"The notion of a Christian commonwealth ..."

" ... should be exploded forever ..."

That's how the rest of the quote above goes. Here is the whole thing in its fuller context:

No national church, can ... be the Gospel Church. A national church takes in the
whole nation, and no more; whereas, the Gospel Church, takes in no nation, but
those who fear God, and work righteousness in every nation. The notion of a
Christian commonwealth, should be exploded forever, without there was a
commonwealth of real Christians. Not only so, but if all souls in a government,
were saints of God, should they be formed into a society by law, that
society could not be a gospel church, but a creature of the state.

Those words were written in 1790 during the ratification process of the Bill of Rights. Who wrote them? Some deistic politician or Unitarian minister? No, it was Baptist minister and leader John Leland and his sentiments were typical of Baptists in that day.

These days many Baptist ministers argue fiercely that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" and thus it should be today. But Baptists of the early days of this nation believed that efforts to establish a "Christian nation" were efforts to set up something that would not really be Christian at all.

It seems to me that Leland and his fellow Baptists had it right on this point. As I recall Jesus rejected the offer of government power to accomplish his ends--rejected it as a temptation of the devil.

What James Madison believed the religious clause accomplished

When James Madison proposed the Bill of Rights in 1789, his wording of the religious clasuse went like this: “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or any pretext infringed.” In course of the debate in both the House and the Senate, this wording was modified several times until the final phrasing of the religious clause of the First Amendment was settled upon: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”

As Donald L. Drakeman points out, “it is possible to debate interminably over the linguistic difference between Madison’s original proposal and the final version of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.” Whatever may be said about Madison’s view concerning the final wording of the religion clause, Madison biographer Irving Brant maintains that “there is no need to guess” about what Madison believed the phrasing accomplished. One year after Congress approved the Bill of Rights, Madison explained why he excluded an enumeration of those in professional occupations from an amendment to the census bill. He did not think it proper to list religious professionals because “the general government is proscribed from interfering, in any manner whatever, in matters respecting religion; and it may be thought to do this, in ascertaining who [are] and who are not ministers of the gospel” (emphasis mine) As Brant says, this represented “the broadest conceivable definition of the constitutional guarantee, made publicly … to the same group of men who had approved it … [and] [n]obody challenged his statement.”

In his first inaugural address, Madison promised “to avoid the slightest interference with the rights of conscience, or the functions of religion so wisely exempt from the civil jurisdiction” (emphasis mine). While Madison was president, the plight of a Baptist church in the Mississippi Territory came before congress in 1811. The congregation had accidentally built its meeting place on federal land due to “an error in surveying.” Congress addressed the problem by passing a bill granting what was considered a “trivial” piece of land to the church, but Madison vetoed the bill. He explained in his veto message that “reserving a certain parcel of land of the United States for the use of [a] Baptist church comprises a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.’”

In retirement Madison wrote in his “Detached Memoranda” that “the appointment of Chaplains to the Houses of Congress” is unconstitutional because “[t]he constitution of the U.S. forbids anything like an establishment of national religion.” Paying ministers with tax dollars to serve as chaplains involved the principle of a “national establishment.” Furthermore, the appointment of chaplains was “a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles” because the beliefs of the chaplains selected “shut the door of worship [against] the members whose creeds [and] consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.”

Repeatedly Madison interpreted the language of the First Amendment to provide for the separation of church and state in the strictest terms. This was certainly pleasing to his Baptist allies in the struggle for religious liberty. John Leland, an influential Baptist minister of that day, believed, with his fellow Baptists, that “the religious opinions of men [should not be] the objects of civil government, nor in any way under its control.”

Beyond toleration

On April 25, 1776, two delegates were chosen from Orange County, Virginia to participate in the general convention where the state would formally declare its independence from Britain and draft a new frame of government. One of those delegates was 25 year old James Madison whose “Baptist neighbors may have helped him to win election,” according to historian Lance Banning. Madison was not a Baptist, but he actively protested the persecution of Baptists at the hands of the state Anglican establishment. Indeed, numerous historians claim that Madison, the father of the United State Constitution, got into politics to protest the persecution of Baptists.

The young legislator arrived in Williamsburg for the convention on May 6, 1776, “a stranger to most Virginia leaders,” according to Irving Brant. Yet this newcomer to state politics was nonetheless responsible for a great leap forward in thinking on religious liberty.

George Mason was late arriving as a delegate to the convention and he was immediately placed in charge of drafting a Declaration of Rights. Mason was widely respected in the state for his opinions on government and Ralph Ketcham says, “Madison and [Thomas] Jefferson always deferred to him as their mentor in matters of political theory.” However, Madison was not content with Mason’s wording on religious freedom in the Declaration of Rights which included a clause saying “all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience ...” Madison prepared a change which he convinced Patrick Henry to present, but the body rejected the amendment because it was feared that the replacement language would disestablish the Anglican Church. Madison prepared a substitute amendment, this time asking Edmund Pendleton to bring the motion. The new wording passed, replacing Mason’s language on toleration with the radical new thinking that “all men are equally entitled to enjoy the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience ...”

According to Banning, Madison’s “final phrasing ... erected an ideal that no society had ever written into law.” Madison thus went a step further than John Locke’s advocacy of toleration and he was ahead of Thomas Paine who later called toleration a type of despotism. According to Ketcham, Madison’s “experience at Princeton and his struggle against persecution of Baptists in Virginia convinced him that ‘toleration’ was an invidious concept.” Ketcham also maintains that Madison’s success in replacing toleration with equality and free exercise in matters of religion “made possible complete liberty of belief or unbelief, and utter separation of church and state.”

And so James Madison, who got into politics to protest the persecution of Virginia Baptists, took his first step in a lifelong crusade for religious liberty.

Church building lost to presidential veto

So a Baptist congregation built a meeting house in the Mississippi Territory sometime in the early 1800's. At some point it was realized that, due to a surveying error, the church building had accidentally been constructed on federal property. The church apparently petitioned Congress for relief and a bill was passed granting the congregation what was considered an inconsequential five acre parcel.

President James Madison vetoed the bill on February 28, 1811.

Why would Madison, a lifelong friend of Baptists, be so mean to a Baptist church? Because he saw this bill that gave federal land to a church as a violation of the First Amendment. In his veto message to Congress, Madison wrote that this legislative act comprised "a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.'"

While Madison's action might seem pretty unkind, the principle that he defended is crucial to religious freedom. I don't know what happened to the meeting place of that Baptist congregation after Madison's veto. It must have been tough time for the church. I wonder if the members of the congregation took any comfort in the fact that they lost their meeting house for a good cause?

Angry Anna

Anna Jarvis was the driving force in establishing Mother’s Day in the U.S. In 1914, after years of hard work, Jarvis saw President Woodrow Wilson sign a joint congressional resolution establishing Mother’s Day as a national observance. It was the realization of a dream for Jarvis but she became disillusioned by what Mother’s Day quickly became.

Jarvis’ mother, Anna Maria Jarvis, dedicated her life to numerous social causes as a way of expressing her Christian faith. Her “Mother’s Day Work Clubs” were designed to improve health and sanitary conditions and to raise money for those who could not afford needed medicine. Her organization assisted families where the mother of the house was stricken with tuberculosis. Anna Maria Jarvis and her fellow mothers organized an inspection process for milk and other foods. During the Civil War the Mother’s Day Clubs declared neutrality and cared for wounded soldiers of the Union and the Confederacy. At the conclusion of the war, Jarvis the elder, through her clubs, deliberately worked to reconcile neighbors that had been at war. Besides all this, she was a Sunday School teacher in her Methodist church for 25 years.

In 1905 the younger Jarvis swore at her mother’s graveside that she would dedicate her life to her mother’s work and establish a Mother’s Day. After Mother’s Day became a national reality Jarvis was horrified that it was soon transformed into what she saw as a day of profit for the flower industry and greeting card companies. Gone was the emphasis on social change led by her mother.

Jarvis was very vocal in her complaints about Mother’s Day. She was once arrested for disrupting the meeting of a mother’s organization that she claimed had turned Mother’s Day into nothing but a day of profit. She began circulating petitions trying to have Mother’s Day rescinded as a national observance and spent the bulk of her inheritance attempting to undo what she saw as the damage of Mother’s Day. She was finally committed to a sanitarium where she died penniless and bitter.

While there is certainly nothing wrong with recognizing the positive contributions that mothers have made to our lives, I wonder if there is any hope of restoring any of Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis' emphasis on Christian social activism to the day. Is Mother's Day destined to remain only a "Hallmark moment" or can it also become, as it once was, an opportunity for obeying Jesus' command to reach out to the least of these?

Satan, the Holy Spirit and Christian education

Marv Knox, editor of The Baptist Standard, recently reported on the disturbing results of a new Barna survey. According to the study, nearly six out of ten self-described Christians in America believe in neither Satan nor the Holy Spirit. That's right, it appears that nearly 60% of U.S. Christians either strongly agree or somewhat agree that the devil and the Holy Spirit are symbols rather than living beings.

Knox outlines nicely the troubling dimensions of the results of this survey from a biblical and practical perspective and he makes an appropriate application of it to the tendency of Baptists to "avoid the Spirit." Check it out at the link above--good stuff. But I am wondering if this survey underscores the sorry state of Christian instruction in our churches. When nearly six out of ten Christians believe in neither the devil nor the Spirit then something is not working well in our Christian education.

In Baptist life we used to have much more instruction relative to worship services. Now, in most churches, we have fewer opportunities for Christian instruction and these tend to be more sparsely attended than in years past. With the death or near death of Training Union/Discipleship in many Baptist churches, systematic doctrinal instruction is nearly nonexistent.

Acts 2:42 tells us that believers in the early church devoted themselves to teaching. I don't think we do so today and I cite this recent Barna survey as evidence.

Taking H and H Road

According to Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus said: “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (TNIV).

We naturally take the wide roads, not the narrow ones. Jesus invites us to take the narrow road.

If I am taking a long trip south, I check the route on an Internet mapping program or on a GPS device. Every such program that I have used instructs me to take H and H Road, but I never do. H and H Road is almost directly across from my subdivision and it is definitely the shortest way to go if I am headed to points south. The problem is that the road is little more than a dirt path with ruts and holes and some pretty big puddles when it rains. Furthermore, H and H Road only trims maybe 1 or 2 tenths of a mile off the trip. So I take the nice, wide, hard surface Mount Pisgah Road instead taking H and H Road despite what the mapping programs and the GPS devices say.

I don’t know of anyone in my subdivision who routinely takes H and H Road. No sensible person would take that narrow road when there is a nice, easily accessible, wide road.

Jesus invites us to take H and H Road. The Lord invites us to travel the path that seems a strange choice to the prevailing notions of our culture.

Jesus told his followers to sell their possessions and give to the poor (Luke 12:33). He told us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). He said that, if someone strikes you on one cheek, don’t hit them back, just offer them the other cheek (Matthew 5:39). He told us to prize the lowly people of society rather that the prestigious people (Luke 14:12-14; Matthew 25:31-46). He said to give your shirt to the one who takes your coat (Matthew 5:39). He said to give to the one who asks you (Matthew 5:42), and to lend without expecting repayment (Luke 6:43). He said blessed are you who are poor, but woe to you who are rich (Luke 6:20; 24). He said blessed are you who are hungry, but woe to you who are well fed (Luke 6:21; 25). He said blessed are you when people hate you but woe to you when everyone speaks well of you (Luke 6:22; 26). He said blessed are you who weep now, but woe to you who laugh now (Luke 6:21; 25). He followed the path of the cross and he told his followers to take up their own crosses.

Do you see that following Jesus means taking H and H Road? He turns many of our values upside down. His teaching runs counter to the conventional wisdom of our society. Following him means being weird and most of us don’t want to be weird.

I guess that’s why we keep wandering over to the wide road.