The American Character

One of our relatively forgotten Founding Fathers is James Wilson, a signatory of The Declaration of Independence, a member of the Continental Congress, and among the first six Supreme Court justices chosen by President George Washington. One the most prominent lawyers of his time, Wilson is often credited as being the most learned of the Framers of the Constitution.

James Wilson was also someone who fretted over the youth of America and strongly advocated teaching young children the principles of liberty, freedom, and justice which inspired the American Revolution. Wilson takes on the teacher’s role in the following passage (from Of the Study of the Law in the United States), where we find him touching on the topic of the American character and how both the law and religion can degenerate into ridiculousness when in the hands of their “injudicious friends” who today many would say have become the majority.

Were I called upon for my reasons why I deem so highly of the American character, I would assign them in a very few words–that is, that the American character has been eminently distinguished by the love of liberty, and the love of law. The science of law should, in some measure, and in some degree, be the study of every free citizen, and of every free person. Every free citizen and every free person has duties to perform and rights to claim. Unless, in some measure, and in some degree, you know those duties and those rights, you can never act a just and an independent part.

Happily, the general and most important principles of law are not removed to a very great distance from common apprehension. It has been said of religion that though the elephant may swim in it, the lamb may wade there too. Concerning law, the same observation may be made. The home navigation, carried on along the shores, is more necessary, and more useful too, than that which is pursued through the deep and expanded ocean.

You have heard much concerning the forms of process, and proceedings, and pleadings. Much has been written in praise, and much has been written in ridicule, of this part of law learning. It has certainly been abused: in some hands, it has become, and daily does become ridiculous. And what is there that has been exempted from a similar fate! Religion herself, elegant and simple as she is, assumes yet an awkward and ridiculous appearance when dressed in the tawdry or tattered robes put upon her by the false taste of her injudicious friends.¹

—

Read the next article in our series on the Founding Fathers: Ethan Allen on God, Reason, Prayer, & Religion.

Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.

1. The above quote by James Wilson has been lightly edited for brevity and ease of reading. [↩]

Patrick Henry & The Great Christian Divide

Any series on the Founding Fathers and Christianity would be remiss without addressing the topic of slavery. For us today it seems amazing that such enlightened men, who demanded liberty and freedom for themselves, couldn’t see the hypocrisy in keeping slaves. But many of the Founding Fathers did clearly see the evil of the slave trade and bore no illusions as to themselves being masters over another race.

For some perspective on this matter, we turn to Patrick Henry, the former governor of Virginia, who is famously remembered for his “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” speech, which was a call to arms against the oppressive British government. The following passage from Patrick Henry is taken from a letter to a friend who had sent him a book condemning the slave trade. What is especially poignant in this commentary (for the modern reader) is Henry’s observation of the great divide that exists between what Christians know is wrong in their heads, and what they actually reject as wrong in real life. It is great chasm that still exists today, even among Progressive Christians.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the receipt of Anthony Benezet’s book against the slave trade. I thank you for it. It is not a little surprising that the professors of Christianity, whose chief excellence consists in softening the human heart, and in cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong.

What adds to the wonder is that this abominable practice has been introduced in the most enlightened ages. Times that seem to have pretensions to boast of high improvements in the arts and sciences, and refined morality have brought into general use, and guarded by many laws, a species of violence and tyranny, which our more rude and barbarous, but more honest ancestors detested.

Is it not amazing that at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision in a country, above all others, fond of liberty, that in such an age and in such a country, we find men professing a religion the most humane, mild, gentle and generous, adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity, as it is inconsistent with the bible, and destructive to liberty? Every thinking, honest person rejects slavery in theory, yet how few in reject it in real life from conscientious motives!¹

—

Read the next article in our series on the Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson on Jesus, Religion, & Reason.

Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.

1. The above passage from Patrick Henry was edited lightly to make it easier to read by the modern reader. [↩]

John Dickinson, Divine Providence & Our Freedoms

In this installment of our series dealing with the Founding Fathers–thoughts on Religion, God, and Progressive Christian living, we turn to John Dickinson, a less widely-known Father from Philadelphia who fought during the American Revolution and served as a Pennsylvania delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787. Dickinson is perhaps most famous for his declaration to King George III that Americans were resolved to die free men rather than live slaves.

The following passage is taken from John Dickinson’s “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies.” Here we find Dickinson, the former Progressive Christian President of Pennsylvania, writing eloquently on the freedom that is granted to us by God, and the vigilance that is required to retain that freedom. His comment regarding how our freedoms can be gradually usurped has special resonance for Americans today.

I am no further concerned in anything affecting America, than any one of you; and when liberty leaves it, I can quit it much more conveniently than most of you. But while that Divine Providence which gave me existence in a land of freedom permits my head to think, my lips to speak, and my hand to move, I shall highly and gratefully value this blessing I’ve received, and I’ll take care that my silence and inactivity shall not give my implied assent to any act, degrading my brethren and myself from the birthright, wherewith heaven itself “hath made us free.”

[With Regards to Great Britain] All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, try to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible. Those who succeed them may then venture to go a little further; for each new encroachment will be strengthened by the former. In other words, that which is now supported by examples, grows old, and eventually become another example to support fresh usurpations.

A FREE people therefore can never be too quick in observing, nor too firm in opposing the beginnings of alterations in form or reality regarding those institutions established for their security. The first kind of alteration leads to the last. Yet, on the other hand, nothing is more certain than that our forms of liberty may be retained even when the literal substance is gone. In government, as well as in religion, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”¹

—

Read the next article in our series on the Founding Fathers: Thomas Paine on Christianity & True Greatness

Gain fresh insight into the Lord’s Prayer. Read our free online book The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life. The prayer’s hidden teachings will enrich and inspire you. Click the following link to begin reading the Living Hour book now: The Lord’s Prayer.

1. The above passage from John Dickinson was very lightly edited to make it easier to read by modern readers. [↩]

The Test of Freedom

The writer and wandering traveler Isabelle Eberhardt was an extraordinary woman. The remains of her book Dans l’Ombre Chaude de l’Islam – In the Hot Shade of Islam (salvaged from a flash flood that killed the young author) was once called “one of the strangest human documents that a woman has given to the world.” In her early twenties, Eberhardt wrote the following:

Vagrancy is deliverance and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and get out! To one who understands the value and the delectable flavor of solitary freedom (for no one is free who is not alone) leaving is the bravest and finest act of all.

Most of us can feel sympathy with Eberhardt’s words and admire her courage, especially considering the fact that she wrote them sometime around 1900. Who has not felt (at some point) the desire to “smash the chains” and set out on the open road? Perhaps when we are young, this can be the bravest and finest act of all. But as we grow older, the act of fleeing is often neither brave nor fine.

Looking toward the life of Jesus, we discover that true bravery is to defend our liberty even when being denounced by others, to honor our conscience regardless of the consequences, and to embrace our independence while others toe the line. In other words, to remain free even when we are not alone. The true essence of freedom is defined not by the depth of our solitude but by how well it stands up to the crowd.

—–

Please subscribe to The Living Hour’s free Daily SBNR Motivationals by entering your email address into the “Opening the Small Gate” box in the right corner of this web page. This Progressive Christianity series is written for Unitarians, Agnostics, and all who seek a richer life.

To read about Jesus’ second coming and the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, please go to: Jesus & The Grand Inquisitor.

Jesus, Dostoevsky & The Grand Inquisitor

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s parable of The Grand Inquisitor, Jesus reappears on Earth during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Although the crowds adore him, he is promptly thrown in prison and sentenced to death. While in his cell, Jesus is visited by the Grand Inquisitor who says that he must kill him, even though he knows that he is truly Jesus Christ. The Inquisitor defends Jesus’s death sentence because:

Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of people at rest for ever, you chose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic; you chose what was utterly beyond the strength of others, acting as though you did not love them at all; you who came to give your life for them! Instead of taking possession of people’s freedom, you increased it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with its sufferings for ever.

The Inquisitor says that the Church, by giving people strict rules and telling them exactly what to believe in, is saving them from suffering the burden of making choices and doing them a greater service than Jesus ever did.

Instead of debating with the Inquisitor, Jesus remains silent and at the end simply kisses the old man on his “bloodless” lips. Shocked, the Inquisitor releases him from the cell and sends him away, telling him never to come back into the world.

That Jesus chooses not to argue or debate with the Inquisitor is perhaps the most important part of this parable. In the Gospels, Jesus is conspicuous for never getting into tit-for-tat theological debates or arguments. Instead, he simply speaks his mind when confronted with hypocrisy¹ and answers the questions asked of him by his disciples, the scribes, and others.²

Why was Jesus against arguing? Because he realized that the “winner” of an argument is a momentary champion. When it comes to personal beliefs, lasting changes of heart never come not from persuasive rhetoric. They only arise from inner awakenings.

Please subscribe to The Living Hour’s free Daily SBNR Motivationals by entering your email address into the “Opening the Small Gate” box in the right corner of this web page. This Progressive Christianity series is written for Unitarians, Agnostics, and all who seek a richer life.

To read about M. Scott Peck, Buddha, and The Road Less Traveled, please go to: Life is NOT Difficult.

1. “Hypocrites! It was well said by Isaiah when he prophesied about you: ‘This is a people that honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far removed from me; But vainly do they worship me, for they teach but the precepts of men.’” Matt 15:7-9 [↩]
2. “Teacher, are we right in paying tribute to Caesar or not?” Seeing through their deceitfulness, Jesus said to them: “Show me a coin. Whose head and title are on it?” “The Emperor’s,” they said; and Jesus replied: “Well then, pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Luke 20:21-25 [↩]