Rights of Conscience Inalienable: An Apologetic

 


Many cultures throughout time have sought to ensure the peace of a people group by tying together the forces of the secular and the spiritual.  Constantine’s conversion and proclamation of Christianity as the religion of Rome is discussed as a positive event.  Yet, from the establishment of the colonies through the framing of the Bill of Rights and the final disestablishment religion in the 1830’s, the predominately Christian founders of the United States recognized the need for not only physical liberty, but mental and spiritual liberty as well. John Leland, in his article “The Rights of Conscience Inalienable”, lays out five causes for the Establishment of Religion and the corruption behind each. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0100704904/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=73569084&pg=1  The right to evaluate and decide for oneself is based upon historical, logical, and moral grounds.

The first cause for Established religion is based upon a desire for control or power.  Leland summarizes with “love of importance is evil.”[1]  In both Virginia and in Massachusetts, Leland had seen the influence wielded by the established denominations against others.  Compulsory attendance to services and taxes to support ministers or properties as well as laws preventing or limiting election to public offices served to maintain the status quo within the governments.

By establishing a specific religion or denomination, the colonies and countries before them took from Christianity.  Constantine’s establishment of Christianity “made [it] as stirrup to mount the steed of popularity, wealth, and ambition.”[2]  Service within a denomination or standing within a particular church became seen as a path to individual authority.  Motivations such as this created shallow belief or hypocrisy within the churches.  While Constantine and leaders like him may have created state churches for good reasons, they did “more harm than all the persecuting emperors did.”[3]

Winthrop, when founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, invoked a state religion to gain peace through uniformity of religion.  Man is not uniform, each is unique with their own thoughts, dreams, and beliefs.  Leland is quick to point to human history as proof that uniformity is unattainable.  Compulsion is not freedom.  God is glorified most through Man choosing to follow Him.  Governments should welcome and defend debate, protecting dissenters to promote thought.  The result of this debate will be the discovery of truth naturally without coercion.  “Truth disdains the aid of law for defense – it will stand on its own merits.”[4] 

The Founding Fathers, such as Madison, were concerned about sectarianism causing turmoil in the country.  One means by which this spread would be due to the swaying of unlearned people to get swept away by rhetoric.  The concept that some portions of society are not capable of deciding for themselves what path should be taken both secularly and spiritually led some colonial governments to combine the magistrate and the minister.  Leland rightly calls into question the justice of this stance.  Christ debated the learned elite of His day, as did the prophets and apostles.  The very concept that man could not understand the Word of God maintained the power of the Roman Church over Europe until the Reformation.  Morality, a portion of General Revelation, is in every man, allowing individuals to form societies based on human interaction.  God and His Word should be the basis of our spiritual interactions.

The previous four causes are linked to the fifth, the desire for clerical authorities to gain, defend, and exercise earthly power.  This has been seen in history through multiple cultures.  Catholic and Protestant governments led campaigns of persecution against dissenters up to and including execution.  Even the Anabaptists, predominately pacifists, have the events Muenster in their history.  The evils perpetrated by the mutual corruption between church and state were not only cited by Leland but also by David Thomas[5] before the Revolution and Roger Williams in the seventeenth century.[6] 

The defense against these causes and any ill effects on the United States government or the citizens of this nation was and is the right to conscience.  The balance between individual rights and governmental power is what has allowed this country to grow.  Leland’s respect for and support of Madison and Jefferson provided a means by which the Freedom of Religion was added to the Bill of Rights.  Any government worth having should not fear the spiritual and moral compass of its people but should welcome it for the benefit of all.


[1] John Leland, “The Rights of Conscience Inalienable,” (New London:Greer), 9.

[2] Ibid, 10.

[3] Leland, “The Rights of Conscience”, 10.

[4] Ibid., 11.

[5] David Thomas, “Virginian Baptists: Or A View in Defence of the Christian Religion as it is Professed by the Baptists of Virginia,” Baltimore, Enoch Story, 1773.

[6]  Roger Williams and John Cotton, The Bloudy Tennent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience, Discussed, in a Conference Betweene Truth and Peace Who, in all Tender Affection, Present to the High Court of Parliament, as the Result of their Discourse, these, Amongst Other Passages, of Highest Consideration (London: s.n.], 1644).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sam Insull and the Creation of Commonwealth Edison

  In 1892, a young businessman from England who had settled in America found himself on the losing side of a merging between General Electric and Thompson-Houston.  Thomas Edison’s company was seeking to acquire Thompson-Houston.  J.P. Morgan backed Thomspon-Houston, forcing the acquisition of Edison GE, putting Edison himself out of business. [1]   The young businessman, Sam Insull, had worked to help build Edison GE and was placed into a quandary.  Faced with the prospect of working for the newly formed General Electric Corporation as a vice president or taking a substantial pay reduction to run Chicago Edison, Insull chose Chicago Edison. Insull would lead the company for over forty years, developing the municipal utility into the service provider for much of northern Illinois.   As early as 1903, Insull was looking ahead to the merger of Chicago Edison with the nearby Commonwealth Edison to enlarge the companies service territory. [2]   Insull, h...
Read more

The Great Awakening, The Enlightenment, and James Madison

  Two great movements of the 18th century sought to give men freedom.   Each promised to free the minds of men and in turn give them liberty from oppression.   In some instances, one movement would hold primacy over the other or completely exclude the other.   When balance was not maintained, the rights of individuals and groups were suppressed.   Extreme measures were taken against those that stood against the dominant position.   In one point of time, both the Enlightenment and the Reformation combined to create a new world of freedom for men. Born out of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment placed value upon logic and reason.   While early thinkers such as Pascal saw reason as a portion of General Revelation, later generations began to move away from the faith alone perspectives of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church.   Religion, commonly referred to as superstition by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Jefferson, was replaced with a vi...
Read more

Causes and Effects: The Great Depression and Subsequent Recovery

  The 1930s in United States history were in stark contrast to the decade immediately preceding.   The Roaring 20s had been an age of growth and excess during which the horrors of modern warfare were exorcised from memory.   Life in the moment and the expansion of credit to fuel this view, per the Austrian Cycle Theory, set the stage for the Great Depression. [1]   The boom in the economy was followed by a period of stagnation, which in turn was followed by the bust of the Great Depression.   Many economic theories and models have been created to determine the cause and ultimate correction of the Great Depression.   Bernstein outlined many groups or types of these theories in his article “The Great Depression as Historical Problem.”   While all of the strongest theories modeled some aspects of the Great Depression, the work of Josef Steindl may have provided the closest theoretical model.   As capital is concentrated overtime.   Holding of c...
Read more