The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
one could charge “with robbing a nation almost of their whole Continent, and murdering their women and children, and then depriving the remainder of their lawful rights” as well as enslaving African Americans and subjecting them “under the lash with hunger and fatigue under the scorching rays of a burning sun.”
The Bible admonishes Christians “to follow Jesus Christ and imitate him and have his Spirit.” Apess said that the Bible reveals this in Jesus’s summary of the Ten Commandments in Matthew 22:37–40, and in numerous verses dealing with the need for Christian love and charity as in John 13:35; 1 John 4:29; 1 John 3:18; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 4:20; and 1 John 3:15. Apess further cited Romans 13:9, which says, “Now if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
Apess proceeded to point out that, as Jews, Jesus and his disciples were not white and asked rhetorically when Jesus had ever taught his disciples “that they ought to despise one because his skin was different from theirs?” In an indirect reference to 1 Samuel 16:7, Apess further pointed out that God looked on the heart rather than on outward appearances, and cited a passage quite familiar to abolitionists, namely that “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scthian, bond nor free—but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11). He further contended that missionary societies were degrading rather than elevating Native Americans.
Apess further pointed to Acts 10:34, which indicated that “God is no respecter of persons.” Such Scripture was contrary to state laws that prohibited intermarriage between whites and Native Americans and inconsistent with the fact that whites had themselves often chosen Native American mates.
Accusing whites of degrading and robbing Native Americans, Apess noted that there were some American statesmen who did not mock them, and evoked the compassion of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). He ended with, “Do not get tired ye noble-hearted—only think how many poor Indians want their wounds done up daily; the Lord will reward you, and pray you stop not till this 35tree of distinction shall be leveled to the earth, and the mantle of prejudice torn from every American heart—then shall peace pervade the Union.”
Relying more on history than on Scripture, Apess delivered his “Eulogy on King Philip” on January 26, 1836, which in many ways resembles more traditional jeremiads (Bizell 2006). Comparing this Native American king to George Washington, Apess described in vivid detail the manner in which the Puritans had treated Native Americans as less than equals. He reversed the tables of historians who had described Native Americans as savages by detailing how the Puritans had prayed for their deaths and committed many massacres against them. Much like Frederick Douglass in his “What to the Slave in the Fourth of July,” Apess described both the day that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and Independence Day as “days of mourning and not of joy” (Apess 1836).
See also Douglass, Frederick; Native American Indians; Prophets and Jeremiads; Puritans
For Reference and Further Reading
Apess, William. 1833. “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man.” University of Houston Clear Lake. http ://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/Amerind/apesslkggls.htm. Note: Because this text leaves out many of Apess’s references to the Bible, I have supplemented it with https://www.youtube.com/watch?y=NiY5ef4hWTO.
Apess, William. 1836. “Eulogy on King Philip.” Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/apess-eulogy-speech-text/.
Bizell, Patricia. 2006. “(Native) American Jeremiad: The ‘Mixedblood’ Rhetoric of William Apess.” American Indian Rhetoric of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic, ed. Ernest Stromberg. Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 34–49.
Goodnight, Ethan. 2017. “William Apess, Pequot Pastor: A Native American Revisioning of Christian Nationalism in the Early Republic.” Religions 8(18): 17pp. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/2/18/pdf.
Tiro, Karim M. 1996. “Denominated ‘SAVAGE’: Methodism, Writing, and Identity in the Works of William Apess, a Pequot.” American Quarterly 48 (December): 653–79.
Articles, Laws, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Martial for the Colony in Virginia (1610)
Although it has received far less attention than the laws of New England, the Articles, Laws, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Marital for the Colony that were issued in Virginia in 1610 have similar scriptural foundations and supports.
Brent Tarter has noted that this set of orders was “the earliest extant English-language body of laws in the western hemisphere,” but is careful to add that “it was not a legal code in the modern sense. No legislation created it, and no court enforced it” (Tarter n.d.). Although often associated with Governor Thomas Dale, the orders, which came at a very troubling time in Virginia’s early history, appear to have originated with a number of military men. Moreover, in contrast to studies that suggest that colonists carried the common law with them to America, these fairly draconian laws appear more similar to regulations that had been used to govern other colonies, with relatively few free men, than those that are associated with the common law (Konig 1982). It is not always clear whether 36the regulations applied to citizens in general or only to those who were in the militia, which might, however, have included most adult males.
The most obvious features of the regulations was the manner in which they depend so heavily on the Ten Commandments and how many violations of these commandments are in turn linked to the death penalty. The first of thirty-seven numbered sections begins by observing that humans owe the highest allegiance to “the King of kings, the commaunder of commanders, and Lord of Hostes” (1611). This leads to regulations against speaking “impiously or maliciously, against the holy and blessed Trinitie,” or “against the knowne Article of the Christian faith, upon paine of death” (1611). Section 3 specifically provides that those who take God’s name in vain or “use unlawful oaths” are subject to having a bodkin thrust through their tongue or, upon multiple offenses, even death.
Subjects are compelled to go to church twice a day and, consistent again with the Ten Commandments, to observe the Sabbath. Section 8 punished murder with death, with other severe penalties for sodomy, fornication, or sacrilege. Section 10 provided penalties for theft, and Section 11 for bearing false witness. There were additional sanctions for trading with Native American Indians or with visiting shipmen, which were, in turn, tied to the sin of covetousness.
Perhaps reflecting the state of near starvation in the colony, the law limited the killing of domestic farm animals that could be bred to increase the colony’s stock. There were additional sanitary regulations limiting the distance within which one could wash clothes or utensils or relieve oneself near a street or well.
Section 25, which is one of the more interesting, provided that “every man shall have an especiall and due care, to keepe his house sweete and cleane, as also so much of the streete, as lieth before his door, and especially he shall so provide, and set his bedstead whereon he lieth, that it may stand three foote at least from the ground, as will answere the contrarie at at a martiall Court.” A number of penalties involved cutting off the ears of offenders or requiring their work in ship alleys.
See also Capital Punishment; Massachusetts Body of Liberties; Ten Commandments
For Reference and Further Reading
“Articles, Laws, and Orders, Divine, Politic, and Martial for the Colony in Virginia.” 1611. Teaching American History. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/articles-laws-and-orders-divine-politic-and-martial-for-the-colony-in-virginia/.