The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
that either our Saviour, or any of his apostles, ever did interfere with the affairs of any government, or the administration of any government, other than by submitting to them” (540). Quoting Jesus’s dictum in Matthew 22:21 to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” Boucher observed “that it is enough for the disciple to be as his master, and the servant as his lord” (342).
No government will ever be perfect, but by nature it is “absolute and irresistible” (345), and it is up to citizens to obey in order to avoid calamities. Government needs to be supreme and, in America, this supremacy is vested in “the King and the Parliament” (554). Moreover, it is unwise to revolt “on account of an insignificant duty on tea” (554), however irritating it might be.
See also Declaration of Independence; First Continental Congress; Revolutionary War
For Reference and Further Reading
Berens, John F. 1978. “‘A God of Order and Not of Confusion’: The American Loyalists and Divine Providence. 1774–1783.” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 47 (June): 211–19.
Boucher, Jonathan. 1793. A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution; in Thirteen Discourses, Preached in North America between the Years 1763 and 1775: With an Historical Preface. London: G.G. and J. Robinson. [Note: Readers may find an excerpted copy of Boucher’s sermon on Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Nonresistance at the Constitution Society website at https:///www.constitution.org/bcp/nonresis.htm.]
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Frazer, Gregg L. 2018. God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case against the American Revolution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Noll, Mark A. 2016. In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783. New York: Oxford University Press.
Boudinot, Elias
Elias Boudinot (1740–1821) was an early American statesman who was born in Philadelphia, attended the College of New Jersey (today’s Princeton), and studied law under Richard Stockton, who would later become his brother-in-law. He served on a Committee of Correspondence and as a member of the New Jersey provincial assembly and was appointed by General George Washington to serve as a commissary general for British prisoners. He also served in the Continental Congress, where Congress elected him president for the year 1783, and where he introduced a call for a national day of thanksgiving. He was elected to three terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, signed the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, and headed the U.S. Mint.
Boudinot became an ardent Federalist who was strongly opposed to the secular forces unleashed by the French Revolution, which he feared would flourish in America with the election of Thomas Jefferson, whom he considered to be a Deist. More generally, Boudinot feared the decline of public virtue in the United States. In retirement, he helped found and served as the first president of the American Bible Society, through which he thought that the spread of the Bible and of Christianity might bring soon the return of Jesus to earth.
An orthodox Presbyterian, Boudinot had been baptized by George Whitefield (1714–1770) and grew up under the preaching of the revivalist Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764). Boudinot was clearly shocked when Thomas Paine, who had utilized the Bible in Common Sense, to argue against the institution of hereditary kingship, published The Age of Reason, in which he attacked the authority of the Bible and many other orthodox Christian doctrines.
Boudinot was especially concerned about how such infidelity might affect the morals of America’s youth. In a letter to his daughter, Boudinot observed, “I confess that I was much mortified to find the whole force of this vain man’s genius and art pointed at the youth of America. . . . This awful consequence created some alarm in my mind lest at any future day, you, my beloved child, might take up this plausible address of infidelity; and for want of an answer at hand to his subtle insinuations might suffer even a doubt of the truth, as it is in Jesus, to penetrate your mind” (DeMar n.d., viii).
Boudinot’s refutation is saturated with references to classical historians and contemporary thinkers as well as with scriptural references and scriptural quotations. Indeed, in his dedication, he refers to the Bible as “the Alpha and Omega of knowledge,” a term that the Bible (Revelation 1:8; 21:6; and 22:13) uses for Jesus (1801, xxii).
Paine sought to dismiss most biblical accounts on the basis that they were based upon hearsay by individuals who are not alive to be questioned. By contrast, 67Boudinot sought to argue that the biblical record, which had been based on hundreds of witnesses, was superior to most other historical accounts upon which scholars commonly rely and had been validated by prophecy. He thus sought to uphold accounts of the virgin birth of Jesus, the divine mission of Christ, the Trinity (which Boudinot believed had been shared by other early religions), the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and the authenticity of the books of both the Old and New Testaments. In arguments that continue to be a part of modern apologetics, Boudinot believed it was contradictory to argue, as Paine had done, that the ethics of Jesus and his disciples were a great advance, while then denying the claims to deity that he believed Jesus had made and suggesting that his disciples had perpetuated a fraud when they argued for Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. Referring to a wide variety of statements that the gospels had attributed to Jesus, Boudinot rhetorically asked, “Can that man be a virtuous and amiable man—a preacher and practice of the most benevolent morality, not exceeded by any—and yet in the opinion of this writer, be guilty of imposing on his followers, by assuring them that ‘He was before the foundation of the world—that he was the birth born of every creature—that he was sent of God—came down from Heaven—that he was the only begotten Son of God—that God was his father’” (1801, 85). Boudinot observed that “the denial of the principal events and historical occurrences of the life of Jesus Christ, as recorded by the evangelists, necessarily implies a miracle equal to the affirmation of them” (91). Boudinot also challenged Paine, who remained a Deist, to explain evil without the doctrine of original sin (125).
Although The Age of Reason sold well in America, it would appear that many more Americans identified with the view expressed by Boudinot and other critics than with Paine, who died in relative obscurity and who continued to be a favorite whipping boy of those who opposed biblical infidelity.
See also American Bible Society; Common Sense (Thomas Paine); Jefferson Bible
For Reference and Further Reading
Boudinot, Elias. 1801. The Age of Revelation: Or, The Age of Reason Shewn to Be an Age of Infidelity. Philadelphia: Asbury Dickins. Reprinted by Power Springs, GA: American Vision Press.
DeMar, Gary. n.d. “Foreword” to Boudinot, Elias. 1802. The Age of Revelation: Or, The Age of Reason Shewn to Be an Age of Infidelity. Philadelphia: Asbury Dickins. Reprinted by Power Springs, GA: American Vision Press, pp. vii–xiv.
Den Hartog, Jonathan. 2014. “Elias Boudinot, Presbyterians, and the Quest for a ‘Righteous Republic.’” Faith and the Founders of the American Republic, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 253–76.
Den Hartog, Jonathan J. 2015. Patriotism & Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Flick, Stephen. n.d. “Elias Boudinot: Building America on Christ.” Christian Heritage Fellowship. https://christianheritagefellowship.com/elias-boudinot-building-america-on-christ/. Accessed May 9, 2019.
Keane, John. 1995. Tom Paine: A Political Life. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
Staloff, Darren. 2014. “Deism and the Founders.” Faith and the Founders of the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 13–33.