The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
“in the liberty of the soul, subject to no restraint but the law of love, and in the liberty of the individual, limited only by the equal rights of his neighbor” (2000, 239).
In his book describing the United States as a Christian nation, after observing that “the Bible is the Christian’s book,” Brewer continued,
No other book has so wide a circulation, or is so universally found in the households of the land. During their century of existence the English and American Bible Societies have published and circulated two hundred and fifty million copies, and this represents but a fraction of its circulation. And then think of the multitude of volumes published in exposition, explanation and illustration of that book, or some portion of it. (1905, 39)
Later in the book, Brewer opined, quoting from Proverbs 14:34, “It needs no declaration of Scripture to convince that ‘righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.’ In so far, therefore, as the principles and precepts of 71Christianity develop righteousness in the individual, to the same extent will a similar result be found in the life of the nation” (1905, 75). Still later, urging his readers to cultivate Christian homes, he urged them to “crown all these with the inspirations which come from Christianity, place the Bible on your table and enshrine the Master in your heart and you may be sure you are building up a home which will be not merely peace and blessing to you, but also for the strength and glory of the republic” (98).
Przbyszewski points out that Brewer cared little about religious doctrine but believed in a God who would sustain people through trials and right all wrongs. As a postmillennialist, Brewer believed that America could hasten the millennial rule of Christ on earth. This appears to have stimulated his work on behalf of international law. Brewer, however, opposed American foreign imperialism.
See also Declaration of Independence
For Reference and Further Reading
Barka, Mokhtar Ben. 2011. “The Christian Nation Debate and the U.S. Supreme Court.” European Journal of American Studies. Special Issue: Oslo Conference. https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/8882.
Brewer, David J. 1905. The United States: A Christian Nation. Philadelphia: John C. Winston.
Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892).
Hylton, J. Gordon. 1998. “David Josiah Brewer and the Christian Constitution.” Marquette Law Review 82 (Winter): 417–25.
Przbyszewski, Linda. 2000. “The Religion of a Jurist: Justice David J. Brewer and the Christian Nation.” Journal of Supreme Court History 25 (November): 228–42.
Brown, John
John Brown (1800–1859) was one of America’s most radical abolitionists. He led a hardscrabble life that was filled with numerous business failures, law suits, and the loss of several infant children that may have further radicalized him.
In addition to leading the massacre of men and boys at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas in retaliation for proslavery attacks on Lawrence, Kansas, and conducting a raid into Missouri in which a slave owner was killed and eleven slaves freed, Brown led the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (today’s West Virginia), in an unsuccessful effort to spark a slave rebellion. In the trial that followed, Brown successfully elevated his profile from that of a terrorist to that of a martyr reading and carefully marking his Bible and identifying himself with prior Christian martyrs, including Jesus.
Whereas many abolitionists espoused a more liberal theology, Brown was a strong Calvinist who believed in the doctrine of original sin and read the sermons of Jonathan Edwards. Although Brown’s espousal of violence might seem better to fit the God of the Old Testament than the New, Professor Louis DeCaro argues that Brown’s vision “was premised upon a thoroughly biblical spirituality rooted theologically and ethically in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles as much as the Hebrew prophets and Old Testament accounts regarding the slaying of pagan tribes” (2002, 5). DeCaro further noted, “As an evangelical Christian, he 72not only read the Bible as God’s word, he read the Bible as God’s word to John Brown. He believed that the Scriptures continued to speak to life situations, radiating fresh truth and directives without obscuring its original and primary meaning” (5). In similar fashion, another scholar has observed that “Brown’s deterministic Calvinism was tempered by antinomian and perfectionist views held in common with many other abolitionists and religious reforms of his day. Antinomianism, an anti-clerical Protestant heresy with a long life, held that in matters of faith each soul was in direct communication with God outside any church or minister’s discipline” (Fellman 2010, 22).
Brown’s moralism was evident in a provisional constitution that he drew up for the free state that he anticipated would grow from his raid at Harper’s Ferry. It prohibited “profane swearing, filthy conversation, indecent behavior, indecent exposure of the person, or intoxication or quarreling” or “unlawful intercourse of the sexes” (Fogleson and Rubenstein 1969, 47). It also provided for setting aside Sunday for rest and for “moral and religious instruction and improvement, relief of the suffering, instruction of the young and ignorant, and the encouragement of personal cleanliness” (57–58).
In 1859, Brown published “A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America” that was patterned on the Declaration of Independence. It referred to “the enormous sin of Slavery,” stated, in words close to those that Thomas Jefferson had once voiced, that “I tremble for my Country, when I reflect, that God is just; And that his justice; will not sleep forever,” and ended with the dramatic words, “Hung be the Heavens in Scarlet” (Brown 1859).
When asked by a bystander at his trial what principles motivated him, Brown responded, “Upon the golden rule. I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God” (Fellman 2010, 39). In making a statement before the court that sentenced him to death, Brown said,
This Court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, is no wrong, but right. (Fellman 2010, 42)
Brown believed deeply that sin required blood atonement. In disciplining one of his children, he kept an account of his offenses, and, after giving him a number of lashes, then bared his own back for his son to inflict upon him the balance of the judgment (Fellman 2010, 23). An early disciple of Brown summed up his theology with the verse, “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin [Hebrews 9:22]” (Gilpin 2013).
A biographer of Brown notes that the Bible that Brown read in prison was a King James Version, which was printed by the American Bible Society. He 73gave it to his baker, John F. Blessing, with his best wishes and added that “there is no commentary in the world so good in order to a right understanding of this blessed book as an honest Childlike and teachable Spirit” (DeCaro 2007). Altogether he had dog-eared thirty-five pages, with nine in the Old Testament. In an earlier Bible that he had owned, Brown had marked passages in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and