The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
lawyer and missionary who served as an officer for the 92American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He wrote a series of essays under the name of William Penn explaining its injustices. Although a great number of the essays were devoted to explicating Cherokee rights under treaties and international law, he made a number of arguments from Scripture.
Indeed, in the first of his essays, he likened the attempt to remove the Cherokees to the story of Ahab’s seizure of Naboth’s vineyard (aided by his wife Jezebel) as described in 1 Kings 21:1–16 (Evarts 1829, 5). Evarts further tied injustice to God’s judgment. After noting that America would suffer in the eyes of other nations if it acted unjustly, he further observed,
There is a higher consideration still. The Great Arbiter of Nations never fails to take cognizance of national delinquencies. No sophistry can elude his scrutiny; no array of plausible arguments, or of smooth but hollow professions, can bias his judgment; and he has at his disposal most abundant means of executing his decisions. In many forms, and with awful solemnity, he has declared his abhorrence of oppression in every shape; and especially of injustice perpetrated against the weak by the strong, when strength is in fact made the only rule of action. (Evarts 1829, 5–6)
He further cited the words of Micah 6:8 in reference to the obligation “to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God” (Evarts 1829, 6).
Evarts’s second essay combined biblical and natural rights principles. He thus observed, “The Cherokees are human beings, endowed by their Creator with the same natural rights as other men” (Evarts 1829, 7). He noted that they had adopted an agricultural lifestyle and established schools, and that many had become Christians.
Meticulously defending the rights of the Cherokees under treaties and both national and international law, Evarts once again called upon God:
If this case should unhappily be decided against the Cherokees, (which may Heaven avert!) it will be necessary that foreign nations should be well aware, that the People of the United States are ready to take the ground of fulfilling their contracts so long only, as they can be overawed by physical force; that we as a nation, are ready to avow, that we can be restrained from injustice by fear alone; not the fear of God, which is a most ennobling and purifying principle; not the fear of sacrificing national character, in the estimation of good and wise men in every country, and through all future time; not the fear of present shame and public scorn; but simply, and only, the fear of bayonets and cannon. (Evarts 1829, 46)
Further summarizing the view of the Cherokees in his fifteenth essay, Evarts observed,
We do not profess to be learned in the law of nations; but we read the Bible, and have learned there some plain principles of right and wrong. The Governor of the world gave us this country. We are in peaceable possession. We have never acknowledged any earthly lord, or sovereign. If our Creator has taken away our land and given it to you, we should like to see some proof of it, beside your own assertion. We have read in the book, which we understand you to acknowledge as the word of God, that “to oppress a stranger wrongfully” [Ezekiel 22:29] is a mark of great national wickedness. (Evarts 1829, 55)
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In what should have appealed to a largely Protestant audience, in his sixteenth essay, Evarts observed that Queen Elizabeth was imitating the pope when she tried to claim North America, just as the pope had sought to divide South America between Spain and Portugal (58). In a later essay, Evarts linked the whites’ desire for Cherokee lands to the biblical sin of covetousness, which is delineated in the Ten Commandments (88).
In his twenty-third essay, Evarts argued that Christianity is both “the basis of the present law of nations” and “a part of the common law.” He, in turn, linked both to the Golden Rule of treating others as one desired to be treated (95).
Almost as if imitating his namesake, the prophet Jeremiah, Evarts observed that “the memory of these transactions will not be forgotten. A bitter roll will be unfolded, on which Mourning, Lamentation, and Woe to the People of the United States will be seen written in characters, which no eye can refuse to see” (100). He then quoted from Deuteronomy 27:17–19: “Cursed be he, that removeth his neighbor’s landmark: and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he, that maketh the blind to wander out of the way: and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow: and all the people shall say, Amen” (Evarts 1829, 100–1).
After again suggesting that God would judge the nation if it went forward with this plan, Evarts proceeded to elaborate with an apparent reference to Deuteronomy 19:14, which warned against removing boundary stones:
It is now proposed to remove the landmarks, in every sense;—to disregard territorial boundaries, definitely fixed, and for many years respected;—to disregard a most obvious principle of natural justice, in accordance with which the possessor of property is to hold it, till some one claims it, who has a better right;—to forget the doctrine of the law of nations, that engagements with dependent allies are as rigidly to be observed, as stipulations between communities of equal power and sovereignty;—to shut our ears to the voice of our own sages of the law, who say that Indians have a right to retain possession of their land and to use it according to their discretion, antecedently to any positive compacts; and, finally, to dishonor Washington, the Father of his country,—to stultify the Senate of the United States during a period of thirty-seven years,—to burn 150 documents, as yet preserved in the archives of State, under the denomination of treaties with Indians, and to tear out sheets from every volume of our national statute-book and scatter them to the winds. (Evarts 1829, 101)
Evarts ended by quoting Thomas Hooker to indicate that the seat of law is found in “the bosom of God” and that it is “the mother of their peace and joy” (101).
See also Common Law; Jezebel as Political Archetype; Judgment; Native American Indians
For Reference and Further Reading
Andrew, John A. 1992. From Revivals to Removal: Jeremiah Evarts, the Cherokee Nation, and the Search for the Soul of America. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
[ Evarts, Jeremiah]. 1829. Essays on the Present Crisis in the Condition of the American Indians: First Published in the National Intelligencer, under the Signature of William Penn. Boston: Perkins & Marvin.
West, John G., Jr. 1996. The Politics of Revelation and Reason: Religion and Civic Life in the New Nation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
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Chosen People
See America as New Israel
Christian Amendment
The Ten Commandments resemble a treaty between God and his people, and their introduction, as recorded in Exodus 20, begins with God saying, “I am the LORD thy God.” Although some defenders of the idea that America was a Christian nation found meaning in the fact that the attestation clause of the U.S. Constitution referred to “the year of our LORD,” some religious groups thought the nation could never secure God’s blessings without more explicitly mentioning Him. The Reformed Presbyterian Church, with roots in the Scottish Covenant tradition, launched an initiative to see that the U.S. Constitution specifically acknowledged God. John Alexander, a layman, proposed to a convention of the National Association to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution (later called the National Reform Association) meeting in Zenia, Ohio, in February 1863 that such an amendment acknowledge “the rulership of Jesus Christ