The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile

The Bible in American Law and Politics

The Bible in American Law and Politics - John R. Vile

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159).

      Particularly prominent during the 1870s, this movement presented a petition of more than thirty-five thousand signatures to Congress but met with increasing concerns that the proposed amendment, especially as worded to recognize Jesus Christ, might violate the separation of church and state. Such proposals continued, however, with support from the National Association of Evangelicals and other groups. In 2000, the platform of a group calling itself the Constitution Party observed as follows:

      The U.S. Constitution established a Republic under God, rather than democracy; our Republic is a nation governed by a Constitution that is rooted in Biblical law, administered by representatives who are Constitutionally elected by the citizens; [and] in a Republic governed by Constitutional law rooted in Biblical law, all Life, Liberty and Property are protected because law rules. (Vile 2015, I: 72)

      See also Findley/Wylie Debate over “The Two Sons of Oil”; Ten Commandments; U.S. Constitution

       For Reference and Further Reading

      Jacoby, Stewart O. 1984. “The Religious Amendment Movement: God, People and Nation in the Gilded Age.” 2 vols. PhD diss., University of Michigan.

      Kabala, James S. 2013 .Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787–1846. Brookfield, VT: Pickering and Chatto.

      Vile, John R. 2015. Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues, 1789–2015. 2 vols., 4th ed. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

      Throughout Christian history, theologians and political leaders have sought to ascertain the degree to which biblical laws and admonitions should be enacted 95into laws and the degree to which they should apply to non-Christians. American Puritans probably came as close as any group to using biblical laws as the basis of colonial laws. They further limited voting rights to those who were church members.

      Rousas John Rushdoony (1917–2001) has laid the philosophical foundation for reinstituting such a polity within the United States in what is generally recalled Christian Reconstructionism, or Theonomy. The son of an Armenian immigrant, Rushdoony was educated at the Westminster Theological Seminary (a breakaway from Princeton Theological Seminary) and served as founder and president of the Chalcedon Foundation, which was named after an early creed that reiterated that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. Influenced by the idea of presuppositionalism, which he learned from Professor Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987) at Westminster Seminary, Rushdoony argued that believers, who followed the Bible, had little in common with those who did not. It became the responsibility of the former to exercise dominion over all creation in accord with the mandate that God gave to Adam in Genesis 1:28 and reaffirmed in the covenant with Noah in Genesis 9:1–3, and in Psalm 8:6–8. Rushdoony was a prolific writer whose most important work, The Institutes of Biblical Law, first published in 1973 and patterned on John Calvin’s classic Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), describes in detail how each of the commandments would be applied.

      Many Reconstructionists believe that America is a Christian nation and that states and localities are responsible for enforcing the Ten Commandments, including capital punishment (stoning) not only for offenses like murder but also for blasphemy and disrespect for parents. Molly Worthen has summarized the tenets of Christian Reconstructionism as follows:

      A Calvinistic notion of regeneration, or salvation by God-given grace; a postmillennial eschatology predicting that Jesus Christ’s second coming will occur after a thousand-year reign of the saints, thus requiring Christians to act now to bring about that reign; presuppositional apologetics; an anti-statist worldview requiring “decentralized social order where civil government is only one legitimate government among many”; and finally, “continuing validity and applicability of the whole law of God” (Worthen 2008, 401)

      Worthen further observes that the rule of God’s law would include not only the Ten Commandments but also some six hundred other rules that accompanied them (401).

      Frederick Clarkson observes that there are both “hard and soft Dominionists,” but that they are bound together by three views:

      1 Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.

      2 Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.

      3 Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believed that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of 96American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing biblical principles. (Clarkson 2011)

      Rushdoony was a particular foe of public education, which he associated with secular humanism, and he helped lay the groundwork for the Protestant Christian homeschool movement. Believing that the purpose of government was to establish justice rather than to embody love, he further argued that law should focus on punishment rather than on rehabilitation. Rushdoony, who opposed racial desegregation, believed that the purpose of law was not to equalize individuals but to form a “separate” people in a covenantal relationship with God (Worthen 2008, 419). As in Puritan thought, Rushdoony had little respect for diversity, viewing law itself as what he described as “a state of war; it is the organization of the powers of civil government to bring the enemies of the law-order to justice” (Worthen 2008, 421).

      Rushdoony’s thought has been proponed by a number of followers, including his son-in-law Gary North, an economist with whom he was estranged. Reconstructionism has had the greatest influence on the Christian right, influencing such individuals as Herb Titus, who helped found the law school at Pat Robertson’s Regent University; Gary DeMar, who heads American Vision; Roy Moore, the Alabama judge best known for installing a large monument to the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court; Randall Terry, who headed Operation Rescue in opposing abortion; Texas senator Ted Cruz; former Kansas senator Sam Brownback; former televangelist D. James Kennedy; and others (Sugg 2005; Clarkson 2011).

      Bill Strittmatter, the pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ in Lakemore, Ohio, published a pamphlet, probably in the early 1970s, entitled “A Christian Constitution and Civil Law for the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth,” in which he attempted to base a proposed national constitution on the Ten Commandments. It was based on the idea that the United States was a Christian nation (Vile 2014, 122).

      See also Capital Punishment; Covenants, Compacts, Contracts, and Constitutions; Moore, Roy; Puritanism; Ten Commandments

       For Reference and Further Reading

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