The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
269, 271–72). After citing his own knowledge of contemporary science, Columbus said that his primary inspiration and guide had been “the Holy Spirit who encouraged me with a radiance of marvelous illumination from the sacred Holy Scriptures” (Delaney 2006, quoting Columbus’s Libro, 272).
It is important to understand that Columbus’s journey preceded the Protestant Reformation and the resulting split in Christendom. Like Columbus, those (especially the Puritans) who later settled North America brought their own sense of mission and apocalyptic expectations with them (Delaney 2006, 287). They too believed that they came to the New World with a mission and that this mission 119justified their possession of the land from Native Americans, especially those who refused to convert to Christianity.
See also America as New Israel; Colonization; Puritans
For Reference and Further Reading
Delaney, Carol. 2006. “Columbus’s Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48 (April): 260–92.
Phillips, William D., Jr. 1992. “Africa and the Atlantic Islands Meet the Garden of Eden: Christopher Columbus’s View of America.” Journal of World History 3 (Fall): 149–64.
Sha’ban, Fuad. 2005. For Zion’s Sake: The Judeo-Christian Tradition in American Culture. London: Pluto Press.
Common Sense (Thomas Paine)
Even after fighting erupted between American and British troops in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, many Americans remained loyal to King George III, believing that their quarrel was with the British Parliament and its claims to exercise sovereignty over the colonies, which were not represented in that body. Statesmen like John Adams viewed the British monarchy as part of the “balanced government” consisting of the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, each of which represented different class interests. On August 23, however, the king proclaimed the colonies to be in rebellion, and he followed up with speeches to Parliament supporting its position on October 27, 1775, and again on October 31, 1776 (Vile 2019, 107–10).
Between these two speeches, Thomas Paine (1737–1809), a recent immigrant from Britain, wrote a popular book entitled Common Sense, which was designed to question such balanced government in general and monarchy in particular. Although he would later become known as a skeptic for The Age of Reason, in Common Sense, Paine engaged in fairly extensive biblical exegesis to argue for what Nathan Perl-Rosenthal calls “Hebraic Republicanism” (2009), or the idea that the Old Testament preferred republican government over government by a king.
In Common Sense, Paine observed, “In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings, the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion” (1953, 10). He further observed that “government was first introduced into the world by the heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry” (10). Paine observed that both Gideon and Samuel had opposed the creation of kingship and that “monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them” (11). Citing Gideon’s refusal to rule as a king, which is recorded in Judges 8:23, Paine quoted his response to the plea to “Rule thou over us, thou and thy son, and thy son’s son,” with “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you. The Lord shall rule over you” (11). Similarly, he quoted from 1 Samuel 8, where God tells Samuel that “they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” and where Samuel warns the people that a king will take their sons and daughters for his work and tax them heavily (12). Paine 120proceeded to make further arguments about hereditary succession and argued that America was ready for a continental union and had sufficient strength to succeed in a conflict with Great Britain.
Opposing the idea that Britain should be treated as a kind “mother” country, Paine played on Protestant prejudices by associating this term “with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds” (21). In another analogy drawn from the biblical book of Exodus, he further compared George III to “the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England” (27).
In one of the most dramatic passages of his work, Paine imagined a nation ruled by law rather than by a king: “Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know that, so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king” (32). This is a scene reminiscent of Moses’s destruction of the golden calf in Exodus 32:20 (he had ground it up, sprinkled it in water, and made the people drink it); Paine suggested that “lest any ill use should afterward arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished and scattered among the people, whose right it is” (32). Paine further suggested that “nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence” (43).
Perl-Rosenthal said that Paine’s arguments were similar to, and may have been at least partly drawn from, the writings of John Milton (1608–1674), Algernon Sidney (1622–1683), and others but that his Hebraic republicanism was a departure from many other civic republican writers who had accepted monarchy, at least as part of a balanced government. In his Two Treaties of Government, John Locke (1632–1704) had, of course, argued against the doctrine of the divine right of kings that Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653) had advanced in his Patriarcha. Perl-Rosenthal further documents how Paine’s work prompted a number of published attacks and responses, which further served to focus on biblical arguments both for and against kingship (2009, 537).
In writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson directed his attacks on the British king rather than on Parliament, the authority of which the colonists had already previously rejected.
Later in life, Thomas Paine wrote The Age of Reason, which, while affirming basic tenets of Deism, attacked orthodox religion and its biblical foundations. Many Americans, especially those who remembered Paine’s arguments from Scripture in Common Sense, were shocked by what they considered to be his infidelity. Elias Boudinot was among those who authored attacks on Paine’s reasoning.
See also Boudinot, Elias; Declaration of Independence; Gideon; Pharaoh; Political Hebraism
For Reference and Further Reading
Jordan, Winthrop D. 1973. “Familial Politics: Thomas Paine and the Killing of the King, 1776.” Journal of American History 60 (September): 294–308.
Paine, Thomas. [1776] 1953. Common Sense and Other Writings, ed. Nelson F. Adkins. New York: Liberal Arts Press.
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Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan R. 2009. “The ‘Divine Right of Republics’: Hebraic Republicanism and the Debate over Kingless Government in Revolutionary America.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series 66 (July): 535–64.
Vile, John R. 2019. The Declaration of Independence: America’s First Founding Document in U.S. History and Culture. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Commonwealth v. Cooke (MA, 1859)
Ever since its decision in Abington v. Schempp (1963), the U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated devotional Bible reading in public schools, but it was not always so. In 1859, the Police Court of Boston, Massachusetts, thus upheld the right of a teacher, McLaurin F. Cooke, to inflict corporal punishment on an eleven-year-old boy named Thomas J. Wall after