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 The strong Chrisitan component in the discussions  Ben Franklin's reminder The Framer's Christian take on the issue Comparing the American and French efforts at Republic-building The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work America – The Covenant Nation © 2021, Volume One, pages 146-156. |
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The example also of Ancient Israel
These men were also aware of another example of an ancient people who had tried to be self-ruling, similar to what the Americans were trying to do. These constitutional Framers were quite well read up on the Bible and were very aware of the sad record of the ancient Israelites in their efforts to stay a strong, yet free people. Indeed, as Christians, the Framers were very well aware that human sin (pride, jealousy, lust for power, etc.) stood as a constant threat to any effort to empower a central authority.
For generations, God alone was ancient Israel's
sovereign. The Israelites had called on him time and again to protect
and preserve them against their enemies – foreign and domestic. But
their loyalties to God were most unsteady. Finally at one point, the
people called out to their spiritual leader Samuel, "Give us a king."
They felt that The Protestant component
This was exactly what the American colonists had felt had come to pass with the English kings. The English kings had tried to take the place in the life of the nation that belonged only to God. This effort of the kings to play God, claiming Divine Rights to do so, was what had finally prompted their revolt, their War of Independence. All Americans, as Protestant Calvinists (New England Congregationalists, Reformed Dutch, Middle Colonies Presbyterians, etc.), Baptists, Quakers and even as Church of England vestrymen, well understood that they too had Divine Rights which no king had the right to disregard or trample on. Indeed, in one form or another nearly all of those who assembled to draft this new venture into republican government were Christians, Protestant Christians. They were politically informed by their own sense of the longer history of the Church. Protestantism was very aware of the fact that prior to the adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperors in the 300s, Christianity had been a free religion, under no central political control, but self-governing by small communities of believers themselves in accordance with their strongly Christian moral consciences and ingrained spiritual beliefs. The Christians of the first three centuries of the Church had survived terrible persecution from the Roman political authorities and yet not only had kept themselves together as a people but had grown rapidly at the same time. Pure Christianity needed no hierarchical authority to organize and direct the faith of the true believer.
Thus the Framers tended to be strongly anti-hierarchical in both their religion and their politics. The Puritan-Protestant predecessors of the Framers had lived in terror of the forced Catholicizing of England which the Catholic powers of Europe (principally their perpetual enemies Spain and France) sought to promote. The sending of the Spanish Armada to England in 1588 was loudly justified by Spanish King Philip II as a result of God's command to him as Defender of the Faith to bring the English back to the True Faith (Catholicism) – by force if necessary. The humiliating defeat of Philip's mighty naval Armada therefore ranked not only as a victory for English independence but also as victory in the defense of their Protestant faith. This conflict with the Spanish consequently left an even deeper dislike of hierarchical Catholicism among Protestant Englishmen. In part, the Glorious Revolution in England a century later was prompted by the evidence that English King James II was secretly Catholic in loyalties and planning an alliance with Catholic France to crush the power of the highly Protestant English Whigs who controlled Parliament.
Protestantism as political culture
Thus the Protestant faith of the English colonists was a matter of great political, economic and social importance to them. Their personal freedom and their religious faith were to them inseparable items. As Protestants they chose their own pastors, elected their own elders and deacons to manage their local congregations, read and interpreted their Bible readings on their own – without a priest performing that function for them – and came to their own opinions on theological matters themselves as a matter of their basic rights. This was a matter of great personal distinction to them.
Their Protestant faith registered itself not only in terms of the things they opposed (namely, hierarchically-controlled religion) but the things they aspired to. Their republican instincts were shaped strongly by the way their churches operated. Their church officers were elected by the congregation on a regular basis and, at least on the part of the very strong Presbyterian component among them, they even developed regional representative government in the form of their Synods (Senates) attended by pastoral and lay representatives. Ultimately, community life, both religious and civil – by long established habit – was to their understanding always governed from the ground up, not the top down. They strongly conceived of government as being collegial rather than hierarchical. Generations of them had lived and died for this principle. They would have it no other way. |
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God as the guarantor of the success of America's new Republic
Indeed, the constitutional Framers who gathered at Philadelphia in 1787 saw themselves and their challenge very much operating within the context of God's will. They were very well aware that God Almighty, which in the fashion of the times they often referred to as "Providence" as in "The One Who Provides," was the one empowerment that had enabled them recently to succeed in their very risky revolt. Apart from the direct – and frequent – assistance from God, it would have been highly unlikely that a handful of mere commoners could have ever succeeded on their own in a revolt against a powerful king and his army. They knew well, and testified often to the fact, that only God had made the success of the American revolt possible. They all understood that it was not the size of the American army, nor the cleverness of their generals – but it was the hand of God operating among them that had brought them successfully through these trying times.
Ben Franklin's reminder
Mr. PresidentAnd thus Franklin, the widely respected voice of American pragmatic wisdom, summed up the situation that faced the designers of America's new political system. Madison, who recorded the events of the Convention (including Franklin's speech), noted that the motion was seconded by Roger Sherman, but met by a concern (voiced by Alexander Hamilton) that in taking up this policy at this late date in the process, people would interpret this resolution as merely the result of the embarrassments and dissentions among the delegates (which was indeed the case). Randolph of Virginia then came to the support of the Franklin proposal with a motion of his own specifying how this resolution was to be enacted. But the business of the day ended without any vote on Randolph's motion. We cannot state that the Constitutional Convention at this point then turned itself into a gathering of some kind of saintly religious synod. But clearly all present understood the significance of what Franklin had just brought to their attention. In the end what would guarantee the wisdom and durability of this constitutional enterprise rested ultimately not on the flawed and contentious wisdom of man, but instead on the mercies of the God that Provides for his people, especially in guiding their thoughts and actions. Furthermore, the matter at hand was not just one of providing the thirteen states with some kind of political formula for cooperation, but was (as it had always been) that of building a test society, a demonstration model founded specially to give hope to all mankind that a people's government was not only possible, but was also able to stand strong against forces that would like to return the little people, the commoners of the earth, back under the domination of the high and mighty. Thus there could be no failure in this important enterprise. Franklin
Benjamin Franklin was a very complex individual, witty, even a bit of a showman, a journalist and publisher, a scientist and inventor, a skilled politician and diplomat, and a philosopher possessed of a folk wisdom that cut through folly and conceit in order to bring authentic understanding of life to light. He was a strong Christian, but never dogmatic in his beliefs so that one could therefore identify him with this or that particular religious group. Some identified him as a Deist, who believed merely in some kind of Creator-God that simply observed life from above – and that perhaps (maybe) controlled the gates of Heaven, opening or closing them to a person at death depending on that person's moral performance while on earth. But actually Franklin's Christian faith varied widely over the course of his life, from a very early negative reaction to the strict Puritanism of his parents, to indeed something that looked like regular Deism, to an interest in the power of passionate Christian revival to alter a person's course in life, to an understanding that indeed God is very active in the course of life for both individuals and societies. But in any case, he was a very independent thinker on all subjects near and dear to him (which were vast in scope). Certainly it was easy to believe that he mostly was just a secular scientist focused primarily in studying the mechanics of life (especially this matter of electricity). Yet others could see in him a person seriously concerned about the religious matters that were important to all Christians (or Jews), but in such a way that Christians, ranging from Roman Catholics to Quakers, could easily believe that he was definitely one of their particular faith. The man was brilliant, a Humanist in the very best sense of the word, not really a lofty or isolated Idealist but very much the intensely involved Realist, and a person able to touch the hearts of others in a way that truly stood him out as one of the Greats of the Age. He was born in Boston in 1706, the last male of seventeen children born to his father and his two subsequent wives, given formal schooling only until age ten, supposing himself headed to the ministry. But at age twelve he took an apprenticeship in a printing business run by an older brother, James. But at seventeen, Benjamin broke from that relationship (an illegal act at the time) and escaped to Philadelphia to work in printing shops there, before heading off to London to do the same. A couple of years later he returned to Philadelphia, where he not only resumed his work in the publishing business but formed a discussion group (English coffeehouse style) of young members that combined their libraries and engaged in far-ranging discussions of social interest. Young Franklin was very interested in public matters, and soon started up a series of newspapers that offered commentary on the world around him, especially on the matter of what brought societies to virtue and thus happiness, a theme that would remain central to Franklin for the rest of his life. In 1730 he took up a common-law relationship with Deborah Read, whom he was not allowed to marry because she was already married to a man that ran off with her money, never to be heard from again. Franklin brought into that relationship a son, William, born to him earlier by possibly another woman (or perhaps by Deborah herself?) and a surviving daughter, who would accompany and look after her father after her mother died. He and Deborah remained together until her death in 1774.
But his curiosity about life and how it worked did not stop there. He loved to experiment with better ways of doing ordinary things, inventing multitudes of new objects along the way, such as the Franklin stove, bifocals, an elaborate glass harmonica, but especially things connected with the new idea of electricity (including eventually the lightning rod, a dangerous venture which killed others who tried to follow his lead). This latter interest soon had him considered to be one of the leading scientists of the day, and he found himself closely involved with the growing scientific community, especially during his many extensive stays abroad in Europe. He was no less an inventor in the field of education, helping to develop in the 1750s a New-Model college curriculum taught not by tutor generalists but by professional specialists in different academic fields, and then to see this curriculum put into play in the new King's College (ultimately, Columbia University) and the College of Philadelphia (ultimately, part of the University of Pennsylvania) – the latter which Franklin also co-founded. But it was in the field of politics that Franklin would be best remembered. From the mid-1750s onward, Franklin spent much time in London as a representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly, in part to press the case against the autocracy of the Penn family (Penn's descendants were less generous than their Pennsylvania founder). But eventually his main concern would come to be over the new taxes (especially the expensive government stamps required on all publications) being imposed on the colonies by King George's Tory Parliament. With his opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, he became well-known back in the colonies as a key advocate for a cause that touched not only Pennsylvania, but all the colonies mutually.
Franklin appearing before the King's Privy Council – 1774
But tragically this would put Franklin in deep opposition to his son William, who by Franklin's own intervention had been awarded the position as Governor of New Jersey. This royal appointment was to make William a very strong Tory leader in the colonies, at the same time that his father was becoming a leading voice in the colonies' rising spirit of rebellion. The two would split over this matter, never to be reconciled. When Franklin returned finally from London in 1775, the rebellion had already begun, and Franklin was appointed as a Pennsylvania delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he was also chosen to be a member of the five-man committee commissioned to draft a Declaration of Independence.
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The Framers understood the dangers of building only on
ever-changing human logic ... rather than on permanently-established basic law Franklin's appeal registered itself as strongly as it did because all present knew well the Biblical story of the Fall of Adam and Eve from God's Paradise. Adam and Eve had ignored God's warning not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (human logic), but instead had followed the Serpent's advice to do exactly that because it would make them be "like God." The temptation to play God by assuming for themselves the knowledge of Good and Evil was too great for Adam and Eve to resist. But in breaking that command, disaster struck. What they got for their efforts was only a half-truth (the most dangerous of all lies). Apart from the fundamental guidance of God, their logic could not guide them except in merely self-justifying circles. It did not produce true knowledge. Their logic was only technique – not Truth itself. Truth came from a deeper source of life – from a depth that human logic itself could never reach. Only a close, fully trusting relationship with the Author of Life – and Life's basic Truths as God ordained them – offered true knowledge. But by their disobedience, by their questing for knowledge apart from God, Adam and Eve had ruptured that vital relationship. They were on their own with their own sophistication (as in the sophistication of the Sophists of Ancient Athens). But this sophistication only made them all the more aware of life's shortcomings, especially in others, whom they blamed for their problems. Ultimately this broken relationship with God ended in death – their death. Not a pretty picture! The Framers understood very well the moral of that story: human logic was not the answer to life's challenges. Relationship, holding together in a spirit of unity, and holding to God as the ultimate judge and ruler of life, was the path they needed to follow. The better way would come if they were willing to submit their particular self-interests, and the moral and tactical logic man used in defense of those self-interests, in support of the greater bond that held them together as Americans – Americans under God. What they ultimately formulated as their new American government was a rather simple alliance system that encouraged them to work together without according too many powers to the system itself. This new federal system was their response to the challenge. Even then they knew that this new system would work only if man's hunger for power (as in Adam and Eve's desire to play God) was held in check. A deep respect for – and even fear of – God among the people was the only way they felt that things might stay on course as they faced the many challenges ahead of them. This was a component missing in the logical systems of the philosophers, ancient and modern. It was not missing in the thinking of the Framers of the Constitution. In fact it held a central or foundational place in their understanding of things.
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Contrast the American approach to self-government in 1787 with the
French Revolution which broke out two years later in 1789 – just as the
American Constitution went into effect.
The French were led simply by their belief in the power of human reason or logic – especially their own logic (that is, the logic of their political leaders) – which they supposed would produce a Platonically perfect French Republic. Tragically, the leaders of the French Revolution had only bright ideas – and no practical or deeply tested experience in guiding and directing a society. Nor did the French people themselves have any understanding of what their role was to be in this new Revolutionary society. God played no part in the plans of the French reformers. Indeed, their mood was generally hostile to the idea of God (whom they frequently mocked), for they understood liberty as freedom from religion. They viewed religion, the Christian faith in particular, as a key component of the very Old Order that they were bent on overthrowing. They were determined to be ruled not by God but by man – by man's basic ability to do the right thing, the logical thing. By way of complete contrast, the Framers were well aware of the dangers of trusting to merely self-justifying Human Reason to direct them. They were quite aware that God – whose rules for human behavior were as eternal as the laws of physics and chemistry – had to stay sovereign over these United States, or they too would drift down the "creative" or "progressive" path of Human Reason that the French Revolutionaries had foolishly taken up. Totally unsurprisingly to the more pragmatic Americans, when the French intellectuals attempted to put their "enlightened" political philosophy to practice – they found themselves unable to agree among themselves as to what exactly constituted the right thing, the reasonable, or logical thing. One man's logic was not another man's logic. Soon they fell from their Idealism into mutually hostile intellectual camps. Consequently, the Revolution quickly collapsed into a murderous chaos. At first they kept the guillotine busy beheading the old ruling class of the Ancien Régime: France's king and queen, its barons and aristocrats, its bishops and clergy, etc. But having overthrown the Old Order ... they could not agree on what the New Order should look like. It was at this point that the leading revolutionary groups, the Girondins and Jacobins, savagely turned on each other over points of differences in their "pure" thinking ... sending each other to the guillotine! And thus France fell into a very bloody period, especially during the years 1793-1794, a period known today as the French "Reign of Terror." And so it was that the French "enlightened ones" themselves became the victims of their own Revolution.
It finally took the dictatorship of Napoleon (1799-1815) to bring the French under some kind of political order. It required a new form of tyranny to rescue them from the tyranny of unrestrained human self-interest – and the reason or logic used to justify such self-interest. So much for human Reason and the Idealistic belief that man's Reason opened the way to some kind of absolute Truth and Goodness! Yet it would be a sophisticated belief that would never seem to die, despite the ugly historical record of man's continuing attempts to build utopias on the basis of human Reason alone. By way of strong contrast, the Framers of the Constitution were very aware of such potential dangers.1 Thus the American "Revolution" they presided over, highly suspicious of unrestrained human behavior and thus cautiously minimalist in its utopian efforts, succeeded awesomely in creating a viable republic – one loaded with many checks and balances in its distribution of various governmental powers. And thus it was that the American constitution-building effort would succeed brilliantly ... to the same extent that the French Revolution failed miserably. 1Except
probably Jefferson, who anyway was away during the drafting of the new
Constitution, serving as America's Minister (Ambassador) to France
(1785–1789). In Paris, he was wholly enraptured by the reformist spirit
of the French philosophes (intellectuals or philosophers), a spirit
which was clearly driving France toward revolution. Jefferson, being
himself a utopian idealist, long remained a devout defender of the
French Revolution, which finally broke out in 1789 (just before he
returned to America). Indeed, he was one of the last to finally admit
that the murderous Reign of Terror into which France soon fell had
tragically betrayed the original high ideals of the French utopian
philosophers he once so greatly admired. |
The execution of French King Louis XVI – January 21, 1793
... setting off a realm of mass executions ... first of the French nobility and clergy
then descending down into mutual slaughter of opposing revolutionary groups,
Jacobins vs. Girondins
Leaders of the French Revolution
Georges-Jacques Danton early leader ...
replaced by the more radical Maximilien Robespierre
The sociopath Jean-Paul Marat ...
who used to make the list of those to be guillotined during the Reign of Terror
The Goddess of Reason, symbol of the new Cult of Reason (1793)
replacing France's traditional Catholicism. She is being led to the Cathedral Notre Dame
where she will be placed at its altar as a sign of the new Age of Reason ...
ironically at the same time that the French are slaughtering each other over points of "reason."
Jacobin headquarters during the height of the "Reign of Terror" (July 1794)
The mass-murderer Robespierre himself is finally guillotined (July 28, 1794)
... the beginning of the slowdown of the Reign of Terror
The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (reigned 1799-1815) finally settles France down
... before spinning the country outward in a campaign of European conquest
Miles H. Hodges
But with the conversion of Roman Emperor
Indeed, not only was the idea of having their
lands to the West put under Catholic hierarchical authority that
reached to Rome – but also the idea (which was being discussed openly
by 
