The First Amendment

When the United States were formed into the old federation under the U.S. Constitution one of the first things done by Congress was to propose amendments to the brand new Constitution which had only recently been ratified. Those who had opposed the Constitution had fought for changes to the Constitution before ratification. The Constitution was eventually ratified in some very close votes. The supporters of ratification were able to win over some of their opponents by promising to amend the Constitution with the opponents’ proposals as soon as it was in place.

James Madison, who led the pro-Constitution fight in Virginia, was true to his word and offered 13 proposed amendments. Ten of those amendments passed and they are today known as the Bill of Rights. I would like to address part of the First Amendment. It states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The part I would like to discuss is that part which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The courts and popular media during the second half of the 20th century turned this statement onto its head. They have distorted its meaning and used it to stifle the public expression of the Christian faith in America.

Most Americans have no idea what the founders meant when they wrote this (or anything else in the Constitution) because we are, as a people, abysmally ignorant of the political, religious and philosophical milieu of that day. A majority of Americans have bought into a lie about the 1st Amendment because they have no idea what the Founders intended when they wrote it. Those who are ignorant about the truth are easily led and taught to believe a lie.

What did the founders mean by this statement? Before looking at that lets look at what they did not mean. They did not mean that children could not say “under God” in a pledge (Note: I personally dislike the pledge, but that is another story). The founders did not intend for nativity scenes to be barred from public property. They also did not mean for the 1st Amendment to be used to do away with “blue laws” in local communities. We could continue with examples, but I hope you get the point.

Here is why the founders wrote this section of the amendment. The United States under the Constitution formed a “federation” or “confederation” of sovereign states (i.e. nations). If you asked one of these early Americans what country he was from he would have named his home state and not the United States.

The states that created the federation (i.e. the United States) were all Christian and dogmatically so. Of these Maryland, which was founded as a haven for English Roman Catholics, did not have an established church, Pennsylvania which was set up as a haven for English Quakers did not have an established church and neither did Rhode Island which was founded by the Baptist Roger Williams. These three states were still “Christian” states though they did not have established churches. All the rest of the states had established state or national churches. Some of the established churches were Anglican (Church of England) and the others were Congregational. The American statesmen who wrote and ratified the First Amendment did so because they understood ecclesiastical matters were a state issue, and not a federal issue.

Calvinistic Christianity was the overwhelming theological view of early Americans in both establised and non-established churches alike. It is also important to know that large segments of the colonies had revolted against King George in part because they feared that he was going to establish Anglicanism in those states where it was not already the official state “church.”

The 1st Amendment did not create a “separation of church and state”, as it is understood today. It barred the establishment of a “federal church” by congress. Nine of the states, which ratified the Bill of Rights, had established state churches. The same congress, which wrote the 1st Amendment, produced chaplains for the military; it created chaplains for the house and senate. These same men authorised the printing of Bibles for use in converting the Indians, et cetera.

The 1st Amendment is not ambiguous. It made it illegal for CONGRESS to pass a law establishing an official federally supported and sponsored church. The federal courts have grossly distorted the intent of the founders on this point as they have on many others as well.

The type of “separation of church and state” as touted and promoted by the ACLU, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and other liberal groups is a horrible perversion of the original intent of the founding fathers who ratified the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Deo Vindice,
Kenith

Christendom and the Franks

The Franks were a German tribe. This tribe invaded the Roman empire while the the western half of the was collapsing. The Franks settled in the Roman territory of Gaul. Over time they gave their tribal name to the place, so we no longer call that land Gaul, as the Roman’s did, we now know it by the name it took from this German tribe, We call it France after the Franks.

In 496 AD Clovis, king of the Franks, converted to the Christian faith and with him the tribe of Franks converted to Christ as well. The Franks would become important defenders of the church and the Christianity.

In 632 AD Mohammed died and his followers began many years of conquest. Muslims soon controlled territory from India to the Straits of Gibraltar, in North Africa. In 711 AD they crossed into Spain and soon conquered the Iberian Peninsula. In Oct. of the year 732 AD the Arab army and the Frank’s Christian Army lead by Charles Martel (the Hammer), meet on the fields of Tours, in France. The Muslim Army was made up mostly of cavalry and the army of the Franks was an infantry army. This was a bloody day. The bodies of men and animals lay strewn on the body field and at the day’s end, the Franks held the field. The Muslims retreated back across the Pyrenees into Spain where they would maintain control of all or part of Spain until the year 1492.

At the Battle of Tours the Franks and their allies halted one hundred years of conquest and expansion by the Muslim armies of Islam. All of Christian North Africa and Spain were in Arab hands and it looked, for awhile, as though the Arabs, under the banners of Islam would conquer all of Christendom but this was not to be.

Today, at times, it looks like the forces arrayed against the Christian faith are overwhelming, and many Christians believe that we are destined to decline and cultural defeat. I strongly believe that is a mistaken belief, and Christians will triumph against the forces of modernity and the Muslim terrorist as well, just as the Franks triumphed against the Arab Muslims at the Battle of Tours.

Christ is our King and we are his soldiers. He has given us a powerful weapon to do battle with the enemy; it is the two edged sword of the Gospel. It is that Gospel that will win the day in God’s timing. The Holy Spirit will yet bring all the World into the Kingdom of our Lord.

Dominus vobiscum,
Kenith

Charles V and the Reformation

In 1521 Martin Luther (an Augustinian monk, parish priest and Doctor/professor of theology) was summoned to appear at the Diet (i.e. council) of Worms before the young Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Charles V was the most powerful man in Europe. By inheritance he had become the sovereign ruler of a vast part of Europe. No ruler since Charlemagne had ruled such vast European territory. Charles ruled Burgundy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and her territories in the Caribbean, central and South America. He also governed all of southern Italy and Sicily, much of Northern Italy, Austria, Bohemia and was Emperor over Germany.

Charles was the most powerful ruler Western Europe had seen in many centuries. He was, like his grandmother Queen Isabelle (who sent Christopher Columbus to the New World) a devout Roman Catholic. He was disturbed by religious descent that young Luther had caused in Germany, and he was determined to put an end to the heresy that was growing in many portions of Germany.

He summoned Martin Luther to the city of Worms (pronounced "verms") and granted him safe conduct for the journey, because Pope Leo X had already condemned Luther and it was unsafe for him to travel outside of the Duchy of Saxony. Luther travelled on foot to Worms and was meet along the way by cheering crowds. Had already become a hero to many in Germany.

When Luther appeared before the Diet (council) he expected to be examined about his beliefs, but instead he found his books stacked on a table. Luther was asked if he had written the books and he admitted that they were his writings. He was then called upon to recant.

Luther was standing before the most powerful ruler in Europe. He knew that he was very close to being burned as a heretic. Luther then requested 24 hours to think the matter over. The next day Luther again appeared before the Emperor and the many German princes and was again called on to recant what he had written. Luther responded to his inquisitor "Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-- I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-- my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me."

Luther knew that the answer he had given was not the one the Emperor wanted to here. He said as he left the chamber "I am finished." He expected to be burned at the stake just as the Bohemian preacher Jan Huss had been in the previous century.

Luther left Worms in a hurry, was kidnapped and hid out by his benefactor, Duke Fredrick the Wise of Saxony.

Charles V condemned Luther and those that stood with. He was ready to take an army north into Germany to squash the infant reformed movement, but was prevented because of war with France. For 25 years Charles would make plans to move north into Germany to crush the Lutheran heresy but for 25 years he would be prevented by wars with either France or the Ottoman Turks. All the while the Reform was able to grow and spread throughout all of northern Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

After 25 years Charles is able to attack the Protestants in his dominions but they had grown great and it was to late to crush them out as he had desired from the beginning.

The Lord God in his providence protected Europe from the Muslim Turks by the might and power of Charles V. The Lord also protected the Reformation from an early extinction by preventing Charles from moving against the Reformation by raising up the Turks.

History is the handy work of God in time. We should know our Christian history and give God glory for what he has done through space, time and history. Those who believe that we live in the "most corrupt and evil times" show that they know nothing of the history of Christ Church.

Dominus vobiscum,
Kenith

Christianity, Slavery and the Antebellum South

Slavery is an ancient institution and for millennia it’s moral, political and cultural legitimacy was unquestioned. This was the case when a Dutch ship brought the first African slaves to the English colony of Virginia in 1619. However most slaves in the British American colonies during the first half of the 17th century were of European and not African ancestry. We know these slaves as indentured servants.

The British, like all of historic Christians, believed that Christians were as a people heirs of God’s promises that He made to Abraham and were thereby the true Israel of God. As such they looked to the Law’s of the Old Covenant as a basis for many of their own laws. In the Old Covenant an Israelite could not hold a fellow Israelite in permanent slavery, unless the individual voluntarily made himself a slave for life, which included the sign of piercing his ear, this act testified that he was in permanent subjection. In the Old Testament under normal circumstances an Israelite could not be held in bondage for more than six ears. A Hebrew slave of a fellow Israelite was to be released during the Sabbath year.

The English during the colonial era, still viewed Christians and the church covenantally, they therefore applied the same Old Covenant law about slavery to their times. They did not allow for the permanent or generational enslavement of fellow Christians. A Britain or other European, almost all of whom were baptised in infancy, could sell himself into slavery for a period of years, usually four or five, to obtain passage to the New World. Then after the designated period of time he was released from service, because a baptised brother could not be held in continual slavery.

These indentured servants were the majority of slaves in the colonies for most of the 1600’s, In the later half of the 1600’s the number of African slaves began to increase dramatically, and the number of indentured servants fell off just as dramatically. The Africans were pagans and not a baptised Christian people, and so there was no obligation to free from bondage these unbaptised people.

But the Africans brought to the New World soon came into contact with the Gospel and some turned to Christ and were baptised. This brought about a problem. The planter could not keep a baptised European in perpetual slavery, but what about the African who converted to the Christian faith or more importantly still, his or her children who were baptised in infancy?

Some planters were hesitant to allow the Gospel to reach their African slaves, because they believed (rightly) that if they were baptised then they, or certainly their children would have to be freed.

The Virginia House of Burgesses addressed this concern in 1667. Act III of that year was titled “An act declaring that baptisme of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage” and reads thus:

Whereas some doubts have risen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made pertakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by vertue of their baptisme be made ffree; It is enacted and declared by this grand assembly, and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedome; that diverse masters, ffreed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavor the propagation of christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament. (Original spelling)

Maryland shortly after followed Virginia’s example. This was a major change in the thinking and law of the English. They had understood that baptised peoples could not be held in perpetual and generational slavery. Now for pragmatic reasons, and to make certain that African slaves were not prevented from hearing the Gospel, they made a dramatic and important change in the Law. They mad an exception for the baptised Africans, these people because of this law could be kept in a permanent and generational state of enslavement.

In America it now became the case that Christians could keep fellow Christians in perpetual slavery so long as the fellow Christians were of Black African descent. With the passing of this fatal law slavery in British North America became race-based slavery. Even the pagan American Indian could not be held in perpetual, much less generational slavery. We see this in a 1670 Virginia law. Act XII of that year titled “What tyme Indians to serve” says this:

Whereas some dispute have arisen whither Indians taken in warr by any other nation, and by that nation that taketh thern sold to the English, are servants for life or terme of yeares, It is resolved and enacted that all servants not being christians imported into this colony by shipping shalbe slaves for their lives; but what shall come by land shall serve, if boyes or girles, untill thirty yeares of age, if men or women twelve yeares and no longer.

The non-Christian Indian was to be held as a slave only for a given number of years, but the African who arrived “by shipping shalbe slaves for their lives.” So it is clear that his or her perpetual slavery was now based exclusively on race.

Slavery had been seen as a necessary part of life by almost every culture on earth for most of human history. But in the 18th century this began to change. By the time of the American Revolution most of the Founding Fathers, North and South, considered slavery to be an evil. Some saw it as a necessary evil, but an evil all the same. This was true of Washington, Madison, Jefferson etc., all of whom were slaveholders.

Patrick Henry, who was also a slaveholder, likewise saw slavery as an evil. In a letter dated January 18, 1773 he wrote “Every thing we can do is to improve it [Note: it = emancipation], if it happens in our day, if not, let us transmit to our descendants together with our Slaves, a pity for their unhappy Lot, & an abhorrence for Slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished for Reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with lenity, it is ye. Furthest advance we can make toward Justice [We owe to the] purity of our Religion to shew that it is at variance with that Law which warrants Slavery.”

Henry, like most of the founders, hoped that African slavery could be ended, but at the same time they had doubts that both free Europeans and free Africans could peacefully live together without one group slaughtering the other. Thomas Jefferson expressed this in a famous letter. In regard to slavery in the South he wrote “[A]s it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

In the early part of the 19th century most abolitionist/emancipation societies were in the South, but they feared that the two races could not both inhabit the same land in a peaceful coexistence . So they sought to transplant the Africans either to Africa, the West or elsewhere in the Americas.

The Southern view changed dramatically in the 1830’s. This was brought about by the rise of radical abolitionists in the North. The new abolitionists movement’s founders came out of the Unitarian and Transcendentalists ranks, and were staunchly anti-Christian. These Abolitionists did not just see slavery as an evil, they declared slavery to be sin and said the slaveholders themselves were evil as well.

The attack from the Unitarian and Transcendentalist abolitionist movement sent the Christians in the South to their Bibles to prove biblically that Slavery was certainly allowed by God and was therefore not necessarily sinful. They pointed out that the Father of the faith Abraham was a slaveholder. Southerners also pointed to the Old Testament and showed where slavery is regulated by God’s law and is by no means condemned.

The Southerners pointed out that Jesus lived in a society where slavery was a normal everyday thing. They correctly argued that Jesus never condemned nor argued against slavery. The Southerners could even point to the New Testament epistle of St. Paul to Philemon. Philemon was a Christian and a slaveholder.

During this period of time the South was becoming a more overtly Christian culture, while in the North Unitarians, Transcendentalists, cultists and revivalists were eroding the Christian foundations of that region. The Abolitionists arguments were mostly humanistic and emotional and it was easy for the Southerners to counter with Scripture. Slavery was clearly allowed and regulated by God in the Bible and it was easy to point that out to Americans North and South.

Before the rise of the more radical abolitionists movements in the North Southerners had generally considered slavery an evil that they had inherited, but now they defended and also presented it as a positive institution.

Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney, a strong defender of the South and Southern slavery, pointed out this change in attitude in a letter he wrote in 1840. Dabney wrote “Before the abolitionists began to meddle with our affairs, with which they have no business, I remember that it was the common opinion that domestic slavery was at least injudicious…I do believe that if these mad fanatics had let us alone, in twenty years we should have made Virginia a free state. AS it is their unauthorised attempt to strike off the fetters of our slaves have but riveted them on the faster. Does this fact arise from the perversity of our nature? I believe that it does in part. We are less inclined to do that which we know to be our duty because persons, who have know right to interfere, demand it of us.”

Southern attitudes changed, as Dabney points out, in reaction to the abolitionist onslaught. At the same time pastors like Dabney and countless others, even while defending slavery against Northern Abolitionists attacks, wrote and preached to their Southern brethren that much of Southern slavery fell far short of the standards set forth in the Bible. The preachers warned that unless they reformed the institutions and brought it in line with the Word of God that God would bring judgement upon them.

Yet they failed to address the grievous error of 1667. They never addressed the fact that they had discarded the covenantal aspects of their theology so as to maintain the Africans in life long and generational slavery. Southern slavery, despite it numerous failings was far more benign than slavery in other parts of the New World. Only five percent of the people taken from Africa ever made it to the United States. The Africans reproduced and thrived in here, while in other parts of the New World the slaves had to be constantly resupplied because of the high mortality and the lack of children.

The South had nearly two hundred years to correct their horrible misjudgement of 1667. The Africans had been, from an early time, presented the Gospel in the America. They had become a baptised Christian people and if biblical law is valid, as they certainly believed, then they were obligated to set these people free.

On a constitutional level the Southerners were correct. The South could secede from the Union, but biblically Southern slavery failed to ever address the great sin of making Christian brethren perpetual slaves based on the colour of their skin. Had Southerners been true to their own doctrinal understanding of the Word of God, then the Africans would have been emancipated long before the War Between the States.

It took a tragic war, in which many Christians on both sides died, to correct the decision of Act III made by the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1667.

Coram Deo,
Kenith

The Star Spangled banner

Francis Scott Key, while on board a British naval vessel, watched as the British bombarded Fort McHenry at Baltimore. The bombardment took place on September 13-14, 1814, and lasted twenty-five hours. When the bombardment stopped Francis Scott Key saw that the flag of the American Union still stood over the fort. The British attempt to take the fort had failed. That is when he wrote the poem that would later become the American national anthem.

Most Americans don’t realise that Key wrote more than one verse to the Star Spangled Banner. There are, in fact, four verses. My favourite verse is the fourth verse. Here it is:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

I am sure the anti-Christian folks would highly object if we sang the last verse of our national anthems at football games.

Key was a lawyer, a poet and a Christian (Episcopalian). Besides writing the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key also wrote hymns; here is a verse from of one of his hymns.

Lord, with glowing heart I'd praise thee For the bliss thy love be-stows,
For the pard'ning grace that saves me, and the peace that from it flows:
Help, O God, my weak endeavor; This dull soul to rapture raise;
Thou must light the flame, or never can my love be warmed to praise.

Key's view of man was biblical. He knew we all are in need of salvation, and he knew that salvation is only in Christ. The idea that there are many paths to God, and we may each choose our on path, is alien to the Bible. If the idea that there are many roads to God is true than the Bible is a lie and Christianity a false religion.

Christ is the one and ONLY means of salvation, or he is a fake; there is no other option here as well. Jesus Christ and the writers of the Bible declare this to be so. The earliest Christian writers say the same, as do those that came later. Christian's must maintain this position. To deny this is to abandon the historic faith. It’s vital that we love all others enough to tell the truth in love.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kenith

A Humble Christian Man

One of the humblest Christian men I know of is also very prominent in American history. Five of his near kinsmen signed the Declaration of Independence, his father was one of Washington's best generals during the War for American Independence and his father was also instrumental in Virginia's ratification of the Constitution. This same man married the daughter of George Washington’s adopted son.

The man in question decided on a career in the military, and graduated second in his class at Westpoint. He was eventually offered the most important command in the U.S. Army. He declined the job and resigned his commission because he believed duty demanded it. He did this because he believed that one must do his duty no matter what the personal cost may be.

He was a man that always led his family in worship when he was home. He pointed his children to Jesus and looked to and trusted in Christ his saviour in all that happened. He is a man that suffered great tragedy and lost his home, all material wealth, and yet his faith increased and prospered through it all.

Here is part of a letter he wrote his wife. He was, at the time, in the middle of a horrible war defending his country from invasion. He wrote the following after receiving news of the death of his beloved daughter:

I cannot express the anguish I feel at the death of my sweet Annie. To know that I shall never see her again on this earth is agonizing in the extreme. But God in this, as in all things, has mingled mercy with the blow, in selecting that one best prepared to leave us. May you be able to say with me, 'his will be done.'

Robert E. Lee bowed humbly before our Lord in all things. His life is a wonderful testimony of Christian virtue, love and sacrifice. There are few men as noble or as humble in all of American history as General Lee.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kenith

Patrick Henry: My favourite founder.

Patrick Henry had a very fruitful life. He played one of the most important and pivotal roles in Americans gaining their independence from Great Britain. Henry was a man who understood his times. He knew, long before the great majority of his countrymen, what was confronting them and what needed to be done.

Patrick Henry was a devout Christian. His mother had been swept up in the Great Awakening, the momentous Calvinistic revival that swept the British colonies during his youth. Henry himself credited much of his own oratorical skills to Rev. Samuel Davies, an important Presbyterian preacher in Virginia at that time.

Henry had a large family, seventeen children from two marriages. The final words in his last will and testament shows how important Christ was in his life and family. Here are those words: "This is all the inheritance I can give to my family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed."

Patrick Henry also loved America. With his will were other papers he believed to be important. Among those papers were these words to addressed to future Americans about this country: "Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself and encourage it in others."

Henry understood, as did most of his fellow citizens that doctrinally sound Christianity, which produced righteousness in the people of the nation, was vital to both political and religious liberty and freedom.

There are few people today that adhere to the Christian doctrines and biblical worldview that Americans’ followed in Henry’s day. The Great Awakening was a vital component of the thinking that lead to the War of Independence and the shaping of our countries political and religious liberty.

We, as a nation have forgotten, these things. Is it any wonder that our we have become a people with a “contrary character.” We need to look at the past to examine our faith today. What did the Christians, who bestowed upon us a Christian country, believe that we have forgotten? Is there anything we can learn from them?

We can learn a lot but that would mean reading and study, and who wants to do that? I hope more and more Christians will do that and if we are faithful God may yet grant our children or us another Great Awakening.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kenith