EVEN IN NEW YORK, 1787 AND BEYOND

 

The last posting shared and described four arguments the scholar Daniel Elazar presents regarding the work of the founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  These four are the first of five arguments and they are,

 

1.     The Constitution was written by a committee.

2.     It was written as a political document, not a legal contract.

3.     As such, its terminology reflects current fashion as well as precise usage and strives for ambiguity where it was deemed politically necessary to do so.

4.     The framers of the Constitution draw upon more than one major source of ideas for their understanding of federalism.[1]

 

This posting will focus on the fifth argument:  “The Federalist [Papers by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay], valuable as it is as a work of political thought and exposition of the Constitution, is not the whole commentary on the subject.”[2]      

This blog introduced this last argument by highlighting what Elazar emphasizes; it stated, “Collectively, the common opinion is that these writings … [were] the product of three sources:  classical education, … Hobbesian-Lockean social contract [theory] … and the writings of the Enlightenment thinkers.”  To these and of more importance is the influence of the “Biblical-Reformed-Puritan tradition.  But, Elazar adds, however one attributes influence, be it the classical/political theory view or the Puritanical view, “[b]oth traditions address the idea and practice federalism.”[3]

To demonstrate this, Elazar claims that the classical/political theory view contextualizes federalist unions as confederations and as such limits the view as a political arrangement that forms a permanent league but maintains sovereignty with the units constituting the league – an ascription that describes more accurately the polity formed by the Articles of Confederation.  On the other hand, the Puritanical view has a theological base – a federal theology.

Within that latter construct, the agreement forming the union is a covenant (or foedus) which, by design, grounds a resulting union and any such human relationships as part of the original covenant between God and man.  This is originally described in the Bible and is followed through with subsequent pacts.  One can describe a religiously sanctioned marriage agreement as such a union.  This mode of associating, emanating from the Judeo tradition, had evolved to be a viable theo-political model by the mid-eighteenth century.

Varied from the classical notion of a polis – a completely self-defined political entity which could collaborate with other poleis in some form of league – the Biblical framework allows for unions of polities under a shared common law and developed institutions.  And it was this latter view that took hold throughout New England.  The first to do so was Connecticut.  It was created by bringing together various settlements – towns – under unambiguous federal principles; that being a mixture of religious and political principles.

The agreement in Connecticut is known as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut and note its date, 1639, only nineteen years after the Mayflower Compact was proclaimed.  And Elazar is quick to point out that the heirs of this earlier federalist founding authored the most important compromise at the Constitutional Convention forming the United States as a federal union, i.e., the Connecticut Compromise.

Elazar goes on to cite the work of Donald S. Lutz.[4]  This political scientist did an extensive document review of the Constitutional Convention and of the writings of that time and reports convincingly, according to Elazar, that the founders ubiquitously and powerfully relied on the Biblical-Reformed-Puritan tradition in the writing and adopting of the final Constitution.  That is, “Lutz found that the Bible was the most cited source by far.  Indeed, the Book of Deuteronomy, with its discussion of the Mosaic constitution for Israel, alone is cited more than any other source.”[5]

One factor that is often overlooked, and Elazar points out, is that The Federalist Papers were written and distributed initially to a New York audience.  By that time, New Yorkers had become fairly secular in their outlooks – had developed what Elazar calls an “individualistic political culture” – and a heavy dose of Biblical references could probably be a turn off.   As for the rest of the states, one found either the Puritanical tradition or the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian tradition being established and they, those Americans, were more apt to listen to Biblical references.

So, what can one judge The Federalist Papers’ to be in terms of reflecting the thoughts of the founding fathers?  Yes, they are useful, but in no terms should they be considered the sole authoritative source or commentary on why the Constitution is what it is.  Further, since the Constitution lays down the basic model of the polity, even if subsequent changes during the history of the US – for example, the secular turn toward a marketplace economy in the late nineteenth century – the basic ground rules remained federal. 

As such, all variances to the values and principles of governance and politics swarmed around this basic commitment – that of a federated citizenry.  That is, federalism remained the ultimate standard by which to judge these variances, even in New York of the late 1700s.  This blog aims to offer more evidence to this claim, but as for the Constitutional Convention, this blogger feels comfortable with the role that Elazar, Lutz, and others ascribe to federalism in the writing and adoption of the US Constitution.

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[1] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution?  Thoroughly!” In a booklet of readings, Readings for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar (1994), prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute. Conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1-30, 3-4.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 5.

[4] In full disclosure, Dr. Lutz served on this blogger’s doctoral committee.

[5] Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution?  Thoroughly!,” 7.

ELEMENTS OF WHAT HAPPENED IN 1787

 

In trying to reinvigorate the reputation of federalism among scholars, Daniel J. Elazar took it upon himself – and shared with secondary classroom teachers – to offer a review of the overall qualities that were common among the founding fathers.  His focus was on those who wrote the US Constitution and their efforts at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  As a summary, he highlights a set of those qualities:

 

1.     The Constitution was written by a committee.

2.     It was written as a political document, not a legal contract.

3.     As such, its terminology reflects current fashion as well as precise usage and strives for ambiguity where it was deemed politically necessary to do so.

4.     The framers of the Constitution draw upon more than one major source of ideas for their understanding of federalism.

5.     The Federalist [Papers by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay], valuable as it is as a work of political thought and exposition of the Constitution, is not the whole commentary on the subject.[1]

 

This posting reviews these elements of an overall argument that can be stated by the title from which these qualities are taken.  That is:  “How Federal Is the Constitution?  Thoroughly!”

          The first element wishes to emphasize that, contrary to the common ascription that James Madison is more or less the “founder” of the Constitution (one hears that the convention invented Madisonian democracy), the resulting compact was truly the product of a very talented committee.  And, as a disproof of the opinion that nothing good can emanate from committees,[2] the participants of this one represented disparate elements of American society of that time.  Yes, that was an elite group of Americans, but from a broad range of interests found in the nation’s social-economic-political environment of the late 1700s. 

As such, there was a cry for a strong central government to replace the confederacy in place in the person of Alexander Hamilton, but at the other end there was those who wanted to maintain a weak central government and defend prominent state power as was already in place under the Articles of Confederation.  This was, for example, argued by George Mason who sought to merely tweak the Articles. 

With a cursory review of the stated positions of the various participants, one can readily recognize a wide variety of opinions among them.  This fact bolsters the accomplishment they were able to achieve by agreeing to the Connecticut Compromise that will be reviewed in a future posting by explaining that compromise’s federal character.

Given the fact that the founders were predominately lawyers, there were exceptions.  That is of the 55 participants, 13 were not lawyers and that included its president, George Washington.  But one common descriptor of them was that they were all politicians.  And as such, they, in participating in this exercise, were not thinking in black-and-white legalistic terms, but in “what is possible” political terms. 

The aim was to fix what ailed the Articles and the resulting instrument had to be sufficiently ambiguous so as to be able to muster sufficient support to gain approval from this varied group of men.  And when one considers this quality a bit of extra thought is hopefully beneficial.  That is, one needs to consider what the function of a national constitution is, and to a lesser degree, of a state’s constitution.

In this blogger’s opinion, constitutions serve as an intellectual meeting place.  That is, a thought-out mental place in which whoever draws up the document has to find a compromised position.  That position is between the political culture of a people (including their espoused values, attitudes, and dispositions) and the realities of everyday governance and politics – what some change theorists call their theory-in-use.  Consequently, as was the case at the Constitutional Convention, ambiguous language, judiciously used, softens the inevitable disagreements and demurs to the subsequent practitioners of the designed governmental structures and processes what the founding document establishes.

This view goes directly against the school of constitutional thought known as “original intent” for the simple reason that there was no single original intent in all cases, but instead there were intents harbored by the various participants.  What this logic would say is that a constitution is indeed not originally a legal document.  It is instead a compact – even if, through precedent forming court decisions, it is solidified as a functional legal document by its application, not by its writing. 

Admittedly, this is a nuanced view of a constitution and one that secondary students might find hard to understand, but, after all, the primary aim of the founders was not to make life easier for secondary students.  It was to meet the political challenges of their time and of subsequent generations.

To return to Professor Elazar’s thoughts, he comments,

 

The business of the members of the convention, then, was the business of politics, the judicious mixture of fidelity to principle and felicitous compromise.  Artful use of language is a major means of combining the two.  Thus the language of the Constitution is crystal clear where possible and ambiguous where necessary and the document must be read in that spirit.  Nevertheless, until our own generation, one of the things of which there was no doubt was that the Constitution articulated a truly federal system of government.[3]

 

Does that mean anything goes when it comes to interpreting the document?  Of course not, it has, in all cases, definite conceptual guardrails, limits as to how wide interpretations can be, and in many cases, it specifically denotes constitutional designations as in there is only one president at a time.

          And that leaves the fifth element identified above, qualifying the role The Federalist Papers played in describing and explaining the Constitution.  This blogger has a few thoughts regarding this element.  First, reliance on this book to give one insights as to what the Constitution prescribed and why it prescribed them reflects a heightened function for this collection of essays.  This also goes for the collections of writings from the Anti-federalist group who advocated against the ratification of the Constitution. 

Collectively, the common opinion is that these writings were mostly, if not exclusively, the product of three sources:  classical education and its reliance on ancient Greco-Roman philosophers, Hobbesian-Lockean social contract political science, and the writings of the Enlightenment thinkers.  Elazar and, humbly, this blogger, question this judgement.  Yes, these sources had their influence on the founders, but more was at play and one can argue that the Biblical-Reformed-Puritan tradition had its effect on not only the structure of the new government – its constitution (with a small “c”) – but its projected aim at establishing a federated people.

And reviewing this last element will be the topic of the next posting.  Obviously, for those who follow this blog, there lies the main point of this exercise; that is to make the case that the Constitution does not establish so much a contractual relationship among the American people, but a compact-al arrangement in which a partnership is set up. 

That partnership being federated, relies on a strong sense of being able to sustain meaningful levels of cooperation, collaboration, and community within the various levels of the resulting union from localities to the national setting.  Despite varying levels of acceptance of that federation, the Constitution insists that to meaningful degree, the partnership needs be respected.

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[1] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution?  Thoroughly!,” in a booklet of readings, Readings for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar (1994), prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute. Conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1-30, 3-4.

[2] A common refrain by those who support a more natural rights view is to argue that only vested individuals can accomplish anything meaningful.  For example, the novel, Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand disparages committees of any kind.

[3] Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution?  Thoroughly!,” 4-5.

CONCOCTING AN INFLUENTIAL VIEW

 

The current postings of this blog relate a story.  And that story takes place in two locations, England and in early colonial New England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.  The last posting related how strict the monarchy in England had become in regard to Puritans and their more radical version, Congregationalists.  The more radical devotees wanted the English government to grant them not only freedom to practice their beliefs, but that the government mandate Calvin’s system of Presbyterian Church government.

          That is, in following Calvin’s devised view of church government, the church is a community or, using its language, a body in which the head is Christ, and all members are assigned equal status below Him.  That community supervises the selection of pastors, decides who will be members or dismissed as members, sets up the schedule of services, and enforces church discipline.[1]  And this was a milder form of demands.  Even more radical were the Separatists.  They wanted political separation from the non-Puritans. 

Of course, all this was a non-starter for the English crown.  With the rule of James of Scotland, relations with the Calvinists became more strained.  Even though he was brought up a Calvinist, he apparently had had enough of it and instituted a more rigorous persecution of them.  This was followed by his son, Charles I, who was even more stern in his dealings with the Puritans.  As already indicated in the last posting, all this led to emigration of some Puritans beginning in 1620 (the “Mayflower Compact” group).

          Some nine years later, a major exodus took place as 400 Puritans followed the initial group to New England.  They set up a colony – the Massachusetts Bay colony – with the intent to follow their more extreme religious doctrine.  But in this later exit, a bit of creativity was involved.  According to Guelzo,[2] one could not just leave England at that time for any reason.  One had to demonstrate an inoffensive and reasonably plausible aim for such a move.  So, these Puritans organized themselves as a commercial enterprise.

          Named the Massachusetts Bay Company, the stated aim was profit.  The fact that this effort was led by well-known Puritans was presented to the government as just a happenstance.  Never mind that the group had a number of Puritan ministers; they gave a convoluted reason for their efforts and that succeeded in securing approval from the English authorities.  For whatever reason, this development proved to be a viable mechanism by which thousands of Puritans were eventually able to leave England for the Massachusetts Bay area.

          The primary center in this new settlement turned out to be Boston, but around the Boston area various towns sprung up.  In each case, a new organizational model took hold.  They each established a church that was independent from the other churches and no bishopric was ordained.  That is, each church ran its own business.  Despite that lack of organizational governance by some central entity, the churches began service protocols similar to each other.  Part of that commonality was the establishment of membership qualifications they imposed on accepting new members.

          That included that people who applied for membership had to produce testimonies that they, on an individual basis, were granted the grace of God (see the “TULIP” explanation from the March 2 posting).  They also wanted to honor some of the old ways from England.  For example, towns were mandated to establish a church and everyone in the town was, by law, expected to attend its services.  But, and this is an important turn, ministers were not officers of the realm or the government.

          In addition, marriages, beyond any ceremony in a church, had to be performed by a magistrate that introduced a strong provision separating church from state.  Having provided for that division, ministers still were influential voices within the civic community and their opinions were sought even as elections drew near.  They were often and were expected to take part in the various civic events and celebrations that the townspeople conducted. 

A significant accomplishment of this mix was the establishment in 1636 of Harvard College in Cambridge (just across the Charles River from Boston).[3]  Through this institution, American religious/political thought developed.  This deserves some closer look since it will help form foundational political thought during the colonial period.

Of course, all of this took time to evolve, but it reflects a bit of disagreement today between those who claim the founding fathers were mostly influenced by classical philosophic thought (that of the ancient Greeks and Romans) and those who look to the religiously oriented thinking of the colonial period.  One way to approach this divide is to look at what constituted the colonial thinking one item at a time. 

The judgement here is that that is worthwhile and in accordance, Guelzo identifies a three-part formula that implemented logical principles derived from classical thinkers.  And here an irony manifests itself:  it turns out, therefore, that classical thought played a crucial role in the development of a biblically based theology.

Here is how a “study” progressed according to the formula:  first, a citation or a series of citations from the Bible were highlighted, quoted, and analyzed – phrase by phrase – for its meaning using logical argument.  Usually, the meaning supported a predetermined “lesson.”  Second, the citations and their meanings would be used to deduct religious principles that one could understand and apply.  And lastly, the principles would be applied to everyday life situations or used as points of meditation. 

The application was meant to demonstrate how practical the Bible was to these church goers.  But the irony of the pagan influence could not be totally forgotten, for they of ancient times provided these more recent students their models of logic.  In this, one needs to carry the thought that even if these early colonial efforts to seek universal truths were limited in their accounts by lacking any empirical evidence – gathered by means of historical study or more scientific methods – they did have their effects on the ways people defined what governance and politics should be. 

Those determinations of what should be were still further based on beliefs on what was the nature of governance and the nature or politics.  Yes, these early conclusions can be critiqued in terms of them being mostly rationalizations and lacking in honest, objectified study.  Preachers and even these early scholars were out to prove their predetermined conclusions and those conclusions bolstered whatever the established theology of a given religion was, in this case, Calvinism.

But they did sound reasonable and were considered in accordance with the church goers overarching beliefs.  They were justified by complex arguments that set out to logically counter whatever doubts existed among the faithful.  They also instructed church goers about what they should do in a trying, challenging environment.

The next posting will look at a federalist interpretation of these developments and make the claim that these early and continuing efforts at addressing questions of governance and politics, be they sectarian or secular, had a pervasive influence on the founding of the nation.

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[1] “Presbyterian Church Government,” Britannica (n.d.), accessed March 8, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/topic/presbyterian .

[2] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – transcript books – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005).  The factual, historical information of this posting is derived from this source. 

[3] Harvard, originally, was more a place to study theology than an academic center for all areas of study.  Using logic as its method of study, it would take a long time before other modes of study would be employed and sought after in its academic efforts.

MAY THE SETTLERS FLOWER IN A NEW LAND

 

This blog is in the midst of telling a story – it began with the last posting and the reader is invited to go back and catch the first segment of this tale.  It has to do with the Puritanical origins of this nation.  And the story goes back to the disappointment Europeans felt over the discovery of the Americas.  During the 1500s, Europeans invested in western voyages so as to find a shortcut to the lucrative markets of the Far East.  No such route was found, but those voyages began the tumbling of various streams of “dominoes” that are still toppling today.   

          The last posting kept the reader in Europe, actually England, and this posting has a few more developments to relate emanating from that nation.  The previous posting left off with Elizabeth I’s (1533-1603) trying to handle the religious strife that befell her country.  Mainly there was the ongoing battle with Catholics who wanted to regain their prominence and that conflict even included an attempted foreign invasion from Spain – the Spanish Armada. 

This religious strife began before she was queen and was particularly intense during her predecessor’s reign, that of “Bloody Mary.”  Back then, religious disagreements could and were bloody indeed, and in those earlier years Catholics had a supportive queen, Mary I and her husband, Philip.  Her aim was to reestablish Catholic dominance after her father, Henry VIII, split with the Roman church and made the Anglican Church dominant.  Mary died in 1558 after a relatively short reign of about five years.  What one needs to remember, religion and political leadership of a country were highly interwoven with each other at that time.

          After Mary died and Elizabeth became queen, she, Elizabeth, established the Anglican Church as official and barred open membership to other religions; and that included not only Catholics, but other upstart Protestant sects such as the Calvinists.  The sanctions against the Calvinists were mostly mild but starting in the early 1600s, more radical forms of that religion’s beliefs (the last posting reviews its tenets) began to be promulgated.  

Eventually, and this transcends Elizabeth’s reign, the more ardent, radical Congregationalists or extreme Puritans made their presence known.  They took the Calvinist beliefs in the unconditional election; that is, humans are subject to God’s determination as to who is saved and who is not, and irresistible grace; that is, once chosen, a person will not reject God’s grace (the “U” and “I” of the acronym TULIP) up several notches.

          They, according to Guelzo, “… wanted membership in the[ir] church limited to only those who could give testimony and evidence of having received God’s grace, even if that meant separating … from the rest of England’s presumably impure society.”[1]  And the split with the crown grew after Elizabeth’s death in 1603.  Her successor, James of Scotland, intensified the government’s crackdown on these radicals. 

With his and his successor’s policies, the Congregationalists or Puritans started to look for escape from the island nation.  And one group of them first sought refuse in the Puritanical Netherlands. Donald S. Lutz,[2] described these people’s experiences before getting to their eventual destination, the New England coastline. 

He has extensively analyzed the connection between these Puritans and original constitutional formulations in American development by studying how early American settlers from England and then Holland went about organizing themselves.  Starting with the Puritans who landed at Plymouth in 1620, certain federalist elements were established.

Lutz points out that the Puritans (this group specifically known as the Pilgrims) were interested in simplifying the religious practices of the English churches.  Being persecuted in England, they sought to “create a new city of God – a society run according to the dictates of the Bible.”[3]

Adopting the notion of a covenant, originally from Hebraic tradition and law of the Old Testament, the Puritans established a society and a “politick” on the following elements: a bonding between the members of the covenant, a calling upon God to witness the bonding, and the consent of each member to join the resulting communal union.  This latter element is a basic component; each member was free to bond and did so of his own volition.

Of course, all of this was accomplished by the drawing up and signing of the Mayflower Compact.  He writes,

 

During the 1600s, over 100 other founding documents similar to the Mayflower Compact would be written by American colonists. Some of these agreements would create single settlements, while others (such as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut) would join several existing covenanted communities into a broader association. In each case the people created by the agreement would be identified by those who signed the document. It is a peculiarly American trait that founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution have signatures at the end. This expectation is part of the legacy of early agreements like the Mayflower Compact; just as “We the People” is derived from “We the undersigned.”[4]

 

And the Mayflower Compact introduced several other important ideas basic to the nation's political perspective.

First, it established the principle of adding or admitting new members to a covenant. Not all the signers of the Mayflower Compact were Puritans. A non-Puritan, though, was not given subordinate status. A new addition was awarded equal status with every individual of the original group.

This provision was the beginning of a standard that led to the constitutional provision that all new states, as they joined the national union, would be granted equal status with the original thirteen states (as demonstrated, for example, by equal representation in the Senate and extends to new citizens as well).

The second significant aspect of the Mayflower Compact was its Lockean logic. Before John Locke ever wrote a word, Puritans in America were living out his prescriptions by creating a society first and then creating a “politick” to govern it. “On the Mayflower we find the colonists doing essentially everything that Locke would later recommend.”[5]

One last contribution of the Mayflower Compact was its clear statement of political values which included commitments to justice, equality, respect for law, and community. Not mentioned was individualism. Instead, the following language dominates the document:

 

… these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and of one another, convenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid … for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.[6]

 

Defined in religious contexts, the Puritans brought with them strongly felt values and principles that would evolve in the formative, colonial years and provide the basis of future bills of rights principles. 

This covenant did not present a model for governmental structure. As such, it was not the first formal constitution in America.  That distinction belongs to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, 1639.  But it did contain important elements; they are the forming a union based on consent a priori to actual governance, formulation of a formal agreement based on a covenant (a promise which called on God as witness to the agreement), and an integral commitment to equality – which, by the way, appears before any commitment to individuality or individual rights.

But before this tale totally shifts to North America, there are still some important developments to relate that took place in England.  More would happen there that prompted further exodus from that nation to North America.  The events also affected the formal format by which these early settlers departed England and helped determine the formal arrangements the settlers had with the mother country.

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – transcript books – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 25.  In the original, this quote begins with “The Separatists …” indicating the other term used to identify these believers.

[2]Donald S. Lutz, “The Mayflower Compact, 1620,” in Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted,” ed. Stephen L. Schechter (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990), 17-23.  What this posting includes is an edited rendition of what this blog posted earlier in this blog.  See Robert Gutierrez, “At the Beginning:  Mayflower Compact,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics (January 13, 2012), accessed March 4, 2021, https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/preview/1954479639890698872/7769498729070174796 .

[3]Ibid., p. 18.

[4]Ibid., 19.

[5]Ibid., 21.

[6] Eric Bruun and Jay Crosby, “Combine Ourselves into a Civil Body Politick: The Mayflower compact,” in Our Nation's Archive: The history of the United States in Documents (New York, NY: Tess Press, 1999/1620), 46-47, 47.

A STREAM OF DOMINOES BEGINS TO FALL

 

The well-worn analogy of falling dominoes applies to just about all historical developments and the development of how Americans arrived at their view of governance and politics is no exception.  Where to begin?  One specific place can be when Europeans, in the 1500s, realized that by going west one was not going to find a short cut to the Far East and the promising trade routes European merchants were seeking.  There, smack in the way, were what came to be known as the Americas.  So, initially the investment in finding that route came to mostly zilch.

          But as with most historical events or developments, more than one result is possible and usually materializes.  In this case, these discovered lands – to Europeans – offered opportunities to certain groups.  One such group was Calvinists who were being hassled in England for not falling in line with that nation’s dominant religion, the Anglican Church.

          And that points to another line of dominoes, a stream of events falling from King Henry VIII’s split with Rome and his establishment of England’s own hierarchical church.  This latter factor seems to be often overlooked and disregarded, but it proved to be important in determining how this nation, the US, looks at governance and politics.  With its vertical structure, the Church of England mimicked how the Roman Catholic Church was/is organized and administered.

This, some years later, ran into another Protestant arrangement, that of the Puritans, a Calvinist group, and how they preferred to organize.  The Calvinists set about organizing their churches on a congregational basis.  That is, each church stood independently and was arranged by local worshippers. 

And this tradition added its name, yet another stream of dominoes, to what had been going on prior to King Henry’s split.  That is, starting in the early 1500s, a grand revolt within Christianity took place with the protestation against Catholicism initiated by Martin Luther in Germany.  Once that took hold, the legitimacy of falling away from Catholicism became recurring in certain European countries and various religious theologies and other resulting beliefs sprouted within those countries. 

And in terms of the story being told here, one was that of John Calvin in Switzerland.  Along with Calvin’s objections to Catholic theology was a rejection of the Roman church’s structure.  The historian Allen C. Guelzo describes this shift:

In Switzerland, a French protestant named John Calvin reconstituted the organization of the church.  The church had always been a hierarchy, with the bishop of a diocese at the top – with the Pope in Rome as the bishop of the bishops, the priests below, and the laypeople underneath.  Calvin refashioned this hierarchy into something more nearly resembling a committee, with priests redefined now as elders or presbyters, ruling the churches jointly with lay leaders.[1]

Of special note and of relevance to American civics instruction is the formation of the congregational structure which will prove highly influential in the development of the US government.

          While the above had lasting effect on how government should be structured, Calvin theology also had a strong influence on initial American attitudes as the early arrivals from Europe faced the challenges of a frontier environment.[2]  In that, Calvinism, through the Puritans, added a strong sense of discipline.  A quick review of that theology’s main tenets can portray this initial thinking that turned out to help those settlers meet the dangers and other challenges that the unforgiving wilderness presented.

          And here an acronym might assist one’s recall of those beliefs and that is TULIP.  Guelzo points out that this aid refers to the following:

 

“T” stands for total depravity; that is, humans are born highly deficient, sinful, and depraved and can only be saved – meaning eternal happiness in heaven and even a better life on earth – by God’s grace.

“U” stands for unconditional election; that is, humans are subject to God’s determination as to who is saved and who is not.  Humans, through their behavior, have no effect on those determinations.

“L” stands for limited atonement; that is, what grace God bestows on humans is a result of the freely given sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ.  But not all are recipients of this grace, it is limited to those God chooses.

“I” stands for irresistible grace; that is, once chosen, a person will not reject God’s grace.  And

“P” stands for perseverance of the saints; that is, the chosen people will be active in this grace and it will be apparent to all who encounter the elected that they are in a state of grace.

 

All this theology took some time to work out and a final theological system was mostly finalized fifty years after Calvin’s death, or the early 1600s.

          While at first glance this notion of grace-allotment by God and grace reception by humans sounds like a grand lottery, in effect, what became important for believers was demonstrating one was chosen for that grace.  Outwardly, one did so by exhibiting a strict moral code – one chocked full of what people should and should not do – so that others would conclude that they were among the chosen ones. 

Later, that was what encouraged the eventual Puritan settlers in America to exhibit the discipline demanded by the challenges these people confronted.  As it turned out, history illustrates that that approach, at least in North America of the 1600s, proved to be effective.[3]

          Now, back to England of some years earlier and the reign of Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I, 1558-1603, where the government’s bestowal of legal authority to the Church of England – the Anglican Church – was firmly established.  Included in that authority were automatic membership to that church upon being born in England and the tithes (donations) and taxes English people were mandated to pay that church.

Structurally, the church just carried on the organizational elements inherited from Rome, but many Protestants in England saw all of this as being too Catholic and began demanding further departure from Roman ways.  And those groups included the Puritans, a Calvinistic sect.  Initially, while Elizabeth deemed these Protestants to be as treasonous as Catholics, her time was taken up with dealing with a Catholic rebellion against her religious policies. 

This gave the Puritans the opportunity to gain accommodations within the government, the English church, and universities.  As such, these other Protestants were able to exert various levels of influence within the institutions of England.  And this burrowing was assisted by the fact that their demands were, for the most part, relatively not so demanding.

          But as is often the case with such movements, there were those who sought more radical change or expressed heightened discontent with the established modes of religiosity.  These radicals began demanding wholesale “reforms” to the existing, established church including a heightened adherence to the theological beliefs (TULIP) reviewed above.  And this abbreviated story will be continued in the next posting with the addition of how some of these disgruntled believers decided to leave England and eventually arrived at their promised land, America.

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – transcript books – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 23.

[2] While native Americans inhabited the Americas when the first Europeans showed up, the vast land mass was, by standards today, sparsely populated.  Estimates vary, but at the time of Columbus’ first voyage, 1492, they range from seven to ten million people.  Then, that population was seriously reduced due to the spread of diseases often originating from imported African slaves.  Again, estimates range as high as 90% of that indigenous population.  Those diseases included smallpox, measles, and the flu.  See “The Story of … Smallpox – and Other Deadly Eurasian Germs,” PBS (n.d.), accessed March 2, 2021, https://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html .

[3] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” in The Annals of America, Vol. 13 (Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968/1911), 277-288.