Tag Archives: United States

“Who Will Remember?”

Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

(The following text is from a speech I wrote in 1994, when I was still in high school.  I presented the speech at a camp in the summer of that year.  While my writing is still reflective of a high school sophomore, I believe my observations and arguments are still relevant. Since I have not posted anything here for 2016, I thought this would be a fitting post for this 72nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion. SMC )

On June 6, 1994, President Bill Clinton joined world leaders in northern France to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day.  He did all that protocol required of him.  He attended speeches and visited memorials.  He looked every bit the President of the United States.  The media’s attention focused on seemingly touching gesture made by President Clinton-that of placing rock in the shape of a cross on the beach.  But when it was revealed that this incident was staged, it became evident how President Clinton really felt about D-Day.  He wasn’t there to celebrate it.  The 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion was merely a photo opportunity for our president.  All the speeches and ceremonies were nothing more than required presidential duty-just another famous date in history to commemorate.

But unfortunately, President Clinton isn’t the only one guilty of participating in the empty ceremonial style.  Today, many Americans have come to view D-Day in the same way.  It has no meaning to their lives.  It has simply joined the long list of historical dates that have a school book significance to the modern world.  We must not let this happen!  We must not allow ourselves to forget the on-going influence of D-Day!  It is an event that history will always remember, and we as Americans must never forget!

Why is this historical event so important you may ask?  First, the invasion across the English Channel was the only successful one of its kind in modern times.  Many invasions across the channel have been attempted.  Few have succeeded.  Both Napoleon and Hitler attempted to send invasion forces across the channel.  Both attempts failed.  Until 1944, the last successful attempt at sending an invasion fleet across the channel was almost 900 years before, in 1066, when William the Conqueror sailed across the channel and defeated the Saxons.

However, it could be easy to forget.  As time marches on, the miracle of D-Day will lose its grasp upon our souls.  As the date grows further away, it will become easy to simply view it as another event in history or just another date to remember for a test.  As the veterans grow old and leave us, we will lose the first-hand accounts of what it was like to hit the beaches and face the Germans.  We will lose the personal testimonies of heroism and honor.  In the year 2019, when we celebrate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, we will no longer have such people as Walter Cronkite to take us back to Normandy.  As the veterans dies, we will lose an important piece of living history.  The collection of veterans at the 50th anniversary will probably be the last time such a gathering will ever take place!

But perhaps the most important reason why we should not forget D-Day could be best summarized in the words of the great Roman orator, Cicero: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”  How can we as a nation move forward in the future if we do not know where we have come from in the past?  By forgetting the Americans who landed at Normandy, we do not only them, but us a great disservice.  How can we remain the leader of the world if we do not know where we have come from and what our past is?  The only way we can maintain our greatness as a nation is to remember the struggles we had on our rise to greatness.  It is our solemn duty as citizens to remember those who gave all they had for the fight for freedom.  But do we want to remember them in President Clinton’s way of empty ceremonies?  Do we want to treat their sacrifice as just another day’s work?  I think not.  Let us instead remember them as we should-men who did their duty.  Let us remember the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who were willing to commit themselves to fighting for the cause of freedom.  And let us dedicate ourselves, once again, to remembering them as we should.  As those soldiers on the beaches of Normandy were willing to do their duty, so let us do ours in preserving their memory and their work.  The nation that forgets its past leaders will be the nation that falls.  But the nation that remembers will be the nation that prevails.  As American citizens, let us dedicate ourselves to the task of remembering D-Day.  We must not forget.  Instead, we must remember so that we are better prepared for the problems and challenges of the future.  Let us remember the past so that we will know what we are about in the present and what we will be about in the future.

Protestantism’s Death & Liberty’s Demise

The Rise of Neo-Medievalism, Religious Authoritarianism, and the Fusion of Church & State in the West

When I first posted my stories about the ‘American Theocracy’ over a year ago, I did not expect to see such significant manifestations of this intellectual, religious and spiritual trend within the span of a year.  But throughout 2015, I have noted several surprising trends that all point to a very disturbing pattern regarding the fusion of religious ideology with political rhetoric to produce a frightening new phenomenon in the American scene.  This new movement is a form of bigotry, hatred and malice that appears very different to us who witnessed the horrifying racial, ethnic and religious hatred of the modern era, but in principle it is no different from the thoughts systems that produce Nazism, Communism, Socialism, and the extreme forms of social and economic racism in this nation’s history .  And for those of you following my stories on the American Theocracy, the struggle over these moral principles is the cornerstone of that imaginary story set in the future.
I hope to return to that series soon, but I want to take some time to relate the principles that under gird my story to our current context so that you, my readers, can better understand what I am seeking to communicate. While the origins of the story itself is only eight years old, nonetheless, I will admit that the influences upon my thinking which led to its creation were the result of twenty-four years of different streams of thought merging together together withing my own view of the world and Biblical truth within the last ten years.  These same streams bring us back to the main purpose in creating this blog in 2013.
In all fairness, before proceeding with this post, I should state for readers not familiar with all the nuisances of my theology and my thinking a key presupposition that guides my analysis of current events as well as their relationship to the past.  As an unapologetic Protestant Christian, I believe that the source of all truth is found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.  By consequence, I also believe that the fruit of a true knowledge of truth is liberty of conscience-both spiritual and material (see John 8:32).  Thus, I draw a direct line from the rise and fall of the Protestantism in the West to the rise and fall of liberty and constitutional government among the Western nations in the last five centuries.  But I am not alone in this supposition.  Many historians, both Christian and secular alike, have noted the unique and close kinship between the rise and spread of Protestantism five centuries ago and the rise and spread of personal liberty, or as it is often known, Classical Liberalism.  Alternatively,  few historians and thinkers in our day-both modern and postmodern alike-have failed to note the close parallels between the decline of historic Protestantism and the rise of the totalitarian state with its authoritarian ideologies in the last one hundred years.  Nonetheless, since the dawn of the twentieth century, this process is exactly what has unfolded in the West-first in Europe in the middle of that century, and now in the United States in our own time.  Consequently, in Europe, as Protestantism died, the old order of constitutional monarchies or constitutional ideals were replaced with Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism.  The result was a continent ravaged with with a century of war, chaos, carnage and destruction.   But now, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, that same cancer has spread to North America, and this principle is the underlying reality to all the disturbing news stories of the past year:
The CAUSE  of the death of Liberty and constitutional government in the United States is directly linked to the death and decay of Protestantism in the United States.
Several lines of historical and theological arguments could be offered to support this claim, and I hope to continue exploring these themes in future posts.  But for this article, I simply want to note the the board historical arch which unites events of this year indicating that Protestantism is dead, and consequently, our Postmodern world is quickly returning to a Pre-Protestant and Pre-Reformational status.  But there is another term I would prefer to use to describe this phenomenon:
In 2015, the world watched the first major surge of an intellectual, religious and spiritual movement that could be defined as ‘Neo-Medievalism.’  
What is ‘Neo-Medievalism’?  Obviously, the term, ‘Medieval’ is generally used by historians to describe the millennium between the ancient era of history and that of the Reformation/Modern Era which still continues to affect our Postmodern world.  But while some might simply employ that term as a chronological sense, I would argue that Medievalism was more than just a broad designation for an era of disjointed historical chaos.  Granted, few in the actual Medieval period probably used that word to describe their own thinking regarding truth, religion, and the world (they would not have even known such a term). Nonetheless, the Medieval European and Medieval Semite (occupant of the Ancient Middle East) possessed a carefully defined and highly developed worldview.  One of the great tragedies resulting from the Modern and Postmodern study of history has been the over-simplification of the exact nature of the Medieval worldview by both Christian and Secular historians alike.  The term, ‘Dark Ages’ is often used to describe that era of a thousand years as a time of backward thinking and provincial attitudes. As a Protestant, I would argue that indeed much of Europe and the Middle East (as well as other parts of the globe) were in a deep spiritual darkness, and in that sense, the world was living in a ‘Dark Age’.  But it is the height of historical ignorance to argue that somewhere intellectual thought died during that extended period of time.  If we could learn one key lesson from the events of the Protestant Reformation (which was a true intellectual revolution for the West), the European ‘Wars of Religion’ (1524-1648) demonstrated there was clear conflict of worldviews between the Medieval and the Reformational Protestant.  And that one hundred and twenty-eight year conflict of worldviews did more than just impact religious bodies.  Besides devastating much of the populace of Europe, this conflict completely changed the entire continent, giving birth to the idea of separating the church from the civil government, and religion from society at large.
When we consider the seismic impact of the Reformation to Europe, we must ask this question: what was the foundation of Medieval Thought in contrast to Reformational Protestantism?
Without over simplifying a rather complex question (and one that deserves much more study than I have given to it), permit me offer what I believe to be the one key distinctive of the Medieval worldview in contrast to the Protestant worldview.  And while I must admit that there were and still are Protestants and Catholics who may not fit precisely into this category, I would argue that such individuals are the exception to the general observable pattern:
The Medieval mind viewed the institutional church and institutional religion as the cornerstone of society (hence Medieval and Modern Catholics often approach political and economic theory from a purely collective or materialistic perspective) whereas the Protestant mind viewed the individual and his or her family as the centerpiece of human interaction (and therefore approached their worldviews from more of an individual and spiritual perspective).
Much could and should be flushed out in this definition which at the moment I will not take the time to do.  But if one considers that basic definition of Medieval thinking in contrast to historic Protestant thought, a pattern within the significant events of 2015 begins to manifest itself:
1. The U. S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell vs. Hodge declared that same-sex unions were equal to more traditional definitions of marriage and therefore, should be given the same legal status by the U. S. Constitution as traditional marriage is.
This decision renewed a long standing call by ‘Evangelical’ and other ‘Christian’ conservatives that it was the responsibility of the State, as a ‘Christian entity’ to define and regulate the institution of marriage.
2. In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks linked to ISIL as well as the influx of Syrian refugees to Europe and North America, some ‘Evangelical’ and ‘Christian’ politicians have called for the implementation of Identity Cards be issued to those who do not publicly adhere to the Christian faith.
3.The open hatred expressed by some Christians towards both open homosexuals and Muslims in general is yet another reflection of the same spirit of religious intolerance and bigotry that fueled the wars of religion in Europe in the 1600’s.
4. The address of Pope Francis I to a joint session of the U. S. Congress-a first in American history, and one that was widely applauded by many self-identified Protestants and Evangelicals, despite the pontif’s ambiguity on things like the definition of marriage, the role of government in both economics and politics and a papal exhortation for Americans to embrace multiculturalism despite the fact that many Evangelicals strongly oppose such positions.
5. In recent weeks, the number of American Conservative Christians who have publicly denounced the reception of Syrian refugees by the American government to the United States as a policy that is both ‘Un-american’ and ‘Unchristian.’ simply because these refugees may hold either Muslim beliefs or simply non-Christian beliefs.
6. And lastly, but most disturbingly, calls by some Christians to embrace a total war or a ‘holy crusade’ against militant Islamic groups throughout the Middle East.
Each of these particular issues deserve more attention than I can give in a single post, but for the moment, simply consider the broad pattern that unites these events:
In 2015, we noted an unusual paradigm shift within the American political and social structure in responding to these events:
It was the political Left (not the ideological left, mind you), that became the promoter of ‘individual liberty’ as it is so badly defined in our Postmodern society, and it was the political right (and in this case, the ideological and political bloc are slowly fusing with each other) that was promoting government intervention in everything from society to economics to political power to the very definition of warfare itself.
Regardless of one’s personal views or convictions, this trend is a highly significant pattern for the student of history.  But this reality is even more troubling for the Christian who holds that the Bible is their supreme authority and that Christ is their only Lord, for here is the practical lesson we ought to learn from this observation:
The Modern world is dead, and the Postmodern world has given to us ‘The Brave New World.’  For those of you reading this blog who think that the world is still in the PROCESS of becoming the ‘Brave New World”, permit me burst your bubble right now.  Postmodernism IS the ‘Brave New World,’ and that means the ‘Brave New World’ IS NOW. And as this new paradigm works itself out in other realms of human life, the ‘Brave New World’ will appear in this fashion: the political left will defend their version of ‘personal liberty’ which might better be defined as ‘chaotic licentiousness’ and the political right will defend religious authoritarianism as the ‘divinely ordained’ means to prevent this new Postmodern ‘liberty’ from spreading.
But here is the great irony in this historical development:  It was NOT Postmodernism that killed ‘liberty’.  The rise of Neo-Medievalism that considers the church and and external or institutional religion with all its entangling totalitarianism is what is truly killing and has already killed liberty in the United States.  And this ideological foundation is fueling the conflict that is manifested by an intense hatred of many American Christians against Islam, Secularism and the inane theory of the ‘Great Left-wing conspiracy’.  This the paradigm that will govern the next fifty to one hundred years of American religion as its influence continues to grow upon American public policy.   But that reality is small in comparison to the truly frightening source of this new paradigm.  This embrace of ‘Neo-Medievalism’ by the Christian church in American is the consequence of the death of Protestantism in America.
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Holy War! The Rise and Fall of the American Theocracy: 2039-2079 (Part 4)

By Nathaniel Lane Stewart, M. A.

The Unique Phenomenon of the American Theocratic Republic  (Part 4)

(Note: This post marks Part 4 in a series on the history of the American Theocracy, a work supposedly published in A. D. 2195, when much of the world was governed by the Covenant of Religious Detente, a series of accords proposed by Pope John Paul III in A. D. 2121 and agreed to by leaders of Christendom, Islam and Judaism ten years later.  The author of this book, Professor Nathaniel Stewart, taught at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia during the middle of the twenty-second century, one of the few universities still left in the North American continent which was devastated by war from the 2040’s to the 2070’s.  This section continues his second observation regarding the historical significance of the American Theocracy-the unique historical and philosophical world which contributed its existence.  For the previous section of this part, see the link below.  Parts 1 and 2 can also be read on this blog.) 

The American Theocracy: Historical Context

Thus, what was this unusual convergence of ideas that occurred in the early decades of the twenty-first century (which was the result of the philosophical revolutions of both Modernity and Post-modernity) and would lay the ground work for the institution of the American Theocratic Republic in 2065?

The answer to that question can be readily found by discerning the pan-centennial flow of western philosophy from the rise and spread of Modernity, its slow morphing into Post-modernity, and the eventual collapse of Western philosophy as a whole by the 2040’s.  It is beyond the scope of this essay to provide a complete survey of these systems of thought and their impact upon the history of the world (10).  However, such an examination is not required in order to answer our query.  A simple understanding of each proposition as it moved from age to age will provide us with a more than sufficient answer to this question.  But first, let us outline the eras of the history of Philosophy as well as that of religion before explaining each position:

1. The Protestant ‘hiccup’ of the Christian Church (1517-1650)

2. The Age of Modernity (1650-1950)

3. The Era of Post-Modernity (1950-2040)

4. The Great Collapse (2040-2065)

5. The American Theocratic Republic (2065-2079)

One of the most important observations that needs to be noted is that the Age of Modernity, the Era of Post-modernity, the Great Collapse and the American Theocratic Republic can all find their origins in what historians now refer to as the ‘Protestant hiccup’ of the Christian church.  Again, it is beyond our purpose to examine these inter-historical connections (11), but we note this fact for one reason: While most of the Theocratic apologists were rather anti-Protestant in the traditional and historic sense, they were hardly loyal churchmen as was demonstrated by President L. Carter McPherson’s purge of the ‘Old Order Catholics’ in 2069 from the party apparatus (12).  So in one sense, the American Theocracy was the final gasp of a degenerate and dying semi-Protestantism. But on this point, we digress.  The two key questions we must ask are 1. How did the Protestant version of Christendom give birth the Age of Modernity, and given this fact, 2. Why was the Age of Modernity so long (1650-1950)?

The answer to the first question is actually discovered in the answer to the second question, so we shall answer the latter one first.

The Age of Modernity roughly spans the years A. D. 1650-1950.  It’s length must be credited to the fact that in 5,300 years of philosophical and religious speculation (including all Pre-Christian thought), Modernity was the oddest and perhaps most irrational school of thought ever (13).  The reason is thus:

While the Modern rejected the spiritual principle, definitions, propositions and general principles of Christendom (both Protestant and Catholic forms), its school of thought maintained in outward form the basic principles of knowledge, structure, order, rational thought, applications and ethics of Christendom, and particularly that of Protestant Christendom.  So that while many Moderns were anti-Christian in thought, they were nonetheless, quite Christian in knowledge, forms, traditions, and practices.  And herein is the greatest irrationality of the Modern.  In form, he was Christian while in spirit he was not.  It was this paradox that gave Modernity its length as well as laying seeds that would ultimately produce a cancer that will kill it entirely.

The three distinct phases of Modernity express well how Modernity was shaped by Christianity even as it rejected its basic principles:

Early Modernity (1650-1800)

High Modernity (German Higher Critical Thought; also known as the German Era of Modernity) (1800-1900)

Late Modernity (or Dialectic Materialism, or Secular Modernity) (1900-1950)

To Be Continued. . .

 

(10) Professor M. C. J. Hopkins, IV, Ph. D., D. D., held the Chair of Historical Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, England, and wrote a very fine work outlining the course of the Modern and Post-modern Philosophies.  His work, while highly devoted to the worship of the Holy Catholic Church, is nonetheless a true work of scholarship and provides a helpful survey in this topic.  It is entitled: The Historical, Existential, and Catastrophic Consequences of Collective Unbelief: An Historical Survey and Interpretative Examination of the causes and course of Protestant Sectarian and Rational Absurdities upon the history of the Catholic Church, 1500-2131.    (And this is the abbreviated title. Sadly, Professor Hopkins was never known for his brevity.)

(11) Besides Professor Hopkins’ work, see the essay, An Examination of the Parallel and Contrasting Strains with Modern and Orthodox Protestantism, 1850-2070, by Charles L. Fields, M. A., Professor of History and Philosophy, New York Ecclesiastic University, A. D. 2161.

(12) See Volume II, Part 2, Chapter 15, of this work for the historical background of the ‘purge.’  While many scholars of the church in our time claim the purge by President McPherson was purely religious in nature, the facts appear to indicate his actions were a combination of both religious ideology and political convenience.  After the National Referendum for McPherson as Supreme President of the Theocratic Republic in A. D. 2068, many Old Catholics aligned themselves with the last remnants of the Neo-Libertarians (who had subsumed all other opposition groups, including the American Gay Party) and both groups were still hoping to overthrow the Theocratic government some time between A. D. 2069 and 2070.  Recent documents have provided evidence that the Old Order Catholics had exchanged secret letters with officials at the Vatican who had promised the support of papacy in the overthrow of the American Theocratic regime.  However, these same documents show that while some church leaders favored intervention in the American political crisis, the majority did not, primarily due to the fact that much of Europe was still under Russian domination and the papacy was trying to balance both cooperation with the Russian Imperial Federation and the underground movements fighting against this occupation.  Thus, support from the Papacy for an overthrow of the American theocracy was never forthcoming, and many Old Order Catholics were either killed or imprisoned in camps during the second Neo-Nullification crisis in A. D. 2071.  Those who survived were liberated by the armies of the Eastern Alliance in A. D.  2077-2079.

(13) See Professor Stewart’s work, The Death of the State: How the German Epistemological Matrix Destroyed the Protestant Commonwealth, Chapter 5 for a concise explanation of the irrationality of Modernity.

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 Holy War! The Rise and Fall of the American Theocracy (2039-2079) (Part 2)

By Nathaniel Lane Stewart, M. A.

Introduction: The Unique Phenomenon of the American Theocratic Republic (Part 2)

(The following post is the continuation of the introductory chapter to the book cited above which was (supposedly) published in the year, 2195. This essay offers some opening observations to the historical narrative of the American Theocracy of the 2060’s and 2070’s. The numbers in parentheses indicate foot notes at the end of the article.  You may click the link below if you wish to read Part 1 of this post:

A. D. 2081: Post-war United States

What was the American Theocratic Republic of the 2060’s and 2070’s, and how did it differ from the Federal Constitution of 1787?

Asking that question is far more easier than attempting a fair and candid reply.  In the opinion of this writer, some historians over the past two decades have rendered very shoddy work in both narrating and analyzing the rise & fall of the American Theocracy.  The chief blunder most scholars of our day have committed is they fail to acknowledge three necessary presuppositions regarding the historic context of the Theocratic Republic as well as the character of this unique marriage of religion and politics in the Americas that enable a student of the past to rightly understand these events. Those three presuppositions are as follows:

One, the pan-centennial arc of the Theocratic ideals flowing through the history of Christianity in North America which climaxed during the era of the American Theocracy.

Two, the unique, and in one sense, unprecedented world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the history of the world which gave birth to the American Theocracy.

Three, the contradictory character of the American Theocratic movement demonstrated by a peculiar intellectual paradox embraced within their beliefs and their practices.

Without a precise understanding of these three factors, a candid narration as well as an honest assessment regarding the historical significance of the American Theocratic Republic will be quite difficult if not impossible to offer.  The definition of these three presuppositions is the subject of this introductory essay.  We shall now consider of them in brief:

The Pan-centennial arc of the American Theocratic Ideals

One of the most misunderstood attributes of the American Theocratic movement is that it was not exclusively an event of the twenty-first century.  Though its period proper extends roughly from the fall of Jerusalem to the armies of the Confederation of Arab States in A. D. 2039 to the defeat of the American Theocratic forces at St. Louis, Missouri, in June, 2079, by the armies of the Eastern Alliance, the origins of the Theocratic movement can be traced to the mid-twentieth century while its core principles and ideals can be traced to the early nineteenth century.  The most unbiased statement one could make regarding the American Theocratic movement is this: it was a spirit whose arc was like a river in a dale which can be traced throughout the entire history of the American republic.  As one writer in the early twenty-second century noted, the  rise and fall of the American Theocracy cannot be explained without first understanding the rise and decline of religion among the American people from A. D. 1650 to A. D. 2050 (1).

The forces that propelled the Theocratic Party forward were deeper than such events as the coalescing of Islam in the 2030’s or the Arab-Mexican Pact of A. D. 2043.  Their crusade to remake society after a more ‘Biblical fashion’ was driven by more than the Fall of Jerusalem in A. D. 2039, or the “Gay Rights” amendment to the Federal Constitution in A. D. 2037, or the Neo-Libertarian embrace of Anarchist government and the doctrine of ‘Free-Market Politics’ (2).  If we are to find the source of this unusual party in American history, we must go past the explosion of the Militant Islamic revolts in early decades of the 2000’s.  We must move beyond the traumatic attacks of September 11, A. D. 2001.  We must travel back in time prior to the Cultural Revolutions of the twentieth century, the world wars and the rising threat of Materialistic Dialectic Communism.  We must trace the arc back to the nineteenth century and understand the dramatic epistemological revolution that occurred in that century which was believed to be the seminal threat to the existence of Christianity.  But even after we have noted that essential fact, then we must travel further into the past where we shall discover that the ultimate root of this oddly deformed hybrid of a tree and a boulder called the American Theocracy is located in the very early days of the American Republic itself(1650-1800).  It is only then that we find the true significance of this unique phenomenon of the twenty-first century called the American Theocratic Republic. Hence, unlike other histories of this period, we have chosen to begin ours at A. D. 1650.

The first seed of the Theocratic ideal was actually sowed by a group of individuals so far removed in both time and perspective from the Christian Republic Party that their actions are truly an ironic commentary on the full impact of the law of unintended consequences. That first seed was planted with the establishment of the Puritan Commonwealth in the colony of Massachusetts in A. D. 1629.  Those ancient ‘Puritans’ desired to institute the ideal Biblical Commonwealth upon earth, and even though they were also an extremely militant form of Christianity (quite unlike the true manifestation of Christian Catholicity that we know and enjoy), even their worldview did not call for the total eradication of every perceived enemy of Christendom as did that of the Christian Republic Party (3).  This Puritan Vision died by A. D. 1700, but its ideal was resurrected in a rather secular form 76 years later with the Declaration of Independence by the 13 British Colonies that later took the name the United States of America.  Then with the ratification of the Federal Constitution of 1787, in one very real sense, this new organization of the United States enacted into law with the famed first amendment a totally secularized vision of the Puritan dream (4).  This act ensured a certain level of freedom for the individual conscience-both the freedom to practice one’s religion as well as the freedom NOT to be coerced into submitting to a government administrated church (like those of the European monarchies of their own time, and much like what we enjoy today, though in a more spiritually refined position than did they enjoy).

Nonetheless, this act of instituting a ‘secular republic’ caused great consternation among the more strict Protestant churches of the populace as many of these militant ministers feared the ‘secular identity’ of the American nation would only lead the Republic into moral chaos and ruin.  Hence, those ministers watered the old seeds of the Puritan vision through a series of mystic revivals, movements of communal spirituality, programs of social reform, and a spirit of militant cultural activism-all of which were promoted by the Protestant Evangelical churches who had experienced a great revival in the years preceding the revolution of the 1770’s and wanted most earnestly to perpetuate that same revival in their own day.  It is from this spirit which originated in the century spanning A. D. 1750 to A. D. 1850 that we find the true origins of the theology and thought of the American Theocratic Republic.

(To Be Continued. . .)

 

(1) See ‘A Secular ‘Faith’: The Problem of the American ‘Religion’ by Cardinal Xander Morino, SJ, former Executive Dean, Catholic Academic League; essay published in A. D. 2134, by the International Catholic University, Rome.

(2) See Volume 1, Part II, Chapter 10, of this book for a more thorough explanation of this political theory of the early twenty-first century.

(3) See The Quest for a Christian Commonwealth (A. D. 1550 to A. D. 2120) by James A. Morris, Ph. D., Published by Commonwealth International University, Louisville Campus, Kentucky, 2145.  Morris documents how the Christian Republic Party of 2060’s appealed to the Puritan Dream as their primary inspiration for establishing the Theocracy in A. D. 2065.  His work offers appropriate comparisons between the two visions of a ‘Christian Commonwealth’ while still acknowledging that the Puritan vision was not nearly as militant as the American Theocracy (see pages 93-121).

(4) For a respectable though highly narrow perspective, see A Defense for the Necessity of a Secular Commonwealth, by William Salisbury, published posthumously in A. D. 2129, by official order of the Commonwealth National Assembly.  Salisbury attempts to defend the “disestablishment” clause of the Old Federal Constitution.  His position is a more precise statement of Grantham’s position outlined in his first inaugural address.