Gardiner meet Mr. Madison

[buc...@exis.net]

When we turn from religions liberty to the repudiation of: special
state aid, we enter a more. complicated area. That section of Puritanism
which championed religious liberty in the seventeenth century had divided
into, a right and left wing as regards the relation. of the church to the
state, a division which was important; in Witherspoon's day and also in
ours.
The left wing held for a rigid separation of church and state,
based on a theological compartmentalization of the spheres of creation (or
nature) and of redemption (or grace) The state belonged to the sphere of
nature and was to be shaped solely by natural law with no regard for
Scripture or church. There could he no such thing as a "Christian state."
There should be no religious tests for the franchise and no ecclesiastical
intervention in political matters. The state, on the other hand, most
respect the sphere of the church and redemption as outside its
jurisdiction. Such was the sscheme of Roger Williams in Rhode Island, and
of John Lilburne and John Goodwin in Old England. This became the main
stream of Baptist thought in England and the colonies and has remained so
ever since.
A different but equally important pattern of thought had emerged at
the Westminister Assembly, especially m the manifesto of the Congregational
minority there. It was actually put into effect in the 1650's by Cromwell,
but was then of course rejected at the Restoration of the Stuarts and the
old episcopal establishment. Like the separationists, this scheme fervently
supported religious liberty. Cromwell's regime gave greater scope to
religious liberty than any other major European state previously had done.
But this tradition refused to give up the notion of the bearing of
Christian revelation on political life. Cromwell conceived his government
to be generically Christian, but without giving state aid to any
ecclesiastic constitution preferentially. As he administered the pariah
system, benefices were held by ministers of Congregational, Presbyterian,
Baptist and Episcopal persuasions indifferently. To this extent it was
multiple establishments, based on the novel conception of a number of
equal and independent denominations cooperating to shape Christian nation.
The state represented all collectively and equally on the basis of what
was called "the common light of Christianity,
The state constitutions of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New
Hampshire sad Maryland represented substantially this position in the
1780's. Public provision conld be made for school teachers and religious
ministrations or whatever denomination the several towns might wish and in
some eases at least, dissenting minorities were exempt from taxation.
Nearly half of the states of the new republic maintained multiple
establishments of this general type and the Congress provided something of
the sane sort for the Northwest Territory of of which Five mid-Western
states have since been erected
In Virginia, on the other hand where the Anglican establishment
bad been less generous to dissenters than the Congregationalists of New
England, it was rather the radical separationist view which triumphed under
the leadership of Madison and Jefferson. And this Virginia struggle was
the immediate background of the drafting of the First Amendment.
Where do the American Presbyterians fit into this picture? Although
they rejected state support or church ministrations their general outlook
seems still to have been that of the Cromwellian "common light of
Christianity." If we are to take Witherspoon's lectures on moral philosophy
as a commentary on his preface to the Form of Government, the repudiation
of special state aid does not imply a strict separationism of the Roger
Williams or Baptist type. Whereas it is one of the most important duties of
the civil magistrate to protect the rights of conscience, he is also, m
Witherspoon's view duty bound to punish profanity and impiety. He should
encourage piety by his own example, attending to public and private
worship, avoiding swearing and blasphemy.(5) In Witherspoon's mind, the
state was still called to give aid to Christianity in general in these
ways. It was not expected to be neutral as between the religious and the
irreligious. And, in. his discussions of the system of state aidfor public
worship suiting the great body of citizens with full liberty for
dissenters, Witherspoon observes mildly, "there is much reason for this"
Clearly Witherspoon's devotion to the mechanism of separation is vastly
less intense than air commitment to religious liberty. The main point is to
secure freedom and non-preferential treatment for all religious bodies and
views. Separation was valued, not as an end in itself, but, as a means to
the end of religions liberty.
Footnote:
(5) Lectures on Moral Philosophy (ed. Collins), pp. 111-13.
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: John Witherspoon on Church and State, by James
Hastings Nichols. JOURNAL OF PRESBYTERIAN HISTORY, 42, (1964)
pp 171-73)

[Richard A. Schulman]

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 13:20:55 -0500, buc...@exis.net wrote:

> When we turn from religions liberty to the repudiation of: special
>state aid, we enter a more. complicated area. That section of Puritanism
>which championed religious liberty in the seventeenth century had divided
>into, a right and left wing as regards the relation. of the church to the
>state, a division which was important; in Witherspoon's day and also in

>ours....

This was a very interesting post. Is it a direct quote from your
secondary source or your summary of the secondary source? Please use
quotation marks next time around to make that clear.

> As he [Cromwell] administered the pariah

>system, benefices were held by ministers of Congregational, Presbyterian,
>Baptist and Episcopal persuasions indifferently.

"[P]ariah" looks like a typo, hopefully not Freudian, for "parish."

>(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: John Witherspoon on Church and State, by James
>Hastings Nichols. JOURNAL OF PRESBYTERIAN HISTORY, 42, (1964)
>pp 171-73)

Thank you for omitting your twenty-two line sig. It's nice to read
something informative without being sledge-hammered at the end with a
billboard.
---
Richard Schulman
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