Ecclesiastical Republic vs. Democracy
It is interesting to me that throughout my life, as I moved through conservative Christian circles, everyone liked to remind all who would listen that “we live in a Republic, not a democracy, the founding fathers despised democracy.” True. Then we’d gather each Sunday in our respective churches, baptist predominantly, and tout our individual autonomy as a congregation and our form of church government… pure democracy.
Why do we love our representative Republic for civil government, but throw it aside for American’s individualistic preference for autonomous churches and mob rule for governing therein? Consider that the founding fathers went with, what historically the church had maintained since Moses, in operating as an ecclesiastical republic while American’s have largely gone the other way in their church life. Note the condition of the country and ponder that the Sodom and Gomorrah you live in now is due to the church having lost its way, not the state. Yet, Christians largely sit around debating how to fix the state purely by civil government means: elections, lobbying, fixing the schools, etc. Salvation does not reside in the U.S. Constitution! That Constitution did not prevent getting to where we are! The discussion should be about fixing our churches and bringing them in line with God’s government of them.
Here’s a sample from a book I’ll be releasing in the next couple days, The American Mind in 1776. The following is Appendix B from that book. Keep your eyes out as this will be a free book that needs to be disseminated and read far and wide.
Presbyterianism: The Model and Motive for the U.S. Constitution
Although the radical Thomas Paine claimed to be the father of the American Revolution, Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, Daniel Webster was correct when he said that the American Revolution could not have lived a single day under any well founded suggestion of possessing a tendency adverse to the Christian faith. Even Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, neither known for their staunch belief in orthodox Christianity, felt it to be unavoidably necessary, in order to give spirit to the enterprise, and moral heroism of the people, to bring into operation the principle of Christianity. This was the electric power which made men stand erect upon the basis of liberty.
All the essential principles which lie at the basis of the government of the United States - the principles of republicanism in contrast with democracy, on the one hand, and an aristocratic sovereignty, on the other were found in the Jewish Church; were fully developed in the Christian Church; are clearly and prominently presented in the system of doctrine and government adopted by the Presbyterian Church; were maintained and acted upon by the Waldensians, (who have always been thorough Presbyterians), during all their history; were brought to life, and revived in the reformation of the sixteenth century; and are illustrated in the modern history of the Presbyterian Church in Europe, in England and in this country.
The spirit of our Revolution is embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and in the (original) Constitutions of the several states, and of the United States. Our present study, therefore, leads us to trace the influences which, in their measure, led to the spirit, form and character of these productions.
There are two prominent Declarations of Independence; that of Mecklenburg (county in North Carolina), issued May 19, 1775 and the national Declaration, adopted in July 1776. Between these there has been exhibited a similarity of sentiment, and of phraseology, which necessarily leads to the conclusion either that Thomas Jefferson, in writing the latter, was indebted to the former, or that both papers may be traced to a common source, accessible to the authors of both. Such a source is found to exist in the ecclesiastical covenants of Scotland of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The similarities between these covenants and the Declarations of Mecklenburg and of the United States, are not only with reference to general form and character, but also with reference to style and language.
These covenants of Scotland were political as well as religious, national as well as ecclesiastical. They originated in distinctly Christian principles, and were carried forward and applied by Christian people of the age of American Independence.
The covenants of Scotland were “subscribed by persons of all ranks and qualities, by ordinance of council,” - “subscribed by the nobles, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers and commoners.” This is the title of the National Covenant of 1638. The “General Band” (or covenant) of 1588 and the General Confession of 1580 were “subscribed by his Majesty and divers of the estates, and afterwards by persons of all ranks and degrees by an act of council.” The Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, begins with these words:
“We noblemen, barons, knights, gentlemen, citizens, burgesses, ministers of the Gospel, commoners of all sorts in the kingdom of Scotland, England, and Ireland" - and has explicit reference to "the true liberty, safety and peace of the kingdom, where every one's private condition is included.”
The Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 was a covenant with God entered into by Scotland, England and Ireland to establish a church and state in those nations based on the Bible and under the Kingship of Jesus Christ. It was a declaration of war against the despotism of either church or state, the tyrannical effect of which is always “the utter annihilation of all liberty, civil and religious.”
The Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 was a summary of all preceding, and a model of all subsequent, covenants. It is difficult to conceive how any calm, unprejudiced, thoughtful and religious man can peruse this covenant without feeling upon his mind an over-awing sense of its sublimity and sacredness. The most important of man's interests, for time and for eternity, are included within its scope, and made the subjects of a solemn league with each other, and a sacred covenant with God. Religion, liberty, and peace, are the great elements of human welfare, to the preservation of which it bound those three nations. Those who framed it knew very well that there can be no safety for these things in a land where the mind of the community is dark with ignorance, warped by superstition, misled by error, and degraded by tyranny, civil and ecclesiastical, therefore, they pledged themselves to the uprooting of these pernicious evils. The framers and signers intended this solemn covenant to be the basis of civil and constitutional liberty in Great Britain.
Many of those who signed this document added to their names, “TILL DEATH,” and some even cut veins in their bodies and wrote their signatures in their own blood. The large sheet containing the covenant, in a short time, became so crowded with names on both sides, that there was not space left for one more signature.
The adoption of the U.S. Constitution with its federal (covenantal) plan and republican form may have been the most important event in modern history. Its results were not confined to America. It encouraged lovers of freedom all over the world to resist oppression. It gave an example of a great people not only emancipating themselves, but governing themselves without either a monarch to control, or an aristocracy to restrain, and it demonstrated, for the first time in the history of the world, contrary to all the predictions of statesmen, that a great nation when duly prepared for the task, is capable of self-government - in other words, that a purely republican form of government can be founded and maintained in a country of vast extent, and peopled by millions of inhabitants. The principal variations from the British Constitution were the substitution of an elective chief magistrate, personally responsible, for one hereditary, and only responsible through his ministers and agents; the upper house being elective like the lower; and the nation consisting of a confederation of republican states, each independent, in many essential particulars, but all combined, as regards foreign relations, under one head, and all governed by a central Legislature, of powers limited by law as to its jurisdiction over each individual member of the Union, though quite absolute as to the general concerns of the whole confederacy, and the federal relations of its component parts.
The fundamental principle of the Constitution is, the vesting of the supreme authority, executive and legislative, in the people, who themselves are governed in all things by the Word of God, to be exercised in every case by their chosen representatives - in no case, except in their elections, by themselves. And this at once distinguishes the great modern republic from all the democracies of ancient times. The representative principle is fully and universally introduced into it, and the people depart completely with all their power to their chosen deputies. It is another, and an essential principle, if indeed it be not involved in the former, that the choice of representatives and a chief magistrate is the only elective function exercised by the people - all civil and military officers, and especially all judicial functionaries being appointed by the executive government.
CONFEDERATION and REPRESENTATION are the two essential principles which lie at the basis of the American Constitution. And both of these principles are Presbyterian principles. First, in the Presbyterian system, as over against the congregationalist system, for example, with its autonomous, unrelated local churches, there is the principle of “Connectionalism” or “Confederacy,” wherein local churches are structurally connected together by a common confession and form of government, called Presbytery. In this relation, the Presbytery has certain authority over all the local churches, while each local church has its own governing authority as well - the Session. Both authorities are well-defined and limited. Second, Presbyterian government is republican, i.e., representative government. The members of the Presbyterian Church elect elders to represent and administer the constitution of the Church, the Bible. In churches with a congregational system, the majority of the members directly rule the church; and in churches with an episcopal system, to one degree or another, one man, such as the Pope, rules. Roman Catholicism breeds monarchies; congregationalism breeds democracies, which always turn into tyrannies; and Presbyterianism breeds constitutional republics.
Therefore, because of the influence of Presbyterianism, the U.S. Constitution created:
A confederacy of state governments united in a federal government, each with well-defined and limited authority, powers and jurisdiction.
A constitutional, representative republic, wherein the civil magistrates were elected by the people and the states to represent, defend, and administer, not the whims and fancies of the majority of people, but constitutional law based on a Christian moral order.
Wherein does LIBERTY consist? Answer: In the right use of the principles of COVENANT REPRESENTATION and IMPUTATION resting upon the principle of FAITH as the only legitimate basis of the whole. Where a people, under a social covenant, do, in an enlightened manner and in the fear of God, make and execute laws and transact their own business by REPRESENTATIVES OF THEIR OWN CHOICE, they are a free people. Where they are deprived of the privilege of choosing their representatives - i.e., where they are not represented by those in whom they, or a majority of them, have FAITH, they are not a free people. Here then we have the elements of all social government: and the principles of all PRACTICABLE democracy, i.e., REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLICANISM. And where did we get them? Answer: FROM THE CALVINISTIC CONFESSIONS OF FAITH, as clearly deduced from the Bible, as the infallible Word of God. There and there ONLY - there originally are they found. There is the doctrine of COVENANTS - there the doctrine of REPRESENTATION or VICARIOUS AGENCY - there the doctrine of IMPUTATION, and there the vital spirit of them all, the doctrine of FAITH.
A corollary from this statement is that PRESBYTERIAN GOVERNMENT IS THE NATURAL and NECESSARY RESULT of Calvinism. The principles of Presbytery are found in the very bosom of this creed. Presbytery is but the natural development, in the external form of the church, of the doctrines of grace which warm her bosom. And for a Calvinistic church to wear any other form of government would be a monstrous development - so monstrous indeed, that the world has never for any length of time witnessed such a wonder. NO OTHER FORM OF GOVERNMENT CAN NATURALLY GROW OUT OF CALVINISM. And although repeated attempts have been made to preserve a union between this faith and other forms of government, none has ever succeeded.
It can be shown historically that Presbyterianism has ever been found working out the spirit and principles of constitutional, representative, and republican government, and giving impetus to the onward progress of civil and religious liberty. Such has been its glory, when glory has been attached to such principles, and such its infamy, its reproach and its standing denunciations by all its enemies.
Eighteen centuries of history proclaim the truth that the Calvinistic faith, united to Presbyterian government, has been most productive of glory to God and good to man. It was in the use of this simple and unpretending, but mighty and majestic moral machinery, that the illiterate fishermen of Galilee, assisted by the learned and indefatigable Paul, accomplished, in the face of the bitterness of Jewish persecution, and the iron sternness of Roman cruelty and power, one of the mightiest revolutions that have ever changed the aspect of our world. It was Presbyterianism that preserved religion in its purity, throughout those centuries of trial and corruption. And when Rome, that “mother of harlots and abominations,” extended her scepter over the world, and began to be “drunk with the blood of the saints,” the Presbyterian Church furnished a large proportion of her victims. And throughout those ages of darkness, that gloomed at the rise of Popery, and reached their midnight after the inundation of the barbarians of the north - WHERE and WHO were the SEED that God, according to his promise, had preserved to serve Him? Where in those days was a faithful remnant to be found? It was to be found, not in Asia, but in Europe.
In the Alps, those mighty barriers which have baffled many a tyrant's rage, the people of God, driven from their eastern home, and hunted for the truth's sake, from land to land, had taken refuge, and there, despite the rage of the Romans and the fury of the Frank, they preserved and practiced the truth in its original beauty and simplicity. And WHO and WHAT were these dwellers of the Alpine valleys? PRESBYTERIANS ALL!! The faith we hold was their faith - the government under which we rejoice was their government. And faithfully did they maintain them. Amid the flames of their burning villages - or unsheltered amid the desolation of Alpine winter - hunted from mountain to mountain and from valley to valley - oppressed - imprisoned - burnt and driven from their homes, still, with unbending firmness, they held on to the truth of God; until by that very dispersion, by which Rome thought to crush them, was sowed the seeds of that Reformation that makes Rome totter to her fall.
The great Reformer of Geneva (Calvin) learned much from these Waldensians in regard to that original and Apostolic Christianity, of which he was so learned and eloquent an advocate: and the enemies of the other Reformers often charged them with deriving their opinions from these godly and faithful victims of Rome. Indeed, the candid searcher of history will be constrained to believe, that from the Apostolic times, a church maintaining the Presbyterian doctrine and order, was by the providence of God preserved, until she gave to the purest branch of the great Reformation, the doctrine and ecclesiastical image, which she had preserved unmarred, through so many centuries of darkness and of blood.
Not only were the American War of Independence and the Declaration of Independence inspired by Presbyterian principles, and the U.S. Constitution based on and given its character by them, but after the War of 1776 was over, when the leaders in the states came to settle the form of government in their states, they simply copied into every state constitution the simple elements of representative republicanism found in the Presbyterian system. It is a matter of history that cannot be denied that Presbyterianism, as found in the Bible, and in the standards of the several Presbyterian churches, defined the character of our free institutions. Although many of the churches of New England, as well as many of the Pilgrims, went under the name of “congregationalist,” nevertheless, all of these people had been nursed in the bosom and had drunk of the spirit of Presbyterian Holland and Geneva, before they reached the rock of Plymouth, and from the very first, their institutions partook of the Presbyterian form.
The battles of “Cowpens,” “King’s Mountain,” and the severe skirmish known as “Huck’s Defeat,” all taking place in South Carolina, were among the turning points of the American War of Independence. These battles illustrate the predominance of Presbyterianism and of Presbyterians in America at this critical juncture in our history, out of which came, not only the Revolution itself, but also the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
General Morgan, who was the commander at Cowpens, was a Presbyterian elder. General Pickens, who made all the arrangements for the battle, was also a Presbyterian elder. And nearly all under their command were Presbyterians. In the battle of King’s Mountain, Colonel Campbell, Colonel James Williams, who was killed there, Colonel Cleaveland, Colonel Shelby, and Colonel Sevier, were all Presbyterian elders; and the body of their troops were collected from Presbyterian settlements. At Huck’s Defeat, in York, Colonel Bratton and Major Dickson were both elders of the Presbyterian Church. Major Samuel Morrow, who was with Colonel Sumpter, in four engagements with the British, and at King’s Mountain, Blackstock, and other battles, and whose home was in the army, till the termination of hostilities, was for fifty years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church.
In asserting and vindicating the patriotism of Presbyterians, and the influence of this denomination in all ages of its history, and especially since the reformation, in defending and diffusing the principles of civil and religious liberty, we neither stigmatize nor detract from the patriotism of other religious denominations. In those days Puritan principles and spirit influenced all churches, so that even eighteenth century American Catholics were criticized by their European brothers as having imbibed some measure of American Calvinism.
He who would tarnish the luster thrown around the religious principles and spirit of the Reformers and Puritans, as the fountain of our constitutional laws and liberties, and attribute these to the mere natural impulses of the human heart, is no more absurd in reasoning than he is profane in spirit.
We may have been somewhat hyperbolical in claiming for the generic spirit and principles of Presbyterianism the founding of empires. But he who will consider its influences in sustaining the Jewish Republic; in preserving the system and independence of the Waldensians; in creating the republic of Geneva; in confederating the republic of Switzerland, and making Geneva the focus of Protestantism and of practical republicanism; in combining the States of Protestant Germany against the threatened extermination of the Emperor and the Pope; in resuscitating the united provinces of the Netherlands, when they threw off the yoke of Philip II, and founded in their morasses a confederation, very nearly resembling that which had been founded in the mountains of Helvetia (Switzerland); in creating an empire within the despotic and unquestionably Popish France; in erecting the Commonwealth of England upon the ruins of civil and religious despotism; in giving origin to that liberty and reform which are still at work in the gradual transformation of the British Constitution; in moulding and fashioning the character of the Scottish people, so as to make them preeminent among the nations of the earth; and, not to enlarge, - in giving birth to the spirit of independence in these colonies, inspiring courage to declare it, union to maintain it, and wisdom, in some degree at least, to mould the Constitution of these United States; when, we say, these facts are contemplated with a searching and unprejudiced eye, our words may well be tolerated as not unwarrantably eulogizing the genius of Presbytery as the genius of civil and religious liberty.
May the Lord grant Spirit-wrought revival to Christians, reformation to the Church and Christian reconstruction to our nation. May this Spiritual revival bring with it the revitalization of Presbyterianism, without which liberty and justice cannot survive. To that end, we make as our prayer the final paragraph of The Solemn League and Covenant of 1648:
“And this Covenant we make in the presence of Almighty God, the Searcher of all hearts, with a true intention to perform the same, as we shall answer at that great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed; most humbly beseeching the Lord to strengthen us by His Holy Spirit for this end, and to bless our desires and proceedings with such success, as may be deliverance and safety to His people, and encouragement to other Christian churches, groaning under, or in danger of, the yoke of anti-Christian tyranny; to join in the same or like association and covenant, to the glory of God, the enlargement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and the peace and tranquility of Christian kingdoms and commonwealths.”
* This article is an edited, paraphrased, and updated version of an unsigned article, entitled, “Presbyterianism - The Revolution - The Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution,” published in The Southern Presbyterian Review, March 1848. The original article probably was written by the editor of the SPR, James H. Thornwell and serves as an introduction to five more articles on the topic.
As of the publication of this article, The Southern Presbyterian Review volumes are archived at: https://www.logcollegepress.com/southern-presbyterian-review
You may want to go download them while they are available.