Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
precepts at claremont.org wrote:
> Claremont Institute Precepts: Prince of Peace, God of War
> By Thomas L. Krannawitter
>
> Amid terrible times of suffering, Americans turn to God.
> Americans always have been, after all, a religious people.
> George Washington believed the American Revolution, and the
> ensuing experiment in free government, was guided by the
> hand of Providence, because he thought God on the side of
> freedom. Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address,
> a work no less theological and philosophic than political
> and poetic, interpreted the horrors of the Civil War as
> divine retribution for the sin of slavery.
>
> Americans of old understood what is right, and reasonably
> expected God to shine His blessings on them and protect
> them when they lived rightly. And they feared Him when
> they strayed. They understood that God is good, that God
> favors freedom over tyranny, justice over injustice. They
> understood that the principles of America are good -- that
> it is the first country in human history founded on
> the "laws of nature and of nature's God" -- and that their
> patriotic duty to their country is no less a duty to God.
>
> Today many of our ministers, priests, and rabbis neither
> think nor speak this way. As a nation we have succumbed to
> modern ideas that blur, if not erase, the distinctions
> between right and wrong, good and evil. These ideas have
> come to dominate our halls of worship, as they dominate our
> legislative halls and halls of education. Many churches
> today fail to teach patriotism because they no longer know
> what is right, and they no longer know America to be right.
>
> But this week we have seen the face of evil up close. Evil
> has been thrust upon us. If anything good is to come from
> these terrible events, we must use them as reminders of the
> principles of right and the duties of citizenship. Our God
> and our Constitution demand it. Our slain countrymen
> deserve it.
>
> One way to help us remember these things is to recall the
> sermons delivered during the American Founding. These
> sermons represent a religion that knew right from wrong, as
> clearly as it knew night from day, because it understood
> that the principles of right are made available to man by
> his reason no less than divine revelation. What follows
> are excerpts from a 1758 sermon delivered by Samuel Davies
> to the militia of Hanover County, Virginia, as that body
> sought new recruits to fight the French and Indian War:
>
> Cursed be he that doth the work of the lord deceitfully;
> and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.
> Jeremiah 48:10
>
> Nothing can be more agreeable to the God of Peace
> than to see universal harmony and benevolence prevail
> among His creatures; and He has laid them under the
> strongest obligations to cultivate a pacific temper
> toward one another, both as individuals and as
> nations. "Follow peace with all men," is one of the
> principal precepts of our holy religion. And the great
> Prince of Peace has solemnly pronounced, "Blessed are
> the peacemakers."
>
> But when, in this corrupt, disordered state of things,
> where the lusts of men are perpetually embroiling the
> world with wars and fighting and throwing all into
> confusion; when ambition and avarice would rob us of our
> property, for which we have toiled and on which we
> subsist; when they would enslave the freeborn mind and
> compel us meanly to cringe to usurpation and arbitrary
> power; when they would tear from our eager grasp the
> most valuable blessing of Heaven, I mean our religion;
> when they invade our country, formerly the region of
> tranquility, ravage our frontiers, butcher our fellow
> subjects, or confine them in a barbarous captivity in
> the dens of savages; when our earthly all is ready to be
> seized by rapacious hands, and even our eternal all is
> in danger by the loss of our religion; when this is the
> case, what then is the will of God?
>
> Must peace then be maintained? Maintained with our
> perfidious and cruel invaders? Maintained at the expense
> of property, liberty, life, and everything dear and
> valuable? Maintained, when it is in our power to
> vindicate our right and do ourselves justice? Is the
> work of peace then our only business? No. In such a
> time even the God of Peace proclaims by His providence,
> "To arms!"
>
> Then the sword is, as it were, consecrated to God; and
> the art of war becomes a part of our religion. Then
> happy is he that shall reward our enemies, as they have
> served us. Blessed is the brave soldier; blessed is the
> defender of his country and the destroyer of its
> enemies. Blessed are they who offer themselves willingly
> in this service, and who faithfully discharge it....
>
> ...Some [Americans] lie dead, mangled with savage
> wounds, consumed to ashes with outrageous flames, or
> torn and devoured by the beasts of the wilderness, while
> their bones lie whitening in the sun and serve as tragic
> memorials of the fatal spot where they fell. Others have
> been dragged away captives and made the slaves of
> imperious and cruel savages. Others have made their
> escape and live to lament their butchered or captivated
> friends and relations. In short, our frontiers have been
> drenched with the blood of our fellow subjects, through
> the length of a thousand miles; and new wounds are still
> opening...
>
> Will this violence cease without a vigorous and timely
> resistance from us? No. We have no method left but to
> repel force with force, and to give them blood to drink
> in their turn who have drunk ours...
>
> I seriously make the proposal to you, not only as a
> subject of the best of kings and a friend to your
> country but as a servant of the most high God; for I am
> fully persuaded what I am recommending is His will; and
> disobedience to it may expose you to His curse...
>
> ...The cause in which these brave men, and our army in
> general, are engaged is not so much their own as ours.
> Divine Providence considers them not so much in their
> private, personal character as in their public character
> as the representatives and guardians of their country;
> and, therefore, they will stand or fall, not so much
> according to their own personal character as according
> to the public character of the people whose cause they
> have undertaken. Be it known to you, then, their success
> depends upon us even more than upon themselves.
>
> ...Ye that love ease and shrink from the dangers of war;
> ye that wish to see peace restored once more; ye that
> would be happy beyond the grave and live forever --
> attend to my proposal. It is this: A THOROUGH NATIONAL
> REFORMATION. This will do what millions of money and
> thousands of men, with guns and swords and all the
> dreadful artillery of death, could not do -- it will
> procure us peace again, a lasting, well-established
> peace.
>
> Our enemies think their political cause -- the cause of
> tyranny -- is good. We think the cause of freedom and
> constitutional government good. Both think God on their
> side. It cannot be. As the preachers of the American
> Founding explained, reason is the voice of God, no less
> than revelation. Reason and revelation agree on the equal
> rights of all men, government by consent, and the rule of
> law. Any revelation, any religion, that contradicts these
> simple dictates of rational morality -- that denies the
> equality of all men, and the equal rights of liberty, life,
> and conscience with which we are endowed by our Creator --
> is untrue.
>
> If the enemies of freedom wish to discuss these things, we
> will demonstrate why their position is unreasonable,
> unjust, and evil. But if our enemies refuse to talk, if
> they refuse to heed the counsels of reason, and choose
> instead to make war, we will make sure they get it. In
> those times, terrible times such as we face today, let us
> follow the Abraham of America, our great Civil War
> President, having faith that "right makes might, and in
> that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
> understand it."
>
> Thomas L. Krannawitter is Director of Academic Programs at
> the Claremont Institute. He is currently writing a book on
> the political sermons of the American Founding.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Copyright (c) 2001 The Claremont Institute
>
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