People want to be happy. Each individual wants to fulfill their full potential. Men and women innately desire to realize the blessing of love that is fulfilled through the ideal of the true family. Furthermore, people desire to live in a peaceful and harmonious society in which they can enjoy the fruits of their labor and provide a comfortable life for their families and their posterity. These are not only the basic goals of humankind; they are expressions of God's purpose for mankind to be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion over the earth.

These are truly the blessing of liberty and can be achieved only in an environment of freedom. Man's mind desires the free pursuit of these ideals. Yet, by the end of the middle ages, man's pursuit of freedom was blocked both internally and externally by the prevailing institutions. The Church had resisted the impulses toward reform in the middle ages and blocked man's basic desire for freedom of conscience and for the pursuit of truth in relation to the natural world. The papacy, in pursuit of political goals and wealth failed to satisfy the spiritual craving of the people and was enmeshed in the politics of Italy and Western Europe. Furthermore the economic and political institutions of feudalism frustrated peoples desire for material gain and political freedom.

The quest for freedom and desire to break the shackles of the medieval world took two forms. Man's external pursuit of truth was stimulated by a revival of interest in the ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Renaissance was essentially a revival of Hellenism.

Hellenism was the system of thought developed by the ancient Greeks, spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean by Alexander, and adopted by the Romans. Hellenistic thought stressed the supremacy of reason. The Greeks had prided themselves on the rational study of the natural world. Greek art glorified the beauty of the human body. The philosophers of the ancient world used reason not only to study nature but to analyze social and political institutions and to investigate questions of morality.

During the middle ages, church leaders had emphasized the salvation of the soul over the development of the body. Nature was neither studied nor exploited. Man tended to downplay the importance of this world. The rediscovery of the ancient Greek texts caused a revolution in Western Europe. Beginning in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spreading to France and then England in northern Europe, renaissance thought rekindled an emphasis on reason and a renewed interest in the natural world. Man's thinking began to be reoriented from the world to come to this world. Rather than viewing the body as sinful, Renaissance man, first in art and then in life began to glorify the happiness of the body.

In time, the development of these trends was to give rise to the birth of rationalism by Rene Descarte in France stressing that truth could be arrived at only through deductive reasoning, and empiricism in England by Francis Bacon stressing inductive reasoning based upon empirical observation and experimentation in the natural world. Both of these trends tended to downplay the faith in miracles and revelation which were central to medieval faith and to call into question the basis principles upon which Christendom rested.

In the thought of the French Enlightenment of the 17th century, a new view of humanity and history was developed stressing the centrality of reason. In France in particular where the Church clung to the infallibility of its doctrine and the ideas of the Reformation were squashed in the massacre of the Huguenots on St. Batholowmew's day, thinkers such as Voltaire began to challenge the authority of the Church. Encyclopediasts such as Diderot embraced theories of materialism and not only challenged the idea of revelation but denied the existence of God. Philosophers such as Rousseau spurred by the romantic view of nature which was developing spoke of man in an innocent state of nature and developed theories of social contract and the general will (will of the people). The theory of divine right which had been the premise of the rise of the absolute monarchy in France was attacked and thinkers such as Montesquieu developed the idea of separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Eventually these ideas were embraced by the developing bourgeois classes in France. The ideas of equality, fraternity, and liberty spread amongst the population of Paris and gave rise to the French revolution which degenerated into a frenzy of bloodletting which subsided only with the consolidation of power by Napoleon and the establishment of the French empire. By this time France was launched into a war with all of the monarchs of Europe.

The defeat of Napoleon resulted in a period of political reaction in Europe, but the development of radical secular thought continued. Living in the authoritarian Prussian state, Karl Marx was influenced by the Left Hegelians. Hegel had taught that the absolute reality was spirit and that history progressed through dialectical development. Marx turned this thought on its head and developed the theory of dialectical materialism. Expelled from Prussia he moved to Paris where he was exposed to the ideas of the French socialists and communists. In 1848, Marx published the communist manifesto, denouncing the ownership of private property and capitalist exploitation of the workers as the root of social evil and calling for worldwide revolution. Moving to England, he devoted himself to the writing of Das Kapital in which he expounded his atheistic materialistic theory of socialism. He was assisted in this work by Fredric Engels and his ideas were spread by the international workers party which he helped to found. Eventually, Lenin became the leader of the Bolshevik faction of this party and led the Russian Revolution resulting in establishment of the Soviet Empire and the communization of almost half of the world.

Marxism has been the most extreme form of secular humanism, the belief in the progress and betterment of humanity through reason and science and the denial of God. It was the most virulent because Marx claimed that this goal could only be achieved through violent revolution, the forcible seizure of property, and the dictatorship of the communist party. We have seen that this path was indeed a tragic delusion.

Nazism and Fascism are two other forms of secular ideology which have proven almost equally disastrous. Not all forms of secular humanism have been as violent. In the democratic west, secular humanists have sought to implement their ideas through the democratic system. While not as violent, we can see that any form of purely secular ideology which seeks to engineer social welfare through domination of the state by a secular elite tends to erode the moral foundation of society leading to the breakdown of the family, centralization of power in a bureaucratic state, economic stagnation, and a loss of freedom.

While the ideals of secular humanism stemming from the Renaissance, refined in the thought of the Enlightenment, and bearing fruit in secular institutions of the 20th century have been noble, their attempts to realize those ideals apart from a moral foundation provided by religious principle have been futile and disastrous.

The development of science and reason are important and necessary for human happiness, but in order to prove fruitful this pursuit needs to be coupled with the quest for internal truth, the truths of religion. As the Bible says, "Unless the Lord build the house, those who labor do so in vain." A peaceful and harmonious society needs to be rooted in the virtue of its people and that requires a moral foundation based upon religious principle.

Just as the desire for truth concerning the natural world according to reason gave rise to the Renaissance, so also the desire for internal truth and freedom of conscience gave rise to the Reformation. Just as scholars began to pore over the secular texts of the Greeks, so also religious scholars such as Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin began to study the original transcripts of the Old and new Testaments. Just as humanist scholars in Italy began to question medieval norms in light of Hellenic ideas, so the religious scholars of Northern Europe began to call into question the doctrines and practice of the papacy in light of the scriptures.

As discussed in the last lecture, the Reformation was triggered when Martin Luther protested the Church's sale of indulgences and put forward the doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Further, his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers stressed each person's individual relationship with God and challenged the monarchical authority of the papacy. The Reformation spread to Switzerland and France through the work of John Calvin and then to England through the English Reformers and to Scotland through the work of John Knox. Henry VIII, originally a "defender of the faith" broke with the papacy in the early 1530's after the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine, seized the holdings of the monasteries, and set in motion a century and a half of religious turmoil in Britain. The American Colonies were born during this time of turmoil and the seeds of every branch of reformation thought were planted in America.

From the time of Henry's break with Catholicism until the accession of William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, three different religious viewpoints vied for dominance in the Great Britain. Catholics loyal to Rome hoped for a restoration of papal authority. Members of the English Church under the crown who wished to maintain a continuity with Catholic practice and Episcopal organization supported the Anglican church under the crown and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Thirdly, those who were most influenced by the reformers on the continent wished to see the church reformed in accordance with the scriptures.

Henry broke with Rome but instituted no major change in church structure. Under the short reign of his son Edward VI, who had received his education under Protestant tutors, Protestant influence began to become more pervasive. Edward's reign was followed by his half sister, Mary Tudor, a Roman Catholic. Mary sought to purge the church of Protestants and bring about a full return to Rome. A number of bishops were burned at the stake. Mary married the Catholic King Phillip II of Spain and involved the nation in a number of humiliating military defeats on the continent. In 1558 she and her archbishop both died and Elizabeth came to the throne.

Elizabeth primary concern was securing her position of the throne and maintaining the peace and prosperity of the nation. She maintained the independence of the English church from Rome. Her main requirement was that English subjects accept her as the supreme governor of the church. By this time Elizabeth was the primary Protestant ruler in Europe standing against a resurgent Catholicism. Thus reformers stood by her hoping that eventually the church would purify itself of papal influences. During her reign the English Book of Common prayer was published which incorporated many reformed features. At the same time, in many of the churches and the universities the reforming impulse was gaining influence. In particular many scholars were influenced by the writings of John Calvin and ideas of Covenantal and Presbyterian theology. In Scotland, John Knox succeeded by 1560 in organizing the Scottish church along Presbyterian lines. Furthermore, the publication of several English translations of the Bible spurred the impulse to purify and reform the church in accordance with the scriptures.

Elizabeth's successor, James I, who had been king of Scotland, had a less favorable view of those who sought radical anti-Episcopal reform. He sought to strengthen the absolute monarchy and the state church and intensified the persecution of non-conforming believers. As a result, many lost faith in the gradual process of reformation and began to worship separately in secret. One such group was the Pilgrim fathers who first moved to Holland and then came to America on Board the Mayflower in 1620.

This situation intensified in under the reign of Charles I who came to the throne in 1625. In the 1630's, large groups of Puritan Congregationalists migrated to New England in the British colonies. The tensions in Britain were reflected in the conflict between Charles and the Parliament, and in developments in common law. In both religion and government, British citizens were seeking greater rights and more freedom. Events came to a head when Charles failed in 1640 to subjugate the Scottish Presbyterians and the Long Parliament instituted the Puritan Revolution of 1642. The Episcopacy was abolished and attempt to totally reform the church began. In 1649, the king was executed and Oliver Cromwell assumed political authority. This unleashed a turbulent time of religious and sectarian activity and the growth of new faiths. There was little peace and order however, and many were alienated by Cromwell's regime. When Cromwell died in 1660, Congregationalists and Anglicans alike joined together to restore Charles II and traditional church order.

Once restored however, Charles sought to regain the absolute authority of the monarchy and strict conformity to the national church. Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Quakers, Unitarians, and Catholics were all persecuted alike. On his deathbed in 1685, Charles converted to the Catholic faith. His son, James I declared himself a Catholic. Protestant leaders responded by inviting William of Orange from Holland to take the throne. In 1689, William accepted the Declaration of Rights proffered by Parliament which recognized the independent existence of Parliament. Furthermore, William sought to restore religious harmony by granting a degree of toleration to non-conforming churches in England.

It was against this background of religious and political turmoil that the American Colonies were born. Speaking of this period of English history R. H. Tawney in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, says

The growth and transformation of the Puritan spirit was the most fundamental movement of the seventeenth century. Puritanism, not the Tudor succession from Rome, was the true English Reformation, and it is from its struggle against the old order that an England which is unmistakingly modern emerges. (Tawney, p. 165)

Commenting on the effect of the intense spiritual activity in England during the period when the colonies were planted in North America, Yale professor Sydney Ahlstrom remarks

What is true for England applies equally to America. By most remarkable happenstance, almost the entire spectrum into which Christian life and thought were refracted by the tumultuous English Reformation was recapitulated in the American Colonies. Sometimes the circumstances were strangely reversed, with Quakers dominant in Pennsylvania, Roman Catholics in Maryland, and Congregationalists in New England... In the colonies, moreover, private and public life could respond to all of the vital forces unleashed by the Reformation. In one colony or another, each major reformatory tradition would gain full expression; and because of the principle of toleration, other non-English traditions would in due course make their contribution. Persecution and harassment of minority groups would also erupt in the New World, but ultimately, all churches would flourish in a degree of freedom unknown elsewhere. Puritanism, above all, would leave a legacy in America no less significant than the impact of Luther upon the German nation. (A Religious History of the American People, p.97-98)

After the Reformation, England and then America emerged as two of the most influential nations in the world. One reason for this is that both nations synthesized the fruits of both the Renaissance and the Reformation. As we have discussed, the Renaissance was spurred by man’s desire for external truth and external freedom pursued through reason and science. The Reformation reflected man’s desire for internal freedom through pursuing the internal truths of religion according to the freedom of one’s conscience.

The period from the accession of Elizabeth to the Glorious revolution - the period of the English Reformation and the settling of the British colonies in America was not only a time of tremendous spiritual and religious activity. It was also the time of the Elizabethan Renaissance filled with scientific and cultural advancement. This is the time of Shakespeare and Ben Johnson, of Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke. In contrast to the French Enlightenment, English scientists and philosophers did not reject Christianity or faith in God, and English religious professors and prelates did not reject reason. While philosophers in accordance with the perceived dictates of reason called into question miracles, certain doctrines of the church such as the trinity, and in some cases even the need for revelation, they considered reason a gift from God, and felt that through the study of God’s creation they would learn more about the creation. Moreover, philosophers such as John Locke argued that not only reason but the rights of life, liberty and property were natural rights given by God. Locke also argued for religious toleration.

On the religious side, reform scholars were generally well educated, steeped in the classics and history. In particular, members of the congregational and Presbyterian traditions who followed Calvin interpreted his teaching that men should preach "the whole counsel of God" to mean that they should be aware of the changes and developing ideas in the world and incorporate them within a religious perspective. Furthermore, Calvinism was more than just theology, it was political theory which had been applied in the foundation of the Republic of Geneva under the leadership of Calvin.

The sparsely settled expanse of North America was literally a New World of freedom for English citizens who sought a haven in which to practice their religion as they wished as well as for those who sought fortune and adventure in the New world. The first attempt to establish a colony, the Roanoke colony was a failure. In assessing the reasons for the failure, Francis Bacon, one of the sponsors, noted the lack of a spiritual foundation on the part of the settlers. The Jamestown colony was established in 1609. In 1619, they established the first colonial legislature.

In 1620, a group of separatists from the English Church under the leadership of William Bradford set sail in the Mayflower. Upon their arrival in the New World they committed themselves to the Mayflower Compact:

In ye name of God, Amen. We whose name are underwritten, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lorde, King James, by ye grace of God, of Great Britiane, France and Ireland king, defender of ye faith, &c., having undertaken for ye glorie of God, and advancemente of ye Christian faith, and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne partes of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly & mutually in ye presence of God, and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together in a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by vertue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just & equal lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience....

Shortly thereafter, with the persecution of the Puritans under Charles I, the Puritans followed the separatists. The Massachusetts Bay Company was formed in 1629. John Winthrop was selected as governor, and in April 8, 1630, a group of 700 emigrants set sail for the New World. Winthrop and the other Puritans who formed the company felt that England was in for a day reckoning in which "God will bring some heavy affliction upon the land, and that speedily." The Puritans saw it as their mission to create a New England which could serve as a model for a decadent Europe. In the course of their passage to America, Winthrop preached a sermon entitled, "A Model of Christian Charity," in which he exhorted the colonizers

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into a covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission, the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We... have hereupon besought Him of favour and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath he ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it...

...We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of spirit and the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us as His own people... He shall make us the a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "the lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city on a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.

This sense that America was a new Canaan in to which God was calling the righteous in order to establish an exemplary people in covenant relationship with God guided the first generation of those who established New England. Others who sought a haven for persecuted believers soon followed suit. In 1634, the Ark and the Dove landed in Maryland to establish a sanctuary in which English Catholics would be free to practice their faith. In 1681, William Penn, a personal friend of both George Fox and John Locke, obtained a charter for the establishment of Pennsylvania. Penn saw this colony as a "Great Experiment" and a sanctuary for the persecuted people of Europe. He wrote the original laws for the colony himself - "a set of Quaker principles applied to actual government." Penn provided for freedom of worship and toleration for all who believed in God. Penn circulated brochures and pamphlets advertising his colony throughout the British Isles and Northern Europe. Freedom proved to be a magnet drawing not only English Quakers, but Germans, Welshmen , and English of a variety of faiths. By the time of the revolution Philadelphia had become the largest city in the colonies.

The development of religious freedom was one of the most important aspects of this period of colonial development. Roger Williams played a key role in this. Williams came into conflict with the Puritan authorities of Massachusetts colony on several counts. He called for complete separation from the Church of England and said that all ministers who had associated with it needed to repent. He claimed that their charter was illegitimate because the king had no authority to grant lands that properly belonged to the Indians. He stated that no unregenerate person could be compelled to pray in church or take an oath in court. Finally, he stated that magistrates had no authority over religious matters and called for complete separation of church and state. In 1636, Williams fled from Massachusetts. In 1638, on land which he purchased from the Indians who had sheltered him, he founded the colony of Providence, declaring later that he "desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for their faith." In 1647, he helped to form a federated commonwealth of Rhode Island. The preamble to the institutes of government declared, " the form of government is DEMOCRATICAL, that is to say, a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all, or the greater part of the free inhabitants." The document ended

These are the laws that concern all men... And otherwise than thus, what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God. And let the saints of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever.

At the time, Williams championship of complete religious liberty was revolutionary. Its basis was theological.

Williams ... denied the legitimacy of instituted churches altogether. In the corruption of the Middle Ages, he said, the church had lost its authority. "God’s people now are in the Gospel brought into a spiritual land of Canaan ... Therefore, an enforced settlement is not suitable to the Gospel as it was to the ministry of priests and levites under the law." Restoration could come only by a mighty interposition of God - and to Williams the day of its coming was not far off. (Ahlstrom, p.170-171)

Williams believed that God had broken down the authority of the medieval church so that he could directly guide people through their conscience in preparation for the second coming of Christ. The purpose of the government was to keep the peace, provide defense and provide a stable basis for commerce. The State had no right to interfere with the individual’s relationship with God and pursuit of truth according to his conscience. Williams also helped to found the first Baptist congregation in America, and Baptists were to prove champions of religious freedom throughout the colonies and in the new nation helping to incorporate this basis freedom in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Indeed, the American colonies provided not only a haven for religious expression, experimentation and development, but a school in the principles of self-government. The churches and denominational conventions themselves which took place served this cause, but moreover, from the town meetings of New England, to the various colonial legislatures which provided laws throughout the colonies, Americans experienced a greater degree of freedom to govern themselves than any other people in the world. The colonies also provided the opportunity for persons who were willing to work hard to acquire property and develop wealth on a scale which was impossible in Europe. Throughout the 17th and into the 18th century the population grew rapidly and the people prospered.

As they did so, religiosity of the descendants of the original settlers ebbed. In New England, Cotton Mathers pined, "Religio peperit Divitias, Filia devoravit Matrem; Religion brought forth prosperity and the daughter destroyed the mother." Part of this stagnation was due to preoccupation, part of it was due to the influence of secular ideas stemming from the Enlightenment which were becoming current in both England and America. Soon however, America was to be swept by revival throughout the colonies.

A foretaste of the Great Awakening was experienced in North Hampton in the early 1730’s. In 1734, Jonathan Edwards noticed an increasing response to his closely reasoned sermons. Ironically, Edwards is best known for his sermon "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" when in fact fewer than a dozen out of more than a thousand sermons dealt with the theme of damnation for sin. Edwards had an almost mystical love for God and nature. He was strongly convinced of the need for personal experience of the love and saving grace of God. He was not only a minister by an incisive thinker and profound philosopher. He was strongly influenced by John Locke, and devoted himself to the reconciling the thought of the Enlightenment with the doctrines of Calvinism to which he subscribed.

Edwards presided over the sprouting of the Great Awakening in North Hampton from 1634-1638. He wrote to a friend Benjamin Colman in Boston, "this town never was so full of Love, nor so full of Joy, nor so full of distress as it has lately been… I never saw the Christian spirit in Love to Enemies so exemplified, in all my Life as I have seen it within this half-year."

This was followed by reports of revivals in other parts of the colonies.

Far away in Boston, and farther still in England and Scotland, prominent theologians and ministers were thrilled by the news and convinced that a new day of the Lord was at hand. Edwards himself became convinced that America was the chosen place for the Kingdom’s coming, and he invited the great Whitefield to preach in North Hampton. (Ahlstrom, p. 283)

Edwards had published his Faithful Narrative on the New England revival in 1737 and it was widely read. Two of those influenced by it were John Wesley and George Whitefield who were both in Georgia at that time on a mission to evangelize the Indians. Wesley who was stirred to personal religion during a violent storm by the calm faith of Moravians on board. went on to become the greatest preacher of the 18th century and the founder of Methodism which in the 19th century would evangelize the American West with its great tent meetings and circuit preachers. George Whitefield was to become the Great Itinerant, setting the colonies aflame in a general awakening throughout the colonies. On Whitefield’s first trip to America, he had preached in Georgia. In 1739 he returned and conducted a campaign from Philadelphia to New York and back to the South. It was during this tour that Benjamin Franklin, his friend and printer noted in his Autobiography

In 1739 arrv’d among us from England the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, who had made himself remarkable there as an itinerant preacher. He was at first permitted to preach in some of our Churches; but the clergy taking a Dislike to him, soon refus’d him their Pulpits and he was oblig’d to preach in the fields. The Multitudes of all Sects and Denominations that attended his Sermons were enormous, and it was matter of Speculation to me who was one of the Number, to observe the extraordinary Influence of his Oratory on his Hearers, and how much they admir’d & respected him, notwithstanding his common Abuse of them, by assuring them they were naturally half beasts and half Devils. It was wonderful to see the Change soon made in the Manners of our Inhabitants, from being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the World were growing Religious; so that one could not walk thro’ the Town in and Evening without Hearing Psalms sung in different Families of every street.

In 1740, Whitefield returned again to America. This time he preached the length of the colonies, from Savannah to Portsmouth. Once again his preaching had an incredible impact. In a week in Boston, he had to preach several times a day, inside churches and then outside to audiences of thousands who could not gain entrance. Returning to Boston after a visit to Portsmouth he was greeted by a crowd of 30,000 in the Boston commons. He then spent two days in North Hampton with Jonathan Edwards, who wept profoundly as he preached. Finally he preached in New Haven. While Whitefield’s preaching was criticized by many of the "Old Lights" of the established churches who were repelled by the excessive enthusiasm of the Awakening, there is no doubt that he and those who followed them reinvigorated the American religious scene. In addition, Whitefield may have done more than any single person to promote a sense of unity amongst the citizens of the various colonies. He was the first person who was known and followed throughout America. Georgians, Virginians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders alike read reports of his activities and conversions.

The Great Awakening took place concurrently with the American Enlightenment which was occurring amongst the American elite producing such stellar figures as the famous scientist, diplomat, statesman, printer, and writer Benjamin Franklin. These two trends combined to create a sense of mission and purpose which was to culminate in the American Revolution. Historian Paul Johnson says

As John Adams was to put it, "The revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the mind and hearts of the people; and change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations." It was the marriage between the rationalism of the American elites touched by the Enlightenment with the spirit of the Great Awakening among the masses which enabled the popular enthusiasm thus aroused to be channeled into the political aims of the Revolution - itself soon identified as the coming eschatological event. Neither force could have succeeded without the other The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background. The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event. That fact was to shape the American Revolution from start to finish about determine the nature of the independent state it brought into being. (Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, p. 116-117)

Following the Great Awakening, Americans were involved in the French and Indian War. Their participation in a common defense contributed to the sense of commonality amongst the colonies. The conflict also thrust George Washington into some degree of prominence for his role in the defense. The conflict against the French, not only in North America, but through the larger conflict worldwide, the Seven Years War, of which the French and Indian War was but one theater, drained the British treasury, and England saw fit to tax the colonists in order to pay for their defense. Resistance to the British brought the colonies closer together, as prominent leaders in the separate colonies first formed committees of correspondence and then a Continental Congress to discuss the situation and formulate a united response.

Since the beginning of the 18th century, the British Crown had gradually been increasing its control over the colonists. Furthermore, the Anglican Church had begun to take a more active role in the colonies and their was talk of appointing an Anglican Bishop for America. Baptists, Quakers, and Congregationalists began to fear that the unabridged freedom which they had experienced may be abridged. Furthermore, colonists resented not only the taxes but also the restrictions which England put on manufactures and trade.

By this time there were over 3 million people living in the American colonies. Several of the colonial governments had been in operation for well over a hundred years. If anything, the colonists cherished their rights more than native Englishmen. They had come to the New World seeking religious, political, and economic freedom, and they had found it. From the Enlightenment they had gained the perspective that their rights were God-given. From their religious roots and the Great Awakening they had inherited a sense that they were a people who were playing a special role in God’s Providence. When the Parliament, to whom they naturally looked as their allies, joined the crown in denying their rights they felt that their was no recourse but to resist and they steadily moved in the direction of independence.

Those individuals who moved to the center of events which led to independence were imbued with the feeling that they were playing a part in an historical drama that was directed by God himself. In 1774, John Adams wrote in his diary, " If I should be called in the course of Providence to take a Part in public Life, I shall Act in a fearless, intrepid, undaunted Part, at all Hazards - tho it shall be my endeavor to act a prudent, cautious and considerate Part..." As independence approached, and Adams indeed felt that he had been called to play a role, he recalled in his diary the example of Moses, "is not a saying of Moses, ‘Who am I that I should go in and out before this great people?’ When I consider the great events which are passed and which are rapidly advancing, and that I may have been instrumental in touching some springs and turning some small wheels, which have had and will have such effects, I feel and awe upon my mind which is not easily described."

Just as the earlier settlers felt that they were called by God to build a new city on a hill, so also those who guided America to independence and a new birth of freedom, felt that they were being guided by God and it was their sacred duty to respond. It was no easy task, and they did not rush into it rashly. They were severing ancient ties. They put on the line "their lives, their property and their sacred honor." England was the greatest power in the world with the mightiest military. The people of America were not unanimous in support of independence, they had no army, the Continental Congress itself had only been in existence for a short time and had little legal status other than the support of the colonial legislatures which themselves had been chartered by the crown.

In the Declaration of Independence they declared the justification for their bold action,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers form the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Having declared their cause, the colonists proceeded to accomplish these aims. Through the dark days of the war, it was their conviction that that their cause was just and their faith in the Justice and Providence of God which sustained them. When victory came, they recognized that they had overcome incredible odds and they attributed their success to God.

In his request for prayer at the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin advised the delegates

In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard - and they were graciously answered...

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men.

Furthermore George Washington in his First Inaugural Address testified as follows:

... it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides over the counsels of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States...

No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; ...

In the course of the Revolution, the individual states had held conventions to adopt state constitutions. After the Revolution, when it became apparent that the Articles of Confederation were not sufficient for resolving disputes which arose amongst the newly formed states, they resolved to hold a convention in Philadelphia to frame a stronger federation under a new constitution.

The system which the framers arrived at is the most sophisticated instrument of government ever devised by man. It divided power between the states and the federal government; and within the federal government itself, developed a system of checks and balances between the three branches. The legislative branch itself was divided into the Senate and the House of Representatives in order to try to instill the positive attributes of both aristocratic and popular government.

The new Constitution was submitted to state conventions to be ratified by the people. It was ratified in 1788 after fierce debate and only after agreement was reached that the Constitution would be amended with a Bill of Rights to insure further protection of the God-given rights of the people from the central government. Elections were held and the new government convened in Philadelphia.

The system of government which the framers put into place was meant to insure their political freedom, rights, and participation in the government. The First Amendment which they passed was an amendment to protect freedom of religion. The author and prime mover behind the amendment, James Madison considered the free practice of religion without restraint to be the essential foundation of all freedom. In the words of John T. Noonan, legal scholar and Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit:

In the ultimate and absolute relation of each individual to God lies the limitation on civil society and civil government on which JM insists. Without that relation, why should the individual not be absorbed by the community, why should society be constrained to respect conscience? With that relation to a Creator, Governor, Judge, in existence for each individual, with that responsibility to a personal God, a government of human beings must be a government of limited powers. The theology underwrites the political theory on the competencies of government. The "great barrier which defends the rights of the people" - that barrier central to JM’s theory of government - depends upon the people having other business than the ordering of the temporal society, its goods and goals. By their consciences people relate to God. The faith that there is a governing god is fundamental. (John T. Noonan, The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom, p. 89)

Noonan points out that "Free exercise was a negative on Congress. It was also a charter for religious organizations, which multiplied, and religious interventions in society which intensified. Of these interventions one was traumatic, paradigmic, and triumphant - The Christian demand for the abolition of slavery."

Indeed beginning about 1800, America experienced a second Great Awakening, once again beginning in New England. One interesting feature of this awakening was the formation of civic societies for social betterment. Many of the of the later social movements - the abolition movement, the women’s rights movement, and the temperance movement trace their origins to this period.

The First Amendment opened America to people of all faiths to practice their religion in freedom. Indeed, many Catholics and Jews had already made valuable contributions to America during the colonial period and during the Revolution. The federal government was now forbidden from denying them their right to worship freely. As the right of religious freedom was adopted by and extended to the states as well as the federal government, the door was opened for not only Christians, but Muslims, Buddhists, Independents and all others to worship as their consciences dictated.

The principles of political and religious freedom were established. Yet, in the early days of the republic, the nation was still saddled with debt and the rules of economy and commerce were not yet firmly established. America was fortunate in having a genius, Alexander Hamilton, as Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton established the good faith and credit of the government and developed a plan for manufactures to stimulate industry in the infant nation. He also established the first national bank which provided a stable basis of credit.

It fell to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall, however, to insure the legal framework for economic freedom and prosperity in the United States. Marshall was appointed by the Court in 1800 and served as Chief Justice for 34 years. He was particularly influenced by two books, Edmonde Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Concerning the influence of Smith on Marshall, Paul Johnson say’s

Next to Burke, Smith revered Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. He was closer to its spirit than Hamilton, believing the state should be chary of interfering in the natural process of the economy. Left to themselves, and with the law holding the ring so that all were free to exert the utmost of their powers, industrious men and women were capable of fructifying America’s vast resources and making it the richest country on earth. It was capitalism, not the state, which would conquer, tame and plant the Mississippi Valley and still farther west. All it required was a just, sensible and consistent legal framework so that the entrepreneurs could invest their capital and skills with confidence. (Johnson, p. 237-238)

The Founders in general, following the writings of John Locke, believed that the right to property was a bulwark of freedom. However, many of them differentiated between real property - land - and artificial property - stocks, bonds, interest, etc. One such person was the Virginia Senator John Taylor who published a work claiming that artificial property such as banking wealth was immoral and dishonest and did not deserve the same constitutional protection as land and other forms of real property. Says Johnson

Marshall had none of Taylor’s reluctance to acknowledge "artificial" property." It was the market, not sentiment which defined wealth, provided it were honestly acquired. It was the duty of the court so to interpret the Constitution that the rights of property of all kinds were properly acknowledged, and capitalism thus enabled to do its job of developing the vast territories which Almighty God, in his wisdom, had given the American people just as he had once given the Promised Land to the Israelites. (Johnson, p. 238)

Through a series of cases Marshall saw to it that his concept of property prevails. In commenting on Marshall’s contribution, Johnson concludes

In the light of subsequent history, it is easy for us to applaud Marshall’s work as saving the United States from the demagogic legislation and government follies which made property insecure in Latin America, and kept it so poor and backward. Marshall’s rulings made the accumulation of capital possible on a scale hitherto unimaginable and he can justly be described as one of the architects of the modern world. (Johnson, p. 239)

I have spent considerable time exploring the background to the birth of America because it is upon this foundation that America has grown to its preeminent position in the world today. Freedom under God is a powerful formula. It has been a beacon drawing tens of millions of people to this land, uniting them in a common vision, and unleashing their creativity. The founders of our nation created a system which combined political and economic freedom. That system was built on a religious foundation and that foundation was nourished by religious freedom which was guaranteed.

As George Washington counseled in his Farewell Address

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The seeds of man’s innate desire for freedom which were unleashed in the Renaissance and Reformation both bore fruit here in America. The ideals which were generated in that synthesis are succinctly stated in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "… that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

These words have inspired and continue to inspire millions of people around the world who seek freedom and look to America as an example. Furthermore, these ideals have provided a standard of judgment against which America itself has been held accountable, for the reality, which soon became apparent and, in fact, was perceived at the time, is that in practice America fell far short of the ideal which it had expressed in its Declaration.

The ideal that all men are created equal and derive their inalienable rights was an inspired idea. It stems from God’s original ideal. God created men and women in his image to be the objects of His love. This is the source of the infinite value of the human being. It is in this sense, that we are created to be partners in love with God that all human beings are equal. God’s original ideal was that mankind would multiply families of true love and populate the earth with a culture of true love and freedom. As the Bible says in John 3:1, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son." God did not send Jesus to save just one nation or race, but all mankind. Peter reminds us in II Peter 3:9 that the Lord desires that "all should reach repentance." Jesus told his disciples to preach the gospel in every nation of the world.

Because of the Fall, man separated from God and inherited a fallen nature. One aspect of the fallen nature is that rather than loving one another men desire to dominate. Slavery is a direct result of the fall of man - a manifestation of man’s fallen nature. In the world that developed after the fall, slavery developed as a pervasive institution. Slavery existed in all of the ancient world. At the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, slavery was practiced in all of the great empires of that time - China, Persia, India, and the Ottoman Empire. Slavery was practiced as well by the natives of the Americas and throughout Africa. Ironically, the one place in the world at the end of the middle ages that had the least practice of slavery was Western Europe. In the decline of the Western Roman Empire and the development of the Germanic states, slavery had virtually disappeared under the influence of Judeo-Christianity. With the expansion of Europe and the discovery and development of the New World beginning with the Portuguese in the 1400’s this was to change. The rediscovery of the institution of slavery and its application in the New World was to be further compounded by the modern development of racism.

Racism is another manifestation of man’s fallen nature. In the eyes of God there is no black, there, is no white, no brown, no yellow. We are all members of one family. God does not look at the color of one’s skin. He looks into a person’s heart. Because of the fall we fail to see from God’s point of view, and we set of false standards of superiority. As human beings migrated throughout the earth, instead of multiplying true families and a culture of love people divided into separate tribes and nations speaking different languages and fighting with one another for control of wealth and resources. Over thousands of years they developed different cultural and physical characteristics. Failing see things from God’s point of view and desiring to exalt themselves, the tribes, nations, and empires which developed tended naturally toward ethnocentrism and xenophobia.

Racism is a more refined development of this trend to which the scientific development of the Renaissance contributed. Spurred by the desire for trade and aided by technological discoveries, Europeans began to spread their influence throughout the globe. This was the era of the great explorers of the Portuguese and the Spanish followed by the Dutch and the British. As they traveled, first around Africa, and then around the globe they discovered new peoples. Some such as the Africans they had vaguely known; others, such as the inhabitants of the Americas and the south sea islands, they had never imagined existed. While some of the Kingdoms of Africa and empires of the Americas and Asia had varying degrees of highly developed cultures, many of the people they encountered lived in a primitive state with little technological or cultural development. Europeans discovered people living in a state of nature, with no written languages and primitive technology and culture. Furthermore, in the eyes of Christian Europe these people were heathens. While many romanticized these people, particularly the Indians of the Americas as children living in a state of nature. The general tendency was to see them as primitive savages and heathens. The Church saw them as a people to be evangelized and Christianized. Those motivated by economic gain saw them as people to be exploited for profit. As the European powers developed their colonial empires and adopted slavery as a means to provide labor for their cultivation, a number of theories of racial superiority began to develop.

As time went on two trends developed, one based on ideas of Christian enlightenment stressed the natural rights of all men and opposed slavery. The other stressing empirical evaluation of differences between the races developed sophisticated theories of racial superiority. As regards slavery, the ideas of Christian enlightenment were eventually to win out. Slavery was ruled unconstitutional in England in 1733, and was outlawed in British colonies in 1807. The French Empire outlawed slavery in 1848. The newly independent Latin American countries outlawed slavery in the early 19th century. We shall examine the experience of the United States, in which slavery was finally banned by the XIIIth Amendment to the Constitution as a result of the Civil War, presently.

It is important to note, however, that the abolition of slavery did not impede the development of racism. Racism actually grew stronger in the latter half of the 19th and the first half of the twentieth century reinforced by developments in science and social philosophy. Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest actually buttressed racism. As applied by Herbert Spencer in Social Darwinism it gave currency to the idea that certain races were superior to others biologically through natural selection and that the domination of one race over another was therefore justified. The development of genetics by Mendel further contributed to this trend by providing a scientific rationalization for racial superiority. The first half of the 20th century saw he rise of the school of eugenics in France which advocated the application of the principles of genetic theory to the development of the human race. These theories combined with German nationalism and Aryan theories of racial superiority found their ultimate expression in Nazism and Hitler’s goal of enslaving the inferior races and exterminating the Jews. In America, they found expression in a number of popular writers. Combined with the ideas of radical socialists and birth control advocates they found expression in the writings of Margaret Sanger prior to World War II. American eugenicists wanted to use birth control, sterilization, and abortion to limit the growth in population of the "undesirable" races and inferior peoples. In this respect World War II was a war not only for freedom and democracy but a war to defeat racism. Since that war no mainstream American would justify racism. Margaret Sanger changed the name of her organization from the Birth Control Society to Planned Parenthood and ceased to advocate the theories of eugenics. Furthermore, it is no coincidence that the civil rights movements erupted after World War II. How could we justify racial segregation and deny equal civil rights to African-Americans who had shed their blood fighting to defeat a racist regime in Europe. African Americans led the way in achieving equal rights not only for black Americans bur for Asians, Latinos, and all other minorities. Indeed, the elimination of racism is one of the major goals which must be accomplished if God’s ideal of true love is to be accomplished. In the final analysis, this is an internal problem which can only be solved by the power of true love.

In discussing the original founding spirit of America, I focused on the ideal of freedom in the development of American character and institutions. Now it is time for us to examine the "organic sin" which tarnished that ideal. Until that sin was exorcised and atoned, America could not truly be one united nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The story of the abolition of slavery is thus a tale of the continuation of the revolution begun in 1776 and the completion of the founding of our nation under the principles declared in the Declaration of Independence.

In discussing the adoption of slavery by the Portuguese, Paul Johnson states

The Portuguese adventurers were excited by these discoveries: they felt already that they were bringing into existence a new world ... these early settlers believed that they were beginning civilization afresh: the first boy and girl born on Madeira were named Adam and Eve. But almost immediately came the Fall. In Europe itself, the slave system of antiquity had been virtually extinguished by the rise of Christian society. In the 1440’s, exploring the African coast from their newly acquired islands, the Portuguese rediscovered slavery as a working commercial system....

The Portuguese entered the slave-trade in the mid-15th century, took it over and, in the process, transformed it into something more impersonal, and horrible, than it had been either in antiquity or medieval Africa. (Johnson, p 4-5)

The Portuguese introduced slavery in the New World in their empire in Brazil. They were followed in the use of slaves and the slave trade by the Spanish, the Dutch and the British. In 1619, a Dutch man-of -war sold 20 Africans to a man of Jamestown as indentured servants. Indentured servanthood, by which a person was bound to service for a period of five to seven years, after which he was free to pursue his own course was the main form of labor in the Chesapeake in the 1600’s. Many poor English men and women escaping economic turmoil in Britain bought passage to America by indenturing themselves for a period of years. Gradually however, black labor superseded white labor on the plantations, and slavery replaced indentured servanthood. Johnson comments on the paradox that the same year saw both the formation of the House of Burgesses and the introduction of slavery:

Thus in 1619, the first English colony in America embraced the two roads which bifurcated and led in two totally different directions: representative institutions, leading to democratic freedoms, and the use of slave labor, the "peculiar institution" of the South... These two roads were to be relentlessly and incongruously pursued for a quarter of millennium, until a their fundamental incompatibility was resolved in a gigantic civil war. (Johnson p. 28-29)

The basis for the slave state was actually laid in South Carolina by planters emigrating from Barbados. To quote Mr. Johnson once more:

You may ask: how did the early settlers reconcile their acceptance that even the meanest had rights - including the right to vote - with the institution of slavery? The point was made with great force by Dr. Samuel Johnson at the time of the American Revolution, and it echoes throughout American history: ‘How is it that the loudest YELPS for LIBERTY come from the drivers of Negroes?" The answer is that America was only gradually corrupted into the acceptance of large scale slavery. The corruption entered through Carolina, whence it came from Barbados. In the West Indian Islands, those occupied by the Spanish, Portuguese and French under Catholic teaching, slaves were treated as actual or potential Christians, with souls and rights - not just property. In the islands occupied by the English and Dutch Protestants, who got their doctrine about slavery from the Old Testament, slaves were seen as legal chattels, with no more rights than cows or sheep. The Barbadian planters in Carolina, who set the tone, never troubled themselves to Christianize their slaves and even prevented others from doing so. (Johnson, p. 72-73)

South Carolina was the first colony to import large numbers of slaves and to develop the system of the slave state. The colonies farther north gradually modeled their statutes on those of Carolina the slave plantation system spread throughout the South. Except for South Carolina the importation of slaves was gradual in the 17th century. By 1715, there were fewer than 60,000 slaves. Yet from that time, it accelerated, especially after 1730.

The founding of Georgia is a case in point. Georgia was founded as an Enlightenment experiment in 1733 by General James Oglethorpe. At the battle of Bloody Marsh he defeated the Spanish and opened up this region for settlement. Oglethorpe had a primary interest in prison reform. He believed that he could establish a colony in America where debtors in English prisons could come to work off their debts. This is the same General Oglethorpe who brought both John Wesley and George Whitehead to the Georgia to evangelize the Indians. In framing the laws of his colony he forbade slavery. Yet planters moving in from neighboring South Carolina ignored the provisions. In 1747, slaveholders were numerous enough to suspend the anti-slavery laws and in 1750 they had them repealed. From that time the establishment of a slave state proceeded apace. Oglethorpe himself surrendered his charter and returned to England disappointed and disillusioned.

From 1715 to the time of the revolution, the importation of slaves increased dramatically reaching 697,000 by the time of the first census in 1790. The majority of these slaves were brought to work on the plantations extending from the southern half and eastern shore of Maryland through the developing south. Yet prior to the Revolution slavery was legal in all of the colonies and there were about 40,000 slaves in the seven Northern colonies in 1775. Moreover, the British had taken over the slave trade from the Portuguese by the 1700’s and new England ship owners joined in gaining the lucrative profits to be gained by the slave trade. Many consider the slave trade itself to have been far more inhumane and immoral than the treatment that the slaves received on the plantations. Thus Britain and all of the colonies were implicated in the developing "organic sin" of slavery.

There were early protests to the institution, In 1688 a petition was circulated by Francis Daniel Pastorius condemning slavery. An anti-slavery book, The Selling of Joseph, was published in Boston by Judge Samuel Seward. The Quakers took an early lead in condemning slavery. In 1754, John Woolman published Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. In 1775, a group of Philadelphia Quakers organized what may have been the world’s first antislavery society. One early antislavery advocate was Quaker Anthony Benezet whose activity brought about the expulsion of slaveholders from the Society of Friends in 1776.

At the time of the Revolution, most Americans particularly in the North, had not come to grips with the issue of slavery and its full implications. The majority of slaves had been imported within the last generation. The Southerners who bought the bulk of them embraced the system because as a means to develop wealth. For most northerners, it was peripheral. Yet the colonists, as pointed out earlier in the quote by Samuel Johnson, were not unaware of the contradiction between their cry for freedom and the institution of slavery. In the fire of Republican oratory which took place preceding and during the Revolution, all of the northern colonies abolished slavery or provided for its abolition. In fact in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, included a sentence blaming the British Crown for corrupting the colonies by allowing the slave trade. The Southern delegates demanded that any anti-slavery language be deleted. Alexander Hamilton submitted a plan to Washington advising that the slaves be drafted into the army as preparation for their emancipation once independence was achieved. This plan was also rejected.

Thomas Jefferson provides us a portrait of a man torn by contradiction on this issue echoing St. Paul’s lament, "In my inmost mind I delight in the law of God, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." Jefferson, a slave holder himself, knew clearly that slavery was an evil that contradicted all of the ideals which he held dear. Not only did he try to include a condemnation of slavery in the Declaration, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, he denounced the institution of slavery and wrote

The whole commerce between a master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the more boisterous passions, the unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other... indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. (quoted in Johnson, A History..., p. 244)

Yet while Jefferson embraced these principles, he bought and sold slaves all his life, and made no efforts to free his own slaves, or to facilitate an end to the institution of slavery. In practice, he compromised his principles to his personal needs.

Indeed, this spirit of compromise prevailed during the period of the formation of the nation. Those southerners who had any qualms about slavery followed the same path as Jefferson in perpetuating the institution. Northerners who opposed slavery and abolished it the north came to consider slavery a state issue rather than a national issue. They knew that the Southern states would not join a union which abolished slavery and achieving agreement on the Constitution was their paramount concern. Many vainly hoped that if the slave trade were stopped, the institution would die out on its own.

Actually, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, it was apparent that the nation was divided into two very different systems with opposing interests and much of the convention was taken up by compromises between the two. In deference to the northern delegates, the word slavery was never mentioned, but the Constitution contained three references to slavery:

Article I declares "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States ...by adding to the whole Number of free Persons ... three fifths of all other persons. Article I, section 9 declares that Congress shall not ban the "Migration or Importation" of slaves until 1808. Technically, this allowed Congress to ban interstate traffic in slaves as well as importation. Importation of slaves was banned in 1808, but no action was taken concerning interstate traffic in deference to the Southern interpretation of this clause. Article IV, section III stated that, "no Person held to Service or Labour in one State ... escaping to another .. shall be discharged from such Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." This section was given force in the Fugitive Slave act of 1793, and an even stronger fugitive slave act passed as part of the 1850 Compromise.

At the same time that the Constitutional Convention was meeting the Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance which banned slavery in the Ohio territories. Ironically the southern delegates did not object to this because they had territorial ambitions extending into the Southwest and the Caribbean and felt that they would be able to add more slave states and thus maintain or even increase there power in the union.

It is hard to believe that people thought that two fundamentally contradictory systems could exist in the same union, yet this is what the constitutional framers sought to achieve. In the beginning, there was a belief that slavery could be constrained as a state issue and that the federal government could remain neutral. Quaker abolitionists in Pennsylvania succeeded in having the Congress appoint a committee to study the issue of slavery and determine means by which Congress could regulate it. But under the influence of James Madison the Congress instead took a position that it would remain neutral. Yet from the beginning it was apparent that the national government could not remain neutral. As anti-slavery opinion grew in the North several states attempted to pass laws frustrating the return of fugitive slaves. These laws were overruled by the Supreme Court and eventually the federal government became the enforcement vehicle for returning slaves who had escaped to freedom. Furthermore, as the Union acquired territories and expanded to the Pacific Ocean - through the Louisiana Purchase, the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and the Oregon Territory - the issue of slavery in the territories and the entry of new states into the union as slave or free states be came the paramount issue in American politics. Northerners were particularly enraged by the introduction of slavery into the territory acquired from Mexico because Mexico had abolished slavery and now under the influence of the South, the federal government was allowing it to be reintroduced. The southern states were desperate to maintain an equal number of slave states in order to insure that the Senate would not fall into anti-slavery hands. From the time of Andrew Jackson until the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Democrats controlled the Presidency and increasingly became the Party which supported slavery. In 1834, Jackson appointed Roger Taney, a pro-slavery advocate, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. the Taney Court issued a number of Supreme Court decisions culminating in Dredd Scott, in which the pro-slavery interpretations of the South became the law of the land.

There was both an economic and a moral dimension to the conflict between the North and the South. In the North, manufacturing, banking and commerce were developing and fed by immigration, the population was rapidly growing. The South was primarily agrarian. The basis of its economy was land, slaves, and crops - particularly cotton. Slavery was the central institution. Slaves were needed to raise cotton in the newly developed states of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. After the banning of the import of slavery, and as the British and Americans patrolled the seas to thwart the attempts of illegal slavers, the Southern states of the eastern seaboard increasingly made their income selling slaves to the cotton growing states. The entire economic, cultural, and political system of the South was dominated by slavery. The hard labor of Afro-Americans was the primary source of Southern wealth and the slaveholders were increasingly anxious to justify the extension of slavery and to protect the institution politically.

There were African-American freedom fighters who rebelled against their slavemasters even in the early 17th century. But with each rebellion, southerners tightened the laws. The South lived in perpetual fear of slave revolt, and strict restrictions on education, assembly, and the type of religion allowed to be preached amongst the slaves combined which swift and severe reprisals for any suspected of agitation made gave little hope to Southern blacks that they could liberate themselves without aid. Their only hope was manumission which was increasingly granted to fewer slaves or flight to freedom which was a course undertaken only at great peril.

Gradually however, the conscience of the North was awakened. As we have seen the Quakers led the way, and they assisted greatly in the formation of an underground railway seeking to spirit escaped slaves to freedom. In time the Unitarian and Congregationalist Churches of Massachusetts stirred by the Second Great Awakening of the early 18th century began to join the fray. With the strict enforcement of the fugitive slave laws and the extension of slavery into the territories, reformers who opposed slavery in principle could no longer delude themselves that slavery was merely the peculiar institution of the southern states. In particular, the debate over the Missouri Compromise dealing with the disposition of slavery in the territories formed from the Louisiana Purchase thrust the issue into national attention. In the debate over slavery Massachusetts represented by John Quincy Adams and South Carolina represented by John C. Calhoun came to represent the extreme poles of the debate.

In 1820 Adams declared

If slavery be the destined sword in the hands of the destroying angel which is to sever the ties of this union, the same sword will cut aside the bonds of slavery itself. A destruction of the Union for the cause of slavery would be followed by a servile war in the slave-holding states, combined by a war between the two severed portions of the Union… its result must be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent and, calamitous and devastating as this course of events must be, so Glorious would be the final issue that, as God should judge me, I dare not say it is not to be desired. (quoted from Johnson, p. 319)

Indeed when Angelique de Toqueville, the sister of the Alexis, the author of the widely read Democracy in America, visited America in 1835 one of the first men she was introduced to was former President Adams. When she inquired about America, he informed her, "There are two facts that have a great influence on our character. In the North, the religious and political doctrines of the first founders of New England; in the South slavery." After investigating the extent of religious influence on government in America for herself she concludes her reflections

My brother Alexis observation went as follows, "Religion - which with the Americans never mixes directly in the government of the society - must be considered the foremost of their political institutions. For if it does not give them the taste of liberty, it singularly facilitates their use of liberty…"

Suppose that slavery… were regarded from the perspective of that most elementary of Christian duties, the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Could neighborly kindness, religiously inculcated, inflame passions and divide the regions of the nation? Already, Congregationalist ministers in Boston are saying openly that slavery is a national sin. My brother anticipated an insurrection by Southern blacks; he did not envisage a clash of North and South. But if Mr. Adams is correct, southern Slavery and Northern religion have made up the chief ingredients of the American character. May it not be that the national character will dissolve into two parts? There has never been a war of religion in the new republic. But what should that conflict be called if religious righteousness led to a demand that the Southern states set aside their peculiar institution as offensive to the morals of a Christian people. Can religion be the foremost political institution and not affect the liberty of each person in the country. (Noonan, p. 114-115)

The analysis of Mlle. De Toqueville indeed proved prescient for from the 1830’s on the polarization of the nation proceeded apace. In 1831, William Garrison began the publication of The Liberator in Boston proclaiming

I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject of [slavery] I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation … I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD!

When Garrison published these remarks, he was dragged through the streets of Boston by those who saw him as a rabble rouser. Yet heard he and others were heard and the abolition movement continually gained strength. Also in 1831, Arthur Tappan of New York formed an anti-slavery committee and began to work for the formation of an national Ant-Slavery Committee. In 1832 the New England Antislavery society was formed demanding immediate emancipation. In 1833, inspired by the abolition of slavery in the entire British Empire, the American Antislavery Society was formed in Philadelphia. There was indeed a worldwide movement to abolish slavery to which all of the major European powers were responding. The United States of America stood out like a sore thumb. The nation which claimed to be the bastion of the republican ideal of liberty in fact was the home of the most egregious form of slavery that had existed in human history.

Opposition to slavery spread West. Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati became a center of anti-slavery thought. When some were criticized for slavery, they broke off and formed Oberlin College which became a center for training abolitionist revivalists. The Abolitionist presses sprang up and were soon printing millions of tracts against slavery. Abolitionists worked with the underground railway to help runaway slaves evade southern slavecatchers and federal agents and make their way to freedom in Canada. Yet not all of the courageous African Americans who fled the oppression of slavery wanted to leave. Many joined forces with the abolitionists to spread the message. In 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Maryland to New York using the papers of a freed black seaman. He then arranged for the escape of his soon to be wife. Douglass published a brief account of account of his life, he spent two years on a speaking tour of Great Britain. When he returned he became the editor of North Star, and abolitionist paper in Rochester New York. In 1845, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was published. Douglass’s eloquence as a speaker, and his straightforward prose not only brought him international renown, it swayed hundreds of thousands of people to recognize the gross injustice of slavery. He was particularly effective in chastising northern preachers who championed missions or other reform ideas but shied away from the slavery issue. When war came, Douglass was an advisor the Abraham Lincoln pushing him toward emancipation.

Other African American champions for freedom declined to escape to safety and returned clandestinely to the South to help others escape to freedom. Risking their lives, Harriet Tubman, sojourner Truth and others led thousands of enslaved blacks to freedom.

In the meantime, the South was increasingly hardening their heart to the cry for freedom which was resounding throughout the world. In 1831, Nat Turner, a visionary black preacher, led a slave revolt in Virginia. Reports of 57 whites killed sent waves of fear throughout the South and brought a new tide of repression. Southern slaveholders were particularly incensed by the rhetoric of the abolitionists. Southern postmasters seized abolitionist mail. They shut down all antislavery societies and presses. One printer, Elijah Lovejoy, had been forced to move from St. Louis to Alton Illinois because of the hostility of pro-slavery advocates. In 1837, he was shot dead defending his fourth printing press. News of this atrocity shocked the nation moving many into the anti-slavery camp. It began to appear that the slavery faction was the enemy not only of southern blacks, but of Northern Whites as well. Furthermore, during this period, the South began to work out a hardened intellectual position, not only defending slavery but proclaiming it as a positive good ordained by God. Increasingly, northerners began to see slavery as an evil institution which not only oppressed the slave but thoroughly corrupted the moral character of the Southern ruling class.

The abolitionists had paved the way, the moral compass of the North was turning in opposition to slavery. Gradually, the slavery issue split the major churches in half - some such as the Methodists and the Baptists formally. Then in 1852, American popular culture was galvanized by the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of a preacher and wife of an abolitionist professor. Not only did this become a best seller. Toys and pictures portraying the characters were sold throughout the North and West. A play was written based on the book which toured the country reducing white audiences to tears. Many a soul who had avoided the moral issue of slavery was won over to the anti-slavery cause. When Lincoln met Mrs. Stowe in the White House in 1862, he addressed her, "So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

Alarmed by the growing tide of anti-slavery feeling in the North, Southern leaders assumed a frenzied siege mentality. The political expression of anti-slavery feeling in the formation of first the Free soil and then the Republican Party convinced them that they must enshrine the pro-slavery doctrine in the fundamental law of the land. The case of Dred Scott was seized upon by Justice Taney to do just that.

The Scott decision marked both the high tide of southern arrogance and the nadir of American constitutional law, with the exception possibly of Roe v. Wade. It was a blatant abuse of judicial power and destroyed any chance for reconciliation between North and South. In the decision, Taney went so far as to rule that no black person - whether slave or free, living in the North or South - was a citizen of the United States. Nor was any black person entitled to any of the Constitutional rights or civil liberties enumerated in the Constitution. A state may grant a black person state citizenship within the confines of their borders, but that did not make them a citizen of the United States. Furthermore, Taney ruled that Congress had no right to restrict the movement of slaves into a federal territory. He also renounced the doctrine of popular sovereignty in the territories ruling that citizens of a territory could not legislate against slavery. Slave holders were free to bring their slaves into any territory that they desired. The Northerners were appalled by the ruling. Whereas, the framers had thought of slavery as the peculiar institution of the South and freedom as the general principle of the nation, Taney construed that slavery was in effect the principle of the nation and freedom was the peculiar institution of the North.

In the Lincoln Douglas debates, Lincoln pointed out the ramifications of the decision. If the Dred Scott case were further extended, Southerners could argue that the Northern states had no right to abridge slaveholders property rights in the those states which had abolished slavery. Indeed, the door was opened to make slavery a national institution. While he lost the Senatorial election to Douglas, hundreds of thousands of copies of the debates were circulated and Lincoln was propelled to national prominence. In 1860, he received the presidential nomination of the Republican Party. Furthermore, the Democratic Party was split. Northern Democrats could no longer go along with the South’s extreme view. Failing to receive a majority of the popular vote Lincoln attained a resounding victory in the electoral college by carrying every Northern state but one.

Lincoln came to Washington on the Republican Platform. It did not call for abolition. Lincoln wanted to end any further expansion of slavery in the hopes that the institution would be contained and eventually become extinct. The South, however, had demonized Lincoln. They sensed that the tide had turned and the days of slavery were limited. Led by South Carolina, the Southern States seceded and when an attack was made on the Fort Sumpter, the Civil War began.

On his way to Washington, Lincoln was presented by a group of black clergy with a Bible. During the dark early days of the war, Lincoln poured over the Bible assiduously. Whereas Lincoln entered the war with the desire to preserve the Union, as time wore on he came to the conclusion that the Civil War was indeed the judgment of God upon America for the sin of slavery. Increasingly he sought the guidance of Divine Providence. In 1862, he reached the decision that the time had come to emancipate the slaves in the rebel states. On July 22, he informed his cabinet but stated that the action should not be taken until some singular victory was achieved. On the eve of the Battle of Antietam, he asked God for a sign and made a vow. If the North won the battle he told God, then he would emancipate the slaves. The battle was won. Five days later Lincoln issued the emancipation Proclamation. In the Gettysburg address, he recalled the original founding spirit of the nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and asked the country to commit itself to a "new birth of freedom."

In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, foreseeing the coming victory, Lincoln shared his providential view of the war and suggested his approach toward achieving the rebirth of freedom and binding up the nations’ wounds. He makes the point that the course and result of the war were determined not by human intention but by divine design. He neither denounces the south nor proclaims the virtue of the North. Rather, he upholds the Justice of God. Equally moving is his recognition that the healing of the nation could only be achieved through the practical application of God’s love.

…four years ago … one eighth of the whole population was colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and a powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration of which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe unto that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and south this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The Judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as god gives us the power to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The brevity of Lincoln’s final paragraph reveals that, while he had determined the basic principles which would guide him in seeking to insure civil rights and restore national harmony, the details had not been worked out. He knew that the reconciliation of the nation would be difficult. Undoubtedly, he humbly hoped that God would guide him as he sought to achieve a just and lasting peace after the war.

Unfortunately, we do not know how he would have fared. Shortly after the surrender of the Confederate forces, Lincoln was assassinated as he watched a comedy in Ford’s theater and Andrew Johnson succeeded him as President.

Johnson had neither the vision and insight nor the stature or respect which Lincoln had. He instituted an initial move towards reconstruction recognizing the abolition of slavery, but seeking to reincorporate the southern states into the Union with a considerable degree of leniency towards the whites. He came into immediate conflict with the Congress. In 1866, the Congressional elections were swept by radical Republicans. Johnson’s reconstruction measures were repealed, and a second Reconstruction initiated. The XIII Amendment to the Constitution was enacted in December 1865, declaring that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude ... shall exist within the United States." The "organic sin of the American nation had been eliminated.

In December 1866 the XIV Amendment was passed in effect overruling the Dred Scott decision and declaring that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and forbidding any state from making or enforcing any laws which abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens or "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The amendment also overrode the three-fifths provision of the Constitution. At the same time the amendment allowed for the denial of the right to vote for those who had participated in armed rebellion against the nation and forbade any who had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy to hold any public or military office in the United States government or any state office.

Finally, the XV Amendment, adopted in 1870 established that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The intentions of many of the Republican Congressmen were undoubtedly good as regards the institution of civil rights for blacks in the South. But the North also felt that the Southern whites deserved to be punished. The effect was that Congress established a military occupation of the South in the Second Reconstruction under which a brief heyday of black political participation occurred. But the humiliation and disenfranchisement of Southern whites also had grave consequences. 1866-67 saw the first birth of the Ku Klux Klan. Southern resentment against blacks and "carpetbaggers bred racial hatred. The Klan used violence and terror to strike back. Moreover, the interest of the North in insuring civil rights in the South was not long-lasting. In 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the South and every Republican government which had been set up by the Reconstruction toppled. In their place the South organized the segregationist system of white superiority which was to last until the civil rights movements of the 1950’s and 60’s.

The Civil War with the Amendments to the Constitution that followed was in fact a continuation of the Revolution which had begun in the 1700’s and had its roots in the Renaissance and Reformation. The victory for the Union and the abolition of slavery represented the true formation of one nation in which freedom under God was the guiding principle. Though it would take some time for the rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence to be extended to all people in all jurisdictions, the fact was that those principles were now established in the fundamental law of the land. That ideal would be further extended in the 20th century to include women.

The women’s rights movement was born to a significant degree out of the abolitionist movement. Lucretia Mott had been banned from attending an anti-slavery rally because of her sex. Other women reformers had been similarly discriminated against. In 1848 Mott together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a women’s rights convention at a Methodist church at which Stanton introduced a Woman’s Declaration of Independence amending Jefferson’s famous words to " all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed their Creator with certain inalienable rights ..." Stanton, declaring that "woman is man’s equal - was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such", encouraged both men and women to work to secure women the vote, and concluded by stating

... being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is ... the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to teach them, both in private and public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held...

Indeed, throughout the period of tremendous growth which followed in the latter half of the 19th century and into the 20th, women have played a leading role. The Woman’s Declaration’s goal of securing the vote was achieved in 1920 with the adoption of the 19th amendment to the Constitution.

The principles of freedom - religious freedom, political freedom, and economic freedom which developed as a synthesis of the thought of the Enlightenment and the religious movements which were sparked by the Reformation, are not merely national ideals. They are universal ideals. In the Providence of God it so happened that America was founded upon these ideals, yet America could not begin to develop her full potential until the "organic sin’ of slavery was eliminated in the Civil War. From that time America began an unprecedented period of growth and prosperity. Before the war, America had expanded in territory and economic development had begun in the Northern States. In the post bellum period the development of the Midwest and the West proceeded. As the railroads drew the country together and industry developed, America became once again a sanctuary for those seeking escape from persecution or oppression, and a land of opportunity for those seeking release from poverty. The massive accumulation of wealth, the growth of huge urban centers, and relations between labor and capital presented new challenges. In time, inspired by religious revivals and reform movements, the battles which these challenges have spawned have been fought out through the democratic processes and in the Courts. In this sense America is still a work in progress, but our basic institutions have served us well. By the end of the 19th century America was the freest, the most religious, and the most prosperous nation in the world. In the Columbian Exposition of 1892, the first World’s Fair, American optimism gushed like a fountain. The centerpiece of the fair was the World Parliament of Religions to which representatives of all of the major religions throughout the world came and expressed their optimistic view of a world of freedom, religious harmony, peace and progress. The vision was premature, but it was prophetic. America and the world both still had major obstacles to overcome, but America had indeed become a "city on a hill" and America was to play a major role in the coming century in promoting the ideal of freedom under God throughout the world.

America was the first great continental power of the modern era. During the 19th century, she had been primarily concerned with her own problems and her own development. This was not exclusively true however. America had been involved in world trade since colonial days and since the early 1800’s American churches, beginning with Baptist missions to Burma, had been supporting missionary activities. Toward the end of the 19th century, American Protestant Churches in particular felt that they had a responsibility to evangelize the world in preparation for the coming millennium. China was a major mission field, and when the doors of the "Hermit Kingdom" of Korea were opened to westerners, Americans sent missions to Korea beginning our relations with that country.

In fact Christian missionaries had a major influence on foreign policy at this time and were at least partly responsible for American entry into the Spanish American War - our first conflict with a European Power since the war of 1812 - and for our post war policy in the territories which we acquired. In effect, America became a colonial power with holdings in the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico and Guam were made US territories. The issue of statehood for Puerto Rico is in fact being considered today. In the case of the Philippines, President McKinley explained his decision to retain the colony in the following terms:

I am not ashamed to tell you, Gentlemen, that I went down on my knees an prayed to Almighty God for the light and guidance that one night. And one night later it came to me this way ... There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ had died.

Thus American missionary institutions were established in the Philippines and a plan was introduced for the development of democratic institutions and eventual independence as a democratic nation.

The point here is not the right or wrong of our actions, but that America was already a global power with global interests when it entered the 20th century. With regards to the machinations for power in Europe and their various empires, however, America chose to remain aloof. Yet the course of events in the twentieth century, America was to be called to play a central role in three major global conflicts.

The Civil War has been called by many the first modern war because of its ideological basis, the use of modern technology, and the degree of devastation. In another sense, we may see in the Civil War a prototype of the three major conflicts of the 20th century - World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. In each of these conflicts, the world was divided and a major principle of freedom was at stake. Furthermore, just as Lincoln had seen a Providential hand guiding the conflict between North and South and its result, so also the three major conflicts of the twentieth century were providential, each advancing the cause of freedom and laying the foundation for the adoption of democratic institutions worldwide.

World War I eliminated the last vestiges of feudalism and monarchism in Western Europe and the Middle East, bringing about the fall of the Russian, The Hapsburg, and the Ottoman empires. The Manchu empire in China fell about the same time with the effort of Sun Yat Sen to create a democratic China. In the aftermath of World I, the League of Nations was created - the first attempt to bring democratic principles to bear in international relations. Though the colonial power of the British and French were extended through the League’s system of mandates, the central governmental institutions of these nations were democratic and their influence promoted the ideals of self-determination and democracy throughout the world.

World War II once again saw the division of the world into two camps. On the one side racism, nationalism, and a fascist brand of socialism combined to create totalitarian systems in which the state was supreme and individual rights were suborned to those of the state. To borrow a phrase from Lincoln, "To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which" Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese militarists initiated the war. On the defense were the democratic states of Western Europe joined subsequently by the Soviet Union and the United States. The entry of the United States into the conflict turned the tide of the war and resulted in the defeat of this form of nationalist, racist totalitarianism.

In the aftermath of the War, the democratic world advanced further along the path of freedom, democracy and equality under God. The colonial empires were disbanded beginning with the independence of India. As Gandhi pointed out, it was clearly hypocritical for the British to ask Indians to fight a war for freedom and against racism while at the same time denying India the right to govern themselves according to the outmoded racist theory of "the white man’s burden." As noted earlier the same trend was manifested in the United States with the birth of the Civil Rights movement and its flowering under the inspired leadership of Martin Luther King which resulted in the dismantling of the Southern segregationist system.

Moreover, the end of the Second World War saw the formation of the United Nations once more moving in the direction of applying the principles of democratic cooperation toward the goal of world peace and accepting the newly formed nations of the world as partners in this process.

The Cold War, peppered by numerous localized hot wars, began almost as soon as the guns of World War two had cooled. Once again the world was divided into two hostile camps. In this case, the democratic world which has its roots in the principles of religious, political, and economic freedom was challenged for supremacy of the world by the most virulent form of atheistic materialism. Whereas the West proposed the idea of religious freedom, Marxism denied the existence of God, denounced religion as the "opiate of the masses, and sought with all its might to eliminate religion as a force in the modern world. Whereas, the West, led by the United States, championed the private ownership of property and the right of every individual to invest in capital and share in its profit, Marxism declared the ownership of property to be the root of all evil and vested all ownership in a one-party totalitarian state. Whereas, the West championed the basic freedoms and civil rights of representative democracy, Marxism declared the necessity of the "dictatorship of the proletariat’ which in practice meant the dictatorship of the Communist Party. The Communists deceived millions with their promise of an earthly paradise - a secular utopia - when in fact what they stood for was the ultimate rebellion against God and His principles. Under the leadership of the Soviet Union, Marxists sought to dominate the world, and it was essential that the West oppose and defeat this system in order for freedom to prevail throughout the world.

With the crumbling of what Ronald Reagan deemed "the evil empire" of the Soviet Union, freedom under God gained the upper hand in the world. This victory has indeed given a new birth to freedom. Not only has communism crumbled, but the military dictatorships of Latin America are gone, replaced by democratic regimes seeking to duplicate the economic miracles which have been achieved by democratic capitalist economies. The newly liberated countries of Eastern Europe and the CIS are moving in the same direction, though with difficulty.

While the direction of God’s Providence is clear, much work remains to be done. the Totalitarian regimes remain in North Korea, Vietnam, Burma, and Cuba. China, while embracing certain elements of economic freedom, continues to pursue the illusory ideal of a secular state dominated by one party, and religious freedom remains a chimera. Africa, plagued by tribalism and religious conflict is struggling to achieve some degree of democratic stability and economic development. Many of the nations of the Muslim world suffer from a lack of religious and political freedom. America needs to continue champion the rights of religious freedom, political freedom, and economic freedom and to assist other nations as God guides us to achieve these goals.

Religious intolerance and persecution is one of the major causes of conflict in the world today. America has demonstrated that religious freedom works. We champion the freedom of speech and press - the freedom to communicate with each other. We should also champion the communication with God. God guides people through their conscience; in order to do so, the conscience must be free. In the past two hundred years, people of all faiths have come to America, and people of all faiths have made great contributions to our nation In spite of outbreaks of intolerance and sporadic periods of persecution, generally under the protection of the First Amendment, we have demonstrated that we can live together in one society in harmony. Indeed, one of the things that astounded Alexis de Toqueville was that political and economic freedom flourished in an environment of religious diversity. The power of conscience liberated in an environment of religious freedom will help other peoples to achieve the same result.

Racism is also still a problem in the world. In this sense, the words of Martin Luther King are prophetic not only for Americans but for all mankind.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live up, live out the full meaning of its creed, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low … and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together… With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood…

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring… we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, Free at last, Thank God a-mighty. We are free at last."

Martin Luther King was indeed a prophet for the whole human race. The dream he shared was not just his dream, it is God’s dream. It is not only a dream for America, it is a dream for the world. Dr. King was celebrating the ideal of one nation of brotherhood under God, but when he speaks of all God’s children and all flesh beholding the glory of God, his words go beyond that and point to one world under God.

The day before his assassination, Dr. King testified that God had given him a vision of the future and assured him of the victory and fulfillment of His dream.

We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I have been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land.

Indeed, as we travel the freedom road, and work towards the realization of the dream of the family of man reconciled under the true parenthood of God, it behooves us to recall that this is God’s goal, that he guides the Providence of events, large and small, and that His will be done.

Ladies and gentlemen, God’s goal is the realization of true love. God created men and women in his image, as His children, so that we can share love with Him, with each other, and with our children. This is the foundation for a peaceful and harmonious world. As the founder of the Washington Times Foundation, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon has said many times, "in order to have a world of peaceful nations, we must have nations of peaceful families.

We are participants in the Providence of God. through the events of the past 400 years since the Renaissance and the Reformation, God has been working to create an environment in which to realize His ideal of true love. The problems which remain in the world can only be solved with the power of true love. As Lincoln encouraged us "with malice toward none, with charity toward all," let us work for a just and lasting peace both for our own nation and the world. The old saying goes, "charity begins at home." This is often misconstrued and misused. Charity does not mean alms giving. That is an expression of charity. Charity means agape love, divine love, true love. And indeed the family is the school in which divine love is learned. The primary challenge for America and the world today is to clearly understand, uplift and practice the ideal of the true family.

It is not surprising that the concept of the family has been blurred in the last century. In the first lecture we identified a few of the secular relativistic ideas which have contributed to its decline - the idea that God, if he exists is irrelevant, that values are relative, that man is primarily an animal, and that the family is only one form of social organization.

One other aspect should be considered which will help us to understand the importance of clearly understanding the ideal of the true family. Up through the 19th century, the concept of the family was influenced by medieval concepts of feudal sovereignty. A man’s home is his castle, his wife and children are his subjects. It was in accordance with this concept, women had almost no rights and, with legal sanction could often be subjected to abuse. Furthermore, all property was vested in the husband, and women’s economic rights were extremely limited. This sort of male-dominated view has been reflected in numerous injustices in political arena and in the workplace and women have worked courageously to correct these wrongs, much to the advantage of our society and the world.

As democratic ideas replaced monarchical principles and as women worked for equal rights, it was inevitable that the concept of the family based on feudal sovereignty would be challenged. Rightly so, for this view is tainted. The God-centered ideal of the true family, however, is not a realm in which the man is the ruler and his wife and children are his subjects. Rather the ideal of the true family as expressed in the Bible is that man and women become one through true love and express that love sacrificially to each other and to their children. There is no conflict between truelove, freedom and human value. Where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. Freedom is necessary for true love to be perfected. Men and women discover their full value and achieve the deepest level of happiness only through their union with God, each other, and their children.

Unfortunately, in the struggle for equality, some, influenced by radical ideas of secular humanism, came to rebel not only against the feudal concept of family, but to rebel against the concept of a two parent family in general. Influenced by Marxist concepts of liberation, they espoused the idea that pregnancy and motherhood were forms of slavery and that birth control and abortion were therefore means of sexual liberation. Following this course, some individuals and groups have gone on to attack traditional sexual morality, the family, and religion. As we have discussed earlier, these ideas were reinforced by the popular understanding of Freud’s theories of sexual repression.

We can see how important it is to clarify the ideal of the true family. As we have seen in looking at the current problems of violence, sexually transmitted diseases, crime, poor educational performance, cycles of poverty, teen suicide and drug abuse, nothing could be further form the truth than the idea that that sexual immorality and the destruction of the two-parent family can lead to personal or social happiness.

Furthermore, equal treatment will only be realized in a society which practices the ideal of true love within the family. This is because equal treatment is based upon love and respect which are learned through experience in the family. If a child loves his grandparents, then when he meets an elderly person he will identify them with his grandfather and treat them with love and respect. The deep bond of love that a child feels for his father and mother is the basis upon which he treats other adults with respect. If a person grows up with loving his brothers and sisters within the home then he will know how to treat his friends and coworkers with love and respect as brothers and sisters. Love within the family is the basis for all social ethics.

In the first lecture, examining the causes of our most serious social problems, we determined that the breakdown of the family is at the root of the problem. In examining the origin of family breakdown we discovered the lack of a clear concept of the true family and the failure to act responsibly and uphold a standard of sexual morality. In the past 30 years, as the breakdown of the family proceeded our problems have increased. The reverse is also true however. If we uphold the standard of the true family, and establish a clear standard of sexual morality then our social problems will abate.

God created the first Adam and the first Eve in a new world and gave them a portion of responsibility not to eat the fruit - to remain sexually pure until maturity at which time they would be blessed in marriage by God and they would fulfill the ideal of true love, create a true family and be the progenitors of a culture of true love. Through their failure to do so, their love was corrupted and we have experienced a history of suffering. God worked through the nation of Israel to prepare an environment for Jesus top be born as a second Adam to accomplish what the first Adam failed to do. But the people that God had prepared failed to receive Jesus and therefore, the Bible speaks of the Second Advent of the Lord. For the past 2000 years, God, Jesus, and the Holy Sprit have been working through Christianity to create a foundation of faith and an environment of freedom in which to finally accomplish his goal.

As we have seen, particularly since the Renaissance and the Reformation, God has been working to expand his world wide providence. The discovery of the new world and the history of America as a champion of freedom have been of central importance. Just as America could not successfully establish a foundation for freedom for itself and for the world until the "organic sin" of slavery had been removed form the national constitution, so in order for us to enter the emerging world of true love we must deal with the "original sin" of sexual immorality. This is the reason that we are stressing the idea that married couples rededicate their marriages consciously to the ideal of God, true love, sexual fidelity, and world peace and commit themselves to raise their children to be sexually pure. We must be reborn as sons and daughters of God through true families.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is God’s hope for America and the world. We are entering the a new millennium. The world is growing closer and closer together and undergoing a technological revolution. What the world needs now is an internal revolution. True love. America has been placed in a key position of leadership in the world. We have received great blessing. With great blessing comes great responsibility. Let us be true to our forefathers and foremothers who have sacrificed so much and worked so hard to bring us to this point. Let us be true to God. It is not enough to lead the world economically. Economic prosperity will crumble and freedom will be lost unless we set an example for the world morally and spiritually as well. Let us dedicate ourselves to a revolution of true love in the same spirit as the founders of this nation dedicated themselves, their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Let us, like the great explorers, pilgrims, and pioneers embark on the great adventure of creating a peaceful world of through the foundation of true love.

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