That is proverbs, and sometimes they were proverbs. Of philosophyype of thiscellent example type of emphasis on virtue and in industry and frugality that were the of franklins philosophy about religion and morality. Thatere is a way in which statement in particular in a way hisd calvinist forbearers would not have wanted to do. The point for his parents would be do not just need god to help you. You need god to change her life. What needs to happen is we are converted by experience of gods transforming power, we were able to live a godly and and i think that type is more of god is a type of supplement. If you work hard and are honest, that things will go well for you. It is a classic american creed but it may sit uncomfortably with the council of scripture. Would you say that is a deist statement . Yes. It has a deist flavor to it. Youbeing active but also need to take responsibility for yourself, that gods work and power is not the first thing that you need. The first thing you need is your own initiative. I think it seems to me, knowing what i know about franklin, there is a sense that god is being secondary or distant. Thank you. , i understandon the government is a republic pyramid people say it is a democracy. Can it be both or is it both . I assume he not think these in inconsistent in some ways which they manifest themselves. If we take awards and look at it there purest definition, might be restrictions. Of the core ofou what republicanism would have which isant, government by consent of the government and exercise through representatives, and the second aspect could perhaps come into contention with democracy and its purest form. As the words might have been used in this time in history, they would not have seen such a two andash between the did not view that some expressions of america take manifestations of peoples voice with republicanism as they understood it. When i explain this to my students, the founders view of democracy, which they thought as ifreally bad idea, every single question any level of government deals with, then the people will have to vote on a popular referendum on every they have theo expertise to make these sorts of decisions come probably not. A foreignpolicy issue, the banking issue, or Something Like that. The ideal is you elect people who do have sufficient expertise in these kind of area the founders would have hoped that these people would be virtuous, knowledgeable, independent people and on behalf of those people, can make informed decisions about various policy issues. We have definitely become more democratic since 1776 and 1787, because, number one, we have a of people voting, so women, lets just start with women. A lot of ethnic minorities participate where they couldnt have at the time of the founding. Still think it is fundamentally a democratic republic that we have, as opposed to a pure democracy the founders would have considered. O be oh considered and chaotic republicanism is another way to put a check on the exercise of power. Biblicalback to a anthropology that we are fallen creatures and need as many checks and restraints as we could possibly manage in the way we frame our government. Thank you. This one is for you. Lets see. Expound more on Thomas Jeffersons religious views . Ok. Well, i didnt mention Thomas Jefferson but my basic understanding of Thomas Jefferson is that he was a little more purely did d a stick and what he had to say. He famously trimmed the bible of certain texts that were miraculous because he mainly want to cause trade on the life and morals of jesus, keyng jesus as morality, a theme for him. Not known that, i do much else about jeffersons religious views. I sometimes use the term, he was inherent of a natural humanon where he saw a reason as the arbiter of the day, which gave him pause when he encountered transcending and miraculous claims that he read in the bible, if he could not explain it through reason, then he had questioned reason to doubt it. Having said that, he thought jesus of nazareth was the greatest moral teachers ever was and there was great value in studying that. The kind of religion he would have warmed to would have been. Ondogmatic and nonhierarchical he was suspicious of governments hierarchical or oriented around bishops, for example. I think he had an affinity, even though he may not have embraced specifics with more covered deck congregational type expressions. Baptists and their church governments. He likes Church Governance quite a part of the belief system. Talking about a very nondogmatic religion that could be explained in rational terms. He famously got along with baptists. Because they shared religious views. They agreed on the separation of church and state. He had a fascinating relationship with baptists. John welland, one of the major baptist figures of the era, who was both southern and new england, he moved around and preach, he loved thomasjefferson. He actually talked about Thomas Jefferson. And he was a very fervent, biblebelieving baptist but he left jefferson. He but jefferson was a gift of god. And he knew about jefferson to an extent, but jeffersons theology, that he disagreed with , but he thought jefferson was just such a gift to the nation because of jeffersons politicsgod. And he knew aboutjefferson to. And he spoke about him like he was a biblicalfigure or something, so he had religious meaning and value evenfor baptists who disagreed with him. And he valued the baptiststake on politics because they read so well with what he thought of, as you were saying describing his view of religion asbasically about morality and freedom for individuals. If you look in his account books, he was very generous in givingmoney to ministers. He maintained friendships with manyministers, including ministers that he would not have agreed with on theological matters. I think this was of some importance to him. When you look at jeffersons views,especially some of the anticlerical statements that he makes, and he makes some very harsh ones. I think its always useful to look at the context in which he makes them. For example, some of the harsh, anticlerical statements he makes are right in the midst of the war, where he sees so many, especially anglican ministers, leaving. They are siding with the loyalists. But at the same time hes expression great admiration with other anglican ministers who have sided with the patriot cause. The same comes up in the election of 1800. Hes harshly attacked by the congregationalist ministers in new england, so again, i think he is deeply and personally wounded by some of the things he say some of the things they say about him. I think you need to lookat the context in which he makes some of the harsh statements around harsh statements about clergymen around the election of 1800. And he runs into conflicts with clergymen in Central Virginia over who are going to be professors at his new university in virginia. And there were presbyterian ministers inhis own community that were not keen on some of the people he wanted to hire. And again, he kind of lashes out in some veryharsh, anticlerical statements. So i think its always useful to look at the political context in which he makes some of these statements, to understand where hes coming from with that kind of expression from jefferson. Thank you. This next question is for dr. Kidd. Did franklins knowledgeable but not doctrinal phase make him a better Bridge Builder between religious groups . And did a similar thing work for lincoln . I think it did. He was a very friendly terms with lots of differentkinds of churches and ministers. When he was in philadelphia, the most commonly would attend the cities Anglican Church, or the church of england the citys Anglican Church, or the church of england. His wife was more devout. And she was ananglican and he would go with her to church and he gavemoney for the Anglican Church to be expanded. Some peoplesaid it was because he wanted a steeple for his electrical forhis electoral experiment, what i think he got the church was a good thing. He even gave money to help build a synagogue in philadelphia. So it wasnt just charity and benevolenceextended to different types of christian denominations, but even to jews, too. So i thinks that i think thats an upside to franklins nondogmatic approach. And he definitely thought, in a way that jefferson didnt, i think, he thought institutional religion even is a good thing, so he was keen to help a lot of different kinds of churches. And if your member from my talkthis morning, your member john adams sang every Christian Group thought he was probably part of them, and the reason for that is because he was so friendly to a lot of groups in a very harsh time of interdenominational conflicts, especially between catholics and protestants. But when franklin had theopportunity to visit the continent of europe, he was very complimentary towards catholics and catholic churches. He never quite got over some of his deep bread anticatholic deepbred, anticatholic sentiments that he grew up with. But he was definitely a Bridge Builder that and that reflected the fact that he basically had a positive view of religion and churchgoing and that sort of thing, just as long as you didntuse it to beat people over the head with doctrine. And it is similar thing work for lincoln . I dont know as much about lincoln. Maybe professor bird can Say Something about this. I think that lincoln definitely,especially as a leader, washington was like this too, of making sure to reach out to different, to leaders of differentdenominations to say, we need your support and you are valuedhere, this sort of thing. So i think in washington and lincolns case, that you see the kind of principled outreach to different kinds of denominations. I think thats true and would lincoln, there is so much consistency in that comparison. And thats why i think it is helpful. The only distinction that we might make would lincoln is that he had as strong a sense of providential is him as anyone. He clearly believed in providence. However, he had a very pessimistic kind of providence and part of this was his time, part of it was probably the war, and you can see this even in his famous speeches, where he talked about, we need to be on godsside, he talks about, maybe god is not really favor really in favor of what we are doing. Maybe we are going down the wrong road in various ways. So he had a strong sense of gods judgment on the nation, and that i think may have been something somewhat unique. And again, its easy to think of these figures as just kind of hyper intellectual worldreflecting hyper intellects who were reflecting out of body. And with specific instances with jefferson you have to thinkabout the context, and the same is true of lincoln. His entire presidency, and hes the only president you could say this, his entire presidency was bounded by war. From the time he took office, it was a conflict, and that is what he dealt with. I noticed when i read david mccullochs biography of john adams, that john adams, wherever he was, different churchservices, different to nominations, and i found that to be unusual compared to how we intend church today. It seems like we go to our denomination. You feel like visiting variouschurches, as we mentioned, that was bridge building with our earlier founders. Is that something that could help us with that today . I think that youre right, in the 1700s there is such intenseconflict between, i think that youre right, in especially catholic and protestant but alsobaptists and congregationalists, arguing about the differencebetween presbyterian and congregationalists policy, and thats like an issue that you shed blood over. And it speaks to a time when people were number one come on let more theologically conversant than we are today. But they also take these thingsso seriously. And i think in retrospect he think, especially in our day and time, when you cant take christian commitment for granted in the culture, it doesnt seem like you want to be fighting about those kinds of issues anymore, but i think one of the real breakthroughs came with the new evangelicalmovement of the 1730s and 1740s. If you have been to the museums bygone america exhibit, you have seen George Whitfield and the great awakening theater they have here. And one of the things that was a so distinctive about whitfield, who was thegreatest evangelist of that era, was that even though he was an anglican minister, a church of england minister, especially in america, he cooperated very avidly with nonanglicans, anybody who was supportive of his message of the new birth of salvation, being born again, this is the experience that all people need to have. He was quite willing to preach in their churches and to preach alongside them, and he was upbraided by anglicanauthorities who said, why are you cooperating so much with thedissenters, the baptists, the presbyterians, the congregationalists, the quakers . And he said, because i see bornagain people among all denominations. So thats a unity thats borne, to me, out of a specific kind of religious principle,which is a belief in the need for conversion and being born again. So there is a way in which i think these two trends toward religious unity are happening at the same time. One is the evangelical unity around the new birth of salvation. One is the enlightenment kind of trend, saying, we need to stop fightingabout differences in theology. We need to stop having wars and murdering people over small, apparently differences in the elegy. But these of a surging at the same time so you end up getting people like jefferson and john leland, as you mentioned before, who have very different personal views about theology, who have identical views about the role of religion in americanpublic life, which is that we need to have full religious liberty, that the government sudden the government shouldnt persecute people because of their religious leaders, that you should let people meet in their own churches in freedom, that they shouldnt pay religious taxes to support a church theydont attend mo which is what most people in the colonial era had to do. So i think this is why that tradition of religiousliberty is so important. And it doesnt mean, we dont have time toattend everybodys churches zendaya stand that, but we shouldleast follow their example and say, religious liberty is foreverybody. I think there is a couple of interesting things going on when you look at some of the communication that the founders and in particular, early president s had with religious society. Washington, especially around the time of his inauguration,communicated with two or three dozen religious societies across the spectrum. These were main religious groups but also religious groups from sort of the minority communities. And i think there is several things going on here. What is he was to reassure them that they are part of this american experiment. Hewants to bring them into the fold and ensure that they are full participants in the american experience. I think he also is usingthis as an opportunity to communicate to the American Public atlarge. Lets her member, this is a time when there are limited ways in which a political figure can speak to the American Public atlarge. And writing letters to religious societies and groups was one of those ways to communicate to a broad audience. And allof our early president s used letter writing to religioussocieties as a way to communicate some pretty important ideas. Washington is talking very systematically about conceptions of religious liberty. Let us not forget, Thomas Jefferson used a letter to a Baptist Association to express that famous metaphor of a wall of separation of church and state. A few years later at the closing days of his presidency, he raised to a Methodist Society in which he says, he says the dearest part of our constitution is that part that protects liberty of conscience. So they are using these communications to really express, i think, some heartfelt issues, some important issues, but i also think it is important to focus on these communicationsbecause these societies are communicating with them too. And they are communicating what their concerns, what their fears are. There are concerns about their liberty and whether matters of liberty and religious freedom are going to be respected. A liberty that would include them. Thank you. This next question is a long one. Take notes. You reference david as a model for war, m f are gods own heart and yet a man of war. But god said today that because he was a man of war and shed much blood on the europe, david would not be the one to build god ehouse, a rather his sonsolomon, a man of peace. So god showed his displeasure. Please reconcile these two as you can. . Ok. I think its fascinating that opponents of war did not use that text, that reference. And i think part of the reason couldbe that there were other texts that were less of your, more sort of to the moment in terms of Something Like sermon on the mount. Obviously, someone who is a patriot who tried to argue for people to go to war isnt going to mention that. It is a valid point in many ways. It doesnt, though, undercut the point, the larger point that god in some ways when david was going to war, when he was selling goliath, scripture when he wasslaying goliath, scripture tells us that he was doing gods work when he was doing that. So its a complicated question but i didnt see it, at least in the research i did come i didnt see anyone pointing that out, i didnt see anyone saying, those of you calling david a warrior might want to think about this. It just wasnt one of the text that they drawn. However, it is an interesting point and again, it would have helped to reinforcethe argument for not only pacifists, but those who werentpacifists technically, but didnt exactly support the war for one reason or another. Thank you. Dr. Kidd, do you suppose ezra stiles sent a followup letter to Benjamin Franklin about christ before his death . I dont know that he did. He didnt have much time left because he was can do be dead because he was going to be dead five weeks after franklin responded. But it is true that there were people all through franklins life who were very directly imploringfranklin to accept christ as his savior. This is one of thereasons why i dont see franklin as a traditional christian, is the traditional christians around franklin didnt think he was a christian. And so i think the best example is George Whitfield, who imagined a minute ago. Whitfield and franklin were friends and Business Associates for 30 years, and they had a very transparent relationship about understanding that they were not on the same page spiritually, and whitfield thought franklinneeded to do something about that. And so whitfield wouldhold no punches and say, you need to put your faith in christ for salvation. And franklin would sort of say, i am all set. And they would have these conversations. The favorite is in the 1750s, whitfield wrote a letter to franklin, and again theirbusiness partners, franklin publishes a lot of whitfields stuff,and whitfield is saying, i need you to take care of this publication and so forth. And now, by the way, ive noticed amuch success you have had in electrical experiments and youve made so much progress in understanding the mysteries of electricity. Now i am for you to consider the mysteries of the new birth in christ. And you can just imagine franklin kind of rolling his eyes and so forth. But whitfield was constantly talking to him and i just wonder what their private conversations that were unrecorded, i wish i could have been there for some of those conversations. But franklin and his sister jane had conversations like that. There was one time when franklin, after he had kind of made it a in publishing, went backto boston from philadelphia to visit his family. And it is clear that jamie come and ben franklin that jane and ben franklin fought. Thats one of the struggles you have when writing a biography oman a biography of almost any 18thcentury figure like this. Almost all of the letters that jane wrote to ben franklin are cares about this 18thcentury woman. Let us just throw this in the trash. It breaks your heart. It is like listening to a phone conversation where you only hear the one side. Ben franklin writes back to her later and he says i am sorry wefought. He sends her some cloth as a gift. It is clear they were fighting about whether you need god to be moral. She clearly was saying to him, you need to have god change your heart or you can never be truly moral. He was saying i do not think you do. They fought about that. The point being that franklin,throughout his life, that is why i find his response to stiles kindof exasperating. People have been asking him about this hisentire life. It was a constant theme for him. Thank you. Since america and her constitution were established with knowledge and reverence to the bible, how long can we man how long can we maintain these establishments if wecontinue to move away from biblical foundations . That is a hard question. I would start by saying that i think it is important that we understand where these ideas came from. Ialso think that you understand why they were perceived as important in their own time and then we can ask if those reasons are still pertinent to us today. My own view of politics generally is that things like constitutions cannot be divorced from a political culture. You can take a constitution like the american constitution and i believe it is a well conceivedconstitution and you can put it in a different, dutch a different cultural context and it will not work. I think this is true notonly with our own constitution but we have seen it with other constitutions around the world. It is always useful to understand a context in which the constitution is written and in which it is designed to work. My own view is that the founders viewed religion as essential to their project. Washington speaks of this in his farewell address. He says of all the disposition which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable. He does not flesh out what that expression of religion looks like, but he is telling us that religion and morality are indispensable to this political project. I think weare also clear in that he is not thinking in terms of a religious establishment, the kind of formal establishment that had been part of europe since the time of constantine. Rather, he sees a vital role, and informal role for religion in maintaining this political order. I think to underscore how important this is to washington washington is not been outlier washington isnot an outlier. There is no dissent on this point. What does he say in the next sentence, having said that religion and morality are indispensable to political it vain with that man labor whowould work to supplant these props of human happiness. Having said religion and morality are indispensable supports, he goes on to say that if you are seeking to undermine those pillars of religion and more out a you cannot call yourself a patriot. I think for at least washington as representative of his own time, he would have seen the role of religion in the culture as absolutely essential to the survival of an experiment in republican selfgovernment. I agree, and the founders would have taken that as a given thatvirtue there are cautionary notes. We tend to think, critics of what American Culture has become today might sometimes take a rosy view of what American Culture was in 1787. There were notable problems back then. Slavery, hello. They have their own issues. Even though you cannot see your own blind spots, they would have at least agreed that virtue is essential. This issue comes up today, people on the secular left, you will hear that you mean abortion or gay marriage, these kind of hot buttonissues, ill is explained to my students, i think that almosteveryone in america believes we will be better off if we have a virtuous society, at least on some things. The example ill is giveis the financial crisis of 2008 the example i always give is thefinancial crisis of 2008. We had a complex and greedy and right, whoever said we would say we probably would have done better if we had more pervasive virtue andpublic spiritedness. That is what the founders meant i am responsible for my fellow person. I cannot act selfishly because i have to be responsible to the public interest. We had a financial meltdown that was partly a result of pervasive of the pervasive spirit of greed and selfishness. We are all connected to it. As a republic, we would have done better if we would have had more virtue. I like to go to that kind of example because it is more a political. Most people can say we could have stood to have more virtue in an area like that. We are not goingto agree about abortion and marriage and these kinds of things. I have my own opinions about that. Anyone who would say virtue and morality, that is passe, people should just be able to do what they want. The founders would have said that is a formula for chaos and social breakdown. That is an expression of licentiousness which is at war with the concept of liberty. We started this off talking about the constitution, the influence of the bible on that. The three of you had anopportunity to go down to the second floor and see the exhibit. How would you describe the influence of the bible on the mayflower compact . You start with who these people were that crafted this document. They were pious people. Not everyone who was on that ship were pilgrims, it was a mix of people which is part of what prompted the crafting of the document. We start from theproposition that these were people who were on a godly mission as they understood it. They want they saw themselves in a unique position in human history. They had an opportunity to wipe clean the slate of human history, to undo some of the bad mistakes of the past and to try to build a new political system that would avoid some of those mistakes. I think we begin to seereflections of that, even in a document like the mayflowercompact. It is a very brief document it does not tell us a lot. It is a compact in the sense that they are promising to Work Together in a righteous way for something in the future, for some kind of structure. I do not know that we get a lot ofinsight into constitutionalism through the mayflower compact itself. There are certainly the seeds of ideas of ourconstitution and these are seeds that are going to replicate themselves throughout american constitutional history. Forexample, all american constitutions begin with a statement of for whom this document is created. We see this in the mayflower compact, we see this in United States constitution. We see a statement of purpose in the preamble to the United States constitution. There are three distinct statements of purpose in the mayflower compact. It is interesting in which the ordercomes. It is for god and the propagation of the gospel andfinally do we get around to the king. The fact that they still affirm their allegiance to the king is remarkable. They are fleeing the persecution of the king. I think he goes back to the healthy respect for authority that they would have read in romans 13 and 1 peter 12. That in itself reflects a biblical understanding of authority and how you begin to structure a government. Another thing to add to that is that under guarding all ofthese agreements is the concept of covenant. Sometimes we miss the ramifications of what that meant to them. From a reformed point of view, god is sovereign, god does what god wants, god is omnipotent, god is omniscient, but god makes covenants with humans which is a remarkable statement of love that god putsforth. They read the bible as a series of interlocking covenants. All of their lives are based on covenants, covenants forchurches, covenants for cities, covenants for family. This concept of covenants which is so influential overall, they take from scripture. It is in the back of their minds and sometimes at the front of their thoughts as they enter into any of these deals or understandings or negotiations of who they are in thenew world. Thank you. Members of our audience would like to hear more details about the database and what you are gathering and cataloging. This is interesting. The database for the revolutionary warproject, i basically designed using a program called microsoftaccess which is in microsoft office. I went into different primarysources and entered first by verse by verse, everything that ifound. Then at the end, after i had read as much as i could find, i ran it and then printed out the then at the end, after i had text and then i could find out where they were. It is a cumbersome thing. For the civil warproject, it is a much more streamlined process, ive been helped by a professor of history. He is also an incredible coder. He usedprogramming to sleep through an algorithm that can sweep through 2000 primary source texts. That database is so much larger than the revolutionary period database because you can do so much more with the text in the 19th century and in partbecause you can scan them and pick out and understand them. Try that with something in 1776. The computer is just going toget something written by ben franklin to his sister will look like a recipe for chocolate cake. That is what it is. It was a timeconsuming process of assembling data. I hope you have some graduate students helping with that. I have graduate students helping with some things but i do not want to persecute a graduate student, that is too much punishment. This is another long question. When the bible is used in politicalsettings and debates, there is often the concern that biblical text will be used without regard to their biblical context in order to serve a partisan agenda. Do you see evidence of this in the time period youre been discussing today and are thereexamples of the bible being taken out of context for Political Goals . This is one of the concerns that i wanted to focus on when i wrote this book on the bible and the founders. I was not only interested in what kind of text they were drawn to, but i was interested in whether they were using these texts in ways that were consistent with the biblical context in which we find them. The record is mixed. There are exampleswhere you see founders using texts in ways that are more faithful to its context then we use it. For example, you see quite a few references in the founding literature to the use of micah what does the lord require of thee . In my adult life i have heard a dozen or so sermons on that and it is focused on my individual virtue this is what god requires of me individually. When you see this in the literature of the american founding, they understood that this is what theologians call a covenantlawsuit text. This was gods grievance against the nation of israel. In the end of that text, the children of israel having been convinced that they have broken the covenant with god say much what must we do to make things right. This is when god says you must do justice and love percy and walk humbly. This is about a grievance that god haswith his people then gods instruction to me as an individual. There are other texts where they are misappropriating a biblical text. I made a reference to this in my talk this morning. Take for example uses of new testament language on liberty. Americans in this period love new testament texts that use the word liberty. I mentioned galatians 5 1. There are other similar texts. The sun shall set you free. This is more about Christian Liberty than political liberty. This debate over whether the use of these texts is appropriate arises even in their use in the 18th century. There would be those who said not so fast, that is not about political liberty. We often heard this from loyalist ministers who were calling out these patriots for their misuse or misappropriation of the language of liberty, and there was a back and forth about that. But often the response is that gods understanding of liberty is capacious. There was an ongoing debate, even at that time. An even richer and perhaps much more consequential debate is the one that professor berg mentioned. How do we interpret a text like here is3 question mark where you see a very different interpretation of romans 13 by the loyalists. Each will call the other side out. We know why you are missing to day because it will help your political gods. There was a genuinely lively debate between loyalists and patriots over what exactly does romans 13, this idea of being in submission to those what does that mean . You can see why this is a lively debate. You can understand why this is a lively debate, because it goes to the legitimacy of those who suggest we should resist or rebel against england. It is a very heated conversation that we find. It is over the proper interpretation of scripture, whether we are misappropriating to advance a political objective of the moment. Would either of you care to elaborate on that . I always perk up when i see someone we are mostly talking about the founding period when someone loses somethingbecause of their commitment to follow what the bible said. That is when you have somebody on your hands who is committed to the scripture. My favorite example of this is a presbyterian pastor in savannah, georgia. He was a delegate to the First Continental Congress from georgia. He was as bothered as anybody about the taxes and concerns about British Authority in the colonies. In 1775 and 1776 when he saw that the trend was heading towards independence and revolution, rather than just resistance, he said we cannot do that as christians. We cannotrise up against government because of these romans 13 reasons. I do not think that argument is a lock, i do not know what my position would have been, whether i would have a patriot orloyalist, but he resigned from the Communal Congress and became a loyalist, opposed to violent revolution. He lost everything he had. He ended up having to live in a swamp in south carolina. He lost his church, he lost his property, he losteverything he lost everything because he was acting in accord with his conscienceand in what he saw going on in 1 peter and in romans. It is debatable whether he is right about that interpretation. That is a good sign you do see instances like that where people will act according to their conscience even to the point of greatpersonal loss. Of great personal loss. I find those examples inspiring and i think in a lotof cases it is like today. A lot of times in the time of the founding you do have people using the scripture is windowdressing. They are not being insincere, but it is not as if they are paying any price of conscience to cite the bible for that purpose. What that tells us is that the bible was the coin of therealm. It was the language everyone knew how to speak. Part of what is fascinating about this to me, the history of the interpretation of scripture, is that if you think about it. Various people across time in various places with variouspresuppositions, reading this text over time, so that people who do not have much in common at all meet together across time over romans 13 or some particular text. It is fascinating to see how people read at how people read it and interpreted based on their situation. It is easy breast to say that of course the loyalists will use roman 13 to support their position because theyre being selfish. But we all read from our position in acertain situation. They look to scripture for insight, for guidance, they meditate on scripture, not everyone, but a lot of people did, and they look to find where they were in the story. It was only natural in some cases for people to see their side. Is easy for us to condemn that reading, i think we have to do it aswe do any other situation in history. We have to look at it from their point of view and try to think about it from their point of view. It is also fascinating to see the other side on the same text and how others can read that same text. Sometimes both arguments seem pretty good. This is where the bibles history as well as the history of the interpretation gives so much to us. It gives us insight into the people we are studying. I do not know how many times i would be reading a secondary source, a historians take on something, and there were biblical references in the primary text that the historian does notrecognize and they are just thinking this is an interestinginsight. Maybe it was just genesis. I think it gives us insight into the people we are studying because it was so much a part of their lives. It gives us insight into the scripture and how deep the text can be and how multifaceted. Very interesting. This question is addressed to all speakers. Please reflect on religion and masonry and the foundersincluding franklin and George Washington and other founders. I get asked this a lot. Ben franklin was a freemason and a lot of the major founders were freemasons. That has remained acontroversial subject through the present day. I think for franklin, his membership in the masons was significant but he does not talk about it a lot. Some people will say it is because it is a secret society. I do not get the sense that it was a really central issue for him. I do not think the masons in the mid1700s were quite as conch were quite as controversial as they became later on. They were a minimal it fits right along with what franklins overall religious beliefs were, minimally doctrinal and very focused on service and benevolence. It is the opinion me of it is the opinion me it is the epio tome of the religion of the enlightenment. How can we do the most good insociety . It was also a show social it was also a social clubfor them. This was the great area this was the great era of the social club. When franklin went to france he connected with masons there for a short time. He and voltaire were members of the same lodge in paris. I see it as being representative of a fairly elite social club that has these religious overtones but they do not argue about any kind of doctrine. I think that as well stated. Dr. Kidd, can you give us examples of the ways the bible itself affected franklins writings . In my talk i mainly cited episodes where it would just show up. That is a lot of the ways it would come up. You were talkingabout the bible showing up and not even knowing it is the bible, i have to admit that happened to me a few times with franklin because it was so omnipresent that i would not notice, even though i try to read the bible every day is a believer, there were things that were going over my head. One of my favoriteexamples is a passage that franklin cited in his pamphlet, plaintruth, which was one of the First Political pamphlets andAmerican History. It is about the pennsylvania militia, it is notimportant to get into the details, but he is pushing for raising a pennsylvania militia and one of the arguments he makes is basedon the expedition of the expedition in judges 18. Does anybodyremember this very well . I had to remind myself about the expedition. To him, without going into the details, it was the basic point was not being prepared and being deceived and some of these themes. He thought that it was like thomas payne in common sense, he thought that just likethomas paine is citing 1 samuel 8 because people will know this, franklins thinking that the people in philadelphia will immediately see the relevance of judges 18 because they know it and understand the point he is trying to make. I thought this is a lost world of Biblical Literacy that i do not inhabit, even as someone who tries to go to church and stamp with the bible. And stay up with the bible. They are so biblically literate that it goes over your head. That not only tells you how literate franklin is in the scripture, but also how literate the culture is. That is true in philadelphia, it is true in boston and parts of the south. We have just a few seconds left. Would anyone like to make a closing remark or a comment about today . I will add to what was just said that let us not forget that this was a literate culture apart from Biblical Literacy. One of the reasons it was such a literate culture is that they read the bible and the bible was an ideal tool for teaching literacy. It was a useful tool in literacy education. This is ageneration that wouldve been raised learning how to read with a bible in front of them. That is how they would have known so much about the stories from scripture. Thank you very much. Please join me in thanking the panel. Outstanding job. We have a few remarks. We would like to release our speakers to go sit at their table for their booksigning. We do have their book for sale in the back of the room if you would like to purchase them. Right now i would likeintroduce you to rob copeland who would like to say a few words on behalf of the museum of the bible. Thank you. Youre watching American History tv. I am very pleased that you can all be here today. I know how busy you have been with events leading up to tuesdays election and i want to congratulate all of you in the house of representatives that have just been reelected. This bill, the Immigration Reform and control act of 19 it is six that i will sign it a few minutes is the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952. It is the product of one of the longest and most difficult legislative undertakings