Solace but for exhortations to fight. Such scripture helped amateur soldiers overcome their natural aversion to killing, conferred on those who died for the revolution the halo of martyrdom and he gave americans a sense of the Divine Providence of their calls. In this session dr. Byrd will examine specific biblical texts aened how they were umaking the patriotic case for war. James byrd is associate professor of american religious history at vanderbilt university. His latest book is sacred scripture, sacred war. Hes currently working on a book on the bible and the american civil war. Please join me in welcoming dr. Byrd. [ applause ] well, thank you, im so pleased to be here and to be joining in this important conversation at the museum of the bible. Im very honored to be sharing the podium with the two scholars ive admired for years and i especially thank the team here at the museum of the bible rm, all of you for putting this together. Im just very honored to be participating. My focus and my angle on this, specifically deals a little more with t with the war itself and i have two topics i try to bring together, one is the history of the bible in america and the history of war in america. So ill do extensively with war and violence and the bible and how the bible has part of our justification for going to war and our protests against it. So i got interested in this a few years ago. Just curious and all of our projects begin with a certain kind of curiosity. Curious about how the bible was included in the American Revolution and being a computer geek i decided to design a database and pick out the biblical texts and sort them and then i would have the answer. That may have been a mistake, because it took me a few years to do this before i could even write the book so i thought okay, ill get the database together, then ill write the book based on the database and thats what i did. But that involved going to a lot of texts, most of which are not in modern fonts, let me tell you, nor modern spelling. And going to each page and finding each little bible verse and many times they cite the bible verse. So it involved me scanning through and i grew up learning the bible a bit and in sunday school we used to do the draw swords bible exercise. So general knowledge there then just using this citations that i could find to put together a database. At the end of it i printed them all out and said well, i go eue these are the big texts, then i went through an analysis of the texts and thats what the book turned out to be. So i want to talk about these texts and how they were represented, why they were important in revolutionary america, specifically dealing with the war so the next book is on the civil war and it involves a lot more in terms of like the bible and a lot more texts to deal with and this one involved a little more Computer Programming to get to. So i want to start by talking about thomas paine. Tom paine is an interesting character. He brings us very interesting insights on the bible in common sense. That was probably the mostread pamphlet in revolutionary america. Common sense was written for a particular reason in 1776. It was written to argue that declaring independence which they later did in 1776 was just common sense. So he was attempting to deal with arguments that everyone could agree on. He was attempting to just take the pulse of the society and to make a persuasive case for declaring independence because let me say that going to war against britain in one way was one thing, but declaring independence was something all together different. For many people, they didnt necessarily want to declare independence. They were hoping to get a better parliament, perhaps a better king, a better situation. But paine is arguing that its only common sense to declare independence. And he uses scripture to do that. He uses specifically the Old Testament and one particular chapte chapter, 1 samuel chapter 8 that i want to talk about a bit. You might remember 1 samuel chapter 8. The prophet samuel was getting a little old, the people start to think about new leadership and in so doing they come to samuel and they say, hey, your sons arent all that impressive, how about you give us a king so that we can be like other nations . Now just as an aside, if you read the hebrew bible, any time the people want to be like the other nations, thats not a good thing. So hes wrestling with this and he asks god and god says all right, give them a king but in so doing know theyre not just rejecting you, theyre rejecting me as they have done since i led them out of egypt. So god gave them a king not because it was a good thing to do but because they wanted it and they demanded it but in so doing samuel argues that the king is going to oppress you, well, god tells samuel to tell them how a king is going to oppress them, a king is going to be terrible to them and theyll be sorry they ever asked for a king. Well, to. Mass paine pull this is out and he uses it as an argument against the king, an argument for independence to say that its not just that a new king will help, any king is bad. We need to turn against all kings, monarchy is not the way to go. And this draws on the position that the professor was talking about of hebraic republicism. Later paine says bad things about the hebrew bible, he says the Old Testament is more of a word of demon than the word of god. Which is pretty bad. John adams, when he encountered paine and had a conversation about drawing on the Old Testament paine says i got that from milton. So this is an argument about how the bible was influential in various ways regardless of whether or not the people quoting it believed that the bible was the revealed word of god in a specific way. This is a quote from gordon wood, the most imminent american historians specifically in the revolutionary era. He says it was the clergy who made the revolution meaningful for most Common People because for every gentleman who read a scholarly pamphlet and devilled into whig and ancient history for an exclan mission plainatio there were dozens of ordinary people who read the bible and looked to mare ministers for an interpretation of what the revolution meant. So the bible was part of the symboli symbolism, part of the narrative. If anyone owned a book and this is the case for the 19th century as well in their families, if they only owned one book it was probably the bible. So talking about the bible as used to wage war or by patriots. But in so doing, in using the bible to wage any war they had to overcome certain obstacles. Because the bible wasnt just a militant violent document, theres a lot in the bible that speaks against violence so arguing to take the bible to war one had to overcome a few obstacles. One is that pacifist text seem to exit in scripture. Theres the decalog, theres the sermon on the Mount Matthews 57 where jesus says turn the other cheek, love your neighbor as yourself. So the idea that nonresistance to evil as part of scripture is true, too. So its not just the bible is this militant text. A lot of christians because of their faith and love for neighbor resisted going to war. One of the most prominent historian s has argued that trying to get christians to kill for their country was harder than trying to get them to die for their country. The argument was that christians have all along typically had this sense of selfsacrifice. But to get someone to take up arms and kill, that was the harder courage. That was the harder obstacle to overcome for a lot of people in the civil war era. And thats the same case in the revolutionary war era. Same kind of situation and there was the fact that there were a lot of loyalists who knew how to quote scripture really well, including those methodists. They knew scripture pretty well and they were for the most part like john wesley, loyalists. They were english. So i want to talk about a couple frameworks or kinds of ways to frame the way people looked at the bible in the revolutionary period. As i argue, many colonists could not assess their wars without assessing scripture. Ill talk about that in second. When people were dealing with going to war, dealing with a new kind of nation, they naturally appealed to scripture because scripture was not only the in order in all of life for many people but it was also a consoling text. People went to scripture in all kinds of trial, the death of a loved one, any kind of crisis so it was natural that people going to war or thinking about war would appeal to scripture. And they could not comprehend scripture without referencing war. And by that i mean as they read scripture they came to and many of them were very, very proficient at scripture, they saw that there was a lot of war in the bible. There was a lot of conflict in the bible in various kinds of ways and just outright wars. So a Biblical Society knew that the bible was full of war and they understood this. A couple of frame works that they also took with them, one is republicism. And we talked about this already today but republicanism is respect for republics as pivotal models for politics. When you look around at the architecture of washington, d. C. , do you notice a certain neoclassical influence . Its subtle but you can see it. Well this republican ideology, this idea that these ancient republics valued virtue and liberty. That virtue and liberty came together as we talked about that. Without virtue, liberty just dies, it doesnt exist and vice and tyranny go together. That governments, like people, are falliben and prone to corruption, especially when you have too much power involved. So they found republican ideas throughout scripture. I mean, the Old Testament covenants, think about in the Old Testament when a king comes forward, good kings and bad things are fairly easy to identify, the good the kings that do good things usually prosper, the kings that do bad things usually dont prosper and thats the case with other figures so you could see how that would fit very well in a republican world view. Another idea in addition to republicanism is martyrdom. One of the most popular books that protestants read was fox as book of martyrs or acts and monuments. Dont try to download this on the kindle because it will crash your system. It has too many images in its. Its a group of narratives of martyrdom, specifically martyrdom of catholics have imposed on protestants earlier on in the reign of queen mary. So it itself brings together this value that christianity is worth dying for. That this idea of sacrifice is something thats valued. About pretty soon you see that colonial americans have a martyr complex. They see martyrdom everywhere. The idea comes across through the war when you see in washington soldiers in the continental army, preachers interpret their deaths as their dying as martyrs for their country. We see this through the civil war. Wartime death is seen as martyrdom so this idea of martyrdom is pretty critical. Now this one i saw every, just everywhere. Saturated the document, saturated the sermons and thats this concept of military and spiritual warfare. As i said, when people look to the bible they found war and conflict everywhere. The bible was a book of war. But it wasnt just a book of military warfare. They saw spirituality as a warfare. Do any of you remember seeing anything like that in scripture even in the new testament that spirituality is a war between good and evil, a war in the soul, a constant conflict within us, good versus evil going on. This kind of spiritual warfare and military warfare merged in some of these sermons especially where people saw that spirituality and military in military patriotism, military courage went hand in hand. Another aspect of this had to do with means. Means. The means of waging war. Now when declaring war if people believe god is on their side, there could be a tendency to kind of well, do we really need to fight . Do we all really need to join . Do we really need to battle . If god is on our side, it will turn out. Preachers would preach against that say iing you wouldnt say your Spiritual Life if god loves me i dont have to pray. We always have to use means. God gives us the means to wage warfare. God gives us the means to wage spiritual warfare like scripture against satan, god gives us the means to wage military warfare through the best of weaponry and courage so we shouldnt depend on god to do it all. You should use the means that god provides us in this spiritual and military warfare. Theres also a sense that especially ministers in the revolutionary period tend to think that some believe that christians again, some christians shouldnt go to war or if they do go to war they wont be the best soldiers. So there was a real argument that christians are the beth soldiers, that if youre really a christian youll be the best military soldier ever. So i got a quote that might help. This is from a minister in massachusetts 1771 which is not yet the American Revolution. But still, you know, its kind of in the era. I would not intimate that every good christian is of consequence a good soldier, an accomplished man of war, but this i will venture to say, there cannot be a good soldier, an accomplished man of war, destitute of the principle and practice of christianity. I want to talk about a biblical character here that seemed to exemplify that and thats david. David was just fascinating in so many different ways. I mean, think about the story of david. David had it all. What did he not have . He was handsome. He was strong. He was courageous. I mean, you know, as a child it was one of my favorite biblical texts where david slays goliath with a slingshot. I had a slingshot. So who could have any problem with david. He was amazing. He had it all going on. I mean, this is and heres a of many sermons that talk about david, heres one from the prerevolutionary period talking about david as a man after gods own heart. David was a man after gods heart yet he was a man of war. Skilled in the bloody art and furnished above the common standard with the qualifications of war. In this art, terrible as it is, he informs us that he was taught of god. So david was both spiritual and a courageous warrior. I mean, he could go write a psalm about spirituality and the depth of his relationship with god and go into slay 100 philistines. He was just this fascinating hero of the scriptures. And he kind of brings together heroism and spirituality together. But david was also interesting in another way think again about the republican world view of the revolutionary era. Think again about the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The need for balance of powers. And then lets think of the david story. Again, david had it all, david was mighty in faith and mighty with the sword, david was a military leader, a great king. I mean, if anyone could be the perfect king it would be david. And yet when david became king what happened . There was the incident with bathsheba, the incident with uriah. He gets all this power and before you know it hes staying back from the war and committing adultery with bathsheba and having her husband murdered. Could you find a better republican argument that absolute power corrupts absolutely . I mean, being giving someone too much power will corrupt that person no matter who they are, even david was corruptible if given too much power. Now i want to talk about some specific biblical texts. And this is one, i must confess, that i do not know about growing up. This is a story that i did republican but just vaguely. Its a story in the book of judges specifically about a judge named deborah and the verse that gets quoted over and over again in various contexts in revivalistic contexts, preaching for revival, in war context, especially in war contexts, is the courage of moraz. Curse ye said the angel of the lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof because they come not to the help of the lord against the mighty. Okay, lets bring that down a little bit. First of all, where was moraz . I asked a colleague . He said we have no idea. And they didnt know that much in the revolutionary period but they know deborah issued this curse from god because the people of moraz, wherever they were, would not fight for god against the caninites. Would not join in the fight. But one person who did was jael. She was the one who fought for israel by slaying a sisera, an army general for the canaanites. She took a tent peg and grovedrt through his skull. And in doing so she exemplified courage. This played fairly well in the revolutionary period. Preachers picked up on this and connected deborah and jael as two women who would fight. Who were mighty in battle. So the curse of moraz was the most cited biblical verse for over 100 years, from the king Phill Phillips war to the American Revolution, over 100 years. And heres another one, by the way, that got a good bit of play. This is from jeremiah. Cursed be he that dodoeth the wk of the lord deceitfully and curseth he who hold back from doing the work of thespecifical about peter and paul a little bit. Among the various texts in wartime, there was a lot of Old Testament narrative and we can make that makes sense because theres a lot of war in the oldestment. Old testament. Theres a lot of battles, a lot of armies. And in so doing, people drew upon these texts over and over and over. They had something ripe for the pickings. But pacifists tended to point that out and not only pacifists but those particularly opposed to a certain war and they would say, well, sure you can find a lot of war in the hebrew bible or theOld Testament, but what about the new testament . And this is the case in the civil war, i find. How relevant is war for the new testament . So there were several ways in which people who wanted to argue against war could make that move, and one weve mentioned is the sermon on the mount where jesus says turn the other cheek. Someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other, which seems to be nonresistance, could be read as pacifism. That gets quoted over and over and because it gets quoted so much its one of the top ten cited tasks in the revolutionary era. So those who wanted to support war had a burden of proof to overcome so they often cited that text to argue against it just as they cited thou shall not kill. But it was most profitable for them to show how the new testament also spoke about war. And they did this in a few different ways. One way had to do with the book of revelation now you probably knew i was going to mention the book of revelation. If youve read anything about the colonial era and war, often times people speak of millennialism and many times millennial ideas come out of the book of revelation but not just the book of revelation. So many people see this millennial ideology because the book of revelation is fairly war like. If youve read it lately, theres a lot of fighting there, theres a lot of evil beings to fight and a lot of symbolism that is quite violent throughout. So sometimes ministers would point to the book of revelation as a new testament text that endorses war and specifically they would look at revelation chapter 19 where jesus rides in as a warlike figure. So even jesus goes to war in the book of revelation. So the book of revelation is a key text. But even more prominent were texts from peter and paul. Because the idea being, you know, would the apostles support war . What would they do about going to war . And specifically were peter and paul, the great apostles, would they side with the loyalists or would they side with the patriots . And there was a lot of ink spilled over that question. So i want to read you a couple of texts and well just read these texts and lets just see which side they tend to fall down on. Loyalist or patriot . Lets start with peter. Pet peter, 1 peter chapter 2. 1317. This is a part of that. Submit yourselves to every ordnance of man for the lords sake. As free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness but as servants of god honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear god, honor the king. Well, how night go . Heres one from paul which is the most cited text in the revolutionary era. Romans chapter 13. And let me say it gets a lot of play in the civil war as well. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of god, the powers that be are ordained of god. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordnance of god and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation, for he is the minister of god to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is the minister of god, a revenger to execute wrath on him that doeth evil. So obey the king, obey the higher powers because they are ministers of god, they represent god. Some of the loyalists like these texts quite a bit. Among those were methodists like john wesley and John Fletcher and other anglican ministers like Charles Inglis before the revolution and during the revolution. You can see why. Peter is saying fear god under the king, to oppose the king is to oppose god. That the king is the revenger of god. The king does the work of god. And going back specifically one more part of that text, i want to say that i want to use this as free it talks about freedom and liberty because one of the things that the loyalists were arguing was that patriots are using the terminology of libb eerty in th wrong way. And the quote is as free and not using the cloak of liberty for maliciousness. Not misunderstanding your liberty. That almost seems tailor made for the loyalists. So the loyalist argument is this, lets read these texts from the apostles and lets consider the political situation. The political situation was they were under the control of the roman empire and being under the control of the roman empire they had to deal with jews, they had to deal with their own churches and they had to deal with the fact that the roman empire controlled everything. And as was typical in many cases, a lot of people tended to blame the jews. Theres a lot of antijewish rhetoric. And in the colonial period, some preachers, including some loyalists were saying well, the problem was that the jews were stirring up a lot of problems, the jews were stirring up insurrections. And paul and peter were really worried that the christians would cause problems, too, that they would join in these insurrections and become these radicals in politics and just and start all these wars and all these things. So the problem was that christians were getting a bad reputation. People were thinking they were disloyal so peter and paul commanded them to obey the roman government. That they commanded them to be good citizens, join in the government. Now, lets thing about the roman government for a second. What would what was the roman government doing in regard to christians . They specifically were thinking about emperor nero and emperors persecuting christians so they point out, some of these preachers say, look how tyrannical the roman government was, much worse than king george iii. Say what you want about king george iii but hes not killing christians. You cant say as much for nero. Nero tormented, he executed christians. And yet even though they were living under a hostile roman government including roman emperors who were killing christians, persecuting christians, peter and paul say fear god, honor the king. Peter and paul still say that the king is the minister to all, the minister of god, a revenger on those who do evil. So the message some of these loyalists said was obey all rulers, even the bad ones. Respect authority because god put them in authority for a reason. So what you call patriotism is really just ambition. Its selfishness in disguise and all patriotic revolts do is create more violence. Now what about the patriotic argument . What are the patriots going to do with texts like fear god and honor the king . What are the patriots going to do with texts that say that the Civil Authority are the revengers of god on wrongdoers, obey them just as if youre obeying god . What can you do with that . Is there anywhere you can go with that . Well, of course. Lets see. Jonathan mayhew, long before the revolution concerning unlimited submission. That title is really helpful. And people like john adams cousins use this text and many, many others. And lets thing about their argument. They say look again at the historical context. Peter and paul, what they were really doing was making general statements about respecting authori authority. Submission didnt mean unlimited submission to any king or any authority. The problem with saying that they were endorsing unlimited submission to any king, there are too many biblical are too many biblical texts that show people of god disobeying kings, revolting against kings. Anybody remember exodus . Anybody remember darius and daniel . They were bad kings. And the people of god did not have to just take it from any bad king, so it couldnt have been about unlimited submission to any king. Lets look at pauls situation. Paul specifically writing to the romans. He was dealing with christians who were just taking a little too literally the idea that christs kingdom is not of this world. Sometimes christians take that a little too literally. Not of this world doesnt mean this world is gone. It means you still have to live in the world but live in a different way. So paul is saying, the key to understand this is one specific verse, one specific section of a verse that people tend to overlook, and that is, paul said that the rurler was the ministe to god for thee for good. So if the ruler is not acting in the peoples best interests, in the ruler is not gods minister for the peoples good then christians should resist, christians should rebel against that minister against that king. Part of this then means, the patriots said, we have to have some common sense when it comes to approaching scriptures. These commands fear god, honoring the king, theyre basic commands that deal with authority. Its like the bible tells children to obey parents, but does that mean the bible would want children to obey a parent who throws a mad fit and tries to cut all of this childrens throats . That was from mayhew. Speeches could be more interesting back then with all the graphic details. The idea then is respect the king but based on how the king performs his duties and not just because the king is the king. So evaluate leadership. So what the patriots are arguing. Against the loyalists is really youre just proof texting without understanding the true context. You have to read the true context to understand it. But what it really becomes is an argument over what that context is. The loyalists have a view, the patriots have a view of what that context is overall. So some conclusions on this. The revolution, its arguable, was the most important event in American History. The revolution, i mean, it creates the nation, sets the nation in motion, and the revolution becomes a like a we still think the revolution becomes an enduring symbol of what the nation is all about, fighting for liberty. There are many different ways in which fighting for liberty takes itself, manifests itself. Even in the civil war, the revolutionary period is almost like a biblical text of its own because both the confederates and the unionists are arguing that they are the ones who are best following in the footsteps of the revolutionary patriots. So we can seriously make this case that the American Revolution was the most pivotal event in American History. And the bible was arguably the most influential book in the revolutionary period. Its the book that the most people knew about. The book that the most people read. The book that most people honored as authority. Now, there are some differences in the way that people read the bible then and the way that people read the bible now. When people read the bible then, they this was before a lot of higher criticism arguments over different ways of reading the bible, from historical perspectives and other perspectives. More or less when people read the bible, they read the bible as it was and pretty much took it as it was. Thats not to say that there werent skeptics on the bible. Certainly some of the founders and others in the enlightenment area were skeptical about particular views on the bible. There was some biblical skepticism. From my study, i believe that biblical skepticism did in no way interfere with biblical patriotism. Some of the same people who were rather skeptical about scripture as authoritative, as the word of god, as completely true, always used and understood scripture to make claims about patriotism, loyalty, sacrifice, morality. So regardless of any kind of skeptical views of scripture as revelation, scripture was still politically significant. So, through the revolution then colonists became patriotically american, and so did the bible. One of the things that i find reading through, especially into the 19th century. It really would have helped if i would have written the civil war book first and i would have understood the revolution better. But i had to write the revolution book to understand the civil war. We should probably have to go back and rewrite our books. But one of the things that i see over and over through the civil war from both sides in honoring the patriots and honoring the revolution, horni revolution honoring scripture goes hand in hand. As part of that, there is this sense that the bible itself is the nations book. That the bible is that the nation itself has a biblical kind of ora around it. Thats a biblical nation, although they disagree radically over what that means. But it did when i say that the bible became patriotically american, in many cases, people see it as a patriotic book, that the bible preaches patriotism. If the bible did preach patriotism or teach patriotism, its a militant patriotism. One of the things that we cannot ignore Going Forward is the militancy of scripture, and thats something we really have to come to terms with. One of my favorite sections of professor George Marsdens book on Jonathan Edwards he makes the comment Jonathan Edward is one of my other favorite interesting people to read, although i dont agree with everything he said and all the images he preached, but Jonathan Edwards lived in a world in the world that he lived in was very much the world like we see in lord of the rings and star wars. Just this idea that were in this kind of enchanted world and its good versus evil. That what we see in our daily life is not just what we see, there is more to it than that. There is good versus evil everywhere and were always in the midst of it. And its a very meaningful struggle. I think we have to remember that. I think that has to be part of that. Part of any understanding of this time and understanding of scripture because scriptures read in that kind of context. Thats where we get to military and spiritual warfare and the violent imagery there. And im not saying its good or bad, im just saying we have to think about it as certainly part of the tradition. I mean, look through your hymns in churches if you have a hymn book that is there in the pew and notice all the military that is militaristic. Its there. That leads us into conversations about religious violence. To the extent that thats still a conversation that we have to be a part of. We have to come to terms with how we view the militaristic images in scripture and which contexts should they be interpreted . There is also this just war and sacred war kind of question. Inevitability people ask, and the email correspondence ive received on this book that people asked, was the revolutionary war a just war or was the revolutionary war a holy war . Were they fighting a holy war or were they fighting a just war . And my answer is always yes. And by that i mean they lived in a world in which just war theory was prominent. Specifically, they believed that they were not to be fighting wars of vengeance, wars in which god sent them to war and they were just to annihilate everyone as kind of a band like in the Old Testament passages. They believed in just war theory and there were certain rules about going to war, so they argued specifically, many times revolutions would say were arguing for a just war. They would talk about war in just war terminology. At the same time, they couldnt help talking about a just war but could be a godly war because god was a good of justice. There is not really a stark division. I like another quote from George Marsden talking about just war theory, the problem with just war theory is theory, its too theoretical, it doesnt always deal with how people behave. I find that the case also in reading these texts on the bible and the American Revolution. Thank you. I really appreciate this. Its been a great opportunity. Thank you. [ applause ] cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. Today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events in washington, d. C. And around the country. Cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. Coming up on cspan3s American History tv. We continue our look at the bible and the founding of america. Up next, Baylor University professor thomas kidd talks about Benjamin Franklins faith and the role it played in his life. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up friday morning, the goldwater institutes starly coleman discusses right to try medications that would allow terminally ill patients to receive medications not approved by the fda. Heartland president and ceo talks about cpac tax reform, climate and Energy Policy and drug availability. And Vice President of the National EducationAssociation Becky pringle on the recent School Shooting and president trumps proposal to arm teachers and school staff to prevent shooting. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live friday morning at 7 00 eastern. Join the discussion. Next, a conversation about Benjamin Franklins faith. Baylor University History professor thomas kidd argued franklins skepticism to writings undermined his confidence in christian. This event was part of a symposium hosted by the museum of the bible in washington, d. C. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to museum of the bible. Im kay penniger and im the director of museum education. Were delighted you join us today for our february program speakers. Our program consists of three sessions fold