The Light And The Glory
By Peter Marshall
From Egypt to the Wilderness

The church had just suffered through 50 years of media-imposed exile from the public square following the 1925 Scopes Trial. Most Christians were wandering in the cultural wilderness. “Cultural Egypt” might be a better way to put it. Almost to a man, they were totally oblivious to any biblical obligation they might have to civil government or the broader culture.

The only exception were those few who had been reading Francis Schaeffer’s cultural analyis. But most Christians dismissed Schaeffer as “the evangelist to the intellectuals” and chose not to engage.

The Light & the Glory was a clarion call for the church to awake and recapture her rightful inheritance. The book also tapped into simmering feelings of indignation that arose in the wake of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The church as an institution was slow to respond, but many of her members did.

“born-again” President Jimmy Carter was just beginning to show his true colors. Conservative Christians were poised like minute-men waiting for the call to arms. Peter Marshall and co-author David Manuel were there when we needed them, taking advantage of the notoriety surrounding Rev. Marshall’s famous father. Peter Marshall, Sr. had served as chaplain of the United States Senate for most of the previous generation.

A City Set On A Hill

The book unfolds in narrative fashion as the authors recount their quest in pursuit of our long-lost, Christian heritage. The story is fascinating because it reads like a treasure hunt in which our two researchers lurch from one newly discovered clue to another in pursuit of their goal. Sort of a literary forerunner to “National Treasure.”

Peter Marshall fully grasps the importance of covenant in the life of the Pilgrims and Puritans. He documents the Puritan vision that God would bless them as a “City set on a Hill” if they would only maintain their covenant with God and each other. The famous phrase is found in John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity” speech.

Seeds of Pluralism Planted

Peter Marshall faithfully reports the threat to the covenant posed by Roger Williams. His fixation on “Liberty of Conscience” threatened the peace and stability of the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony. The author interprets this to mean “Nobody is going to tell me what I should do or believe.” In the case of one stubborn elder’s wife, they quote the passage, “rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft”, to which she later succumbed

Rather than accept the verdict against him to return to England, Williams fled into the wilderness to found Rhode Island. There he was plagued by the same spirit of rebellion that he had displayed in Massachusetts. According to Peter Marshall “Providence now became a magnet for every crackpot, rebel, misfit, and independent on the Atlantic seaboard.”

Peter Marshall reports accurately the fateful decision of Thomas Hooker to leave the Bay Colony to establish a new colony under The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. Fateful because Hooker abandoned the religious qualification for one to be able to vote. That decision – together with Williams’ -- guaranteed the ultimate demise of the civil covenant under God in America.

The Declension

Part of the charm of this book is the authors’ tendency to fill in the narrative at key points, weaving it in with original source material. For example, “’Can you really be serious,’ we can image Winthrop saying to him [Thomas Hooker]one evening, seated by the hearth....” Thus, the book comes off as something between an historical narrative and historical fiction.

They develop their heroes more like a novel than an historical treatise, but do not hesitate to report on their failures. King Philip’s War, the Small Pox plagues, and the Salem Witch Trials are all interpreted as “God’s Controversy With New England” for her declension from the covenant.

A Sunburst of Light

Peter Marshall interprets the Great Awakening of the 1740s as the return to “a deep national desire for the covenant way of life.” This would “produce a new generation of clergymen who would help to prepare America to fight for her life.” To an extent this may be true, but at another level the Awakening attacked the covenant.

There were in fact pastors like Muhlenberg who recruited their congregations and led them into battle. The Revolutionary War was described as the “Presbyterian Revolt” in England.

A Destructive Fire

Nonetheless, the Awakening undermined the church. The itinerant preachers usually set up shop outside of town in the open field, making small effort to co-operate with local clergy. They saw the church as a stumbling block rather than a stepping stone, ignoring the passage that “repentance must begin with the household of God.”

From that day to this the role of the church has diminished in America. The church as an institution is seen as irrelevant to anything of real circumstance in our national life. This can be traced to the strain of individualism introduced by the revivals.

The Enlightenment

This spirit blended nicely with Enlightenment doctrines such as freedom of conscience, the individual rights of man, rationalism and natural law. Enlightenment currents stirred more gently in America than Europe, but they had an influence nonetheless, especially on the leadership.

Unfortunately, Peter Marshall does not recognize this influence, but rather sees the Revolutionary era as flowing out of the revivals alone. “They [the colonists] were beginning to discover a basic truth which would be a major foundation stone of God’s new nation, and which by 1776 would be declared self-evident: that in the eyes of their Creator, all men were of equal value.”

It is failure to discern this confluence of philosophical streams that plagues the modern church. Contemporary Christian Federalists are blind to the Enlightenment influence. They see the Declaration and Constitution only in terms of continuity with what had gone before. They fail to recognize the radical discontinuity lurking behind the mask of rhetoric.

Flight From Reality

It is at about this point in the book that Peter Marshall begins to take flight from reality. Contrary to Peter Marshall and other Christian Federalists The Declaration of Independence did not appeal to the Word of God to renew the national Covenant with God.

It was not a struggle to restore the governing authority of God, but rather a struggle to assert the rights of man, supposedly God-given, that had been violated. It is all about man, with God called in for the service of man and his alleged rights.

Ephesians 2 says man is "born dead in trespasses and sins" and as such doesn't have any claim on anything from God, least of all rights. Man at birth stands condemned before God with no rights whatsoever.

Man has responsibility to obey the law of God and when he does so a society of peace and harmony will result. This is because of the grace -- unmerited favor -- of God through Christ, but biblically man cannot claim anything as a right. This claim of rights comes from Enlightenment dogma.

It is not the glory and authority of God that is held up as the standard in the Declaration. Rather it is the offended rights of man that are to be avenged and secured.

The justification for independence was thus laid on a foundation of rationalism (self-evident truth) and social contract theory (consent of the governed). This is the Enlightenment -- Scottish right-wing Enlightenment to be sure -- but Enlightenment nonetheless.

In the culminating chapter, Peter Marshall fails to recognize this same spirit at work in the Constitutional Convention. Regrettably, he treads close to the line of Constitution worship when he states that it is “almost beyond the scope and dimension of human wisdom” (p343).

The author ignores the Constitution’s proscription that it is illegal to require an officeholder to swear to govern by the Bible (Article VI, Section 3). In the teeth of this covenant-breaking provision he draws an astonishing conclusion. The Constitution he declares “is nothing less than the institutional guardian of the Covenant Way of life for the nation as a whole.”

This is followed by several pages in which the instigators of this rebellion against God – Washington in particular -- are lifted up almost as demigods. The entire concluding chapter (ch. 18) is plagued by contradictions. Rev. Marshall struggles in vain to reconcile the inconsistency in his position.

By his own concession he undercuts his own thesis: First, he gushes, “The Constitution is the finest contract ever drawn by man for his own self-government.” Then in the very next sentence he confesses, “But as precious as the Constitution is, it is nonetheless a secularizing of the spiritual reality of the covenant. It can thus never be the substitute for a covenant life totally given to the Lord Jesus Christ” (p.348)

We can’t say it much better than that. We are left shaking our heads in amazement. With this single statement the paucity of the Christian Federalist position is laid bare.

It is admitted that the Constitution is secularized with no spiritual covenant reality, but is "precious" nonetheless. What else but unchecked patriotism could lead to such a conclusion?

When there’s a mist in the pulpit there is a fog in the pew. It is a deadly fog indeed. With respect to the national covenant with God, the American church wanders aimlessly in the wilderness, clinging to her Federalist guides. The promised land beckons, but no one can see it clearly.