Baptizing The Enlightenment
Stephen McDowell And
“America’s Providential History”

America’s Providential History, by Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell (Providence Foundation, 1989) provides a fascinating overview of American history from the Pilgrims to the Civil War.

America's Providential History does not read like the typical history book filled only with dry facts. The information is presented skillfully and with an obvious desire to edify its audience.

I especially enjoyed the chapter on “Providential Geography” and the way it was used to set the stage for the drama to come. There is also an excellent chapter outlining the Christian character of most of the state charters.

Regrettably, in spite of these admirable features, I cannot recommend America's Providential History. Although the text contains much useful information, it is flawed by the usual “Federalist” spin that Christian “pop-historians” almost always bring to the subject. Thus, it must be read with caution.

Baptizing
The Enlightenment

In rehearsing the flaws in “America’s Providential History” we run the risk of boring the reader with “vain repetition.” However, it is instructive to be aware of the manner in which contemporary Christian Federalists repackage the same shopworn fallacies in book after book.

Thus, by sheer repetition they have at length achieved a modicum of credibility in the eyes of their unsuspecting Christian readership. It is another example of the old maxim that if you repeat a fallacy long enough the world will eventually believe it.

For example, America's Providential History whitewashes the anarchical government established by Roger Williams in Rhode Island (p62). Known as “Rogue Island” by the other colonies, Rhode Island attracted all manner of social misfits and rebellious persons. This was because the founding documents granted “full liberty in religious concernments” with no covenant commitment to the law of God in the judicial system.

In the Introduction, the authors completely misread the worldview of the American founders. “…almost every one [of the founders] had a Biblical world-view,” claims Mr. McDowell, “Most of our founders were Christians.”

These assertions are simply not born out by the “Notes From the Federal Convention”, where the Founders never refer to the Bible for principles of civil government. The fact that many of them belonged to a church and may have used religious language from time to time is meaningless.

This faulty presupposition colors virtually everything in America’s Providential History from that point forward. For example, referring to George Washington, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, the authors state, “The Godly environment of the Awakening deeply affected and helped prepare them for their destiny.” This non-sequitor cannot be substantiated, particularly in the case of Jefferson who was a self-professed Unitarian and Epicurean.

Historical
Sleight-of-Hand

The chapter on “The Power Behind The American Republic” contains another prime example of the “historical sleight of hand” that Christian Federalists use to baptize the U.S. Constitution as a Christian document.

Article 6 deals with supremacy. In paragraph one it declares that the national government had supreme responsibility for debts. In paragraph two it declares the Constitution to “be the supreme law of the land,”… (p72)

That in itself is bad enough because it replaces the Bible with the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. The authors slide over that inconvenient truth and in the very next sentence manage to twist the Constitution’s secular oath requirement and denial of the religious test oath into a declaration that God is “supreme over both our laws and our leaders.”

”…but then in paragraph two it declares the Constitution to be supreme over both our laws and our leaders: “all…officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath…” taken, of course, with their hand on the Bible. The Framers of the Constitution wrote that the “definition of an oath is a solemn appeal to the Supreme Being, for the truth of what is said.”

The author of this quote is not named in the text. So we do not know if he was a member of the Constitutional Convention, or not.

The implication is that any reference to an oath is automatically an oath to the God of the Bible. However, at least 13 of the signers of the Constitution were Freemasons, an anti-Christian cult, well known for its pagan oaths and rituals.

That included George Washington, the President of the Convention, and Benjamin Franklin, who allegedly called the assembly back to God. How do we know that the “Supreme Being” referred to is not in this case the “Grand Architect” of the heretical Masonic religion? America's Providential History does not tell us.

Beyond that, the Constitution makes no reference to the oath being taken “with their hand on the Bible,” as the authors gratuitiously infer. On the contrary, the very next paragraph (3), emphatically forbids any oath to the God of the Bible for the holder of any office in the United States:

No religious test shall ever be required for any office or public trust under these United States.

Two pages later (p180), the author excuses this obvious reference to an individual’s oath of office by claiming it is referring to “disestablishment of favored denominations.” That is the logical fallacy of “definition” in which the definition of a key term – in this case “religious test” – is shifted within the context of the argument. The prohibition modifies the previous sentence, which refers to the oath requirement. It refers to a "religious test", not a "denominational test."

In the context of Article VI, the words "religious test" have nothing to do with church denominations. That is an interpretation imported to the text by those who want to deny its obvious meaning. Again, repeated so many times over the years that "everybody" believes it.

Superficial Arguments

Later in this same section, which is entitled “One Nation Under God,” two other “weighty” arguments are presented as proof that the Constitution is a Christian document. One is “Article I, Section 7, Paragraph 2, where the President has “Sundays excepted” for deciding on legislation.” The second is use of the phrase, “…in the year of our Lord 1787.”

These two superficial arguments are all the Christian Federalists can muster in defense of the Constitution as a Christian document and they are repeated over and over in their books. America's Providential History is part of that chorus. There is a term for this in the lexicon of informal fallacies: “trivial analogy.”

These shallow defenses serve as “red herrings” to divert attention from the Constitution’s fatal, anti-Christian flaws. By way of review, these include among others:

1. Substitution of “we the people” for God as the ordaining authority,
2. Forbidding the officeholder to swear allegiance to God,
3. Exclusion of the Bible as the Supreme Law of the Land, and
4. Assignment of “all legislative authority” to Congress rather than the law of Moses
5. First Amendment tolerance of non-Christian religions in violation of the 1st and 2nd Commandments.

Many brush this off with the excuse that "no document can protect us if the hearts of the people are not right, so let's focus on our church and family." Maybe so, but the assumption is that the document and the words it contains are unimportant or irrelevant. Remember that the written document represents the covenant that our leaders made (or in this case broke) with God.

God takes written covenants very seriously and unfortunately we cannot dismiss it so casually. God is very concerned about justice in society and the Constitution declares that justice in America is defined by the laws of man rather than the laws of God. No Christian should rest easy while this situation prevails.

It is an open question: Will God bless our efforts to reform the church and family, when the national covenant with Him is so flagrantly violated. Especially when Christians refer to the very act of covenant-breaking as our "Christian heritage" and call for a return to the "original intent" of our founders. This would be like devout Israelites calling for a return to the Golden Calves of Jeroboam when they fell into disrepair. How can God bless that?

The great Reformers Calvin and Knox were actively involved in reform of the civil government at the same time they focused on the church and family. We cannot claim to be their followers if we fail to give the same balanced attention to all of the institutions through which God exercises His rule of the culture.

The U.S. Cosntitution is far more than just an "imperfectly worded document." This seminal failure to recognize the anti-Christian nature of the United States Constitution, disqualifies “America’s Providential History” as a serious history text. For that reason we cannot recommend “America’s Providential History” for use in the Christian school curriculum.

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