A Humble Revolution

As we begin to celebrate the country’s semiquincentennial, let’s remember it could have turned out far differently. 

“Now the onely way to avoyde this shipwracke, and to provide for our posterity, is to followe the counsell of Micah, to doe justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, wee must be knitt together, in this worke, as one man” — John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” 1630

“Last night Nassau Hall was grandly illuminated, and INDEPENDANCY proclaimed under a triple volley of musketry, and universal acclamation for the prosperity of the UNITED STATES. The ceremony was conducted with the greatest decorum.” — The Pennsylvania Packet, July 15, 1776.

Pravity

In November of 1620, a group of forty-one men signed a document in which they swore to “solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant, and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick.” Their aim? To set foot upon new soil and for “the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith, and honor of our King and country…plant the first Colony in the Northern parts of Virginia.” This, I’m sure the reader knows, was the Mayflower Compact, that great statement of “Pilgrims’ pride” of which schoolchildren (used to) sing.

By Thanksgiving of 1621, half of those men would be dead, taken by malnutrition, disease, and weather. Yet their signatures and their promise lived on. The country later born of that initial covenant would have to confront the nature of such a promise. Would this collection of people be unique in their mission? Would their collective efforts be held especially accountable in the eyes of God? Would they rise to be among the greatest nations ever built, or would they be destroyed by the same hand whose guidance they sought? 

A decade after the Pilgrims arrived, another man aboard another ship delivered what would become the most lasting meditation on America’s purpose: John Winthrop and his lay sermon “A Modell of Christian Charity.” Like many documents of that period, the sermon’s authorship is contested. Winthrop, a lawyer by trade, was not trained to deliver such a discourse. Some scholars believe it may have been written by another man aboard the Arbella, and some even believe it was possibly given on the English mainland. Regardless, Winthrop’s authorship provides the greatest credibility. He would soon become the multi-time governor of the colony, and the words in the sermon reflect the meditations of a man about to embark upon a political, and not exclusively theological, undertaking.

As is also the case with many old documents, its message has been filtered through decades and centuries of quotation, appropriation, and interpolation. In his farewell address, Ronald Reagan famously invoked Winthrop, describing the country as “a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.” His infectious optimism colored our current view of the sermon. However, Winthrop’s musings were of lesser pride.

The discourse finds inequality as its main theme. “God Almighty, in His most holy and wise providence,” Winthrop says, “hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission.” He discusses the various ways in which the church can account for and remedy the effects of such inequality. In particular, he notes, the English settlers in America find themselves the beneficiaries of such an inequality. “We are entered into covenant with Him for this work,” Winthrop continues, and “if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it.” Promise begs performance, and the English were entering the period in which they would prove themselves worthy of such a promise.

In their distinction among peoples, the settlers were made a “city upon a hill.” Yet, in the never-quoted next sentence, Winthrop warns that “[t]he eyes of all people are upon us,” and “if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the World.” As he says earlier in the sermon, it is Christ “by whom all the body [is] knit together by every joint for the furniture thereof, according to the effectual power which is in the measure of every perfection of parts.” And, as Paul says in Romans 11:36, “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever.” In a world defined by depravity, the only blessings can come from God’s hands. It is through the worst things that God works. Before Abraham Lincoln’s famous trinity “of the people, by the people, for the people,” early Americans considered another. 

Providence

Given this century and a half of American settlement before the “Founding”, it’s a peculiar thing to date our country to a document, and an even stranger one to have a declaration as a national birth certificate. We seem to arrive through annunciation, not nativity; through word, not flesh.

Perhaps it’s not that surprising after all. Revolutionary Americans — among the most literate people on earth — created and devoured the written word with unparalleled appetite. Pamphlets flew faster than bullets. Writers conducted broadsides with broadsides. Wits proved sharper than bayonets. It’s thus fitting and proper that we wrote ourselves into existence.

But the promises of ink required ratification in blood. And, as we’ve also been taught — hopefully — at some point in history class, the Declaration of Independence was merely that. We remember for a reason the names of Trenton, Princeton, Valley Forge, Saratoga, and Yorktown. We honor the dead, and we recount the lives of the living. Years of sacrifice paved the path from ‘76 to ‘83.

Thus exists a tension in our historical memory about the Revolution. As with any past event, we can only know it from the other side. As a history professor of mine once liked to say, “History is lived forwards but written backwards.” It seems truistic, but in its simplicity lies profound, and often overlooked, wisdom. Historical happenings can often seem to us preordained. Events happened because they happened. “Ought” and “was” collapse into each other, and we explore events like shipwrecks: floating over fallen masts, sneaking through sunken rooms, retrieving decayed artifacts, and lost bullion. The fragments slowly come together, but they can never recapture the full image: the shriek of the wind, the screams of the sailors, the bitter salt of the water. We forget that the “was” of a historical event always began as an “is,” and the “is” once rested on the hopes of an “if.”. 

 We, in the present, justify the Founding through retrospect. Of course they were right, because, of course, they won. The Declaration’s “course of human events” makes room for itself, explaining the country’s reasons for its separation from the mother country. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he continues — and the rest, to use the cliché, “is history.” Yet we gained our Independence through force of arms, not through the mere truth of revolutionary assertion. The truth, we like to believe, was simply vindicated by victory, not created by it. 

Upon closer inspection, though, this notion stumbles. This tension is one between providence and contingency. Though the conflict had a hoped-for outcome, and though the revolutionary generation had faith it would be achieved, such a goal still required struggle. Many of the Founders, though professing faith in divine guidance, did not profess to assume the inevitable victory of their cause.

Perhaps the greatest example was College of New Jersey President John Witherspoon, who anchored the Congress with a characteristic, Calvinistic humility. Yet his chief oratorical achievement was not a speech delivered to Congress; it was a sermon delivered to his congregation in Princeton. On May 17, 1776, just weeks before he’d journey west to Philadelphia, he spoke what would become to posterity his most famous words: 

“There is not a greater evidence either of the reality or the power of religion,” Witherspoon begins, “than a firm belief of God’s universal presence, and a constant attention to the influence and operation of his providence.” But, he later adds, “[n]othing can be more absolutely necessary to true religion, than a clear and full conviction of the sinfulness of our nature and state.” The potential for glory and the predisposition for sin pull at once against the other. Freedom carries with it the potential for error, and, in a more theological sense, sin.

To Jefferson’s credit, he punctuates the list of grievances with the humbleness of the country’s plea. “In every stage of these Oppressions,” it reads, “We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” In past grievances, the colonies had appealed to the king’s reason, attempting to persuade him — and his parliament — to loosen the restrictions on their economic activity. 

The Declaration is, in this way, a list of political sins, numbering the ways in which the King of England — “Defender of the Faith,” as he is described in the Mayflower Compact — had failed to provide for the common good of his people. It is an indictment against the Crown and a bill of separation from its authority. In breaking from their earthly sovereign, the Founders appealed to the highest sovereign. Witherspoon himself says, “there is often a discernible mixture of sovereignty and righteousness in providential dispensations.” Though God, to Witherspoon, is in complete control of any outcome, he will not allow injustice full victory, and he ultimately will, through his will, “promote[] the good of his chosen.”

It still remained to be seen, however, if the American people were such a chosen people. They could be wrong, and they could fail in their revolutionary enterprise. Thus, they submit their case “to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” and “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence…mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honor.” In these final lines — absent in Jefferson’s original draft — the American Founders place their cause in the hands of God. Though Witherspoon likely had no hand in drafting these appeals to providence, he was surely delighted by their inclusion. 

Later in his sermon, Witherspoon says the American people are entering a “season of public judgment.” “Have you assembled together willingly,” he asks, “to hear what shall be said on public affairs, and to join in imploring the blessing of God on the counsels and arms of the united colonies, and can you be unconcerned, what shall become of you for ever, when all the monuments of human greatness shall be laid in ashes, for “‘the earth itself and all the works that are therein shall be burnt up.’” 

“[W]e are now,” he exclaims, “but putting on the harness and entering upon an important contest, the length of which it is impossible to foresee, and the issue of which it will perhaps be thought presumption to foretell.” He certainly believes the American cause to be righteous. It is, to him, both reflective of God’s justice and protective of the American people’s right to pursue His goodness. But, he argues, it would be “presumption” to assume their final triumph and folly to forget their inevitable death. Though only a few shots had been fired, and though victory was years away, Witherspoon begged his hearers to cast their eyes upon the country’s end, when any acts of national greatness would be swept away. Before the country was even born, he contemplated its death and oblivion.

Progress

Yet, months after delivering this sermon and weeks after the Declaration had been approved, Witherspoon tempered this talk of death. On July 30, 1776, he spoke in support of the proposed Articles of Confederation, stressing the necessity of union in the face of protracted conflict. In his opposition to the plan’s critics, we find Witherspoon at perhaps his most optimistic: 

“There is one thing that has been thrown out, by which some seem to persuade themselves of,” Witherspoon says, “that from the nature of men, it is to be expected that a time must come when it will be dissolved and broken in pieces.” He admits that he is “none of those who either deny or conceal the depravity of human nature,” but he rejects the nihilism which could accompany this view. “Shall we establish nothing good, because we know it cannot be eternal?” he asks. “Shall we live without government, because every constitution has its old age, and its period? Because we know that we shall die, shall we take no pains to preserve or lengthen out life?”

He then offers what he says is, admittedly, a “visionary and romantic” thought. Departing from talk of depravity and providence, Witherspoon speaks, strangely, of progress: “I do expect, Mr. President, a progress, as in every other human art, so in the order and perfection of human society, greater than we have yet seen; and why should we be wanting to ourselves in urging it forward?” In the United States, he sees the same opportunity that the early settlers had seen in their nascent colonies. Yet, on the other side of the Enlightenment, he finds evidence of human progress, seeing a natural improvement of human conditions, institutions, and attitudes.

“There have been great improvements,” he continues, “not only in human knowledge, but in human nature; the progress of which can be easily traced in history.” From there, he notes the rise of the “balance of power” system in Europe and its improvements upon global peace and stability. Applying this idea, both particularly to America and generally to the broader world, Witherspoon says, “It is not impossible, that in future times all the states on one quarter of the globe, may see it proper by some plan of union to perpetuate security and peace; and sure I am, a well planned confederacy among the states of America, may hand down the blessings of peace and public order to many generations.” 

In a 1778 “Address to the Natives of Scotland Residing in America,” Witherspoon boasts that their new home country “has had a progress in improvement and population so rapid, as no political calculators have been able to ascertain.” Unlike before, when nations and governments “were settled by caprice or accident, by the influence of prevailing parties or particular persons, or prescribed by a conqueror,” the Americans “have the experience of all ages, the history of human societies, and the well-known causes of prosperity and misery in other governments, to assist us in the choice” of a new and distinct system. 

Though he would not take part in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution nine years later, Witherspoon articulates thoughts similar to those expressed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 1. Through “reflection and choice,” the American people could make a government of, by, and for themselves.

In 1776, when Witherspoon concluded his speech in support of the Articles, he “hope[d], by the blessing of God upon our endeavours,” that a confederacy would be established between the new United States of America. We can imagine that he would have issued similar words at the Constitutional Convention. Even at his most “progressive,” Witherspoon still invoked divine guidance. When his faith in human advancement was at its greatest, his faith in God was even greater.

Pride

Apart from national concern, Witherspoon had his own personal need for faith in divine guidance. On October 4, 1777, his son James Witherspoon (‘73) was torn apart by a cannonball at the Battle of Germantown. Earlier that year, the college he had built into a revered colonial institution was ravaged by war. Later that year, the dwindling Continental Army would face its frigid crucible in Valley Forge. In mere months, the ecstasy of independence had met the bleak reality of war. Through the wrath of God, he predicted in “The Dominion of Providence,” His people would lean into their faith.

Out of Valley Forge emerged a story from this tradition. As the story goes, in the midst of disease and dissatisfaction, George Washington rode into the woods surrounding Valley Forge, dismounted his horse, and kneeled in the snow, praying to God for the deliverance of the Continental Army. The image would spawn countless depictions, many of which came during the height of the Second Great Awakening. Like many stories of Washington, it was likely a myth. Yet — as myth does — it reflected what the country thought of itself. In times of great challenge, the assumption was, the country would turn humbly to God for guidance. Its leaders would lead not from the saddle of a war horse; they would lead from bent knee.

Ultimately, as discussed, the Americans prevailed in the fight for independence. The promise of July 4th was vindicated, and the country earned Witherspoon’s promise of choosing for itself the structure of government best fit for its people. We now inherit that country and that government. We celebrate July 4th, and we will soon celebrate its 250th anniversary.

Yet we cannot presume future progress, lest we fall into what C.S. Lewis called “The Greatest Sin”: pride. Though the children’s song boasts of the “pilgrims’ pride” — and though Lee Greenwood says, resolutely, that he is “proud to be an American” — we must recover a humbler self-image. Instead of being proud, we must be grateful.

In the months and years to come, let’s live forward through our humble revolution. Instead of the pilgrims’ “pride,” let’s remember their promise, and let’s commit ourselves to fulfilling it in the eyes of He to whom it was made. Let’s recover a sense of historical contingency, appreciating that turns of historical fortune could just easily have been knells of national destruction. We must appreciate God’s providence, but we cannot assume, or wait idly for, His favor.

As Winthrop stated and as Witherspoon reaffirmed, our country stands as a great example, either of highest virtue or lowest vice. It is up to us to determine which of these we shall be.

 

Image Credit: The Battle of Princeton (1782), James Peale — Wikimedia Commons

 

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