Cameron brings along Marshall
Foster to help him interpret the monument's symbolism. Foster is a popular
'historian' in these circles. I've listened to him lecture on numerous
occasions and find myself rarely agreeing with much of anything he says. Even
when gets something correct, it is framed in a misleading or manipulative
manner. History has a narrative to it, and it's amazing how it seems to
perfectly match the Theonomic Reconstructionist and Christo-American cultural
and political agenda.
Providence guides history, but
history isn't complete and unless God has specifically laid out a historical
narrative, which he hasn't for any nation in the New Testament but the
Church...it is a dangerous thing to impose one upon the annals of history.
History is messy and complicated and imposing these narratives (like God's hand
was on America) on history is a dangerous business, can be self-deceptive, have
a tendency to whitewash and mythologize, promote unbiblical pride and bigotry, and
can blind people to the evils their nation commits. Assyria was used by God in
Isaiah 10, but then Assyria was crushed and punished by God for her wickedness.
America and the Americanists would do well to take heed. They think of
themselves as a North American Israel...but how do they know they're not an
Egypt?
Suffice it to say, even if I were a Dominionist I would feel very uncomfortable with how Foster speaks about and interprets history. He makes wild assumptions, forces narratives onto past historical events, gets many facts just plain wrong, and engages in an endless stream of non sequiturs.***
They go through the monument
and explain all its meanings, what each statue represents, the surrounding words
and objects they hold. It's all well and good except that the monument itself
is an interpretation. Built by Freemasons in the late 19th century ,
the monument combines many subsequent ideologies and anachronistically attaches
them to the Mayflower Pilgrims. Cameron seems to make the common mistake of
confusing the Pilgrims with the Puritans.
The Puritans had no problem
with a state or Established Church. They simply wanted it to reflect their
theology rather than the 'middle of the road'/partially reformed position the
Church of England had taken with the Elizabethan Settlement. This and other
factors eventually led to the English Civil War in the 1640's, the beheading of
Charles I, and the controversial Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell.
Many Puritans actually returned
to Britain to engage in this war against the Stewarts...and in a subsequent
chapter of the conflict participated in the mass slaughter of the Irish who
like the American colonials a century or so later didn't appreciate tyranny and
tried to shed the yoke of British rule.
Apparently if we're to try and
read back 'freedom and democracy' into the Puritan narrative that didn't extend
to any people beyond themselves. They did not believe in freedom or democracy
when it came to the Irish, the Scots, Quakers, Baptists, or really anyone but themselves.
It's quite a stretch to suggest they believed these to be some kind of universal
values or truths they wished to uphold.
These same people came by the
thousands to America in the 1630's and overwhelmed the Pilgrim settlers which
arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. Theologically there were great similarities.
Both groups were Calvinistic and held to many of the same ideas.****
But there was a key difference.
The Pilgrims did not believe in a Church of England. They were Separatists.
They did not define the Church as being coextensive with a society, culture, or
nation. In fact the system which believed in this concept had persecuted them
and driven them out of England. Once in America they faced difficulties and
were not always consistent. Since they had unbelievers with them, their dream
of purity in a new land was immediately unrealistic.
Christian isolationism is not
only unbiblical, it is fictitious, Trappist monks being perhaps the only
exception, but of course being Roman Catholic monks they're not actually
Christian are they? I'm using Christian in the Biblical sense, not in the
grander loosely defined extra-Biblical sense Dominionists like Cameron are
forced to use in order to make their case.
Nevertheless, they wanted a
place where they could go and worship God, order their affairs the way they
wanted and to be left alone and free of persecution. The ideas of the City on
the Hill, the Redeemer Nation came with the Sacralistic Puritans who were
determined to make both England and the New Word extensions of God's Kingdom.
In American mythology, the
Puritan ideals of the City on a Hill, as well as other concepts (many from the
Enlightenment) regarding law and society were brought together and wrongly melded
to the symbolism of the persecuted and adventurous Pilgrims. The monument in
Plymouth is but one of many representing this powerful but frankly incorrect
and romanticised view of American history.
The Pilgrims are a powerful
symbol in American social iconography. Yet they represented the antithesis of
what America came to represent and certainly does today....power. Power is
about violence and force, bringing your will to bear on others. The state on a
simple level is the entity that is viewed as the legitimate wielder of this
violence. To retain legitimacy it must monopolize the legitimate use of
violence. When someone contends this or tries to break the monopoly...you have
rebellion, revolution, or civil war.
The American Colonial Rebellion
of 1776 was an attempt to take away the power of the king of England and place
it into the hands of colonists...colonists who had come from the Sacral context
of the 'Christian' West but had also combined the values of Scripture with many
worldly ideas concerning 'rights' the 'state', 'law' and 'society'.
Often these ideas are
anachronistically read back into the past and the monument represents this,
confusing later Americanisms with 17th Calvinistic Separatism. This
comes in a host of forms, the most extreme and frankly ridiculous suggesting
Old Testament Israel was also a representative republic...just like America!
Watchwords like freedom are
often applied to the earlier generations, but often they did not mean the same
thing by it. Historically Fischer's work 'Albion's Seed' demonstrates how the
various segments of colonial society all had very different concepts of law and
liberty. These terms didn't mean the same thing to each group. Puritans,
Quakers, Ulster-Scots, and the folk of the Tidewater all had very different
notions of freedom. Nor does the term mean the same today, where it is often
interpreted as license. So historically to just take a word like 'freedom' and place
it on the past is a path to certain error.
This happens all the more when
these modern political and politicized words and definitions are then read back
into Scripture.
A poignant example of this is
when the terms liberty and freedom are read in the Bible. For Americans these
words have strong connotations and we bring this baggage with us when we read
the same words in the Scripture. Sadly, the United States is riddled with many
such monuments which actually twist the words of Scripture. The Liberty Bell
employs Leviticus 25 in this way by using liberty in a sense more familiar to
John Locke than to Moses. Leviticus 25 was not applicable to 18th
century Pennsylvania, nor 21st century America. The 'land' and the
jubilee are pictures of Redemption and the work of Christ...it's blasphemous
for a modern nation state to appropriate these concepts and degrade them by
treating them as 'common' and ordinary and somehow applicable to their man-made
constructs and experiments.
To use Scripture in this way as
many plaques and politicians do is actually quite dangerous and misleading. It
ought not to be celebrated. Christians bemoan its practice when someone like
Bill Clinton does it, but they praised George Bush's attempts.
This is so important I wish to
re-emphasize this....
Bible verses which are really
referencing the history of salvation and thus Jesus Christ should not be
applied to a society or nation. It should gravely concern Christians when this
is done, because it is a wrong use and interpretation of Scripture, it confuses
the meaning of the text, and I hope it is easily seen there is a real danger of
idolatry hidden in this method. Redemptive/Salvation categories are now tied to
a nationalist narrative. When this happens...watch out! A nation's sin and
shame will suddenly become its glory and adoration.
Rather than Biblical
Christianity which certainly would be Cameron's stated goal, we end up with a
hybrid religion, one I often call Christo-Americanism. Like medieval Catholicism,
or even modern Theological Liberalism, it looks Christian, uses the same
lexicon, many of the same symbols but it is really an idol, a false religion
with another gospel.
*** A non sequitur is a
conclusion that 'does not follow'...that is the argument made does not lead to
the conclusion put forward. This happens all the time in historical
interpretation, theology and especially in modern debate on the news etc...
People make the case, develop
the argument and then come up with a conclusion...but it doesn't add up. The
argument either didn't lead to the conclusion, or their conclusion goes way
beyond the facts they provided.
**** Full disclosure on my
part. Lest anyone thinks I just engage in arbitrary American criticism. My own
ancestors were both on the Mayflower and in Massachusetts Bay. Samuel Stone was
one of my ancestors and I'm also a descendant of a survivor of the Deerfield
Massacre and veterans of the Pequot War. I'm not boasting as it should be plain
I take no pride in these events. All I'm saying is that my own family story is
tied in with all of this.