The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
In 1630, a group of English Christians crossed the Atlantic Ocean, settling primarily in New England. They called themselves Puritans.
The Puritans were Congregationalist Calvinists. They believed, as did John Calvin, that God intended the church and state to be two sides of the same coin. That is, the laws of the state (the secular government) should be written, approved, and executed by the church. Theocracy was the notion that had governed England to one degree or another for many generations before the Puritans set sail for the New World, and they intended to create a theocracy in the newly adopted homeland. But it would be different from Anglican theocracy.
In 1785 Virginia wanted to tax all its residents to help pay the salaries of Christian teachers and preachers. James Madison warned against this idea, declaring such a measure to be a dangerous “experiment on our liberties.” Probably he was reacting to his knowledge of the American Puritan tradition.
When the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787, Madison was its primary author. The Bill of Rights was adopted four years later. The first statement in the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Founding Fathers wanted to make sure that there would be what Thomas Jefferson later called “a wall of separation between church and state.”
A hundred and fifty years after the Puritans arrived on these shores, the men (they were exclusively males) who voted the Constitution into existence wanted to avert the injustices caused by religion which had occurred in Europe and Britain, where often there was no separation of church and state. Specifically, they wanted to avoid the extreme restrictions that were put into effect in puritanical New England and elsewhere in the colonies in the earliest days of America.
In two 2022 decisions, the Supreme Court of the United States turned the American calendar back four hundred years. First, by means of a less sweeping judgment, they concluded that local governments in areas of the U.S. where there are no public schools are obligated to give tax funds to support tuition grants to parents for religious schools as well as grants which go to parents whose children attend other private schools.
This case arose in Maine, where over half the school districts have no public high schools. Five years ago the Court had said that if grants were made to any public preschools for playgrounds, they also must be made to both secular and religious preschools as well. In 2020 SCOTUS said that if local or state governments give aid to private schools, they must also provide it for religious schools.
A far more egregious assault on the separation of church and state came in the Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision from fifty years ago which granted women the right to an abortion under certain specific guidelines. The Roe decision said that the Constitution guaranteed that every female citizen could choose to have an abortion within the limits outlined by the laws of the various states.
In effect, SCOTUS decreed that no federal law can exist which allows women the freedom to abort a fetus. Only state legislatures can write the laws which govern abortions. The Constitution was intentionally written to give the states more power than the federal government. Thus state legislatures have been given authority to determine the legality and the ethics of abortion, and the Court backed away from making any federal legal pronouncements on the issue at all.
The status of the “personhood” of fetuses cannot justly be decided by legislation at any level of government, whether local, state, or national. Different people have different beliefs regarding this question. Some believe that a fetus becomes a person at the moment of conception. Others say fetal personhood begins at three or four months of gestation, others say it comes into play at the earliest time the fetus can live on its own, usually around twenty-four weeks. Still others say a fetus becomes a person only at the moment of birth. These are not legal opinions. They are moral opinions.
Most right-to-life advocates have a strong religious affiliation, and most of those affiliations are either Roman Catholic, evangelical, or fundamentalist. Everyone is free to believe whatever they choose about the important question of abortion, but it is almost exclusively those of a puritanical persuasion who strongly or inflexibly support right-to-life legislation. Furthermore, they want the matter to be settled legislatively, which is to say, legally.
As part of his thinking in the Supreme Court abortion decision, Justice Alito wrote that unless a right is specifically found in the Constitution, it cannot be guaranteed by the federal government. Thus, for example, he hinted, but did not directly say, that the court might nullify previous SCOTUS decisions which granted rights to certain types of citizens. Justice Thomas specifically stated that federal laws approved by past Supreme Court members that granted many such rights should be re-visited and perhaps rescinded. He suggested forbidding the use of contraceptives, criminalizing sexual contact with those of the same sex, and rescinding the right to same-sex marriage.
It is these factors which potentially return the American calendar to the sixteenth century. Those who have become religious and moral Puritans want laws to guarantee that their positions alone are followed. However, in the case of abortion, laws cannot force people to believe that abortions are immoral. Furthermore, it is immoral to pass laws that nullify legitimately held beliefs. Other such convictions are belief in God or Jesus Christ, for example.
Roe v. Wade gave every American woman the freedom to choose what she wanted if she became pregnant. SCOTUS has obliterated that choice for women in states that have passed draconian pro-life laws. Caroline Mala Corbin is a professor at the University of Miami Law School. She recently noted that the legal restrictions opposing abortion do not favor a particular religious view, but that they do coincide with such a view.
That “coincidence” is no coincidence. As Professor Corbin says, the SCOTUS decision is “a wrecking ball” on the First Amendment “establishment of religion” clause. It virtually endorses official Roman Catholic, evangelical and fundamentalist views on abortion as the new law of the land. Religious freedom fades; Puritanism pervades.
Those on the political, religious, and military right often profess the slogan that “Freedom Is Not Free.” In puritanical societies, freedom indeed is not free, although that is not the connotation the slogan intends. However, it is primarily in autocracies, not democracies, where abortions, homosexuality, bisexuality, same-sex marriage, and transsexuality are illegal, among many other prohibitions. Historically, autocracy and puritanism go hand in hand.
The SCOTUS abortion position is a direct violation of official pronouncements regarding abortion of many Mainline Protestant denominations, Judaism, and Islam. Judaism’s position is that a fetus has no personhood at all, and does not become a person until birth. Abortion is required by Talmudic law if it is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman. Along with many Christians, many Muslims support abortion, while many others oppose it. A few Muslim-majority nations have laws that forbid abortions except in extreme situations, but most Muslim nations do not have such laws.
Immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision, a number of red states have passed “trigger laws” which instantly forbade all abortions under all circumstances. To prevent abortions of minors, victims of incest, severe fetal abnormalities, and when the life of the woman is at great risk is not only a “cruel and unusual punishment,” it is an ethically corrupt policy. In addition, laws which forbid abortions in every situation, including incest and rape, are as ludicrous as they are lacking in compassion.
Puritanism is rapidly rising in the United States of America. It is increasing in India as well, where anyone who is not a Hindu is in jeopardy. But if you really want to know what 21st century puritanism is, consider what life is like in Iran or Saudi Arabia.
In 1842, the slavery question was on the minds of most Americans, and a war with Mexico was on the horizon. In those circumstances the American Episcopalian bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe wrote a well-known poem. Its opening line said, “We are living, we are dwelling in a grand an awful time.” His words are as prophetic for today as they were almost two centuries ago. Both grandeur and terror have entered American culture.
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.