The power plays of rejecting critical race theory today and embracing Enlightenment thought during the Revolution
Today, there is much anxiety, concern, and fear that secular theories like cultural Marxism, critical race theory, and intersectionality are invading the sacred of the church. But I did not learn that our current “entanglement” with secular political thought pales in comparison to the comprehensive embrace of secular Enlightenment philosophy in theology and ecclesiastical practice before and during the American Revolution. As such, we should view the selective acceptance and rejection of non-religious theories by the church as power plays designed to reflect preference and not the intrinsic compatibility of that theory with faith.
If so, why so much vitriol and fear of the intersection, real or imagined, between some contemporary political thought and the church? Why do we give a pass to colonial embrace of secular Enlightenment thought but so strongly condemn critical race theory and intersectionality today, even as the engagement today is significantly weaker the integration of Enlightenment into early American religious thought? Is this not the definition of hypocrisy, of double-standards, of selective outrage?
There is much of critical race theory that is not compatible with Christian thought, but the same could be said of Enlightenment philosophy, best embodied in Jonathan Edwards’ critique.
So what lessons can we learn from how the colonists and first Americans used secular Enlightenment philosophy in the church, and how can they help us critically inform how the church should have a posture towards contemporary secular theories?
I believe that learning this history we do not learn in church will help us understand the need for critical engagement with and not immediate rejection of the compelling social theories of our day. In doing so, we can better contextualize the truth of the Gospel for such a time as this. And we should see that the selective embrace and rejection of different secular theories is based less in the intrinsic value of the theory but its value in supporting outcomes that some Christians need justification for.
The church could not ignore the growing social influence of Enlightenment ideas
During the middle 18th century, as revolution was debated in the public square, Enlightenment ideas were increasingly prominent in colonial life. While the Puritans first escaped New England in part to escape their rejection of the Enlightenment’s influence in Great Britain, other colonists did not have such disdain for Enlightenment philosophy. In fact, as Mark Noll describes in “The American Revolution and Protestant Evangelicalism,” the Enlightenment had become accepted in everyday colonial life. He writes that “at the dawn of the American Revolution, most people did not see a conflict between Enlightenment ideas and religious ideas. While some desire for self-determination was “rooted in formal study guided especially by thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, whereas for many others, including burgeoning numbers of Methodists and simple “Christians”, it was a product of epistemological self-assertion that heeded no creed but the Bible” (616).
For some if not most pastors, Enlightenment ideas growing in prominence provided useful “off the shelf” ideas that resonated with their congregations. In “Pulpits of Revolution: Presbyterian Political Thought in the Era of the American Revolution”, Christopher Pearl’s analysis of Presbyterian sermons and notes reveals how “clergy embraced and expounded Enlightenment principles [and] schooled their congregants about the state of nature, natural law, the origins of civil society, and the role and purposes of government” (9). In doing so, whether intentional or not, ministers imbued secular Enlightenment ideas with “religious and therefore God-granted legitimacy” (10).
The incorporation of the secular into the sacred was intentional
But the embrace of Enlightenment ideas was not inevitable. It occurred when Christians actively and intentionally integrated biblical precepts with Enlightenment philosophies. Ministers had agency and could have repelled or at least slowed the encroachment of Enlightenment ideas into the church. But they chose to intentionally embrace and incorporate it into the religious sphere. In “The American Revolution and Protestant Evangelicalism,” Mark Noll points out “the interplay between politics and religion was often a process of actors ‘tailoring,’ or promoting, projects through the use of a vocabulary enjoying great normative power in the culture, even if the vocabulary had not originated in the sphere in which it was now being applied…Meanings from the religious sphere came to infuse the political project, or –from the other direction — the valances of politics came to inform religious life” (624)
Secular Enlightenment ideals were so commonplace in church thought that it was used unproblematically in religious arguments. Mark Valeri describes this in his article “The New Divinity and the American Revolution.” He writes that some Christians critiquing the First Great Awakening argued “genuine religion, unlike revivalism and its Calvinist underpinnings, upheld the dictates of reason and communal obligations. These polemicists identified religious reasonableness and social responsibility with observable, universal, uniform, and predictable standards of morality, [in other words, English Enlightenment] natural moral law” (746).
In response to these religious arguments, opposing pastors did not reject their brethren’s use of secular ideas, but used competing secular philosophies to strengthen their argument. And so, in the intellectual arms race within the church, secular ideas were used alongside religious justifications and explanations. Varleri summaries how Calvinist pastors responded to critiques of the Great Awakening by using and “incorporating into their preaching and writing many of the concepts of the moral philosophies then ascendant in Britain [opposed to Enlightenment thought]” (748) while others “attempted to turn the ethics of the Scottish Enlightenment to their own uses” (749). Therefore, on all sides of religious arguments, pastors were using and explicitly incorporating secular thought into the church in order to advocate their ecclesiastical argument.
There was nuanced use of Enlightenment philosophy
But there were varying degrees to which Enlightenment philosophy was used in the church. While some pastors fully embraced Enlightenment ideas, methods, and implications, others were more nuanced and measured. Mark Noll notes the nuance attempts of Presbyterians in balancing commitment to Scripture and the use of Enlightenment ideas. In “The Irony of the Enlightenment for Presbyterians in the Early Republic,” he writes how “Presbyterians joined other American intellectuals in taking for themselves an English moderate commitment to cosmic predictability and a Scottish didactic belief in benevolent common sense. [But] from first to last this Presbyterian embrace of the Enlightenment was filled with irony [as] Presbyterians maintained an enthusiastic theoretical support for the didactic Enlightenment while repudiating it in practice” (151). In other words, they used Enlightenment methodology and even vocabulary, but rejected its ideas as having equal merit as Biblical principles and interpretation.
Noll also argues that at least for some Christians, the encroachment of secular Enlightenment philosophy into the sacred did not mean that the secular had hijacked or taken captive of the sacred. Instead, the engagement created a shared ideological platform and shared lexicon to enable richer engagement between the secular spheres of politics and society with the sacred sphere of the church. As he describes, there is nuanced coexistence as “different spheres of life played upon each other while still treating religious utterances as primarily about religion and political utterances as primarily about politics. This simultaneity opens the way to a fuller account of religion and politics [better than the] common attempt to portray both religion and politics as epiphenomenal expressions of more fundamental realities” (624).
Uncritical use of Enlightenment philosophy led to bad exegesis
However, uncritical acceptance and use of Enlightenment philosophy did lead to bad biblical exegesis. As more and more pastors advocated for revolution, a new consensus emerged where, as Alex Tuckness in “Discourses of Resistance in the American Revolution” summarizes, “the colonists interpreted Romans 13 more like Locke did than like Luther did [and explicitly used] natural law to help interpret the Bible” (554). Instead of starting from biblical principles to examine the world, it seemed that for Christians, their “conviction that civil liberty is a God-given right owed more to the Enlightenment than to orthodox Christian teaching [and read] Scripture through the lens of republican ideology [as] “a patriotic Bible” perfect for promoting “patriotic zeal.” By contrast, it was the Loyalist pastors preaching against revolution that were more devoted to the Scriptures. For these minority of pastors, “The Bible formed the cohesive foundation for the Loyalists’ argument, and their commitment to a plain reading of Scripture stands in stark contrast to the often allegorical and typological interpretive methods favored by the Patriots.” That so many advocates of revolution so poorly interpreted Scripture shows the dangers of uncritical embrace of secular theories resulting in the hijacking of biblical interpretation by extra-biblical influences.
A cautionary tale of necessary engagement
It was impossible for the church to ignore the growing influence of Enlightenment ideas on colonial society. However, its extensive embrace within the church was intentional. Ministers did not only reference these secular ideas from the pulpit, but sought out competing secular ideas in the intellectual arms race within the church. And there was nuance in how the church engaged Enlightenment theories. For at least some pastors, they were able to separate the epistemological methodology and shared lexicon of Enlightenment philosophy while rejecting its ontological claims. But there was a danger of and led to much bad theology as biblical interpretation was hijacked and subjugated to Enlightenment ideas.
The engagement, entanglement, and even entrapment of the sacred by the secular is not a new challenge for the church. As we learn more about how the early American church engaged and embraced Enlightenment philosophies, let us learn the right lessons from history. This encroachment of secular theories into the sacred will occur except in the most fundamentalist of churches that desire to put up impermeable walls between secular and sacred spheres.
For the rest of us, instead of immediate rejection of contemporary political theories like critical race theory, we need to carefully study and examine them so that we can understand what insights they can yield to contemporary interpretation and application of Scripture. We must not treat critical race theory as philistines, with heavy-handed rejection and illiberal condemnation without thorough consideration. Nor should we embrace it uncritically as that likely results in bad biblical interpretation and exegesis. But we should seek to understand how it is useful to inform how Christians engage public life and social spheres outside the church. And we need to recognize the agendas and preferences of those who advocate for and reject different sets of theories.
I believe secular theories like critical race theory can be useful, especially in providing a lexicon to create stronger partnerships and engagement opportunities in our fight against the sin of structural racism. I also believe that we can engage critical race theory without accepting its ontological claims; after all, we already do that with other more “accepted” secular ideas like conservatism and limited government which too are almost always incompatible with our commitments to supernatural revelation by God through the Holy Spirit and Scriptures. And perhaps in doing so, we can follow in the tradition of at least some of our early American church fathers who sought to interpret, use, contextualize, and perhaps even redeem Enlightenment political thought to the glory of God.
In doing so, would we not then be truly revolutionary and more fully take up our call to be a counter-cultural witness to the world?
For more about the series, check out the introduction post and the previous post on Puritans owning slaves.
