John Calvin, Roger Williams, and the Pledge of Allegiance
By Charles Kiker, American Baptist Minister (ret.), Tulia, TX.
As we once again draw near to the celebration of July 4th, I am reminded of three spiritual/intellectual encounters I had last year: with John Calvin, Roger Williams, and the Pledge of Allegiance.
I encountered Calvin in a guest editorial by Frank Bellizzi in the Amarillo Globe News: Happy 500th Birthday, John Calvin. Bellizzi quotes with approval E.G. Leonard’s chapter title “Calvin: The Founder of a Civilization.” To be sure Calvin had a formative influence on Western Civilization, for good and for ill. I would hardly credit him as the founder of a civilization.
Bellizzi acknowledges criticism of Calvin’s role in the execution of heretics. He is apparently referring to the execution of Michael Servetus by burning at the stake, with Calvin’s tacit approval. Bellizzi defends Calvin on the basis that execution of heretics was common practice among religious leaders of his day. So it was. The early Luther encouraged cordial relations with the Jews, in the hopes of converting them. When conversion failed he turned on them with a viciousness that foreshadowed the holocaust.
So Calvin only participated in the spirit of his age. I’m willing to cut him a little slack for that. But I’m not willing to sweep those horrors under the rug and make Calvin a spiritual icon. Religious leaders should rise above the spirit of their age. The Apostle Paul admonishes us, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God…what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2, NRSV).
Let’s skip forward almost a century to Roger Williams (1603-1683). I have long been an admirer of Roger Williams. I met him anew by means of a guest editorial in the New York Times for Sunday, July 5, 2009: A Plantation to be Proud Of, by Sara Vowell. Ms. Vowell wanted to guard Rhode Island’s official name, “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” from any move to change the name simply to “State of Rhode Island.”
She could hardly write about Rhode Island without including Roger Williams. Williams started out in the Church of England, became a Puritan, and fled to Massachusetts to avoid persecution. But on these shores he found religious intolerance which he could not tolerate. He insisted that civil government could not dictate to spiritual conscience, and for his conscience was banished from Massachusetts. He came to what is now Rhode Island and purchased land from the Native Americans. He dealt fairly with Native Americans, learned their language, and treated them as real people. He built a home, which he called Providence. He founded the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, Rhode Island. Williams did not long remain a Baptist. “God is too large to be housed under one roof,” he is reported to have said. Williams remained on friendly terms with Baptists, but became simply a seeker, always seeking but never finding the City of God on earth.
Ms. Vowell incomprehensibly calls Williams, a stalwart for freedom of conscience, a “man with the narrowest of minds.” Perhaps she means that he was extremely narrow minded in his focus on freedom of conscience. Moderation in the pursuit of religious liberty was no virtue for Roger Williams.
John Calvin was extravagantly called the founder of a civilization. It is no exaggeration to call Roger Williams the father of Religious Liberty in America. John Calvin participated wholeheartedly in the spirit of his age. In numerous ways Roger Williams rose above that same spirit.
Just before reading the articles concerning Calvin and Williams, I received one of those much forwarded e-mails urging its recipients to continue the chain. This one had to do with the Pledge of Allegiance. I was urged to enlarge the chain and resist removal of the phrase “under God” from the pledge. I instinctively resist forwarding these kinds of messages, especially when my compliance or lack thereof is used as a yardstick to measure my spiritual standing. My instinct in this particular case was that the message is motivated more by politics than by religion. And that saying “under God” does not make it so.
Our pledge was written by a Christian socialist in 1892, without the “under God” phrase. Congress officially added the phrase in 1954, at the height of the McCarthy communist witch hunts. The phrase was deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court in 2004, so there is no real threat of its removal. But pledging allegiance to any earthly power gives me pause. As a Christian, my final allegiance cannot be to any of the kingdoms of this world.
So we’re back to John Calvin, Roger Williams, and the Pledge of Allegiance. Calvin was quick to align himself with civic powers. Roger Williams used the “wall of separation” phrase more than a century before Thomas Jefferson. If John Calvin were a twentieth century American, I think he would wholeheartedly pledge his allegiance with or without the phrase, “under God.” Roger Williams, on the other hand, would be very suspicious of that kind of pledge.
I’ll take my stand more with Williams than with Calvin.
