America at 250: We the People

Deuteronomy 1:9-17, I Peter 2:9-10

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? - Micah 6:8b

The biblical notion of “we the people” began as Israel was journeying through the wilderness, making their way to the Promised Land. Moses was wary of bearing the burden of the people all by himself, so through God’s command and Moses’ instruction each tribe selected leaders from amongst them.

This was on the governance side. In the sacred sphere, the temple was ruled by the priestly class, and they reserved sole authority for the remission of sins through ritual sacrifices. It is through this that change began. When Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, this was understood to be the one sufficient sacrifice for all time. The priests were no longer needed to mediate between God and people. The change was so profound that 1 Peter 2:9 refers to the people as “a royal priesthood.” Each person now was viewed as a priest and a king!

This is how it was in the church for the first few hundred years. But over time and especially upon the establishment of Christianity under Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D., a priestly class emerged again. For the next hundreds of years, the Western church came to understand itself as the sole dispenser of God’s divine grace through the sacraments.

To manage control, the church codified the process of becoming a priest, banned certain classes from serving in the priesthood—such as women—and eventually formed boards of the Inquisition to root out heresy. The Reformation was largely a rebellion against the entrenched authority in the Church.

Through certain readings of scripture, authority of the king and the priest was thought to be ordained by God and therefore could not be contested by the people. It was the power of Scotsmen like Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon that helped empower the colonists to rebel.

We spoke about him a few weeks ago. He was a professor of James Madison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Second Continental Congress, and eventually served on over one hundred congressional committees.

He was born in Scotland and, when he came to America, brought with him Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Its ideals are founded upon natural law and natural rights, and therefore the people have the right to rise up against their oppressors.

We can easily see these Scottish notions woven into the fabric of our country through Witherspoon’s influence on James Madison, his pupil and architect of the Constitution.

But Scottish Common Sense philosophy also had common sense. It did not have a utopian notion that if suddenly the people had the opportunity to do everything, the world would fix itself. No—part of Witherspoon’s Calvinism included a strong doctrine of the sinfulness of humanity and our ability to rationalize and abuse power.

Thus, the people governed, but they did so with an eye toward minimizing the power of any one individual, so as to preserve the power of the people.

This was over and against the Anglican Church and what it was advocating. Unsurprisingly, being the Church of England, some of them advocated for Christianity to be the official religion, for the people to be taxed in order to finance the church, and they emphasized an episcopal form of church government, which appoints bishops with explicit sacerdotal and governance rights that the people do not have.

On the other hand, embedded in our historic church principles—written in part by Brick Church’s founding pastor, John Rogers—not only does it tell us that God alone is Lord of the conscience, which I have told you many times, but it goes on to say:

Therefore, we consider the rights of private judgment in all matters that respect religion as universal and unalienable. We do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power further than may be necessary for protection and security, and at the same time equal and common to all others.

As a result of John Witherspoon’s and other Presbyterians’ influence, there was a sentiment back in the motherland that the Presbyterians were to blame. In fact, Joseph Galloway, a former colonial leader, said, “the rebellion is a Presbyterian war.” Prime Minister Horace Walpole, in 1774, famously remarked, “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson.” Finally, it is thought that King George III called it “that Presbyterian rebellion.”

As we have come to understand our history, we can now assess the power of the notion “We the people,” through a Christian lens, and its repercussions for our faith today.

It begins most powerfully with your divine right to speak directly to God. We need no mediator other than Christ our Lord. This means that no other person has the ability todictate or control your eternal fate. That is between you and God.

Next, we see how “we the people” practically manifests in our congregation. You,the people, elect the leaders over you, namely the elders. This is drawn from the tradition that Moses began in our Deuteronomy passage!

There is a foundational belief that the community, discerning together under the Spirit, is wiser than any one individual.

There is a compelling example pointed out in the book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. He tells the true story of a county fair contest in which the people are invited to guess the weight of a large steer. All types of people participated—from little children walking by, to veterinarians who worked with these animals daily, to farmers who lived alongside them, to average fairgoers like you or me. When all the guesses were averaged together, the crowd as a whole was closer to the real answer than any one individual—better than the veterinarian, better than the farmer.

But this approach is not mere practicality. It is something that we Presbyterians believe God folded into the fabric of creation. Since we are all bearers of God’s image,we are all owed the dignity of a voice, and we all owe others a listening ear. And we believe this because this is what scripture tells us. And the fight for the power of the people to be able to read the Bible and have accurate translations was so critically important that people risked everything; people like William Tyndale.

A fifteenth-century unknown priest and scholar, William Tyndale, was educated at Oxford and Cambridge; he was influenced by the Renaissance and wanted to translate the Bible into English. He was denied this right by the church and so decided to flee from England to Europe. His translation was smuggled back into England through Germany in bales of cloth and goods. Eventually, he was deemed a heretic.

It was not simply the act of translating the Bible into English that got him into the deepest trouble, though it was banned. It was certain choices of translation that are particularly germane to our topic of “We the People.”

The Greek word presbuteros was traditionally translated as priest, but Tyndale chose elder.

The Greek word ecclesia was traditionally translated as church, but he chose congregation.

The Greek word metanoia was translated as do penance, whereas he chose repentance.

Let’s take these one at a time.

Perhaps that word presbuteros sounds somewhat familiar to you, since we are in the Brick Presbyterian Church. Our church—Presbyterian—is named after the fundamental understanding that the elders, that is, the people, have authority.

The church at the time was threatened because translating presbuteros as elder rather than priest meant the New Testament was not talking about priests—that is, a specific class of people who had sole rights for remitting sins. An elder has no sacerdotal authority, no high priestly calling that only he or she can fulfill.

Next, this was compounded by translating ekklesia as “congregation” rather than “church.” “Church” referred to the institution, giving the church institution the power rather than the congregation—that is, the people.

Finally, Tyndale translated metanoia as “repent” rather than “do penance.” Penance was a specific process codified by the Church and validated through priestly instruction. You would go to the priest, confess your sins, and they would give you the pathway of penance to have those sins remitted. Repentance, on the other hand, is something individuals do.

Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into English codified the power of “we the people” into Scripture, using proper and accurate translations—rather than the power of the priest and the institutional church.

Tyndale is owed our deepest thanks.

He lived as a fugitive for years in Antwerp, continuing his translation of the Hebrew Scriptures until, in 1535, he was betrayed by an agent, Henry Phillips. Phillips had found himself in Europe after having absconded with his family’s money. He was paid a hefty sum to pose as a Lutheran sympathizer and ingratiated himself with locals and eventually betrayed Tyndale.

He was arrested near Brussels, imprisoned for over a year, and in 1536 William Tyndale was tried for heresy, defrocked, strangled, and burned at the stake. His last words were, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”

The power of prayer cannot be overestimated.

A few years after Tyndale’s murder, Henry VIII authorized a translation into English, known today as the “Matthew Bible.” It is clear this translation heavily relied on Tyndale’s work.

Tyndale gave everything so that today you and I can read a Bible that discloses God’s true intentions. Each one of you, all of us, are a “royal priesthood,” given the power of priests and kings, with the profound privilege to go directly to God and given the profound responsibility to lift up our voice.

Amen.