USA > Connecticut > New London County > New London > The First Church of Christ in New London : Three hundredth anniversary, May 10, 17, 31 and October 11, 1942 ; 1642-1942 > Part 2
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The second principle and policy on which our founders established our church was representative government. In Massachusetts the Puritan founded his institutions of Church and State on the principle of
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theocracy under clerical control. It was against this despotism that men like Thomas Hooker, pastor of the First Church of Christ in Hartford reacted and migrated to Connecticut. It was a sermon preached by this eminent divine upon which the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first constitution in history which created a govern- ment, was based. John Winthrop, Jr., a member of the First Church Parish in New London, when governor of Connecticut, secured a Char- ter from Charles II in 1662 which embodied, in a royal grant of political power, the principles of representative government, some of which were contained in the Fundamental Orders. Upon this Charter the free government of Connecticut was conducted for over one hun- dred and fifty years. Twenty-two years after the governorship of John Winthrop, Jr., his son FitzJohn Winthrop occupied that high office, the duties of which he discharged with distinction. His pastor, the Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall, immediately followed him as governor of the State, an office to which he was elected by the people seventeen times. What makes Saltonstall's place among the founders of the First Church's principles and policies so significant is the fact that he was the only man in Connecticut who has been elected governor from the pastorate of a church and he saw no fundamental distinction between serving the Kingdom of God in the pastorate and as a public servant of the State.
This brings us naturally to the third principle and policy upon which our Church is founded, namely that in the Puritan conception of the fundamental relation between Church and State the two consti- tute one organism. There have been varying conceptions as to the method of operating this social unity. In Massachusetts, as I have said, Church and State were one under clerical control which was called a theocracy. In Connecticut, however, under the leadership of Puritan ministers and laymen, as we have seen, the idea of theocracy may have been latent, but the practice was so liberalized as to open the door through the half way covenant, first, for all baptized persons to vote and finally the granting of the franchise to all persons of twenty-one years of age regardless of religious qualifications. In the Constitution of the United States which was, in certain fundamental particulars, founded on the Connecticut Constitution, provision was made in the first amendment for the separation of Church and State.
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The idea of separation of Church and State has been stretched out so thin, at times in our national history, as to take religion out of politics with the result that political corruption has been a growing scandal and to take statesmanship out of the church with the result that all manner of absurd, visionary schemes of social betterment have found a fertile soil for germination and growth. The separation of the pro- cesses whereby Church and State conduct their affairs is wise and legitimate but unity of moral purpose is fundamental to the successful operation and progress of both institutions. In this unity of moral purpose lies the hope of a Christian world. Lord Acton has well said that the one and possibly only contribution the Puritan has made to social organization was his discovery, after long experience, that you cannot have a free Church without a free State or a free State without a free Church.
In the fourth place we must consider some of the theological principles which our ancestors believed. Their text books were the Bible and the "Institutes of the Christian Religion" by John Calvin. There can be no doubt that our forebears were men and women of strong, positive, religious convictions; but as we have already seen they exercised a wide toleration in dealing with those who differed with them. If they were guided and regulated by reason in dealing with matters of Church and State we may be sure that they followed the same course in their interpretations of the Bible and the Calvinistic theology. Their conservatism has not been founded on dogmatic intol- erance of all new knowledge and religious experience, but it has been due to their belief that the Christian revelation was a consistent whole. Since in such a system a significant change in one part affects the whole organism, thinking men hesitate to make any innovations unless they can see their implications for the entire body of belief. When this body of belief is founded on the atonement in Jesus Christ and divine grace imparted to believers, any change in theological thought which tends to destroy or weaken this experience must be watched and handled with care. As a matter of fact Calvin's system of theology can be rationally interpreted as has been made clear by the slow but progressive changes our church has lived through under the leadership of ministers noted for their intellectual as well as spiritual competence. These modifications of the old theology have prepared the way for our
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entrance into the new age with sure, clear, settled Christian convictions on which to build whatever superstructure of thought may be needed to reach new culminations of individual and collective Christian experi- ence. In his address to the University of St. Andrews in 1871 James Anthony Froude has given us an interpretation of Calvinism which would doubtless have been acceptable to most of the members of our parish at that time. In this statement of Froude, to which I am indebted in the paragraphs which immediately follow, we shall see the great ideals underlying Calvinism, but stripped of the ambiguities, contradic- tions and fallacies all of which were the historical accidents of the age in which the institutes were written.
First of all the Calvinist believed that God has an order and pur- pose which He is working out in history. Calvin made much of this conception under the head of predestination. This doctrine may be interpreted as fate if regarded pantheistically as a necessary condition of the universe or it can be regarded as the decree of a self-conscious being. God rules the world by asserting a selective principle in the universe.
This selective principle is not put into operation upon an irra- tional expression of self will by God; but according to organic laws which penetrate the natural and moral worlds of human life and society. These laws are inflexible, absolute and universal. They are stated first of all in the Ten Commandments and in the civil law of nations in so far as they are legitimate elaborations of the Mosaic decalogue. God is no respecter of persons. There can be little doubt that the emphasis placed upon law and order intercalated itself into the common law of England and became the foundation upon which Par- liament superceded the royal power of the Stuart dynasty and thus inaugurated constitutional government in England in 1688, a form of political administration which spread during the subsequent two hun- dred and fifty years from the British Isles to almost all the civilized nations of the world including the United States of America.
Moreover mankind, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit has the capacity to observe and discover these laws. God has given man a mind or power of reason which is the basis of his supremacy in the natural world. This belief was the foundation upon which the Calvin- ists built such educational institutions as the Universities of Geneva,
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Leyden, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and many others. Perhaps I should add that it was this exaltation of the intellectual powers of man which prepared the way for complete and irreparable destruction of the theo- cratic ideal of society and the superstructure of Calvin's system of theology. "Universal education and the perpetual discussion of theo- logical questions," says John Fiske, "were no more compatible with rigid adherence to the Calvinistic system than with submission to the absolute rule of Rome." Thus Calvinism possessed from the first an internal, corrective principle upon which its original theological system could be changed as man's knowledge and experience of the natural world and social and political institutions enlarged and widened. These changes regulated and ordered by the laws of reason exhibit one of the most remarkable cases of conservative, constructive, intellectual revolu- tion to be found in human history.
Again the doctrine of election takes on a new meaning. It becomes the foundation of a vigorous type of individualism, not individualism that is self-generative, but under the decree of a self-conscious omnipo- tent power, a principle which exalts the individual above all earthly powers and dignities. With all the drawbacks of the theology of Calvin there is something to be said for a system of thought and ex- perience which leaves the individual alone with God, in sublime contact with the universal sovereign power of the universe.
But strictly speaking the elect are not alone with their God. They reach the perfection of life through divine grace imparted to them in Jesus Christ. Calvinism exalts Jesus of Nazareth to the highest position of power when it represents him as capable of saving men who are so depraved as its theology describes them to be. Such love as God reveals in Christ goes a long way in mitigating the cold, intellectual exterior which we so often associate with the Puritan.
In the fifth place we can see from our foregoing discussion that the rule of reason, humanity and toleration upon which our ancestors laid the foundations of the First Church of Christ pointed directly to the universal law of nature or the highest idealism on which Church, State and theological systems must rest if they are to attain the perfec- tion of life for the attainment of which they were established and created. Otto Gierke has well said, "The revealed law of God stood to the law of nature (properly so called) in this relation, namely, that,
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while the latter was implanted by God in Natural Reason for the attainment of earthly ends, the former was communicated by God to man in a supernatural way and for a supra-mundane purpose." Natural religion and the revealed religion of Christianity are thus one and united.
The evolution of these principles has been manifest not only in the founding of the First Church in New London and in the State of Connecticut; but in the building of our nation and the world of inter- national relations. From every country in Europe political and religious refugees have followed the Puritan to America and they have been willing to adopt the principles upon which the Declaration of Inde- pendence and our constitution were established: freedom, human equal- ity and toleration. To build our nation it has required at times the maximum sacrifice of war in which our church has participated. We participated in the Revolutionary War which gave birth to our nation, and the Civil War which established our Federal Union and the First World War which gave birth, in history, to the ideals of an inter- national constitutional government established on a Covenant. We are now engaged in a second World War in which our church is par- ticipating wholeheartedly on the side of the United Nations to gain total victory over the Axis Powers.
The present conflict is on such a vast global scale and the nations are so universally involved in it that we are forced as thinking men and women to ask ourselves if Puritanism has any principle or policy upon which to proceed in confronting the future. Since this is an historical occasion we naturally ask ourselves if historic Puritanism has any Christian program concerning international affairs which covers war as well as peace, such a program as is consonant with the spirit of the principles which we have been discussing in the first part of this sermon. Such an inquiry is especially important in view of the fact that the Protestant churches, including those with a Puritan background, are divided on the question of supporting our Government in this war, the greatest moral issue which has ever faced humanity and an issue the outcome of which offers the Churches of Christ the most signal opportunity for advancing toward a new culmination the principles for which our ancesors bled and died, repeatedly, for civil and religious freedom. I may be excused, therefore, in view of the importance of
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this subject, in the present situation, if I take a moment to consider in outline, the history of diplomacy in the international development of the West as it has been inspired by the spirit of Puritanism.
The same spirit of Puritanism which took the initiative in creating constitutional government in England, America and the world has been at work organizing those nations whose governments possessed the character of representative institutions into some form of organization to withstand those nations whose governments were under despotic forms of political administrations. At first the only method known to diplomacy for effecting such combinations was through alliances and counter alliances. It is admitted that in the formation of such unions the democratic nations made alliances with autocratic powers when such a course became necessary to attain success. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and thus far in the twentieth century every major war has been fought with democracies and despotisms fighting side by side, but with different motives, if we look at history in the large and do not confine our observations to incidental exceptions. The democratic nations have fought first for recognition in the inter- national system of states and finally for supremacy; the despotic nations on the other hand have fought in alliances with democratic powers to maintain the balance of power which prevented any one nation from becoming supreme over all the others, as in the case of the struggle for French ascendency in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries and Ger- man Imperialism during the nineteenth century and in the First World War. It will be evident that the doctrine of the balance of power so frequently denounced as the mainspring of power politics has also been the mainspring which has maintained the freedom of the inter- national system of states from the reversion of western civilization to the standards of universal Empire.
While it is true that the doctrine of the balance of power has been adopted by democratic nations in diplomacy yet the principle is funda- mentally contrary to the spirit of constitutional government, for an international system resting on the balance of power is in the nature of the case based on a war footing. Nations which make alliances natur- ally create a situation for the growth of counter alliances the object of which is not peace but war. As long as despotic forms of political administration exist in the world, no international system of states can
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possibly exist in permanent peace, for autocratic governments by their very nature cannot recognize any power outside of themselves to which they owe obedience. When the Hohenzollerns regarded the treaty of Belgium neutrality as a scrap of paper, the democratic nations were horrified and innumerable discussions were held in which people in- sisted that if the world had been better organized in 1914 the nations could have discussed their differences and there would have been no war. Lord Grey, I believe, made such a statement, whether seriously or not, I am not aware. The reason why the world of international relations was not better organized in 1914, however, is because the Hohenzollerns prior to the First World War evaded or only half heartedly accepted, programs pointing in that direction, for the obvious reason that William II, the Imperial German Emperor, would have had to contradict radically the fundamental principles upon which his gov- ernment was established if he had entered such a combination or con- cert of powers. We have had enough experience with international affairs now to have taught us that the word of a despot cannot be trusted. Despots can be dislodged only by force of arms. They are not amenable to reason and treaties with them are literally scraps of paper.
There are two reasons why the balance of power in the interna- tional development of the West has worked on the side of international freedom and has not degenerated into some form of world imperialism. In the first place, since the days of Henry VIII and his Chancellor Cardinal Woolsey, England has held the balance of power in European politics. As went England and Great Britain, so went the world. When the Civil War under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell destroyed the autocracy of the Stuarts and opened the way for constitutional govern- ment in the days of William and Mary, it was because England held the balance of power that the constitutionalization of the international system of the states began and representative institutions spread even- tually to most of the nations of the world and the tendency toward the creation of a union of the democratic nations was definitely initiated and fostered.
In the second place Great Britain has built her world power on the idea of the supremacy of international law. This was natural and inevitable, for the strongest force in undermining the dogma of the divine right of Kings in England was the principle that the royal power
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was subject to the law of the land. It was the common law of England which had been interpenetrated with the spirit of Puritanism, that laid the foundations, as I have previously said, for the supremacy of Parlia- ment over the Crown in 1688. It was natural and inevitable, therefore, that the momentum created in England to seek the supremacy of law over the royal power should have been carried into the field of diplo- macy and should have imbued Englishmen with the idea of conducting their relations with other powers according to the law of nations.
This was not so difficult, because a body of international law was already in existence, having been created by Hugo Grotius when he published his celebrated treatise "De Jure Belli et Pacis" in 1625, a treatise which international lawyers universally concede was the most important work in securing a place for international law in the history of diplomacy.
There is a widespread misconception of the significance of interna- tional law. Most people confuse this science with the foreign policies of states and the numerous diplomatic negotiations which continually take place. As a matter of fact, while nations all have their own con- ceptions of the laws of nations, they have been made to realize, by the great writers on international law since Grotius' day, that there are universal standards of justice to which all nations are equally under obligation to follow and obey. These universal standards of interna- tional law have progressively worked toward establishing a world com- munity of nations to supercede a diplomacy founded on the balance of power which has not been a part of the law of nations, but has been a provisional diplomatic method for the maintenance of national freedom.
At the close of the First World War the United States succeeded Great Britain in holding the balance of power in world affairs. Wood- row Wilson, who like Grotius was a Puritan, saw and seized the opportunity of adopting a diplomacy which would make the United States of America lead the world in creating a world community of nations founded on the real standards of international law. The cove- nant of the League of Nations is not a constitution creating an inter- national government, but it is a very definite step in that direction.
To revert to the question I raised a moment ago, whether or not Puritanism has a program for world reconstruction, my answer is that it has such a program supported by over three hundred years of orderly
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historical growth. With all the failures of international law and diplo- macy to prevent war and to maintain uniformity in the development of peace, the line of progress is clearly discernible to any one who is willing to look deep enough and comprehensibly enough at the history of the international development of the world during the last three centuries. This peace movement under the guidance of idealists, who have created the concept of the supremacy of international law and of the possibility of an international constitutional government has suc- ceeded in making war an abnormal instead of normal relation between the states as it was in the sixteenth century or before. We should remind ourselves of such facts in order to avoid becoming involved in the superficial peace programs such as those which have been devised under contemporary pacifist inspiration and such as have subjected the church to the contempt of statesmen because these proposals are so utterly impractical, visionary and ephemeral.
It is true that the covenant of the League of Nations did not pre- vent the outbreak of a second World War; but it is not true that the League is dead. Many of its activities have been suspended during the war; but there are still forty-six nations which are members of the League and it is to be hoped that when the war is over its organization will be revived, the covenant so reconstituted as to make provision for an international police force and the issues arising out of the war settled by the legal and political machinery already in existence for that purpose, such as the permanent Court of International Justice, the Assembly and the Council of the League, the International Labor Or- ganization and such other organizations as it may be necessary to create after the war to handle questions for which those institutions now in existence prove inadequate. By the time the war is over we shall have learned enough to know that the one and only road to peace is for the United States to assume the responsibilities of world leadership as she declined to do after the First World War. We must lead the world in reestablishing the institutions of Geneva and the Hague which today are in an inactive condition because of our past irresponsibility and we must lead in the formation of as many other institutions as the world will need, to maintain the peace and the reconstruction and the progress of the world economically, socially, politically and legally. To achieve this event the United States must join the other nations in reviving the
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League of Nations and in carrying it to the consummation devoutly to be wished.
Such an international government is a natural and moral necessity in a day like ours. The progress of freedom has been a divisive force increasing and multiplying the conflict of all manner of ideologies and leading toward the breakdown of all forms of external authority. We should not desire to suppress the spirit of liberty in the world but we must create an international constitutional government strong enough to maintain the freedom of all ideologies and strong enough also to maintain law and order in the world and thus prevent the numerous ideologies now violently in conflict from destroying each other and disrupting the foundations of all authority. Such a reconciliation of freedom and authority has been worked out in those nations which have representative governments. The great task which lies before Puritanism in the twentieth century is to take a strong initiative in the future, as in the past, to extend the principles of free political institu- tions, which it did so much to establish within national limits, to the sphere of international relations throughout the world. Without such an international government in a world of so many conflicting ideolo- gies we are headed for world chaos and anarchy. Such political insti- tutions moreover are most important for the religions of mankind.
The greatest religions: Buddhism, Brahminism, Mohammedanism, Confucianism, and Christianity are the most powerful ideologies in the world, if I may be permitted to use this word in relation to these faiths. Probably the adherents of all these major religions would become a world faith on such principles as Professor William Ernest Hocking has presented in "Living Religions and a World Faith." But no such faith can ever be realized unless the leaders of all the great religions of mankind can unite to create and maintain political institutions strong enough to secure the widest freedom of mind, heart and soul consistent with civil order and government. Such a government cannot be created unless there is a world wide consensus of opinion as to the character of the social order, which will contribute most to the health and well being of humanity. The greatest paradox of the contemporary world has been the fact that the political institutions of Geneva, Switzerland which were founded on the highest and best ideals of Christianity and Puritanism and that represented the real possibility of achieving these
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