Self-Contradiction in the U.S. Constitution: The Influence of John Locke

Constitution Day, a U.S. “federal observance” (holiday) on September 17, was established in 2004. I am planning to post a blog article about that on Sept. 15, but this post provides background information and is largely about philosopher John Locke—with a little about “original sin.”   

John Locke was born in England on August 29, 1632, and died in 1704 at the age of 72. Although he never traveled to what more than 70 years after his death became the United States of America, he had considerable influence upon the new nation formed by rebellion against England.

Just last month, University of Chicago Press published America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life by historian Claire Rydell Arcenas.

Locke, who was born into a Puritan home, became the author of hundreds of essays, tracts, and letters, many of which opposed political tyranny and religious persecution. His philosophical, religious, and political thought bolstered the North American British colonists’ fight for freedom.

Although the framers of the United States Constitution, drafted in 1787, were influenced by many different persons, John Locke’s ideas were the most influential factor. (See this instructive website.)

In his seminal work “Second Treatise of Government” (1690), Locke put forward the concept that the power of government originates from the consent of the governed, writing,

Men being . . . by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.

At the same time, however, Locke condoned slavery, denied women full inclusion in civil society, and, ultimately, excluded atheists and Catholics from his calls for toleration. To a large extent, his self-contradictory ideas were accepted by those who wrote and approved the U.S. Constitution.

Heather Cox Richardson introduces John Locke in “The Roots of Paradox,” the first chapter of her intriguing book How the South Won the Civil War (2020).*

In “Introduction,” Richardson states: “America began with a great paradox: the same men who came up with the radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality also owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior” (p. xv).

She asserts that the “self-evident” truths that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence were “cribbed” from John Locke. Based on Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, Jefferson agreed with Locke’s Enlightenment idea of government as a social compact, saying that

the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitled the colonists to create a separate government equal to that of England (Richardson, p. 12).

But Locke, and Jefferson, also held the view that some people—particularly white, moneyed men—were superior to others, especially women as well as indigenous and enslaved people.

So in spite of my deep appreciation for Richardson, she is misleading on calling Locke’s/Jefferson’s position “the American paradox.”

A real paradox expresses truth in statements that just seem to be self-contradictory. However, the stance of Locke and Jefferson was, in reality, self-contradictory.

John Locke’s name also appears repeatedly in Mark Ellingsen’s thought-provoking book Blessed are the Cynical: How Original Sin Can Make America a Better Place (2003), mostly in his second chapter, “Augustinian Realism and the American Constitutional System.”**

Locke was one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers, and as Ellingsen points out, the “Enlightenment’s optimistic view of human nature seems embedded in both the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence” (p. 56).

But along with their embracing that optimistic view, Ellingsen argues that “founding fathers” such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and even Benjamin Franklin also maintained “Augustinian convictions,” that is, a view of the reality of “original sin” that can be traced back to Augustine.

The paradox of the Constitution is seen in this juxtaposition of the Enlightenment view and the Augustinian view of human nature.

There are many deficient ways that the doctrine of original sin has been explained, and some of Augustine’s basic assertions are problematic.

But I think Ellingsen’s ideas about original sin are correct and agree with his conclusion: “Vigilance about the low sides of human nature, a healthy cynicism, improves civic life.”

_____

* Richardson (b. 1962) is an outstanding historian/history professor who daily posts “Letters from an American.” Early every morning I read her latest “letter” and always find them very informative. Here is the link to her blogsite.

** Ellingsen (b. 1949), an Augustinian scholar with a Ph.D. from Yale, is an ordained Lutheran (ELCA) pastor and a church history professor at the Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta. This link should take you to my 2011 review of his book on Goodreads (scroll down). 

Assessing Christianity in Contemporary China

Thirty-five years ago this week, I made my first of three delightful visits to China and first-hand contact with Christians there. My last trip to China was in 2004, and in the 18 years since then there have been some definite changes: both increased persecution and increased growth.

Grace Church, Shanghai

Visiting Grace Church in Shanghai (1987)

In August 1987, I went to an academic meeting in Hong Kong. When the meeting ended, rather than fly directly back to Japan as originally planned, I decided to take the train to Guangzhou (Canton) and fly from there to Shanghai—and then from there to Nagasaki three days later.

On Sunday morning, Aug. 23, I hailed a taxi and showed the driver the address of what in English is called Grace Church. He took me there without difficulty, and it turned out to be a delightful morning. I was greeted (in English) by an elderly gentleman and then introduced to a Mr. Wu.

Mr. Wu sat by me and translated the sermon during the worship service, which was attended by 1,500~2,000 people. After I treated him to a nice Sunday dinner at a local restaurant, he took me to see the first Baptist church built in Shanghai. His grandfather was pastor there in the 1920s.

Grace Church was originally a Baptist church also, but it was forced to close in 1966 at the beginning of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Four years after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, the church was able to reopen, and from then until 1987, the church had baptized 1,600 people.

Hearing Christian Philosophers in Beijing (1994)

My second trip to China was in October 1994 when I was able to attend a fascinating symposium of Christian philosophers from the United States and philosophers at Peking University.

(This year, Peking [the old spelling of Beijing] University was ranked [here] the best university in China and the 12^th best in the world.)

I was not only impressed with the Christian philosophers, particularly Alvin Plantinga,* who had come from the U.S. but also by the brilliance of the Chinese philosophers, who were eager to learn more about Christianity. I was told that one or more of them were “crypto-Christians.”

Visiting Churches in Shandong (2004)

Shandong (Shantung) is a province of the People’s Republic of China on that nation’s eastern coast, the part of China closest to South Korea.

On the last day of July 2004, June and I left Japan, which had been our home for one month shy of a full 38 years. We took the two-hour 45-minute flight from Fukuoka, where we had lived for 36 years, to Qingdao on the eastern coast of Shandong Province.

The next day we made a three-hour trip to Penglai (Tengchow) and visited the church Lottie Moon first attended in China. (If you don’t know who Lottie Moon was, see this 12/26/12 blog post.) We had a delightful conversation (in Japanese) with Rev. Shin, the 80-year-old pastor there.

The four-hour return trip to Qingdao took us by the inland city of Pingdu (Pingtu), where Lottie Moon started a church, and, appropriately, the senior pastor was Rev. Wang, a woman. (Her picture is in the link above.)

So, What About Now?

In recent years, you may have read stories about the persecution of Christians and the destruction of Christian churches in China—and there have been many such cases. Opposition to Christianity increased after 2013 when Xi Jinping became president of China.

But in Sept. 2020, The Economist posted an article titled “Protestant Christianity is booming in China.” With about 3% of the population being Christian, there are now more Christians in China than in France or Germany.

Much of this growth has been since 2004 when I was last in China—and has primarily been by adult conversion not by the birth of children to Christian parents. Moreover, this growth has been without the assistance of Western missionaries.

If present trends continue, which they may not, in a few decades there may well be more Christians in China than in any other country in the world. Imagine that!

_____

* My Sept. 15, 2017, blog post was about Plantinga.

The Inevitability of “Progress”—and Collapse

This blog post is not a book review, but it is based upon a novel that I first learned about from Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs. The book in question is How Beautiful We Were (2020) by Imbolo Mbue. 

Author Imbolo Mbue was born in Cameroon (in 1981), educated in the U.S., and became an American citizen in 2014. She now lives in New York City with her husband and children.

Mbue’s debut novel is the award-winning Behold the Dreamers (2016) and was selected by Oprah for her book club. I am currently reading that intriguing book.

But soon after learning about How Beautiful We Were, I was able to check it out on Kindle from my local library and to read it in a few days. It is the poignant story of the people who live in Kosawa, a small village in a fictional African country.

On July 28 (see here), Anton cited what Yaya, the old grandmother, said about Christian missionaries who had come to that part of Africa when she was a little girl. She was troubled by what the missionaries said—and even though I was a missionary for 38 years, I found their talk troubling also.

But Mbue’s book is not anti-Christian. In fact, in “Acknowledgments” at the end of the book, she thanks her aunt “for making me go to Bethel Baptist Church, Kumba”—and says that “that led me to become the person of faith I am today” (p. 364).

The pivotal issue of How Beautiful We Were is corporate greed, which caused a severe environmental crisis in Kosawa and the surrounding area. Paxton, an American petroleum corporation, began working in that region, and their oil drilling operation led to massive pollution of the land and water.

An increasing number of children in Kosawa die from pollution-caused disease, and the once peaceful life of the Kosawa villagers is increasingly thrown into disarray.

The main struggle against Paxton is led by Thula, the most precocious child in Kosawa, who ends up spending years getting an education in the U.S. before returning to Kosawa to continue the fight against Paxton. There are often signs of apparent improvement, but the struggle ends tragically.

The novel begins in 1980 and concludes in 2020, the village of Kosawa gone, the descendants mostly working for Paxton in Africa or even in the United States. The older people still left in their native country woefully say,

Sometimes we ask our children about the cars they drive. The cars seem to be bigger than they’ve ever been, needing more oil. Do they think about it, about the children who will suffer as we once did just so they can have all the oil they want? (p. 358).

“Progress” seems inevitable when considering industrialism or capitalism. Rather than people maintaining their traditional way of life, the lure of money to buy those things that make life easier and, supposedly, more enjoyable is irresistible. And corporate greed is insatiable.

But as I have already written repeatedly this year, such “progress” leads to overshoot and the inevitability of the collapse of the world as we know it. As Thinking Friend David Nelson remarked earlier this week, “Uncontrolled capitalism is cancerous.” That is a primary reason collapse is inevitable.

When the collapse will come is not known, and action taken now can either hasten or delay the collapse. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act signed by Pres. Biden on Aug. 16 happily postpones the inevitable—but it does not remove the inevitability.

Someone anonymously posted (on Aug. 10) this comment on my blogsite: “We are always looking for an alternative to the only true solution—a radical change in how we consume everything—by consuming far, far less.”

I think that is certainly true—but highly unlikely to happen. The desire for upward mobility, which includes greater consumption, is boundless; the willingness to embrace downward mobility is rare—in spite of Henri Nouwen’s correct insistence that it is “the selfless way of Christ.”**

Sadly, as Jesus declared, “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:14, NIV)

_____

** See Nouwen’s The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (2007). I last read that book in Jan. 2021, noting that it is “a small but quite profound book that could/should be read often.”

India at 75: Still the World’s Largest Democracy?

Today is my birthday, and most of you know that I am “as old as the hills,” as the saying goes. But do you know that I am older than India?! Well, I am older than the Republic of India, which became a sovereign and democratic nation at 12:02 a.m. on August 15, 1947 (my ninth birthday). 

India is perhaps the world’s most complex nation. There was no nation of India until 1947, but the history of the Indian subcontinent is a long and complex one. There were numerous empires, kingdoms, and sultanates that ruled various parts of the area over the centuries.

The subcontinent was (and is) populated by a host of different ethnic groups. Even today India has 22 separate official languages and at least 121 languages altogether.

India is also quite complex religiously. The major religion, of course, is Hinduism. But “India” was also the birthplace of Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. There are also a large number of Christians in India; for example, there are only two countries in the world with more Methodists than in India.

India began to come under greater and greater European influence/rule after about 1500, first by the Portuguese followed by the Dutch and then especially after the formation of the English East India Company in 1600.

After the short-lived independence movement of 1857, “India” was under the British Raj, the rule of the British Crown, from 1858 until 1947, when it finally achieved its independence.

India will soon become the world’s most populous nation. India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country just next year, according to the 27^th edition of the United Nations’ World Population Prospects, released about a month ago.

The population of China was 1,144 million in 1990 compared with India’s 861 million. But with the continuation of India’s rapid growth rate causing its population to surpass China’s, next year nearly 19% of the people in the world will live in India.

With nearly one out of five of the world’s population living in the one nation, India will increasingly have significant impact on the world as a whole.

Is India still the world’s largest democracy? As India celebrates its 75^th birthday today, there will be those who will again point out that, among other things, it is the “world’s largest democracy.”

On January 26, 1950, when the Indian constitution took effect, the Republic of India did in fact become the most populous democracy in the world—and it has been so regarded until the present. But there are some who now question whether India, in fact, is still a democracy.

In The World Ahead 2022, published in Nov. 2021 by The Economist, the first article about Asia is regarding India, and it was titled “A museum for democracy?”

Democracy is in danger there as in other places in the world, including the U.S. That danger both there and here is rooted largely in religious nationalism.

Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in India and Christian nationalism in the U.S. are both linked to religious fundamentalism—and both are a real danger to the perpetuation of democracy.

In my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I have a short sub-section titled “Hindu Fundamentalism.” There I briefly introduce the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That is the Party of Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India, who was first elected PM in 2014.

Under Modi, the BJP is now much stronger than when the first edition of my book was published.

Hindutva is an ideology that disregards Indian Christians and other religious minority believers as true Indians because they have allegiances that lie outside India, and it asserts the country should be purified of their presence.

To be real democracies, both the Republic of India (75 years old today) and the USA (which turned 246 years old this July 4) must accept the diversity and the equality of its citizenry, seeking the greatest good for all citizens regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliation.

Christians in India, of course, oppose Hindu nationalism there. Many progressive Christians in the U.S. also oppose Christian nationalism here (see Christians Against Christian Nationalism).

_____

** On Aug. 12, The Washington Post posted “As India marks its first 75 years, Gandhi is downplayed, even derided.” I was sad to see that.

 

What Does the Rainbow Signify?

A rainbow is a fairly rare natural phenomenon that brings delight to anyone fortunate enough to see one. After the Great Flood, according to Genesis 9:13, God said to Noah and his sons, “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth (NIV).”  

The Rainbow Flag

Presently, perhaps the primary use of the rainbow emblem is with regard to LGBTQ people. The rainbow flag was created in 1978 by artist Gilbert Baker. Upon Baker's death in 2017, a California state senator remarked that Baker (b. 1951 in Kansas) “helped define the modern LGBT movement.”

In June 2015, the White House was illuminated in the rainbow flag colors to commemorate the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states, following the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision.

The rainbow flag is now seen around the globe as a positive representation of the LGBTQ community.

The Rainbow Coalition

Earlier, the rainbow was used in a different manner. In April 1969, Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party founded an antiracist, anticlass movement called the Rainbow Coalition.

That original Rainbow Coalition was a multicultural political organization that included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (poor whites), and the Young Lords (Hispanics), and an alliance of major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change.

Hampton (b. 1948) was assassinated in December 1969—and that is the climax of Judas and the Black Messiah, the 2021 American biographical crime drama film about the betrayal of Hampton by an FBI informant.

Many years later, in Nov. 1983, Jesse Jackson launched his campaign for the 1984 presidential election, claiming to be fighting for the rights of a “Rainbow Coalition” of Americans—including Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans; men and women; straight and LGBTQ.

The Rainbow Division

As many of you know, for ten years now my wife and I have been members of Rainbow Mennonite Church (RMC) in Kansas City, Kansas, (KCKS). Before we attended there for the first time in 2011, I sent an email to the pastor, asking, among other things, about the name.

We had heard that RMC was a church that welcomed and affirmed LGBTQ people, so we wondered if the church’s name was related to that stance. It turned out that there was no connection.

RMC is now located on Southwest Boulevard, but the church’s first location was on Rainbow Boulevard, a KCKS roadway that was renamed that in 1919 in honor of the 42^nd U.S. Infantry Division.

That 42^nd Division was formed 105 years ago, in August 1917, at the beginning of U.S. engagement in the First World War. It was created by combining military units from 26 states and D.C.

Douglas MacArthur said that such an organization stretches “over the whole country like a rainbow.” As a result, the 42^nd came to be known as the Rainbow Division.

Several of those who served in the 42^nd Division were from the small city of Rosedale (which was annexed by KCKS in 1922). Rosedale welcomed local veterans home from the war with rainbow colored bunting, and then Hudson Road, a major street in Rosedale, was renamed Rainbow Boulevard.

In 1957 a Mennonite church was organized in Rosedale. When it merged with another Mennonite congregation in 1964, the name was changed to Rainbow Boulevard Mennonite Church. Then when the church moved to its present location in 1969, “Boulevard” was dropped from its name.

Mennonites have mostly refused to serve in the military, and during WWI many conscientious objectors were harshly treated and some were jailed. Thus, it is somewhat ironic that our church’s name comes from the “Rainbow Division,” the 42^nd U.S. Infantry Division.

Nevertheless, we members at RMC are proud of our name and the larger meaning of what “rainbow” signifies.

And most of us believe that “The moral arc of the universe is long and bends toward justice.” Maybe that moral arc, which is shaped like a rainbow, is also colored like a rainbow and is, indeed, bending toward justice and equality for all the diverse people represented by the colors of the rainbow.

What about Nuclear Energy?

Tomorrow, August 6, is the 77^th anniversary of the first time a nuclear weapon was used in warfare. That morning at approximately 8:15 a.m. (local time), a U.S. Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

As I have made several posts regarding the bombings of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki three days later (see here, for example), this article is mostly about the later use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 

President Eisenhower made a significant “Atoms for Peace” address to the United Nations in December 1953, eight years after the nuclear destruction of the two Japanese cities. That began a period of high hope that nuclear energy could be used for the great benefit of the human race.**

From the beginning, however, the U.S. President’s proposal was partly propaganda and an excuse for building additional nuclear weapons for national security. That led to the Cold War era, and during Eisenhower’s time in office, the number of U.S. nuclear weapons rose from 1,005 to 20,000.

But Eisenhower’s seminal speech also led to the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957, which was set up as the world’s “Atoms for Peace” organization within the United Nations—and as their website shows, it is still quite active.

There have been three major reasons for widespread opposition to the development of nuclear energy.

1) The fear of nuclear weapons being used again in warfare, perhaps by a rogue nation or by terrorists. This was long my main reason for opposing the further development of nuclear energy. I wrote an anti-nuclear article 30~40 years ago for a local publication in Japan.

2) The possibility of accidents. Indeed, there have been three major nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island (Penn.) in March 1979, Chernobyl (Ukraine) in April 1986 (the world’s biggest nuclear accident), and Fukushima (Japan) in March 2011.

The first of those caused a dramatic shift in the enthusiasm for the development of nuclear power in the U.S. Large anti-nuclear demonstrations were held in Washington, D.C., in May 1979, and then in New York City that December.

This is an issue that must be carefully considered, and, indeed, in Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters (2022), Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian historian at Harvard,

holds that the inevitability of accidents is one of several reasons to encourage nuclear power to drift into disuse, rather than give it a new role in the fight against climate change (from the June 25 issue of The Economist).

3) The high cost of building nuclear reactors and disposing of waste materials. According to this website, “the minimum cost per megawatt hour to build a new nuclear plant is $112, compared to $46 for utility-scale solar . . . and $30 for wind.”

And then, disposal of nuclear waste is a major challenge, both in terms of methods and cost.

So, what about now? In recent years, because of increased awareness of the seriousness of global warming, there has again been a growing movement favoring the use of nuclear energy.

The Russian war on Ukraine this year has also once again increased the appeal of the development and use of nuclear power, especially in Europe. Countries that were phasing out nuclear reactors are now postponing those plans.

In Japan, twenty-one nuclear reactors were decommissioned after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, but now ten of those reactors have been restarted and plans are in place for more restarts in the years ahead.

It seems to me that in spite of the risks (and the cost), the industrial countries of the world must make plans immediately for the increased construction of nuclear reactors for the energy needs of the world.

True, destructive nuclear accidents are possible, but more widespread destruction of the world as we know it is quite certain if global warming is not controlled. Nuclear energy is one of our best hopes for significantly slowing the crisis of global warming.

What do you think?

_____

** “How The Atom Changed The World” is an informative 55-minute video (available here on YouTube) regarding the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes; it begins with Eisenhower’s emphasis on Atoms for Peace and deals with the pros and cons of nuclear energy up through 2021.

++ Some of you may be interested in exploring this link to “Nuclear Prayer Day” tomorrow (Aug. 6); it is especially to pray for a world free of nuclear weapons.