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Introduction

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This volume follows four prior reference books that I have recently authored relative to American symbols. The first was on the U.S. flag, the second on the Declaration of Independence, the third on the Liberty Bell, and the fourth on the national anthem. Whereas these prior books dealt with symbols that were distinctive to America, I recognize that the United States has no monopoly on the Bible or its interpretation. By the same token, I believe that American uses of the Bible can cast significant light on both its history and its self-understanding, particularly during the colonial, founding, and antebellum years.

The Role of the Bible in America

In reviewing Donald S. Lutz’s survey of political literature in America from 1760 to 1805, Professor Daniel Dreisbach of American University observes that the Bible was “cited more frequently than any European writer or even any European school of thought such as the Enlightenment or Whig intellectual tradition” (Dreisbach 2014, 146). He further observes that an examination of inventories of individuals who died in the eighteenth century indicates that “the Bible was the most accessible book in late-eighteenth-century America” (147). Professor Mark David Hall of George Fox University notes that “Connecticut required families to own Bibles, and it demanded that towns have schools so that citizens would be able to read them” (2013, 32). Moreover, however much biblical literacy has declined in recent years, Americans remain a religious people, and much current political debate can be related either directly or indirectly to biblical themes. A Museum of the Bible now draws many visitors near the national mall in Washington, DC, while the American Bible Society has recently opened an exhibition on the Bible near Independence Hall in Philadelphia where the nation was born and its constitution formulated.

I realize that a volume on the Bible in American law and politics merely scratches the surface with regard to the role of the Bible in American life and, indeed, in Western civilization. The Torah and other Hebrew writings that Christians call the Old Testament were the foundation of Jewish life and culture. The Bible, expanded to include the New Testament, is the basis of Christianity. Islam also draws many of its stories from the Bible, especially as orally transmitted (Griffith 2013). The Protestant Reformation was based on the doctrine of sola scriptura, or the belief that the Bible alone was the only sure guide to Christian life and practice, a conviction that Puritans brought with them to North America. Biblical scenes have been the subject of numerous works of art, the Bible has inspired and been the subject of many musical compositions, and cultural manifestations are as pervasive as Gideon Bibles in motel rooms; the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky; the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Florida; the Bible Museum in Washington, DC (see Bielo “Materializing xxvithe Bible”); WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) bracelets and the corresponding HWLV (He Would Love First) on the arms of teenagers; bumper stickers (“God said it, I believe it, that settles it”); cartoons; T-shirts; and the like.

Most people who read the Bible probably do not go there chiefly to settle political or legal issues, and most readers likely revere the Bible less because of persuasive arguments on its behalf or because of its perceived connection to American law and politics than for the comfort and inspiration they find for their daily lives. It has even been reported that as he approached the end of his life, W. C. Fields, who had a reputation for dissolute behavior, began reading the Bible in order to look for loopholes! From a more serious standpoint, many people, especially Protestant evangelicals, are likely to view the key doctrines of their faith as grounded on the Bible.

The Author’s Experience with the Bible

In filling out a questionnaire connected to this book, I was asked to list all the contributors. I listed myself both as the “sole” author and the “soul” author because, as much as any of my works, I have put both heart and soul into this book. If readers will permit me to transition from pun to oxymoron, I consider the subjects of the volume to be transcendently practical.

As a child of Protestant Christian parents whose original intention was to be foreign missionaries and whose lives were structured around their faith, I remember singing the words and sounding out the letters of the Bible to a chorus that said,

The B-I-B-L-E,

Yes, that’s the book for me!

I stand alone on the Word of God,

The B-I-B-L-E!

In singing “Jesus Loves Me,” I further learned that this great truth was grounded in the knowledge that “the Bible tells me so.” Yet another song that we sang, reflecting Psalm 119:105, suggested that “Thy word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path always” and observed that learning Scripture was important “that I might not sin; that I might sin against Thee.”

Almost any time my parents sent a card or signed a guest book, whether for a wedding funeral, open house, or other occasion, they left a reference to a Bible verse, a practice I have followed with what I hope will be considered good humor (it’s actually a verse my mother has cited to me a number of times) in this volume. A friend told me about a woman who had forgotten what favorite verse she had taken upon her Lutheran confirmation and called her sister only to be told that it was Proverbs 26:11, which more refined readers may prefer not to read!

In addition to its moral and religious guidance, as I grew older I realized that the Bible was also sometimes regarded as a guide to the future or even as an object of magic. On the last days of the many revival meetings that I attended as a boy, evangelists explained that Russia, China, and the United States were all the subjects of such biblical books as Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation and that xxviinations were even then preparing for the final battle of Armageddon. By the time a representative of the Gideons came to church to tell how a soldier in Vietnam was miraculously saved when a bullet intended for his body instead hit the pocket New Testament in his vest, I was old enough to wonder whether another book might have served the same purpose, but I learned that one should reverently and ceremoniously burn an outworn Bible much as one might dispose of a tattered flag.

Although I knew from a young age that the Bible was composed of two central parts, both of which contained many books (although the epistles are better characterized as letters) the names of which we were encouraged to learn in order (a process now made easier by a song), like most people, I chiefly approached the Bible as a single “holy” book, with a coherent theme. I soon learned that even people within the same denomination often differed in their interpretations of various passages and in their explanation of how seemingly contradictory or obscure passages should be interpreted in relation to one another.

Denominations even had particular translations of the Bible that they approved. When I was growing up, ours favored the King James Version, although, for reasons I still do not completely understand, many also liked The Living Bible, which did not even pretend to be a translation but a paraphrase. Moreover, the story of Adam and Eve’s temptation in the Garden of Eden and of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness revealed that even Satan can quote Bible verses and served as a perpetual warning against misinterpreting Scriptures.

Had I been more closely attuned to the controversies that had been generated by the civil rights movement that developed in the wake of World War II and the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, I might also have wondered why churches in our neighborhood were all white or all black. I heard the story of Moses many times as a child, and the cross was a central motif of our teachings, and yet I do not ever remember either story being applied, as it surely was being applied in black churches and some more theological liberal Protestant churches, to the African American struggle for racial justice, which we often associated with communists and other outside agitators.

As a Protestant Christian who has been teaching Sunday school lessons from the Bible for about forty years and preparing weekly sermons from the Bible for almost twenty, I remain deeply committed to the Bible as a sure guide to faith and practice. As a political scientist, I am also fascinated by the manner in which individuals have interpreted the Bible throughout our history. Moreover, as biblical literacy has declined, I am concerned that Americans may be increasingly unaware of the manner in which biblical themes, as well as specific chapters and verses, and arguments about them, have shaped our own heritage. Perhaps we are now in the position of Europeans about whom Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1781 when he explained, “It was not necessary in New England, where everybody reads the Bible, and is acquainted with Scripture phrases, that you should note the texts from which you took them; but I have observed in England, as well as in France, that verses and expressions taken from the sacred writings and not known to be such, appear very strange and awkward to some readers; and I shall therefore in my edition take the liberty of marking the quoted texts in the margins” (Hall 2019, 30).

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I am reminded of scholars who for many years missed many of the biblical references in George Washington’s thought because he rarely cited chapter and verse, and they didn’t recognize his expressions as biblical. In David Daniell’s magnificent study of the Bible in English, after mentioning the “Bible-blindness of so many scholars,” he cites a 650-page collection of documents from the Great Awakening from two eminent scholars, who admit that they have removed without notice what they considered to be “a superfluity of Scriptural citations” (2003, 552). In a similar vein, during the administration of George W. Bush, evangelicals throughout the nation often recognized biblical allusions in his speeches long before commentators at the New York Times and other mainstream sources did so. It was almost as though he were talking in a language that they did not understand (Berlinerblau 2013, 211). Illustrating yet a different problem, there are any number of books that seek to prove that America is a Christian nation, that its laws are founded on the Ten Commandments, or that most, if not all, American founders were Christians, simply by stringing together quotations from laws, cases, or prominent individuals from American history without regard to context or possible political motivations.

Rhetorical Uses of the Bible

In his classic study of the use of the Bible during the American founding era, Professor Daniel Dreisbach observes that it was used then, as it has been used since, for a variety of purposes. Acknowledging that his own list is overlapping and not intended to be exhaustive, Dreisbach cites five such uses that he thinks have been particularly prominent. They are:

(1) To enrich a common language and cultural vocabulary through distinctively biblical allusions, phrases, figures of speech, symbols, proverbs, aphorisms, and the like; (2) to enhance the power and weight of rhetoric through its identification with a venerated, authoritative text; (3) to identify and define normative standards and transcendent rules for ordering and judging public life; (4) to illuminate the role of Providence in the affairs of men and nations and, specifically, America’s place in providential history; and (5) to gain insights into the character and designs of God, especially as they pertain to His dealings with humankind. (Dreisbach 2017, 72–73)

In a caution that would arguably apply to any period in American history, after illustrating each of these uses, Dreisbach warns against “a misunderstanding of the Scripture’s role in the discourse of the founders” (2017, 93). He thus notes, “To interpret biblical language as purely stylistic or rhetorical . . . could lead to the cynical conclusion that the founders employed the Bible only for temporal political advantage and that their invocations of the Bible were merely playing to the prejudices of bible-reading people” (93). Likewise, the opposite error is “to read all invocations of biblical language as direct, literal appeals to transcendent, divine claims,” which he believes “ignores the nature of political rhetoric and could lead to an erroneous conclusion that the founders were driven by a theocratic, even messianic, vision of America” (93).

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In a study of the early republic, John F. Berens warns that “one element in the political rhetoric of the era was the employment of providential concepts for partisan ends,” which he attributes to both major political parties of the day (1978, 10).

Through writing this volume, I have become increasingly cognizant of the need to interpret the Bible, and references to the Bible, with great care. I recognize both that an individual proof text or texts may often be in tension or conflict with larger biblical themes and that larger themes may often require more than a reference to a single text or texts. During the Trump administration, I have also been perplexed at the manner in which individuals whom I had previously believed to be faithful to biblical principles of civility and righteousness in governmental leaders were so seemingly willing to discard or ignore them for a taste of political power or the achievement of immediate policy objectives.

Apart from such observations, and arguably in contrast to the Bible itself, this book has no grand theme other than that of demonstrating the pervasiveness of biblical citation and argumentation throughout American history. If, as I believe, the Bible is true, and certain understandings of its text are more accurate and more in tune with God’s will than others, then many of these interpretations have been wrong if for no other reason than that they have been contradictory. No one appears to have understood this better than President Lincoln, who recognized that citizens of the North and the South read the same Bible and prayed to the same God while coming to radically different conclusions about their application to slavery. As I have written this book, I have sought to cultivate what I consider to be Lincoln’s own humility in recognizing that it is not always possible to ascertain God’s designs but that we remain obligated to pursue them with the best understanding that we can and that such understanding often begins with careful study of the Bible.

In reflecting on the Museum of the Bible, Professor Richard Gamble has observed that although most historians have asked “what impact the Bible has had on American history,” if they asked instead “what Americans did to the Bible, they would uncover a story filled with active players who have quoted, interpreted, reinterpreted, and applied the Bible” (Gamble 2019, 242). This book is an attempt to illustrate both how the Bible has influenced America and how Americans have interpreted, and sometimes misinterpreted, the Bible. I think it is important to heed the warning of Paul Hanson that a study of the Bible suggests “that political strategies will continue to avoid static imposition of a timeless blueprint and instead justify political positions on the basis of the criterion of their adequacy in representing God’s governance of justice and mercy within specific historical and geographical settings” (2010, 25).

Organization of This Book

I have organized this book, like my other four recent reference books, alphabetically so that readers can quickly find essays on topics of interest. I have included references and suggestions for further reading in each essay as well as cross references to further essays. This book includes a timeline, a topical table xxxof contents, a massive bibliography, and both a general index and an index to specific Bible chapters and verses that I have cited.

Key Topics

As its title suggests, the two most prominent topics of this book seek to relate the Bible to American law and politics. Each of these topics is quite broad, but many essays fall into general categories. There are, of course, court cases that specifically address the Bible, typically in public schools or in other public settings, but I have kept these to a minimum both because most do not directly quote the Bible and because I think they are much better treated in the Encyclopedia of the First Amendment, to which I contributed, and which is now accessible online (the First Amendment Encyclopedia). Proponents of numerous causes have associated them with biblical interpretations. Such causes include slavery, temperance, women’s rights, civil rights, and such issues as abortion, same-sex marriage, and the like.

I have included essays on numerous speeches and documents in U.S. history (typically listed under either the speaker or a prominent analogy like the City upon a Hill) that either rely upon or cite biblical passages. I have also identified a number of key individuals whose writings and speeches are not only religious but distinctively biblical, but, in this respect, I fear that I have barely scratched the surface and that I have undoubtedly left out many such individuals whose lives and political views have been guided by biblical principles. In some cases, I have separate entries on speeches by the same individual because I think that readers might be more likely to look up a speech, for example, the Gettysburg Address or Lincoln’s second inaugural address, by its title than its author.

There are so many denominations within the United States that it would be difficult to cover them all, but I have included some essays on denominations whose interpretations of the Bible have been most influential or whose interpretations have sometimes brought their adherents to court. Unlike the Encyclopedia of the First Amendment, to which I continue to contribute, this book does not address church/state issues, with which I remain fascinated, unless they specifically involve biblical interpretations.

In contrast to some earlier volumes, however, this is not a book about the Bible and American culture per se, but it is specifically limited to the Bible in law and politics. Every Sunday, pastors generate thousands of sermons, most of which remain unpublished. As a general rule, I have not specifically referred to sermons unless they specifically related to issues of law and politics and unless they appear to have been more widely disseminated. As I approached the already generous word limit that my publisher provided, I further had to delete a number of entries that I had originally planned, but many of which, thankfully, are at least discussed in passing in existing essays. I am sure that there are many men and women of faith who have cited the Bible as they dealt with political and legal concerns that I have missed, but I continue to hope that this volume might provide at least a guide for those interested in similar scholarly endeavors.

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Bible Translation

Although the number of Bible translations has multiplied in recent years, unless the source I am quoting does otherwise, I almost always cite the language of the King James Version. I have done so not because I believe it is necessarily the most accurate (although it had the advantage of having been translated directly from original texts) but because it remains among the most lyrical and has certainly been the most pervasive in U.S. history. I recognize that it is ultimately a translation, which derives its authority from its ability to convey the original meanings of the biblical languages in which it was originally written.

I know that there are religions that are active in the United States that have sacred texts other than, or in addition to, the Christian Bible, probably most notably the Koran, and there are some societies that can better be studied through the influence of that book (although it was itself influenced by the Bible) or religious texts other than the Christian Bible. If there were a volume that describes the influence of this text on American law and politics, I would most assuredly add it to my library, just as I would be delighted to find a volume similar to my own on the influence of the Bible in English law and politics. My research, however, indicates that the Bible has always had, and continues to have, a fairly unique place in American law and politics and although I do refer to a number of alternate texts (Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible, the Jefferson Bible, the Book of Mormon, and others), they are not the primary subject of this volume.

Audience for This Book

I believe that this book will interest students of the Bible, students of American law and politics, historians, lawyers, theologians, and lay persons. As I think back on my own years as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, I wish there had been such a book available while I was seeking topics for term papers and for my own dissertation. I do not recall even thinking about writing my dissertation on some of the biblical topics that I have discovered while writing this book and that, in retrospect, might have proven to be better topics. I will consider this book to be a success if it might scout out the scholarly landscape for future studies relating law and politics to the Bible.

As with my previous books, this should be of particular help to reference librarians and especially appropriate for high school and public libraries, for college and university libraries, and for more specialized collections on law, theology, and history. Like the Bible itself, it is my hope that the volume is understandable enough to be read with profit both by laypersons and by scholars and theologians.

Acknowledgments

I have consulted with numerous scholars on my campus about the subject of this volume and owe particular thanks to Dr. Rebekkah King, Dr. Philip Phillips, Dr. Ryan Korstange, Dr. Cheryl Torsney, and Dr. Fred Rolater. I owe even more to my xxxiiwife, who has endured more than her fair share of conversations on the subject over the past year. An undergraduate, Hailey Clark, further helped with proofing the manuscript. As always, I remain particularly indebted to the individuals at the Walker Library at the Middle Tennessee State University, and especially to those in the interlibrary loan office.

I am especially grateful to have found a publisher who was willing to take a volume of this length and owe special thanks to acquisitions editor Jon Sisk. I would also like to thank copy editor Krishnaa Lakshmanan.

For Reference and Further Reading

Berens, John F. 1978. Providence & Patriotism in Early America, 1640–1815. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Berlinerblau, Jacques. 2013. “The Bible in the Presidential Elections of 2012, 2008, 2004, and the Collapse of American Secularism.” Interested Reader: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David J.A. Clines. Atlanta, GA: Society for Biblical Literature, pp. 197–218.

Bielo, James. “Materializing the Bible.” https://www.materializingthebible.com/.

Daniell, David. 2003. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Driesbach, Daniel L. 2014. “The Bible and the Political Culture of the American Founding.” Faith and the Founders of the American Republic, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 144–73.

Dreisbach, Daniel L. 2017. Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. New York: Oxford University Press.

The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Middle Tennessee State University. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia.

Gamble, Richard M. 2019. A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Griffith, Sidney H. 2013. The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hall, Mark David. 2013. Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hall, Mark David. 2019. Did America Have a Christian Founding? Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.

Hanson, Paul D. 2010. Political Engagement as a Political Mandate. Cambridge, UK: James Clarke.