One Project for Christian America: Join or Die

William Penn and Protestant Nationalism

*This post is dedicated to Chase Davis, who has for some two months now persistently pestered me relentlessly about my lackluster Substack-ing.

People have no idea how politically insightful (and based) William Penn (1644-1718).

 His One Project for the Good of England is representative. Penn is colloquially remembered, because of overt liberal efforts to recast our history and national fathers to suit their purposes, as a passive Quaker—the two are synonymous today but not historically accurate—defender of universal toleration, which is now coded as “religious liberty.” I will not now offer a biography of Penn, but simply insist that One Project frustrates this purist, modernist caricature of Penn.

One aside: typically, Penn is credited with influencing the supposedly democratic and tolerationist principles of the West Jersey Concessions and Agreements (1677) (see Wikipedia). But as John Fea rightly corrects the record, said Concessions and Agreements were actually a departure from Penn’s view “that religious freedom should be extended solely to protestants.” What follows will bear this out.

“The Civil Interest is the Foundation and End of Civil Government… The Good of the Whole is the Rise and End of Government, but the Good of the Whole must needs be the Interest of the Whole, and Consequently the Interest of the Whole is the Reason and End of Government.”

“that Plenty of People is the Riches and Strength of a Wise and Good Government; as that is, where Vice is corrected and Vertue encourag'd.”

There is a reciprocal arrangement here. If the purpose of government is the good of the whole then the whole, the people must seek the good of government in order for the government to pursue their good in turn.

“[F]or this Reason of the Government will not suffer it to protect those that are Enemies to its Constitution and Safety; for so it would admit of something dangerous to the Society, for the Security of which, Government was at first instituted.”

That is, the government cannot protect or preserve things that are fundamentally detrimental to the existence of society or civil rule itself. It cannot be suicidal. “But those that own, embrace and obey the Government of their own Country as their temporal supream Authority, and whose Interest is one and the same with that of their own proper Government, ought to be valued and protected by that Government.”

At this point, Penn turns to England, which he calls “Populous and Protestant.”

There the civil interest with which government is charged is “in some sense Religious too.”

“For first, all English Protestants, whether Conformists or Nonconformists agree in this, that they only owe Allegiance and Subjection unto the Civil Government of England, and offer any Security in their power to give of their Truth in this Matter. And in the next place, they do not only consequentially disclaim the Pope's Supremacy, and all adhesion to forreign Authority under any Pretence, but therewith deny and oppose the Romish Religion, as it stands degenerated from Scripture, and the first and purest Ages of the Church, which makes up a great Negative Union.”

Penn is delineating the points around which all stripes of Protestants, dissenter and conformist alike, in seventeenth century England can rally, viz., anti-papalism, an impulse that continued well into late eighteenth-and-early-nineteenth century America. For Penn, this point is definitive of Protestantism:

“And it cannot be unknown to men read in the Reasons of the Reformation, that a Protestation made by the German Reformers against the Imperial Edicts of Charles the fifth, imposing Romish Traditions, gave beginning to the word Protestant.”

The recognition of the foreign enemy amongst all English Protestants is paramount. To divide the country over conformity is to weaken defenses against Romish incursions to the disadvantage of those within and without the Church of England proper. It won’t matter too much if vestments or the Prayer Book were universally embraced if Jesuits take over the country.

“The Civil Interest of English Protestants being thus the same, and their Religious Interest too, so far as concerns a Negative to the Usurpation and Error of Rome.” This is a national security issue, we might say. And Penn asks whether English Protestant unity can be produced without uniformity. “A Kingdom divided against it self cannot stand: what he [i.e., Jesus] said then, let me on another occasion say now, an Interest divided against it self must fall.”

To his interlocutors:

“I know some Men will take Fire at this, and by Crying The CHURCH, The CHURCH, hope to silence all Arguments of this Nature; But they must excuse me, if I pay no manner of Regard to their Zeal, and hold their Devotion both Ignorant and Dangerous at this time. It is not the way to fill the Church, to Destroy the People. A Church without People is a Contradiction, especially when the Scripture tells us that 'tis the People that makes the Church.”

To be clear, by “people” here Penn means the nation, England. His point is that the purity and uniformity of the English church won’t matter if it is overtaken by Rome (again), the opportunity for which is internal Protestant division. Penn wants a united front—or at least that’s his argument here which, as a dissenter himself, is not altogether disinterested, but we will take his argument on the merits. At one point, Penn even suggests—well, more than suggests—that the English churchmen most zealous to bring nonconformists to heel are actually secret agents of the Church of Rome and its post-Trent counter reformation. By his lights, anyone who misses the larger threat cannot be trusted; they are either imprudent or a traitor.

In a fascinating section, Penn, perhaps cynically, argues that the counter reformation is not so much motivated by honest zeal, but rather to rally support for Rome. In other words, as we all know, designating an external enemy—a perpetual one does best (e.g., War on Terror)—can yield profound political focus and consolidation. (In a sense, Penn is arguing for England to adopt the same consciousness and countervailing strategy.) At the same time, Penn perceives Rome inflaming civil unrest in England and other Protestant countries by stoking division, in actuality and perception (i.e., by encouraging persecution and rebellion, and by fostering propaganda).

“and if so, it must needs be of great Importance with all Protestants to let fall their private Animosities, and take all possible care that their dissents about Faith or Worship (which regard the other World) divide not their Affection and Judgment about the Common and Civil Interest of their Country: because if that be kept entire, it equally frustrates the designs of Rome, as if you were of one Religion. For since, as I said before, Religion, with the great men of that Church, is nothing else but a softer word for Civil Empire, preserve you but your Civil Interest from fraction, and you are in that sense of one Religion too; and that such an one, as you need not fear the temptation of Smithfield, if you will but be true to it.”

And so, clever Penn presents the “Zealous Gentlemen,” the conformist, with a conundrum: will they seriously sacrifice the security and interests of the England and Protestantism generally, then under threat and fire, for localized-national conformity, primarily on ecclesiological and sacramental questions? Within Penn’s paradigm, even those who limited civil government in principle to civil-secular interests, the civil interest had necessarily taken on a religious tenor.

Now, he indicts them:

“Being brought to this pinch, I conceive they must say, that they had rather deliver up their Church to the Power and Designs of Popery, then suffer Dissenters to live freely among them, though Protestant, of one negative Religion, and of the same Civil Interest; or else hasten to break those bonds that are laid upon Dissenters of truly tender and (by experience) of peaceable Consciences; and by Law establish the free Exercise of their Worship to Almighty God, that the Fears, Jealousies, Disaffection and Distraction, that now affect the one common Interest of Protestants, may be removed; for it seems impossible to preserve a distinct Interest from both.”

(Nota bene: Penn’s range of “free exercise is limited to English variants of Protestantism, obviously. For him, this means the English panoply at the time: Anabaptist, Quaker, Independent, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian.)

Penn goes on at length, several times using farm animal illustrations, to make the basic point that Protestant ecumenism is the best bulwark against foreign enemies (i.e., Roman Catholics).

“Let us go together as far as our way lies, and Preserve our Unity in those Principles, which maintain our Civil Society. This is our Common and our Just Interest, all Protestant-Dissenters agree in this, and it is both Wise and Righteous to admit no Fraction upon this Pact, no Violence upon this Concord. For the consequence of permitting any thing to break in upon the Principles of Humane Society, that is Forreign to the Nature of it, will distract and weaken that Society.”

And, “That Country which is False to its first Principles of Government, and mistakes or divides its Common and Popular Interest, must Unavoidably Decay.”

This is all a matter of priority and prudence for Penn, again, at least in principle so far as it goes. Christian religious liberty is a practicality; it is necessary to coral a sufficiently powerful counter-revolutionary force to resist common civil-societal enemies. Our socio-political and moral stability is at stake.

Two points. Historically, Penn’s position foreshadows that of American, its pan-Protestantism, as I’ve outlined at American Reformer.

Practically and presently, Penn’s diatribe is instructive for conservatives, which I define as Charles Haywood does via Roger Scruton as those against leftist priorities of levellism and licentiousness. A Christian bloc in America must be formed to stand athwart the foreign metaphysical-moral overhauls threatening us. At this juncture, that could rightly include Catholics. For the foreign influence once presented by Rome is now a dead letter—perhaps, a future Pope will conjure up a new foreign threat through exertion of actual, trans-national authority, but as it stands, American Catholics are functionally Protestants with rosaries. More positively and charitably, I take J. Gresham Machen’s position that Catholics are fundamentally Trinitarian. That’s more than good enough to lock arms in the present crisis, as Protestant-supremacist as I am. Penn was championing a sort of Conformists and Nonconformists together campaign.

Today, based on the frankly wild and tone deaf comments form certain Baptist circles I’ve witness on Twitter dot com over the past couple weeks, the biggest hiccup in this plan is the contemporary (functional-political) Anabaptists. They need to be wrangled, but their stubborn Biblicism and ignorance of the tradition is a high wall to scale. In any case, American Christians need to consider Penn’s strategic advice unto restoration of political order. America will be Protestant, as it has always been. But in the meantime, it is good enough that it is Christian. This is our project over the ensuing decades. Forms of worship cannot divide when basic anthropology is up for grabs. Join or die.

“To come then to our Point, Shall English Men by English Men, and Protestants by Protestants be Free or Opprest? That is, Whether shall we receive as English men and Protestants, those that have no other Civil Interest than that which is purely English, and who sincerely profess and embrace the same Protestation, for which the Antient Reformers were stiled Protestants, or for the sake of Humour or Base Ends disown them, and expose them and their Families to utter misery?

I would hope better of our great Church-mens Charity and Prudence; but if they should be so unhappy as to keep to their old measures, and still play the Gawdy but empty Name of Church against the Civil Interest and Religion of the Nation, they will shew themselves deserted of God, and then how long it will be, before they will be seen and left of all sober men, let them Judge.”