Culture Commands Series Our Great U.S. Culture War Pt 2a

This is Part A of the second installment of a series on Our Great U.S. Culture War.

From Cape Henry to President George Washington

It is 182 years from Englishmen planting the Christian Cross on Cape Henry, Virginia to claim a covenant evangelizing this new world, this Virginia, to the first inauguration of President George Washington. That period from 1607 to 1789 was a tumultuous time. For many families, eight generations or more lived through this time. Their shared time was shaped by great movements of people and ideas, wars of significant consequences, and civil disorder that changed the very basic assumptions of government.

The way that so much happened concurrently, is key to understanding what resulted, ultimately, in America – as the Novus Ordo Seclorum or the New Order of the Ages.

Consider what collided from Jamestown in 1607 to the Stamp Act of 1765.

1. The thirteen colonies were populated in waves of immigration. As noted in the first installment, four sub-cultures from the British Isles divided the colonies into four regions where they dominated. Tidewater, New England, Middle Atlantic, and Frontier Appalachia established themselves at different times. Tidewater and New England were well-established by 1700. The Middle Atlantic followed after they assimilated earlier Dutch and Swedish settlers. Lastly, the great Scot-Irish migration, which defined the Frontier, wasn’t until 1700 through 1760.

The ongoing assimilation of other people groups will be addressed. Yet, the point remains, the mass migration and population growth from 104 Englishmen and boys to 3 million people across eight generations is a story unto itself.

1. The Enlightenment loosely followed the same time line from Galileo publishing Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) in 1610 to the French Terror in 1793. The Enlightenment was an revolution of ideas and an explosion of thought. Culture may command societies, but within cultures ideas motivate humankind. For good and evil. The Enlightenment expanded concepts of reason, rights, nature, liberty, equality, tolerance, science, progress, and virtue.

If that isn’t enough, three distinct Enlightenments influenced Colonial America. The Enlightenments in England and Scotland, France, and America itself were different. The cumulative effect makes our American Revolution unique.

1. Changing ideas about Western Christianity caused conflict. The Wars of Religion waged across Europe. From 1618 to 1648, the Thirty Years War devasted central Europe. The English Civil War had a religious component as Anglicans, Puritans, and Presbyterians fought one another. One hundred years later, the First Great Awakening swept through Great Britain and America. The fervor of the Great Awakening evolved ideas about individual freedom and sovereignty that become uniquely American.
2. The English Civil War was a series of conflicts from 1642 to 1652 where Royalists and Parliamentarians fought for supremacy while the Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates added to the brutal mix. In America, the colonies chose sides. Massachusetts was enthusiastically Puritan, while Virginia remained loyal to the deposed Charles I. That loyalty earned Virginia the title of “The Old Dominion” as a fifth realm of the United Kingdom.

Extremely significant was the fact that three ruling sovereigns were removed from power in the 1600s. The concept of limited government grew from the Magna Charta’s first limits on the absolute power of kings in 1215 to the “King-in-Parliament” rule – ceding legislative supremacy to the Parliament. This severely limited government existed nowhere else on earth. Holland, the Swiss Cantons, and Boer South Africa notwithstanding.

Americans weren’t the first to depose a king. We were to first to establish a government based on a piece of paper – a written declaration of purpose. And, then structure that government on another piece of paper – a constitution.

Any person who lived a Biblical allotment of 70 years during that 182 years of Colonial growth and change, experienced the spirit of their times – the zeitgeist. So much happened and was about to happen, it made the Tale of Rip Van Winkle a well-appreciated favorite in early America.

Everything came together to unite the four American Sub-Cultures in key aspects of identity before the Revolution. Colonists, who identified in 13 rival flavors among themselves, gradually knew themselves to be British Americans to outsiders. And, ultimately, uniquely “Americans” to everyone.

One aspect of that incipient Americanism was our American Biblical Worldview.

America was and what Americans agreed about themselves – upon winning our American Revolution

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