The American Revolution and the Kingdom of God — David Bercot — Ep. 046

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with David Berso in his little office here, and most people would probably know you for your research that you've done on the early church, like Ananicine Fathers, that whole thing. You've written numerous books about it. Back in 2011, you came out with a book that surprised me, I'll be honest, because it was about American history, and it's called In God We Don't Trust. And yeah, let's just dialogue about that. First of all, what inspired you to write it, and what's the basic premise of that book? Yeah, you're right. Most of my research over the years has been on the early church, and that's really my primary research today.

This came about probably because we were homeschooling our children. And so if you're using Christian textbooks like Bob Jones or Abecca, which they both put out excellent, very interesting textbooks, but their American history textbooks, yeah, tend to be extremely patriotic. They don't represent what we would know as the two kingdoms, the doctrine of the two kingdoms. And so reading these patriotic Christian textbooks, I thought someone needs to present another side to American history, not from a liberal perspective or anti-Christian perspective, but from an Anabaptist perspective, from a kingdom of God perspective, something that would be reflective of the early Christian view of the Anabaptists, the Quakers, those groups. Well, okay, because yeah, that's interesting because just correct me if I'm wrong, but this book is dealing specifically with the founding of America, the revolution.

Right. Yeah. So the kind of the premise of the book, if I understand correctly, is comparing those early colonists and what they were doing to what does the kingdom of God teach. Do those two match? Because that's a rhetoric we've heard, I mean, countless times. Do those two things match, the founding of America and the kingdom of God? And they really don't. And it's really hard because on so many subjects, you know, I would fit in with conservative evangelical Christians on so many social issues. I'm not at all liberal. I don't come from that perspective as a person. And yet I think as Christians, we need to look at some of these things honestly, not to whitewash our history.

I think almost everyone who's taken basic American history in school knows that the big issue was taxation, you know, that the colonists didn't want to pay the taxes that England was imposing on the colonies. And yet anyone who's read the New Testament at all has read Jesus saying, you know, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's." And the question was about taxes, you know, is it proper to pay taxes to Caesar or not? And then moving from Jesus to Paul, Paul tells us in Romans 13 that we're to be subject to the authorities, to pay taxes to whom taxes are due, honor to whom honor. And it's like, well, wait a minute, the whole revolution was based on, "We're not going to pay taxes to you because we don't like your taxes," you know?

I mean, since the time I was a little boy, it was like, how does this jive with Jesus' teaching? I always saw a problem. Again, I'm not negative on the United States, you know, or anti-America or anything like that. But yeah, if our loyalty is really to Jesus Christ and his teachings, can we present this as being something that's godly? You know, it's upsetting to Christians when we see God being pushed out of school. You can't teach about, talk about God. You can't, you know, read from the Bible in public schools and all of that. And could some of these problems have started because of the roots of how America was founded? I think these are some questions we should ask as conservative Christians.

So were there other things as well that your research found besides, I mean, clearly you have a very strong spirit of rebellion, you know, we're not going to do what the king is telling us to do. And I'm sure there's plenty of other things, but specifically around that time. My original idea was just to be talking about the American Revolution, and it was going to largely be about taxation. But I wanted to, you know, start back before the revolution and just, you know, be reading things, read the charters of the different colonies and stuff like that. And I saw a lot of other things that were disturbing.

Among them was the whole attitude of the English and I think all of the Europeans. And one of their, in fact, one of the documents I found, and it laid it out this way, it said, "Either the people there will invite us to come and settle there, in which case it's fine, and I would agree on that, or they unlawfully resist us and we have to defend ourselves." It's like, wait a minute, you know?

Okay. Okay. So wow. So in other words, the natives of that country, whatever country it is, they can't win, you know, if they either invite you, in which case you're coming, or they say, "No, you can't come," in which case you're going to say, "Well, you're treating us wrong and we're going to defend ourselves if you attack us, you know, we're going to just come in anyway," you know? So I thought, yeah, this whole attitude isn't really Christian the way it all started, you know? Yeah. Okay. Let's take that and pivot just slightly to the early political developments that were happening in America at the time and compare that with the teachings of Jesus. So we talked about the revolution, talked about that spirit of rebellion.

What about early politics in America? Because we have, we've all heard these things, oh, you know, the different founding fathers, they were Christians, they had Christian values. What did you find when you researched that? Well, some of them did. I mean, it's a wide group. I did a CD series on the myth of Christian America and Oh, interesting. that goes into more detail. And I go through the different founding fathers like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, you know, and some of them would have been fairly devout Bible-believing Christians like Samuel Adams. Most people would say he didn't reflect the spirit of Christ. He was definitely a warmonger. He probably more than anyone else is responsible for the American Revolution, you know, stirring it up and all of that.

But he was a firm believer in scripture, you know, but there's that contradiction there. And then it goes down the line. Alexander Hamilton, I think, was a fairly devout Christian. Benjamin Franklin had a lot of respect for the Bible, but he was a deist.

Same with Thomas Jefferson was a deist who appreciated Jesus as a good teacher, but rejected his divinity or the virgin birth, you know, things like that. George Washington seems to have been a deist. He attended church. He's got this long, they call it the diary. I mean, it's a journal that he kept and it's multi-volumes. Very interesting. I mean, on Sundays, he'll talk about, "Oh, we had so-and-so over for dinner today." And this or that. Never once is there anything about, "Yeah, the sermon today was on this or that topic." Really? He never talks about prayer, never talks about anything from scripture. I know I'm reading it as like, "Wait a minute." Because I know I'd read all this in American texts, you know, the textbooks about, yeah, George Washington, you know, praying there in Valley Forest.

Yeah. The famous, you know, painting. And we've all seen the painting, yeah, and all that. And I'm thinking, "Wait a minute, how could this be real?" I mean, reading this man's, so I respect him a lot as a person. I mean, he's got more Christian, I'd say, ethics. But yeah, so then I started reading, okay, what do we know about his Christianity? And his own pastor, you know, said that, yeah, he would always leave before communion. You know, when communion, they had communion, I think, once a month at that time in the Episcopal. He was Episcopalian, you know, Anglican, and that he would always, no, he wouldn't take communion. That was it. Yeah. So he would say, but just not take communion.

Yeah. And so the preacher preached a sermon against people doing that, you know, that to come to church and particularly what did he, something about statesmen, the example that they should be setting and to not take communion. And afterwards, George Washington, you know, thanked him for the sermon. And thereafter, when it was communion Sunday, yeah, he just didn't come to church.

And so that told me a lot. Plus, yeah, the same preacher says he never saw him kneeling for prayer in church. Then it got me thinking. So we're supposed to believe he was kneeling out in the snow if he didn't kneel in church for prayer? And as Episcopalian, I was an Anglican for a short, you know, for several years. And I know, I mean, that's a big part of Anglican worship is you're kneeling, you know? And it's like, what? He didn't kneel with the others?

And so I started tracking that down. Where did this come from? And it was the same guy who came up with George Washington, you know, cutting down the cherry tree and saying, "I cannot tell a lie." I mean, total myth. And yeah, Parson Williams, he's the one who came up with that whole thing about He just made it up? I don't know if he made it up, but he got it from people. But yeah, it doesn't come from any, you can't trace a source back who lived there, you know? That I'm 99% sure is myth. He never talked about his religious beliefs, you know, which again, yeah, what kind of Christian doesn't talk about his Christianity?

Yeah. Oh, that is so interesting because back at our church, someone actually part of the staff of Anabaptist Perspectives did hit a sermon on that, like started out with that famous photo of, you know, George Washington kneeling in the snow and reading the account that this guy wrote, and then going on to show actually like that probably never even happened. And then, you know, the whole two kingdom concept and things. And I was, wow, that's interesting. You know, I never heard that before. I just always assumed that was something historical. Yeah. Now, and one of the things, it took me a long time tracking out George Washington because there's been, because the conservative, you know, fundamentalist Christians have done so much to, you know, push George Washington that they really have held him up as their, you know, banner.

And so I really wanted to be sure on the guide. And it didn't matter. In other words, Jesus' teachings are clear that we should pay our taxes. I mean, so whether George Washington, you know, was a devout Christian, fine, that doesn't change that. And if he was a deist, that's fine. None of that changes. So I was just curious. On the other hand, it would be absolutely correct to say that George Washington had enormous respect for Christianity, for churches. He did not think a democracy could last without the churches. I mean, he really pushed to promote, you know, churches. This idea of the government should have hands off with the churches, that definitely was not the view of the founding fathers.

And the states, see, it was only the federal government that could not establish religion. The states, a lot of the states at that time, most of them, I think, had a state church. It was just the federal government couldn't. As a kingdom Christian, I recognize the two kingdoms that we stay out of politics, that no government can be a Christian government. There's always going to be that conflict. But I think God is pleased when a government wants to bless Christians, wants to promote Christianity, you know, not as a state religion, but as something worthwhile rather than fighting against it. You know, I think that's good. And that's how this country did start. And it has definitely, yeah, drifted downward.

On the other hand, the founding fathers, I think, had a little bit to do with why the downward drift has happened. Oh, that's interesting. So explain that. Like Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was a deist.

He respected, you know, Christianity. The American deists were not atheists. They believed in a God who created the universe, set everything in motion, and then kind of stepped back to a degree. But they did believe he answers prayer. George Washington definitely believed in the value of prayer and God's providence, you know, whereas the European deists tended to think prayer was a waste of time. And so, yeah, people like Thomas Jefferson would have had, you know, they would have read the Bible, respected it, that sort of thing. But yeah, like in the Declaration of Independence, maybe there's one reference. I'm trying to think to God, and it's in a strange term. And then the Constitution makes no reference to God, which was really unusual.

Interesting. And all the state documents of that time, I mean, you look at the constitutions of the various individual colonies and individual states, they all talk about God and all of that. When you look at the European constitutions, you know, God, then you get to the American constitution, no mention of God. Not because they wanted an atheistic government. I honestly can't tell you the reason for it, but it tells me there was something wrong there. And I think that failure to acknowledge that, as Romans 13 says, that their authority comes from God, that all authority, and Jesus said it to Pilate, you know, without intending to, I think they maybe sowed the seeds that, yeah, promoted a more secular type of country.

And that today we definitely, you know, are seeing it, you know, more full scale, you know, and almost a war on Christianity in certain respects. And then you have the other, you know, other forms of Christianity, like trying to fight to get it back. And then you get this like real serious clash happening. Right. And that was one of the reasons I wrote the book is, can we restore it to a Christian country if it wasn't Christian to start with? If the foundation, yeah, was based on rebelling against Jesus' teaching, not just rebelling against the King of England, but rebelling with Jesus told us to give to Caesar what is Caesar's. If Paul told us, you know, to obey the superior authorities, to pay your taxes, and then you go out and refuse to pay them, you beat up tax collectors, you threaten their lives, you burn their houses down.

Wow, I mean, you are acting in rebellion against Jesus Christ. Well, and then you go in step further and killing people. Yeah. And then taking up your guns and killing people. Yeah. I mean, this is like, you are really flying in the face of everything Jesus taught about loving your enemy, about, you know, paying your taxes to Caesar and that. And then you want to call it a Christian country. Well, yeah, if you want a Christian country, if that's possible, which I don't think it is, then do it Jesus' way. Pray that God, you know, Britain will give us our independence. Fight the battle on your knees. And if God wanted it to be independent, and I can believe he did, then he would bring it about without needing to take up arms.

If they trusted in God, they would have done things God's way. Instead of doing it themselves, they came with their own hands. You've already hit on this a little bit, but those early feelings of the colonists and the revolution, how does that affect us now in the 21st century? Like those feelings of rebellion. And then I think more specifically, and maybe you want to attack this on a separate note, but feelings towards the Native Americans. So maybe that's kind of a two-parter, but yeah, how does that play out today? How it's playing out and how the secular left is pointing to some of these genuine failings using maximum leverage that, see, Christianity is deficient. Look at these Christians, they killed the Indians and all of that.

And of course, that hurts me as a Christian because I agree it was wrong to just take land from the Indians. I think everyone, you know, would believe that now. But the left is probably more vocal about that than the so-called Christian right, you know. Really, Bible-believing Christians should be the most vocal. I mean, we should have, well, like I say, people like the Pilgrims and the Puritans who were Bible-believing, yeah, they should have recognized, hey, it's not right to take somebody's land just because we are stronger than they are. I think they could have settled here in America. They did bring certain advantages to the Native Americans. They were happy to trade with the English and French and Dutch traders, you know.

So yeah, and there was a good bit of room here that they were willing to sell land and do that sort of thing. So the two could have coexisted. Yeah, it was this thing that we have a right to this land and yeah, it's okay for us to just keep pushing the Native Americans further and further away or doing things that would cause a war with them. And then, of course, with our guns, we can annihilate them and say God was blessing us. So non-Christians in our country see the wrongness in that and the hypocrisy.

And of course, it helps to turn people away from God. You know, Christians did, people who professed to be Christians, of course, a lot of them were also unbelievers. And the left never takes notice of that. Well, the unbelievers didn't behave any differently. They were the worst of the worst, you know. So I mean, you had lots of drunks and a lot of, you know, people who had no use for God, you know, who were over here too taking land. So I mean, you know, it's not fair to just put it on Christianity. Christians should have behaved differently. And Christians today should acknowledge that and, yeah, distance themselves. Yeah, what they did was wrong. You know, Christians do not behave that way.

And so, yeah, it has hurt the cause of Bible-believing Christianity. But on the other hand, one of the things I bring out in the book and that I was particularly wanting to research along with everything else was the fact there were Christians that I call kingdom Christians who were committed to living by the teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles, like William Penn, who was a Quaker, okay? So when he came over, the King of England had given him, you know, pretty much the whole state of Pennsylvania for canceling a debt that the King owed him from his father. Oh yeah, he was happy just giving him this land that really wasn't his to give.

And I think Penn knew that. So when he came over here, he basically bought it twice. He then negotiated with the Indians and started buying it from them. So he did the right thing. I mean, he was, you know, not a man who had no flaws. But I think, you know, overall, the life of William Penn is a great testimony to Christianity. A person could come here and treat the Indians fairly and do well. These kingdom Christians, you know, like the Quakers and the Mennonites and Amish, they then ended up being persecuted by the revolutionaries, you know? Okay. Even though this was Pennsylvania that had been founded by Quakers, you know, from day one did not believe in taking up arms.

Yeah, after a while, they had a lot of people, maybe the majority, who were not non-resistant. And so then in the American Revolution, yeah, they started putting these people in prison for not taking up arms, even though this had been their state, you know, founded on that principle. Not only were they ungodly in the way they acted towards the British, they were ungodly towards their brothers and sisters who would not take up arms. I don't know how nuanced we want to get, but just that, especially the treatment of the Native Americans, you know, we've all kind of heard pieces of the bat, you know, the whole wounded knee thing and whatever. But I never quite realized how bad it was.

Like, I don't know, they estimate around 100 million Native Americans were killed in the conquest of America. How many? 100 million, you know. Now, I know those numbers, you know, that's over a period of 100 years. So it changes. But a lot of that's because of diseases. It wasn't because of military action. The other thing I should tell you that happens is the number gets inflated. I don't, I mean, I don't think anyone knows the truth. I mean, like when I was in school, they would have said there were maybe a million Native Americans here. And then when I was researching this, I saw some sources said that, and then some said like 50 million.

It's like, well, that's a pretty big difference. And then, yeah, you've heard 100 million. It depends because that's calculating from the start all the way to like late 1800s. So you have a significant period of time there where, you know. Yeah, I don't, I can't comment on whether that's correct. I do think there's some politics involved there that, but I honestly, I don't think anyone honestly knows. I mean, no one was keeping census. Almost everyone would acknowledge that most of those died from disease. You know, they were not resilient to European diseases. And nobody understood germs. I mean, it's not like the colonists understood that, oh, we're bringing diseases here, that they're dying from diseases that we brought.

I don't think anyone understood that. If it had not happened then, let's put it that way, at some point, I mean, you know, the world was not going to stay in isolated chunks. Sooner or later, the Native Americans were going to come in contact with those diseases. So I think it's right to condemn, you know, taking their land by force. But the diseases, I don't think most of the colonists could possibly be expected to have understood that because they were still thinking these diseases were coming out of the swamps. And of course, so many colonists died from diseases as well. You know, like you say, over 100 years, 200 years, just taking more land and breaking this treaty and this treaty.

And even like the American Revolution, that was actually one of the causes of the American Revolution was in the French and Indian War. Certain tribes aligned themselves with England and certain tribes aligned themselves with France, you know, and England won that war, okay? Well, England had told the Indian tribes that had helped them win that war that, you know, the colonists would not be allowed to settle beyond the Appalachian Mountains, okay? Before the French and Indian War, which the British won for the colonists didn't win that. I mean, they fought in it, but it was mainly the British who did most of the dying and all of the planning and all of the money came from Britain and everything else, you know?

You know, plus Indians as well, Native Americans. There was plenty of room. I mean, there were, I'm trying to remember how many colonists, a million and a half living in this space that is now occupied by, I don't know how many million, 200 million, whatever it is. I mean, a huge number of people. There was plenty of land here east of the Appalachian Mountains. And yet, as soon as the French and Indian War was over, and now the French were out of there, and so the colonists could safely go over the Appalachians and not have to encounter the French, that it was like, oh, we want to go there. And Britain was saying, no, you're not allowed to go beyond the Appalachians.

And the colonists were pushing that, let's break this treaty with the Indians. And so it was very, very wrong what they were doing. And again, it was deists, it was, you know, atheists, it was Bible-believing Christians. They were all in it together. So that was one of the big tensions that Britain was holding them back. And the colonists did not like that. Once Britain was out of the way, yeah, nothing stopped them. They eventually went to the Pacific Ocean, you know, and the Indians, yeah, had everything taken from them. Yeah, well, okay, because that goes really well right into the next question then, because there's, it's not as strong as it used to be, but there's still a lot of people out there that are arguing, no, America is a Christian nation, or at least it was a Christian nation.

That's a very common rhetoric that's still going on. What do you say in response to that? Are they holding on to some idealized sense of the past that they think is slowly disappearing from underneath their feet, or what's going on there? Definitely, when it was settled, it was a nation that respected Christianity, not a nation that necessarily respected Jesus's teaching. Yeah, there is a distinction between obeying Jesus's teachings and being interested in promoting churches. So the colonists who came over were definitely interested in promoting churches that they believed were Christianity, but they just ignored the uncomfortable teachings of Jesus. And so what would you say today then to those statements, oh, but America still is Christian?

Like, yeah, I mean, that's clear. Something's missing here. Yeah, if by Christian, you mean that Christian churches were promoted by the state governments, that the federal government spoke well and wanted to see churches prosper, then yeah, it was a Christian country if that's your definition. Now, if you mean in line with Jesus's teachings, no, you know, you cannot have a Christian country. It is a contradiction in terms because the godless are going to take it from you by force, you know. And yeah, the apostles never set out, you know, trying to establish Christian countries, you know. They were preaching a kingdom that is not of this world. That kingdom cannot be defended with arms. It cannot grow through arms.

And yet arms can't defeat it either, you know. And if the colonists had put that kind of faith in Jesus Christ, yeah, I think we could have had something that would have respected the rights of the Native Americans. And yet people could have settled here. I think there would have been a peaceful break with England at some point in time. Yeah, if it's God's will, it will be done God's way. Yeah, and see, that's kind of the concern I see because we have a lot of evangelical churches today or fundamentalist churches or whatever say, you know, America is a Christian nation. These different military operations that the U.S. is doing right now are okay. They're sanctioned because we're a Christian nation.

We're defending Christian values. It just seems like a repeat of history almost, doesn't it? Or yeah, like what, how is this being? They'll say our faith and trust is in God. Yeah, but then they worry if, oh, our military might get weak if, you know. And so it tends to be Christians who get upset if the United States wants to cut its military budget. And it's like, well, this is a terrible testimony. Do we believe God is behind this country, then we don't have to worry about the military budget because God is going to prevail. It shows we don't really trust in God. And again, I want to emphasize in saying this that I am a conservative Bible-believing Christian.

I'm not saying this as some secular humanist or a liberal Christian who doesn't believe in the scriptures or who, you know, is active in liberal politics or anything like that, you know. I'm coming straight from what Jesus's teachings are, what the historic Christian faith was, the historic practice of Christians, what they did in the beginning. They believed that by staying out of politics, not taking up the sword, that they were protecting the Roman Empire. And they pointed out to the Romans, look, ever since Jesus was born, you've had 200 years of peace, you know, it's known today as the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, you know. And the reason you've had this, why wars have ceased in that part of the world is because Christians are praying and asking for God to hold back the demons that stir up war.

And it is interesting that as long as Christians, you know, would not use the sword, the Roman Empire prospered. And then after Constantine, then they started, you know, taking up the sword. And in fact, by the end of the 300s, you weren't allowed in the army unless you were a Christian. And then that's when the barbarians, you know, overran the Western Empire. So it didn't work using the sword, and it did work relying on prayer. So one last question then with all of this. What should the place of voting be in the lives of Christians now here in America?

Where, yeah, where does that fit into this whole picture? Yeah, Tertullian, one of the early Christian writers, he said there's nothing more foreign to a Christian than public affairs. And yeah, the early Christians and the New Testament Christians, you don't see Paul getting involved in politics, you know, with the conflicts between the Jewish nation and the Roman Empire and all of that. Christians stayed out of that. They didn't fight on the Jewish Christians didn't pick up the sword and, yeah, let's get Rome out of, you know, Palestine and all of that. They didn't have any use for that. They were promoting the kingdom of God. And that's what I have seen repeatedly, the testimony of the early Christians is, you know, the Christians stay out of politics.

They stay out of government. At the time of the New Testament, you had the Roman Empire. You didn't have voting. It wasn't the Roman Republic anymore. So that wasn't a specific issue. General involvement of government, you know, they saw the inconsistencies you would get into. And so today, one of the inconsistencies, okay, as Christians, if we're not going to take up arms and fight and kill people, is it right for me to vote into office the commander in chief? You know, there's such an inconsistency there, you know. I'm not willing to take up arms on behalf of my country, whether I'm an American, a Chinese, you know, whatever country, you know, kingdom of God, we're not going to kill our brothers in another country.

Well, yeah, how can we then vote for the one who's going to be in charge of those armies? So I do see a huge inconsistency. No political party is ever going to represent Christianity. You couldn't get elected, you know, if you stuck with Jesus's teaching. And so we can't make his kingdom part of this world, you know. We have to accept that and be glad about it that his kingdom isn't of this world because anything of this world, invariably, you have all of these inconsistencies we've been talking about, you know. The two are not compatible. You can't run a government of this world by the teachings that are designed for a kingdom that's not of this world.

Wonderful. Thank you for taking the time to share this and especially putting the time and research into writing the book. That's wonderful. I will make sure and put a link in the description for people, and hopefully there'll be a few people who research this more. And yeah, it's something that's a conversation worth having, you know. Like you say, it's a conversation we need to have. We need to have it among us as kingdom Christians because a lot of kingdom Christians are thinking, hey, maybe I should get involved in politics and maybe I can do more good that way. And they end up compromising the kingdom in the process. And I think it's good for those who maybe have been used to voting and depending on guns and that sort of thing.

You don't have to become socially liberal. You don't have to reject Jesus's teachings to be anti-war or, you know, or to say, hey, let's pursue a policy of, yeah, what can we do in putting the needs of others first, of demonstrating greater love for our enemies and that sort of thing.

And that is Bible-believing Christians, yeah, let's give a testimony to the world that we truly do love our enemies and we reject things that our ancestors did that were not Christian, you know. And instead of trying to defend them, yeah, we should say, yeah, that was not Christian and that's not something we espouse today. Yeah, thank you for that. That's really good. Yeah, well, I've enjoyed the talk. It's been fun doing this. Yeah. Yes, this has been very interesting.