The First Amendment vs. The First Commandment
The religion of Americanism teaches us that God’s law is not valid outside of the church; maybe the last six of the Ten Commandments are valid (and even that is considered debatable), but certainly not the first four. Modern theologians like to divide the ten commandments into parts, as if God has two minds. We are told that the Law was only given to Israel, and thus today it is only for the visible church. This comes from both evangelical pulpits and from Civics 101 in public education. There is not much difference between the two.
Americanism is the name I have given to a new dominant religion in our beloved nation. It is a final reference point for almost every moral and political issue, and it has the endorsement of most all conservative pastors in this country. To challenge this new religion means a quick cancellation, especially in evangelical circles.
This new religion is mostly derived from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The religion of Americanism interprets the First Amendment as guaranteeing the right of every American citizen to say anything they want to say (except a few things like shouting fire in a public place, or racial slurs), to turn art into blasphemy (Christ in a bottle of urine), or to worship any god of their own choosing (including Allah).
It also protects the right of men to express themselves physically as women, the right of BLM to destroy private property in public protests, the right to produce and distribute pornography, and the right for university students to call for genocide. It protects the right of anyone to burn the American flag. It protects the right to erect Satanic idols in state capitol buildings. It protects the rights of Drag Queens to read stories to children in public libraries. It protects debauchery. And yet, in this new religion of Americanism, the First Amendment is still considered sacred even by leading evangelicals.
The protection of debauchery was never the intent of our founding fathers. The First Amendment was created to limit the power of the Congress, and not the power of the individual States. At the time of the adoption of the First Amendment, most states had either officially or unofficially adopted the Christian Faith as the State religion. State legislators could establish an official religion, but Congress could not. State churches were legal, but a national church was not. There would be no Church of the United States as there was a Church of England across the pond. Thus, Congress was prohibited from establishing a national church, but States had every right to establish a State Church. States were respected as sovereign entities. This was a long time ago, but it demonstrates the value of studying history.
The Church of England was the official church in the State of Virginia. State taxes were used to pay the Anglican clergymen, who alone were allowed to preach in the Commonwealth. Soon, however, both Baptists and Presbyterians were given the freedom to preach (without going to jail). The First Amendment became a basis for guaranteeing free speech to all Christian Protestants (not all religions). The First Amendment was still rightly understood.
However, things have changed. The First Amendment may soon be used to curtail the free speech of Christians because Christian morals are in direct opposition to the public morals of the day. This is already happening in universities and corporations. Outside the safety of the visible church, employees of both colleges and businesses are walking around on eggshells afraid that they might use the wrong pronoun and put their jobs in jeopardy with a visit from the DEI police.
The problem with the First Amendment as presently interpreted is that it contradicts the First Commandment. The First Commandment says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” God does not tolerate competition. A First Amendment that allows for gods other than the God of the Bible to be worshiped is contrary to the First Commandment. The First Commandment also summarizes the other nine Commandments. Neither does God tolerate decadence. Under the First Commandment, not only are the worship of all other gods forbidden, but derivative events like gay-pride parades would be prohibited. The riotous destruction of private or public property would be forbidden. Drag Queens in public would be forbidden. And on and on!
Baptists give strong devotion to the First Amendment because they identify themselves with a history of persecution. They believe that the First Amendment protects their rights to believe and preach according to their own consciences. They are big supporters of Americanism. However, I believe they need to get beyond the Munster cages of the 16th century and realize that with their large numbers in America today, the roles would be reversed in a hypothetical theocracy. The vision of a Baptist Prince is more realistic in our day than a Presbyterian Prince. However, to be more sensible, I think all of us are all in the same boat now.
More broadly speaking Americanism finds its hope in the United States Constitution. The only problem with this is that the meaning of the Constitution cannot be predicted anymore. Whoever thought just fifty years ago that the rights to abortion and homosexual marriage would be discovered in the Constitution? The Constitution only means what five Supreme Court judges in black robes say what it means. Even as frightening, the United States Congress no longer has any realistic function. Civil power is now in the hands of either a sitting President or a bureaucracy of unelected college graduates from elite and secular universities. Christians are expected to leave the public square and wait for either death or the rapture, whichever comes first.
Americanism also puts a great amount of faith in democracy, where the people vote to decide who will hold office and thus, and consequently, what will be considered publicly right and wrong in our nation. However, even that hope now is teetering. So many people have lost their confidence in the integrity of elections that this tenet of Americanism is dying.
Americanism believes in American exceptionalism. Indeed, we have seen our glory days, but many other nations in the world now view America as the great whore. We are still building on the capital from the past, but decadent immorality has painted us as a prostitute on the world stage. We lost admiration a long time ago. Putin’s Russia or Mao’s China may both be a holy step above us because they have banned homosexual marriage and transgenderism. Militarism for the sake of securing democracy around the world is now viewed as a failure. It was a recipe for death, and has only created more enemies than friends.
The religion of Americanism teaches us that God’s law is not valid outside of the church; maybe the last six of the Ten Commandments are valid (and even that is considered debatable), but certainly not the first four. Modern theologians like to divide the ten commandments into parts, as if God has two minds. We are told that the Law was only given to Israel, and thus today it is only for the visible church. This comes from both evangelical pulpits and from Civics 101 in public education. There is not much difference between the two.
The only problem with this is that it is not true. Paul in Romans 13 says plainly that the civil magistrate is a servant of God and is to promote good and restrain evil. Paul wrote this while living under a Roman hegemony, looking forward to the day when all nations would be Christianized through the preaching of a gospel that would teach them to obey God’s law, as Jesus had spoken. Good and evil can only be defined by God’s law—all of it, including the first four commandments.
Our forefathers understood this. They knew that the United Sates would not survive apart from being a Christian nation. John Adams reflected this when he said that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” By the word religious, he was referring to Christianity. Although I believe that the Enlightenment had a major impact on our founding forefathers, they still maintained enough Christian heritage to understand that Christianity must be the foundation of this nation or this nation will perish.
In a Christian nation, foreigners from other nations are welcome to enjoy the blessings of God with us, but they would not be allowed to worship their gods in public within the boundaries of our country. God’s goodness to us might be an avenue for their conversion. What a blessing it would be to preach the gospel to them in such a context.
What am I saying? I am saying that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as presently interpreted by most institutions including the church is in direct opposition to the First Commandment. Yes, this is a radical statement, but we live in radical times when our presuppositions must be reexamined. Yes, it is revolutionary. But is it true? That is the question.
Since the dominant religion of America moved from Christianity to Americanism, we are watching the demise of this nation. We are under attack by Cultural Marxism, and the religion of Americanism will not protect Christians. As a matter of fact, it will be used against them.
Under the guise of the Constitution, we have brought the Middle East and her wars to America. We dilute our heritage with illegal immigration. We have substituted a constitutional republic with tyranny. We have declared that all gods are equal, contrary to the First Commandment of God. We once had a Christian nation, but now we have sanctioned polytheism. God hates polytheism. He always has.
I know it is too late to do anything about it, save for a biblical revival and reformation, but I do pray that the America I knew as a child will survive. I’m not calling for a revolution. I’m only identifying the problems. When future generations ask what went wrong with the American Experiment, I hope they will learn from our mistakes.
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
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Work as Christian Service
Our secular culture purportedly values neighborliness, even as it kills it. Therefore, a vertical understanding of Christian vocation—one which sees it as a priestly task, the daily self-offering in and through Christ, by the power of the Spirit, to the Father—exists only among those who constantly fight upstream. Which is to say, it is incredibly difficult. It can be sustained only through a life of prayer.
Our current economic situation is one of ceaseless disorientation. Workers are separated not only from the means of production but also from the immediate fruits of production. Whereas past generations received tactile wages, such as a farmer and his crop, we are now at the point where even the once-tangible paycheck has been absorbed into the ether of digital technology via direct deposit. Such a situation contributes to the loss of a telos in our vocations, but it does not remove the search thereof. Naturally, the accumulation of possessions follows. We hunger for the meaning of our labor to be concretized, and since our physical labor has been translated into the realm of invisibility, one can be forgiven for wanting to see an object so as to prove that their efforts produced something. Materialism, then, is materialization, or at least the quest for it. It is the exportation of the otherwise-useless green paper, or worse yet, imperceptible paycheck into the realm of reality.
Christian efforts to redirect the objects of spending are surely laudable. Don’t pour your money into selfish pleasure-pursuits, we are told, and rightly so; rather, give the fruits of your labor to the poor, or to efforts of Christian mission. Much that is positive can be said about this. It acknowledges the longing for the materialization of labor and, recognizing the inherent selfishness in the human heart, redirects it toward Jesus Christ. If followed, it will surely provide the Christian with a deeper sense of purpose in his or her vocation, as the fruit of one’s labor now resides, via translation, in the kingdom of God. This much is good and must be carried on. But, as a means of providing orientation within vocation directly, it falls short. For it does not do anything to fix the telos of labor above the transitory payment, a digitized set of numbers in an online bank. It does not attend to the concrete dimensions of the very tasks and services we perform but locates the telos a few steps away from our action. The result: After we have completed our labor, which in and of itself remains basically meaningless, we can draw meaning from the tangible effects of the money we obtain. While surely better than unreflective materialism, this will not suffice in our quest for the guiding purpose of our labor, one that transcends the mere economic output and resides in the action of work itself.
A notion of work as Christian service accomplishes just this. Rather than positing the wages as the ultimate goal of all labor, whether spent on selfish pleasures or selfless donations, defining vocational meaning as Christian service fixes our eyes upon a higher, steadier telos. In short, one’s vocation is the domain in which he or she obeys the two greatest commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 23:37-39). Vocation itself is a calling (from the Latin vōcare, “to call, summon”). A job or career is not a mere economic appendage to a pre-existing Christian identity, as if Christians interacted with God somewhere other than the real world which they inhabit. On the contrary, one’s vocation is the stage upon which he or she enacts God’s direction. If these two great commandments from Christ are the compass for Christian pilgrims, our career vocations are the terrain we must travel in order to get there. The practical, daily demands of our vocational tasks are the thicket of woods we must traverse in order to move Northward.
Firstly, therefore, our work is service to our neighbors. If, as we have suggested, the purpose of our labor is not determined by our salary, then it follows that value-measurements must be derived from elsewhere. Contrary to the mindset we instinctually absorb, the dollar amount does not determine the worth of our work. Dollar amounts are transient, and in an economy as large as ours, surely do not represent the palpable concerns of the people who immediately surround us. This means that we must first examine the nature of our action itself, that is, what it is we do. The simple answer to this is that we are serving our neighbors.
Each job provides a service for someone who otherwise would not obtain it. A plumber performs a task that someone else is unable or unwilling to do. A lawyer provides a service that would be impossible if no lawyer existed. A computer programmer does something that non-computer programmers cannot do, for whatever reason. So what? What does this have to do with neighbors? Put simply, neighbors need help, and help comes from other neighbors. If someone is unable to cut down the trees in his backyard, someone who can comes over and does it. If someone is sick and cannot diagnose herself, she goes to someone who can. Neighbors need their neighbors to serve them. Each one’s vocational task offers something to the wider community that is valuable precisely because it is needed by neighbors.
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WCF 7: Of God’s Covenant with Man
The covenant of works was a completely generous arrangement. But our first parents violated that covenant (cf. Heb. 8:9). Having broken it they could not regain life through the principle of works. And God was in no way bound to offer another arrangement for salvation. But he did. The covenant of grace is an entirely different agreement. It is still based on works, but not on the works of creatures.
Every relationship needs definition. Without clear terms we are unsure how to interact with each other. Marriage is a good example of how definitions aid relationships. Upon marriage an otherwise unrelated man and a woman become united by covenant. In the presence of witnesses each partner promises to fulfil responsibilities. Signed records formalize the covenant.
So it is with God’s relationship to people. Imagine if God had created humans but never introduced himself or articulated what he expected of them or what they could expect of him. Our debt of obedience and the penalty for non-compliance would still have existed but we wouldn’t have known it. And how could we enjoy God ignorant of how the sovereign Creator would treat us from one moment to the next? From the beginning God has defined his relationship with his people through covenants.
The Covenant of Works (5.1, 2)
Scripture doesn’t explicitly identify a pre-fall covenant of works. And we don’t need to commit to that name; the assembly also called it a “covenant of life.”[i] But Scripture does give us reasons to hold to a pre-fall covenant. First, the initial relationship between God and Adam has all the marks of a covenant, or a binding agreement. It has contracting parties, promises, conditions, penalties and, in the tree of life, a sacrament.[ii] Second, the New Testament explicitly contrasts the actions of Adam and Christ as covenant mediators. Here’s how Paul put it: “For if, by one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17; cf. 1 Cor. 15:44–49).
In the first covenant Adam did not need grace, which we might define as unmerited salvation. Instead the covenant was based on a law principle: “the person who does the commandments shall live by them” (Rom. 10:5; cf. Gal. 3:12; Lev. 18:5). In Genesis one and two God stipulated positive and negative commands. The King required Adam to steward his world, “to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15; cf. 2:5). He spelled out the positive command like this: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over …every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). God provided freedom in this first covenant, for example, in the naming of the animals (Gen. 2:19). His people weren’t slaves. And God enforced only one restriction: “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (2:17).
For his part God provided everything his people would need to thrive. They shared his image so they possessed the competencies required for their task. God also provided food to eat (1:29–30). He made not one person but two so that the man and woman might “have a good reward for their labor” (Eccl. 4:9 NKJ).
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Are You a Minister? Preach the Gospel!
All proclamations of God’s word in our context should contain within them a gospel call, freely offered to all present in that place. We are never to be under the assumption that every person in the hall that day knows the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, even, or maybe especially, if it is the officers, elders and ministers, of His Church. An ARP Church must be a gospel, fire-breathing, house of hope for sinners. Not a lecture center of Reformed theology, but a place where men and women can come with the assurance that they will hear, with no strings-attached, the free offer of life eternal found alone in the Redeemer.
For the next couple of months in this space where we have been taking some time to consider ways to help our prayer and worship life we are going to begin a spring series thinking through some of the unique things that were, and still should be, the identifying markers of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. I am ARP on purpose. I am an ARP minister for the same reason I am not a Baptist, Methodist, or Lutheran, because I believe that the warp and woof of the heart of the ARP, found in its history and confessions is the most Biblical form of the Church found on this side of Heaven. I also am firmly convicted that you should be ARP as well. If I didn’t believe that I’m not rightly sure I could keep my vows. Pragmatism or its dastardly cousin, convenience, have no place really in my soul or when it comes to what I’ve been called to do, nor should it in your heart. That may seem rude, but it is not.
To fulfill that mandate I will give y’all some history and background, quotes from ARP men, either Scottish Seceders, or American-born ministers from our denominational past and explain more about whatever subject is on tap for that week. We’ll take a look at matters like how the gospel is preached, how we understand the biblical covenants and their relation to life today, and the manner in which Presbyterianism is practiced. I hope you find the time we spend on this helpful. The goal here is also to help people within and outside the ARP know more about why we are and who we are.
It makes sense that to start this we need to begin with what is most important, and that is the gospel. Christ dead for sinners, raising them from the spiritual darkness, washing them in His blood, forgiving their trespasses, and making them new creatures in the restored light of Jesus’s countenance. That’s the main message our Lord gave to His infant bride in Matthew 28.
To begin let’s consider first what it is we mean when we say that in the ARP we believe in the “free offer of the gospel”. One of the earliest charges against Ebenezer Erskine and others rallying at Gairney Bridge was that they were being fundamentally “Arminian” in the way they presented the good news of Jesus to the lost.
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