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And this will be the last one on this subject for today.

aurorawatcherak

In examining my anabaptist roots, I am struck by how often these advocates for non-violence and separation of church and state used civil disobedience as their means to protect themselves from the encroachment of the government into their faith.

For the purpose of this article, “civil disobedience” is defined as:

Purposeful, nonviolent action, or refusal to act, by a Christian who believes such action or inaction is required of him or her in order to be faithful to God, and which s/he knows will be treated by the governing authorities as a violation of law.

This article further assumes a Christian stance which rejects violence as a means to any end.

Three Scripture passages are generally cited for the proposition that Christians are to obey the government:

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to the…

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And another.

aurorawatcherak

Since the 4^th century AD, when the Roman emperor Theodosius adopted Christianity as the “official” state religion of the empire, Christians have been told to interpret Romans 13 as a justification for statism. The problem with that interpretation is that it contradicts large portions of the Jewish and Christian Testaments and our known history as a people of faith.

Examples of Biblical believers resisting “the state” abound.

• The midwives of Goshon resisted the authorities by not reporting the birth of children to Hebrew slaves in Egypt. Moses’ parents resisted the rules of Egypt by refusing to kill their baby. His mother resisted the rule of Pharoah when she put him in the basket in the Nile. Read in a secular light, you could say the Jewish religion would never have come into being if not for several acts of civil disobedience.
• Later, Shadrach, Meshach and Obendigo were thrown into…

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Another in the series. I should have labeled these in order, but I didn’t, so sorry if they seem to skip around.

aurorawatcherak

When is it spiritual permissible for a Christian to disobey the law?

Let’s start with an understanding that the United States of America is different from ancient Israel. God established ancient Israel. He guided them through direct connection with their leaders — called judges. Ancient Israel was a theocracy. Even the king (given as a concession that God warned they would regret) was answerable to God.

We don’t live in the same situation. The United States was set up as a secular nation self-governed by the people, many of whom were Christians. They were expected to vote their consciences and thus there is ample evidence that the Christians were well-represented in the early years of the country. Individual Americans who are Christians are answerable to God. If we are working for the government or an elected official, we remain answerable to God and then to our employer. When our employer…

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Another one in that series and worthy of contemplation as we near an election that many of us see backed by ominous storm clouds.

aurorawatcherak

Christians are commanded by God through His scripture to be under authority. Our first allegiance is to His authority, but He also sets pastors and governments over us. Sometimes, however, those other people are wrong in their governance, using their authority for evil rather than for what God commands. When that happens, Christians are called to obey God rather than man and that can result in civil disobedience.

So where do we draw the line?

Christians should certainly stand with Peter and Andrew in insisting that our gospel preaching is inviolate. Today, there are Christians who violate the law of their countries just by believing what they believe, but more so when they talk about what they believe. Muslims who convert to Christianity face a death sentence in at least a half-dozen countries. In other countries, you can be a Christian so long as you keep it silent, but there…

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This appears appropriate, considering the state our government is in now. Christians may be coming to a point of having to choose between obeying God and defying the government or submitting to governmental authorities and defying God.

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The New Testament, particularly Acts, makes it clear that that Jesus’ followers did not blindly obey the governments under which they found themselves. Faithfulness to God was primary for them. History records that the 16th-century anabaptists were faithful to God first and the state second. Jesus knew that His followers would be in tension with the authorities. He instructed them (and us):

You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit (Mark 13:9b-11 NIV).

These are hardly the instructions of a leader expecting His followers to

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In the mercantilist conception of the nation-state and society in general, it was taken for granted that the king’s government had both the right and responsibility to control and direct the economic activities of the sovereign’s subjects. The lands and the people in these countries were viewed as the property of the king to use and dispose of in any manner that he considered most beneficial to his interests.

If the monarch took any interest in the most immediate well-being of his subjects, it was only as a necessary means to the end of his own betterment.

Antoine de Montchrestien (1575-1621) expressed this understanding in a book addressed to the king and queen of France in which he warned of the danger of permitting foreign sellers to compete in the French market:

First of all, I point out to your Majesties that all the implements, the manufacturing of which you are in charge, both in and out of the kingdom, not only in cities but in entire provinces, can be made abundantly and at a very good price in your Lordship’s country.

And further, that allowing in and receiving foreign-made goods here means to take away the life of the several thousands of your subjects to whom this industry is an inheritance and the source of their income; it means reducing your own wealth which derives from and increases through the wealth of the people.” Antoine de Montchrestien (1575-1621), A Treatise on Political Economy (1615)

Montchrestien offered a conclusion to the monarchs: “Let us, therefore, relish in the fruits of our own labor, that is to say, let us rely on ourselves.”

The mercantilist theorists of the day saw trade with other countries as a cause of national disaster that would cause job losses and falling incomes. International trade was seen to undermine the commercial traditions of the people and believed to reduce , and it reduced the income and wealth of the government by lowering tax revenues.

Mercantilists acknowledged some benefits of trade, but only if the value of the goods imported from other countries was minimized and the value of goods exported to other countries was maximized. Of course the mercantilists argued for the government to control and direct foreign trade to assure a “positive” balance of trade. (This sounds so much like Trump’s economic policies, by the way).

Thomas Mun (1571-1641) articulated this idea in his posthumously published work,England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade (1628):

“Although a Kingdom may be enriched by gifts received or by purchase taken from some other Nations, yet these are things uncertain and of small consideration when they happen. The ordinary means therefore to increase our wealth and treasure is by foreign trade, wherein we must ever observe the rule; to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value.

“For suppose that when this Kingdom is plentifully served with Cloth, Lead, Tin, Iron, Fish and other native commodities, we do yearly export the [surplus] to foreign countries to the value of twenty two hundred thousand pounds; by which means we are enabled beyond the Seas to buy and bring in foreign wares for our use and consumptions, to the value of twenty hundred thousand pounds;

“By this order duly kept in our trading, we must rest assured that the Kingdom shall be enriched yearly two hundred thousand pounds, which must be brought back to us in so much Treasure; because that part of our stock which is not returned to use in wares must necessarily be brought home in treasure.” Thomas Mun (1571-1641), England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade (1628)

The mercantilists saw money, in the form of gold and silver, as the greatest and most valuable form of “treasure” (wealth). With a large “war chest” of gold and silver, the monarch would be able to acquire, at home and abroad, all the real goods and services that might ever be needed to win in the conflicts and combats among the nations of the world that the mercantilists considered inevitable and inescapable if a country was going to survive on the international political stage.

“A King who desires to lay up much money must endeavor by all good means to maintain and increase his foreign trade, because it is the sole way not only to lead him to his own ends, but also to enrich his Subjects to his farther benefit …

“The Gain of their foreign trade must be the rule of laying up their treasure, which although it should not be much yearly, yet in the time of a long continued peace, and being well manage to advantage, it will become a great sum of money, able to make a long defense, which may end or divert a war.” Mun

Mercantilist societies sought to be as self-sufficient as possible. If imports were needed, they wanted to limit them to raw materials that could be worked up into manufactured goods at home. It was believed this would stimulate domestic employment, meet certain national economic needs, and have a greater value for re-export so to acquire a net inflow of gold and silver to add to the King’s “treasure.”

My fantasy series does not completely align itself to medieval European history and economic systems. My Celts have been gone from Europe for a thousand years and so have developed some other systems. Mercantilism is not found in Celdrya, the primary society in the series. However, neighboring nations may practice a form of it.

 

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Halloween has always been a sort of ho-hum holiday for me. I grew up in Alaska, where winter arrives in mid-October, so by October 31st, it’s usually cold, there’s snow on the ground and it’s dark by the time school let’s out. You can’t really do a costume because you have got to wear a coat, boots, a hat, and gloves. I guess you could go as a hockey player.

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Another reason that I’m a bit ambivalent about the holiday is that I’m not a huge candy eater. I’m not generally a picky eater, except when it comes to sweet things. I like chocolate without nuts or anything else and pretty much everything else is disgusting to me. So I often ended up with a bag full of stuff I wouldn’t eat. The year I turned 8, a bunch of local kids were hospitalized when some college students at an apartment complex dosed the candy with some chemical that induced violent vomiting. After that, my parents would only allow me to trick-or-treat at homes with people we knew. The year I turned 10, I chose to not trick-or-treat and pretty much never did again.

When my kids were little, a local church would do a fun holiday festival that allowed them to dress up, do activities indoors and get some candy out of the deal. Our daughter trick-or-treated with friends in high school. Our son has accompanied younger kids as a body guard. But mostly, it is still too cold by October 31 to enjoy going door to door in a costume.

So, that’s all I have to say about Halloween, but that holiday is a modern recreation of an ancient Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. In ancient times, it was the start of the new year, celebrated from sunset on October 31 to sunset on November 1, about halfway between the autumnal equinox (September 21) and the winter solstice (December 21). It was one of the four Celtic seasonal festivals, along with Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh. Back then, it was called Samhain (pronouced Sow-in).

Of course it was a pagan festival that is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature. It was a time when cattle were brought back down from the summer pastures and livestock was slaughtered for the winter. Special bonfires were lit that were meant to have protective and cleaning powers. The rituals involved were meant to protect the living from the dead as Samhain was considered a liminal time when the boundary between our world and the Otherwould could easily crossed. People sought to propitiate the fairies (or the dead) to ensure that people and livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink were left outside for them. Costumes were worn door to door, perhaps as a way of imitating the fairies.

In the 9th century AD, Western Christianity shifted the date of All Saints Day to November 1. All Souls’ Day was held on November 2. Eventually, the two holidays became a single modern celebration of Halloween.

Daermad Cycle (The Willow Branch and Mirklin Wood) is a Celtic-influenced fantasy series, so I borrow heavily from Samhain traditions for scenes in the third book. I have the village where Padraig is staying gather for observance. They build a bonfire, there is discussion of the fall slaughter, the sheep being brought to the winter pastures, the local priest performs a ritual. People are meant to extinguish their fires before they go to the observance and then kindle them anew from the Samhain bonfire in the village. I use these details to create tension between my Believer main character and the society in which he is residing.

Because the boundary between the world and the Otherworld is considered thin at Samhain, I make use of it for my own purposes. You’ll have to read the book (Fount of Dreams) to find out what I did with it.

Several years ago, Brad and I lived next door to some neopagans (they might also have been Wiccans. They were kind of hostile to Christians, so we never asked them). One Halloween night, when we were coming home from the fall festival with our children, the neighbors had built a bonfire in their front yard. They were walking around it muttering invocations of some sort and tossing what we assumed to be salt over their shoulders. That was actually what caused me to research Samhain in the first place. It fit perfectly into Daermad Cycle, so I included it in my research.

Of course, modern Halloween includes traditions from many cultures. Check out what my fellow authors found in their research.

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Of course, we’re discussing Halloween this week.

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In researching for my fantasy series Daermad Cycle, I concentrated on medieval Europe as a model for my society. Why reinvent the wheel, right? I adjusted my society to reflect changes you might expect over a millennia.

I needed to acknowledge the changes that happened in European society after my Celdryans left because my people didn’t experience the same events as Europeans did.

My folks missed mercantilism, for example.

What was Mercantilism?

It was a system of economic planning and invention that could be grouped under five broad headings.

Mercantilism was a system of political unification.

“It’s first object was to make the state’s purposes decisive in a uniform economic sphere and to make all economic activity subservient to considerations corresponding to the requirements of the state and to the state’s domain regarding as uniform in nature.” Eli Heckscher, Mercantilism (1935)

Mercantilism was a system of power.

“The object of mercantilism in using economic forces in the interests of the state … [was] to strengthen the state authority itself; it concentrated on … the state’s external power, in relation to other states.” Eli Heckscher, Mercantilism (1935)

Mercantilism was a system of protection.

“The attitude of mercantilism toward the means of supplying the wants of human beings, i.e., towards commodities, was the theory of the danger from which economic policy was chiefly to protect a country lay in having too many goods [imported from other countries].” Heckscher

Mercantilism was a monetary system.

“The connection between money and goods in the mercantilist conception of economics was represented in teh balance of trade theory …. Ideas on the balance of trade and the significance of money undoubtedly occupy a central position in mercantilism.” Heckscher

Mercantilism was a conception of society.

“Mercantilism revealed a fairly uniform conception of general social phenomena in the fields of economics, and this, too, reacted in many ways on the nature of economic policy [as a conception of society in which all interests were to be made obedient to the monarch captured in the famous phrase of the French king, Louis XIV – ‘I am the State’].” Hechscher

Ooo, we just circled back to “divine right of kings.”

 

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I’ve had about all I can take of the election of 2016. The two major parties have not offered us any good choices and the 3rd parties are still down in the polls, so I’m just going to look at history. We are told by pundits that this is the most devisive election we’ve ever experienced. It’s best to remind ourselves that this is not true. There was once a time when political partisans counted off paces and fired pistols at dawn when things became ugly. Thus, I turn my attention to Alexander Hamilton.

Since Ron Chernow’s 2004 book Alexander Hamilton  criticizing Hamilton is likely to risk stoning at dinner parties. Supposedly Chernow cleared up all the myths and lies and brought Hamilton out from Jefferson’s shadow to be shown as “the founding father who did more than any other to create the modern United States.” Gag! The fact is that Hamilton owns our current state of disaster lock, stock and barrel. Nearly all of the problems of the current American tyranny can be blamed on Hamilton and his cronies. He and his party of centralizers changed the face of American culture in the space of a decade and we have not recovered our lost liberty since.

 

Hamilton sincerely believed that if America ran the course of “democracy” it would go the way of the French Revolution. He was convinced that Thomas Jefferson’s anti-federalists ultimately intended this course. He feared that the uncontrolled, anarchical masses would immediately become vulnerable to a would-be Caesar.

But was his stated belief an accurate description of the states’ rights party or was it just politically convenient for Hamilton to portray them as such?

Let’s start with how a popular uprising and dictatorship could possibly have occurred on a national level in Hamilton’s time. Even if he believed it was possible, the problem with the belief is that the anti-federalists were advocates for State sovereignty. It was Hamilton and his cohorts who advocated for centralized power. Any baby Caesar that had arisen in Jefferson’s America would have no central Senate awaiting his grasp and a citizenry quite zealous of protecting their own states with little or no attachment to the national government.

It was Hamilton’s centralization of political, economic and military power that even allowed the specter of any national Caesar to arise.

Historically, decentralized societies do not welcome a Caesar. Instead, a national power first centralizes power, then crumbles and a dictator fills the vacuum. Democracy did not pave the way for Hitler. It was Bismarck who unified Germany. When the nationalized state could no longer sustain itself, it crumbled and Hitler stepped forward to fill the power vacuum. Veneto, that wants to secede—it’s not just the South in America).

Listen to Hamilton’s argument for why we needed a national government, found in  Federalist 21:

Without a guaranty the assistance to be derived from the Union in repelling those domestic dangers which may sometimes threaten the existence of the State constitutions, must be renounced. Usurpation may rear its crest in each State, and trample upon the liberties of the people, while the national government could legally do nothing more than behold its encroachments with indignation and regret. A successful faction may erect a tyranny on the ruins of order and law, while no succor could constitutionally be afforded by the Union to the friends and supporters of the government. The tempestuous situation from which Massachusetts has scarcely emerged, evinces that dangers of this kind are not merely speculative. Who can determine what might have been the issue of her late convulsions, if the malcontents had been headed by a Caesar or by a Cromwell? Who can predict what effect a despotism, established in Massachusetts, would have upon the liberties of New Hampshire or Rhode Island, of Connecticut or New York?

Hamilton is saying that without a strong Union, the little states are prone to would-be Caesars and the national government would be helpless to intervene to save the hapless state. “A successful faction may erect a tyranny”! A little Caesar in Massachusetts might invade New York! Despite the fact that people are not stupid, and such neighboring States would simply raise militias and form confederacy as they did against Britain, Hamilton expected his readers to ignore the biggest point of all, something those who lived through the Revolution should have known well.

What happens when the big government of the Union erects a tyranny? Then what? Is there protection against that?

Indeed, “a successful faction” did “erect a tyranny.” They were called Federalists and it was called the Constitution.

In his descent from power, Hamilton had the greatest hand in Hamilton’s diminishment. His adulterous affair with Maria Reynolds pulled Hamilton from his public pedestal. Brought to power by the patronage of George Washington, Hamilton likely never would have had any influence in American history in his own right. Washington’s retirement marked a disastrous turning point in Hamilton’s career. Known for being touchy and self-aggrandizing, and always prone to go too far without another’s restraining guidance, Hamilton’s subsequent behavior dismayed not just his foes but also his friends. Hamilton was his own worst enemy.

In 1802, after his fall from grace, Hamilton wrote to his old co-conspirator Gouverneur Morris with a sad expression of self-serving pity:

Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the U[nited] States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution than myself. . . . I am still labouring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its foes for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw from the Scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me.

His self-awareness came 15 years too late. Hamilton interpreted the loss of his personal power to be a failure of the Constitution. In his view, the Constitution did not exist to limit government, but to act as a tool of that government and of the people in charge of it. Hamilton did not see himself as bound by the shackles of law. The law is, according to Hamilton, upheld by the strength and energy of Hamilton, for the good of the people, whether they like it or not.

Does that sound like any contemporary politicians?

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both could play the role of Hamilton. They certainly sound like him.