“This Is Our Jerusalem”: Early American Evangelical Localizations of the Hebraic Republic

Abstract

This paper examines how evangelical pastors applied Protestant notions of a Hebraic Republic for their parishioners as America transitioned from a colonial frontier to a new republic. As the American constitutions took shape during and after the Revolution, many evangelical pastors argued that America emulated or was inspired by the Israelite polity as described by the Old Testament. America and its institutions thus became a reincarnated Hebraic Republic, a new "city on a hill", and a new Jerusalem. Originally these pastors drew on a broader, global movement that was shaping republican attempts at reform in Europe, but as they localized the biblical model to their own particular experiences, they brought new meaning to it and exported the transformed model back out to the world.Keywords: hebraic republic; evangelical; preaching; sermon; constitutionalism On 5 October 2015, contractors used the cover of darkness and an increased presence of state police to separate a granite monument of the 10 Commandments from its base and remove it from the premises of the Oklahoma capitol. So ended the long drama stirred by objections that the monument violated the constitutional separation of church and state, objections upheld by the Oklahoma Supreme Court earlier that year. The situation in Oklahoma was another episode in an ongoing American saga. Attempts to remove a similar monument at the Texas capitol a decade ago were unsuccessful. The 10 Commandments controversy has also been acted out recently in other states, including Kentucky, Arkansas, and Alabama, and the constitutional question is far from settled. With Moses and his famous body of laws present in many civic buildings throughout the country-including the architecture of the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court-it is unlikely that Americans have seen the end of attempts to remove them or defend them.America's peculiar history regarding the 10 Commandments stretches back to its origins, and this paper will explain the role that early American evangelical pastors played in this history. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, American ministers formulated a distinctive political theology derived from the broader movements of Protestantism and republicanism in Europe. These two movements were localized in particular ways as pulpit-orators attempted to weigh in on the structure and institutions of the new governments coming into existence in America. The first task here, then, is to define early American evangelicals in their glocal context, after which this study will describe the history of how they applied the Hebraic Republic in the colonial, revolutionary, and constitutional periods.