Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2019
Gary Kilgore North (born 1942) is head of the Institute for Christian
Economics, and a prominent Christian Reconstructionist, who has written
widely on many topics (including postmillennial eschatology).
He wrote in the Foreword to this 2004 book, “This book is the history of a deception. I regard this deception as the greatest deception in American history… The first version of this book appeared as Part 3 of ‘Political Polytheism’ (1989), 201 years after the deception was ratified by representatives of the states, who created a new covenant and a new nation by their collective act of ratification-incorporation. This new covenant meant a new god… It was an act of covenant-breaking: the substitution of a new covenant in the name of a new god…” (Pg. vii)
“Political conservatives call for a return to the ‘original intent’ of the Framers of the Constitution. If only, they say, we could just get back to original intent, things would be good once again… Problem: political conservatives are deceived theologically because they do not recognize the implications of the intellectual shift from the deistic unitarian god of Sir Isaac Newton to the purposeless universe of Charles Darwin… This book is my attempt to teach a Christian remnant the true and long-ignored story of how this nation was hijacked politically in 1788 by the spiritual heirs of the self-conscious spiritual disciples of Isaac Newton…” (Pg. vii-viii)
He continues, “”in whose name was this revolt launched? By what legitimate authority? The formal answer came retroactively in 1788: WE THE PEOPLE. This was a new god with a new sovereignty.” (Pg. xi) He adds, “I argue in this book that the interpretation of the American Revolution as a revolt justified by its promoters in the name of Christianity… is correct, but that any interpretation of the United States Constitution as a Christian document is incorrect. I argue that the Constitution was a covenantal break with the Christian civil religion of twelve of the thirteen colonies. The exception was Rhode Island. Rhode Island was the first civil order in the West to be established self-consciously on a secular foundation.” (Pg. xix)
He outlines, “I ask the question: To what extent is the U.S. Constitution a covenant document? If I can show that it is a covenant document, then a second question arises: What kind of covenant, Christian or secular humanist?... I argue that the Constitution’s framers were not the nation’s Founding Fathers… This is not the standard textbook account of the Constitution… But it is a true account, assuming the Bible is true. I assume that it is.” (Pg. 5-6)
He asserts, “The major figures among the Framers were… Enlightenment men to the core… Their religion was civic religion… they saw civic religion as a decentralized, individual matter rather than as a state affair; it was to aid the national government, but not be part of the national government.” (Pg. 31)
He says of state oaths, “There could be only one kind of oath: to the trinitarian God of the Bible. This made trinitarianism the permanent judicial foundation of the state. In order to break this trinitarian monopoly, the Framers had to undermine the states’ oaths.” (Pg. 111) He adds, “By removing the requirement of the oath, the Convention’s delegates were in fact opening up the door to federal office-holding that would otherwise be close to HONEST non-Christians…. It would also open up offices of authority to men who had taken other binding oaths that were hostile to Christianity…” (Pg. 119)
He summarizes, “the United States Constitution is an atheistic, humanistic covenant… That the word ‘Lord’ appears in Article VII… is not what I would call a persuasive argument for its Christian character.” (Pg. 137) He goes on, “the Constitution is a broken covenant. It was a break with God’s civil covenants, which had been in place in force in a dozen states in 1776… The idea that the Constitution is a Christian document is a myth promoted by Whigs, their spiritual heirs, and their original victims, the Christians… In a world devoid of both cosmic purpose and a God who brings judgment, there are neither natural rights nor natural laws of society. Everything is evolving. Only survival matters.” (Pg. 147)
He argues, “A handful of men had decided to take the new nation down a different path… They wanted a completely new system of national government. This would have to be achieved through a COUP… Yet the Articles of Confederation… specified that all changes would have to be approved by Congress and then by all of the state legislatures…. Congress and the state legislatures would therefore have to be bypassed. This required some very special preparations. It required, in short, a conspiracy.” (Pg. 153-154)
A conspiracy of whom? He points out, “Leaders on both sides of the Constitutional debate were members of Masonic lodges… Does lodge membership of several prominent nationalists prove my thesis regarding the Constitutional Convention as a Masonic coup? No, because men on both side of the Constitutional debate were found in the lodges…” (Pg. 173-175) He continues, “The average student of American history is never told that the Committees of Correspondence and Committees of Safety were very often headed by Masons, held their meetings in lodges or taverns that served as lodge headquarters, and became leaders of the Provincial assemblies.” (Pg. 180-181)
He again summarizes, “I have called the Convention a ‘coup.’ I have argued that Masonic influence was important both in terms of the philosophy of the delegates and their membership in the lodges. If the entire nation had been Masonic, then this would have been a ‘coup.’ But very few colonists were Freemasons… Thus to argue that the Constitution was essentially Masonic is necessarily to argue for a conspiracy… The conspirators were successful. In retrospect, Americans call them the Founding Fathers… They sought to give Americans a new inheritance. What they did was to appropriate an older inheritance in the name of a new family of man.” (Pg. 185-187)
Later, he adds, “But this coup had a side to it that the history books refuse to mention: RELIGION. The Constitutional Convention was a successful attempt by a small group of men whose most influential leaders had long since rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. The voters were Christians; the Convention’s leaders were what two decades later would be called Unitarians. They had imbibed their theology… from dissenting Whig political theory… and from the secret rites of the Masonic lodges to which a dozen of them belonged… What the Constitutional Convention was all about was this: a national political transformation by a group of men who really believed in secrecy and oaths. That almost a quarter of them had taken Masonic self-maledictory oaths is at least worth considering when it comes to assessing their personal motivations.” (Pg. 215) He concludes, “Freemasons had a definite goal: to make illegal at the national level the imposition of a rival theocracy to their own.” (Pg. 219)
He asserts, “The problem with exposing the coup in Philadelphia is that it was such a successful coup. It was a coup that produced a true revolution… What took place in 1787-88 was … a second American Revolution. It violated the terms of the national covenant of 1781… What transformed the coup in Philadelphia into a revolution was the national plebiscite. It was a stroke of genius to appeal to the voters in state-wide conventions rather than to existing legislatures. It was a stroke of providence that they succeeded in overcoming the one man who might have stopped them: Patrick Henry.” (Pg. 249-250)
He concludes, “Christians lost the battle in 1788… The political question facing American Christians is this: How much longer will the Constitution serve as the protector of our legal immunities from state interference?... The Constitution’s provisions were written by self-consciously apostate men… whose understanding of the biblical covenant had been eroded by a lifetime of Newtonian philosophy and training in the pagan classics. Nevertheless, these men were under restraints: political (a Christian electorate) and philosophical (natural rights doctrines). Both of these restraints have almost completely disappeared in the twentieth century. Thus, the evils implicit in the ratified national covenant have grown more evil over time.” (Pg. 301-302)
North freely admits that his is not a “standard textbook” approach; but it will be of considerable interest to those Christians seeking a “revisionist” view of this aspect of American history.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 2004 book, “This book is the history of a deception. I regard this deception as the greatest deception in American history… The first version of this book appeared as Part 3 of ‘Political Polytheism’ (1989), 201 years after the deception was ratified by representatives of the states, who created a new covenant and a new nation by their collective act of ratification-incorporation. This new covenant meant a new god… It was an act of covenant-breaking: the substitution of a new covenant in the name of a new god…” (Pg. vii)
“Political conservatives call for a return to the ‘original intent’ of the Framers of the Constitution. If only, they say, we could just get back to original intent, things would be good once again… Problem: political conservatives are deceived theologically because they do not recognize the implications of the intellectual shift from the deistic unitarian god of Sir Isaac Newton to the purposeless universe of Charles Darwin… This book is my attempt to teach a Christian remnant the true and long-ignored story of how this nation was hijacked politically in 1788 by the spiritual heirs of the self-conscious spiritual disciples of Isaac Newton…” (Pg. vii-viii)
He continues, “”in whose name was this revolt launched? By what legitimate authority? The formal answer came retroactively in 1788: WE THE PEOPLE. This was a new god with a new sovereignty.” (Pg. xi) He adds, “I argue in this book that the interpretation of the American Revolution as a revolt justified by its promoters in the name of Christianity… is correct, but that any interpretation of the United States Constitution as a Christian document is incorrect. I argue that the Constitution was a covenantal break with the Christian civil religion of twelve of the thirteen colonies. The exception was Rhode Island. Rhode Island was the first civil order in the West to be established self-consciously on a secular foundation.” (Pg. xix)
He outlines, “I ask the question: To what extent is the U.S. Constitution a covenant document? If I can show that it is a covenant document, then a second question arises: What kind of covenant, Christian or secular humanist?... I argue that the Constitution’s framers were not the nation’s Founding Fathers… This is not the standard textbook account of the Constitution… But it is a true account, assuming the Bible is true. I assume that it is.” (Pg. 5-6)
He asserts, “The major figures among the Framers were… Enlightenment men to the core… Their religion was civic religion… they saw civic religion as a decentralized, individual matter rather than as a state affair; it was to aid the national government, but not be part of the national government.” (Pg. 31)
He says of state oaths, “There could be only one kind of oath: to the trinitarian God of the Bible. This made trinitarianism the permanent judicial foundation of the state. In order to break this trinitarian monopoly, the Framers had to undermine the states’ oaths.” (Pg. 111) He adds, “By removing the requirement of the oath, the Convention’s delegates were in fact opening up the door to federal office-holding that would otherwise be close to HONEST non-Christians…. It would also open up offices of authority to men who had taken other binding oaths that were hostile to Christianity…” (Pg. 119)
He summarizes, “the United States Constitution is an atheistic, humanistic covenant… That the word ‘Lord’ appears in Article VII… is not what I would call a persuasive argument for its Christian character.” (Pg. 137) He goes on, “the Constitution is a broken covenant. It was a break with God’s civil covenants, which had been in place in force in a dozen states in 1776… The idea that the Constitution is a Christian document is a myth promoted by Whigs, their spiritual heirs, and their original victims, the Christians… In a world devoid of both cosmic purpose and a God who brings judgment, there are neither natural rights nor natural laws of society. Everything is evolving. Only survival matters.” (Pg. 147)
He argues, “A handful of men had decided to take the new nation down a different path… They wanted a completely new system of national government. This would have to be achieved through a COUP… Yet the Articles of Confederation… specified that all changes would have to be approved by Congress and then by all of the state legislatures…. Congress and the state legislatures would therefore have to be bypassed. This required some very special preparations. It required, in short, a conspiracy.” (Pg. 153-154)
A conspiracy of whom? He points out, “Leaders on both sides of the Constitutional debate were members of Masonic lodges… Does lodge membership of several prominent nationalists prove my thesis regarding the Constitutional Convention as a Masonic coup? No, because men on both side of the Constitutional debate were found in the lodges…” (Pg. 173-175) He continues, “The average student of American history is never told that the Committees of Correspondence and Committees of Safety were very often headed by Masons, held their meetings in lodges or taverns that served as lodge headquarters, and became leaders of the Provincial assemblies.” (Pg. 180-181)
He again summarizes, “I have called the Convention a ‘coup.’ I have argued that Masonic influence was important both in terms of the philosophy of the delegates and their membership in the lodges. If the entire nation had been Masonic, then this would have been a ‘coup.’ But very few colonists were Freemasons… Thus to argue that the Constitution was essentially Masonic is necessarily to argue for a conspiracy… The conspirators were successful. In retrospect, Americans call them the Founding Fathers… They sought to give Americans a new inheritance. What they did was to appropriate an older inheritance in the name of a new family of man.” (Pg. 185-187)
Later, he adds, “But this coup had a side to it that the history books refuse to mention: RELIGION. The Constitutional Convention was a successful attempt by a small group of men whose most influential leaders had long since rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. The voters were Christians; the Convention’s leaders were what two decades later would be called Unitarians. They had imbibed their theology… from dissenting Whig political theory… and from the secret rites of the Masonic lodges to which a dozen of them belonged… What the Constitutional Convention was all about was this: a national political transformation by a group of men who really believed in secrecy and oaths. That almost a quarter of them had taken Masonic self-maledictory oaths is at least worth considering when it comes to assessing their personal motivations.” (Pg. 215) He concludes, “Freemasons had a definite goal: to make illegal at the national level the imposition of a rival theocracy to their own.” (Pg. 219)
He asserts, “The problem with exposing the coup in Philadelphia is that it was such a successful coup. It was a coup that produced a true revolution… What took place in 1787-88 was … a second American Revolution. It violated the terms of the national covenant of 1781… What transformed the coup in Philadelphia into a revolution was the national plebiscite. It was a stroke of genius to appeal to the voters in state-wide conventions rather than to existing legislatures. It was a stroke of providence that they succeeded in overcoming the one man who might have stopped them: Patrick Henry.” (Pg. 249-250)
He concludes, “Christians lost the battle in 1788… The political question facing American Christians is this: How much longer will the Constitution serve as the protector of our legal immunities from state interference?... The Constitution’s provisions were written by self-consciously apostate men… whose understanding of the biblical covenant had been eroded by a lifetime of Newtonian philosophy and training in the pagan classics. Nevertheless, these men were under restraints: political (a Christian electorate) and philosophical (natural rights doctrines). Both of these restraints have almost completely disappeared in the twentieth century. Thus, the evils implicit in the ratified national covenant have grown more evil over time.” (Pg. 301-302)
North freely admits that his is not a “standard textbook” approach; but it will be of considerable interest to those Christians seeking a “revisionist” view of this aspect of American history.
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