Clifford Humphrey of Thales College joins us for another discussion on Christian Nationalism.

1. Nature is understood in two senses, both as tendency and as telos
2. It’s true people have always gathered in groups, ethnei, but those are smaller than nation states. Nation states are relatively new. Can we say they are natural?
3. Aristotle writes that people gather into cities first for protection, to preserve mere life, but they stay for the sake of the good life, which has something to do with the capacity to talk and deliberate about the common good. 
4. Likewise, we could say people gather in nation states for the sake of safety, but they preserve nation states for the sake of happiness, the good life. 
5. Christian nationalism in the American context must recognize three things:
6. The problem posed by universal monotheism, settled imperfectly in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), but remained a problem in monarchic regimes before American founding
7. A limited national government (First Amendment)
8. (Originally) Near plenary police power in the states through federalism. This allowed states to make decency laws based on the mores of the people of each state, to discriminate who could vote and who could hold office based on religious tests each state could come up with.

1778 Constitution of South Carolina:

XXXVIII. That all persons and religious societies who acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is publicly to be worshipped, shall be freely tolerated. The Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed, and is hereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of this State. That all denominations of Christian Protestants in this State, demeaning themselves peaceably and faithfully, shall enjoy equal religious and civil privileges. ...That every society of Christians so formed shall give themselves a name or denomination by which they shall be called and known in law.... each society so petitioning shall have agreed to and subscribed in a book the following five articles, without which no agreement fir union of men upon presence of religion shall entitle them to be incorporated and esteemed as a church of the established religion of this State:

1st. That there is one eternal God, and a future state of rewards and punishments.

2d. That God is publicly to be worshipped.

3d. That the Christian religion is the true religion

4th. That the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are of divine inspiration, and are the rule of faith and practice.

5th. That it is lawful and the duty of every man being thereunto called by those that govern, to bear witness to the truth.

1776 Constitution of Delaware:

ART. 22. Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath, or affirmation, if conscientiously scrupulous of taking an oath, to wit:

" I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."

Lincoln’s “Lyceum Address” (context is increase in mob violence and mob justice in the form of lynching) - picking up the problem the ancient solved of how you get people to be attached to the laws (religion = to bind together)

• People will respect the law only if they feel attached to the regime

• The generation of the American Revolution was attached to the...