Responsible Firearms Ownership 

Amid terrible times of suffering, Americans turn to God.  Americans
always have been, after all, a religious people.  George Washington
believed the American Revolution, and the ensuing experiment in free
government, was guided by the hand of Providence, because he thought God
on the side of freedom.  Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural
Address, a work no less theological and philosophic than political and
poetic, interpreted the horrors of the Civil War as divine retribution
for the sin of slavery.

Americans of old understood what is right, and reasonably expected God to
shine His blessings on them and protect them when they lived rightly.
And they feared Him when they strayed.  They understood that God is good,
that God favors freedom over tyranny, justice over injustice.  They
understood that the principles of America are good -- that it is the
first country in human history founded on the "laws of nature and of
nature's God" -- and that their patriotic duty to their country is no
less a duty to God.

Today many of our ministers, priests, and rabbis neither think nor speak
this way.  As a nation we have succumbed to modern ideas that blur, if
not erase, the distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil.
These ideas have come to dominate our halls of worship, as they dominate
our legislative halls and halls of education.  Many churches today fail
to teach patriotism because they no longer know what is right, and they
no longer know America to be right.

But this week we have seen the face of evil up close.  Evil has been
thrust upon us.  If anything good is to come from these terrible events,
we must use them as reminders of the principles of right and the duties
of citizenship.  Our God and our Constitution demand it.  Our slain
countrymen deserve it.

One way to help us remember these things is to recall the sermons
delivered during the American Founding.  These sermons represent a
religion that knew right from wrong, as clearly as it knew night from
day, because it understood that the principles of right are made
available to man by his reason no less than divine revelation.  What
follows  are excerpts from a 1758 sermon delivered by Samuel Davies to
the militia of Hanover County, Virginia, as that body sought new recruits
to fight the French and Indian War:

   Cursed be he that doth the work of the lord deceitfully;
   and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.
   Jeremiah 48:10

   Nothing can be more agreeable to the God of Peace
   than to see universal harmony and benevolence prevail
   among His creatures; and He has laid them under the
   strongest obligations to cultivate a pacific temper
   toward one another, both as individuals and as
   nations. "Follow peace with all men," is one of the
   principal precepts of our holy religion. And the great
   Prince of Peace has solemnly pronounced, "Blessed are
   the peacemakers."

   But when, in this corrupt, disordered state of things,
   where the lusts of men are perpetually embroiling the
   world with wars and fighting and throwing all into
   confusion; when ambition and avarice would rob us of our
   property, for which we have toiled and on which we
   subsist; when they would enslave the freeborn mind and
   compel us meanly to cringe to usurpation and arbitrary
   power; when they would tear from our eager grasp the
   most valuable blessing of Heaven, I mean our religion;
   when they invade our country, formerly the region of
   tranquility, ravage our frontiers, butcher our fellow
   subjects, or confine them in a barbarous captivity in
   the dens of savages; when our earthly all is ready to be
   seized by rapacious hands, and even our eternal all is
   in danger by the loss of our religion; when this is the
   case, what then is the will of God?

   Must peace then be maintained? Maintained with our
   perfidious and cruel invaders? Maintained at the expense
   of property, liberty, life, and everything dear and
   valuable? Maintained, when it is in our power to
   vindicate our right and do ourselves justice? Is the
   work of peace then our only business? No.  In such a
   time even the God of Peace proclaims by His providence,
   "To arms!"

   Then the sword is, as it were, consecrated to God; and
   the art of war becomes a part of our religion. Then
   happy is he that shall reward our enemies, as they have
   served us. Blessed is the brave soldier; blessed is the
   defender of his country and the destroyer of its
   enemies. Blessed are they who offer themselves willingly
   in this service, and who faithfully discharge it....

   ...Some [Americans] lie dead, mangled with savage
   wounds, consumed to ashes with outrageous flames, or
   torn and devoured by the beasts of the wilderness, while
   their bones lie whitening in the sun and serve as tragic
   memorials of the fatal spot where they fell. Others have
   been dragged away captives and made the slaves of
   imperious and cruel savages. Others have made their
   escape and live to lament their butchered or captivated
   friends and relations. In short, our frontiers have been
   drenched with the blood of our fellow subjects, through
   the length of a thousand miles; and new wounds are still
   opening...

   Will this violence cease without a vigorous and timely
   resistance from us?  No. We have no method left but to
   repel force with force, and to give them blood to drink
   in their turn who have drunk ours...

   I seriously make the proposal to you, not only as a
   subject of the best of kings and a friend to your
   country but as a servant of the most high God; for I am
   fully persuaded what I am recommending is His will; and
   disobedience to it may expose you to His curse...

   ...The cause in which these brave men, and our army in
   general, are engaged is not so much their own as ours.
   Divine Providence considers them not so much in their
   private, personal character as in their public character
   as the representatives and guardians of their country;
   and, therefore, they will stand or fall, not so much
   according to their own personal character as according
   to the public character of the people whose cause they
   have undertaken. Be it known to you, then, their success
   depends upon us even more than upon themselves.

   ...Ye that love ease and shrink from the dangers of war;
   ye that wish to see peace restored once more; ye that
   would be happy beyond the grave and live forever --
   attend to my proposal.  It is this: A THOROUGH NATIONAL
   REFORMATION. This will do what millions of money and
   thousands of men, with guns and swords and all the
   dreadful artillery of death, could not do -- it will
   procure us peace again, a lasting, well-established
   peace.

Our enemies think their political cause -- the cause of tyranny -- is
good.  We think the cause of freedom and constitutional government good.
Both think God on their side.  It cannot be.  As the preachers of the
American Founding explained, reason is the voice of God, no less than
revelation.  Reason and revelation agree on the equal rights of all men,
government by consent, and the rule of law.  Any revelation, any
religion, that contradicts these simple dictates of rational morality --
that denies the equality of all men, and the equal rights of liberty,
life, and conscience with which we are endowed by our Creator -- is
untrue.

If the enemies of freedom wish to discuss these things, we will
demonstrate why their position is unreasonable, unjust, and evil.  But if
our enemies refuse to talk, if they refuse to heed the counsels of
reason, and choose instead to make war, we will make sure they get it.
In those times, terrible times such as we face today, let us follow the
Abraham of America, our great Civil War President, having faith that
"right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our
duty as we understand it."

Thomas L. Krannawitter is Director of Academic Programs at the Claremont
Institute.  He is currently writing a book on the political sermons of
the American Founding.
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Copyright (c) 2001 The Claremont Institute