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Calvinism 2.0 – Local Governance
Pic on Right is a Modified Bob Connoly Cartoon
This week I am taking a first pass in my study of Calvinism 2.0. Also, I have to bring us back to Sam Adams perspective that ALL Governance is Local. So, I did title the program, “Calvinism 2.0 – Local Governance” in that it is required to have an understanding on how all governance should function in relationship to ones True understanding of the extensibility of Biblical Reformation Reality.
Sam Adams fully understood this as proven by his moniker “the Last Puritan”. To that, I have included in the references, the Congregational Quarterly, January 1869, which has a great article titled “Samuel Adams, the Last of the Puritans.” Notably, the nation in 1869 had already experienced the forethought of disappointment that Sam Adams envisioned for the Republic without a Puritan mindset. Now look at the mess we are in! Our mess is even further from the glorious hopes of that “Last Puritan” basically because of what he predicted would happen if the pulpits lost their Sound Theology of Reformation purism.
Calvinism 2.0
I barely touch a snow flake on a glacier with what I cover in this program. I’m including one persons consideration on the topic in the references. This is another snow flake in the blizzard of confusion that in so many ways, in my humble opinion, is contrary to Fundamental Biblical Reformation reality. To wit…. and I do mean ‘wit’, Rev. T. Aicken as pastor at The Free Reformed Church Langley in BC Canada – Ha, I bet you did think there were Reformed churches in Oh Canada…. Rev. Aiken’s writes the article: “The New Calvinism – A Critical Assessment”, which I found interesting as a starter summation to the sixty hours I have into this topic so far.
My simple note on this is that Calvinism 2.0 will continue to add to that which is contrary to the Foundational teachings of Americana. I’l stay with the applied theology of “The Last Puritan”!
Artillery Sermon
As you know, I’m really big on the Sermons of the Founding Era. To the previous point, America separated from England due to a clear understanding of Biblical governance.
Pastor Doug Wilson revives the concept of the Artillery Sermon that I think pastors should preach in conjunction with “Election Day Sermons”. I highly recommend that you watch this sermon. It is in the references.
Local Governance
I was appalled at what I witnessed at a Village Board Meeting this past Tuesday night. There is an issue related to the school district that we pay our property taxes for. They (the School-board) stuck the tax payers with a $28 million bond for a new MEGA-campus. I’m not getting into the details of that debacle but, the School-board did not plan well in that they did not have a budget line item for the sewer and water hookup fee. They assumed that the Village would wave the fee.
Well, the long and short of it, which I’ll talk about during the program, is that we witnessed what Cath called the “School Board Bully” fundamentally forcing the Village Board to squeal scared and capitulate with a seemingly workable solution – IF it works. Well, the “IF” in the seemingly workable solution could leave a lot of ‘poo’ in the bucket of the Village tax payers muck house.
Sam Adams Wisdom:
From the Congregational Quarterly vol. XI, Page 3
To Elbridge Gerry
“To see a line drawn as clearly as may be between Federal powers vested in Congress and the distinct sovereignty of the several States, upon which the private and personal rights of the citizen depend. Without such distinction, there will be danger of the constitution issuing imperceptibly and gradually into a consolidated government over all the States, which, although it may be wished for by some, was a reprobated in the idea by the highest advocates of the Constitution, as it stood without amendments.”
And to Richard Henry Lee,
“I have always been apprehensive that, through the weakness of the human mind, often discovered in the wisest and best of men, or the perverseness of the interested and designing in as well as out of government, misconstructions would be given to the Federal Constitution which would disappoint the views and expectations of the honest among those who acceded to it, and hazard the liberty, independence, and happiness of the people.”
Lastly from the Congregational Quarterly of 1869, page 4:
“It can be said of Samuel Adams more appropriately than of Thomas Jefferson, that he (Sam Adams) was “the father of Democracy,” using this now abused and degraded word in its old-time purity and power…”
And because you keep asking!
References:
For today’s program:
1. Artillery Sermon 2019, Douglas Wilson
2. The Congregational Quarterly, Volume XI, New Series Volume I, 1869
3. The New Calvinism – A Critical Assessment Very interesting look at Calvinism 2.0
4. Presentation Of Statues Of John Winthrop And Samuel Adams.