WEBVTT NOTE Review of North: 'Millenialism and the Progressive Movement' 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.740 Sean Rittenauer is going to lead the discussion in detail on Gary Norr's article from the 2 00:00:06.740 --> 00:00:11.340 Journal of Libertarian Studies, Millennialism and the Progressive Movement. 3 00:00:11.340 --> 00:00:16.660 The article under discussion today is Gary Norr's article, Millennialism and the Progressive 4 00:00:16.660 --> 00:00:20.760 Movement, came out on the most recent issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. 5 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:26.120 I think it is, I'll start off by saying it's a very good article and it's an article that 6 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:32.120 needed to be written as an article that I had put on the back burner of writing, something 7 00:00:32.120 --> 00:00:37.760 like this, after reading Murray Rothbard's article, World One in Fulfillment, Power and 8 00:00:37.760 --> 00:00:38.760 the Intellectuals. 9 00:00:38.760 --> 00:00:47.160 After reading this article, I was frustrated at, reading Rothbard's article, I was frustrated 10 00:00:47.160 --> 00:00:56.720 at what I consider to be some, say, lack of clarity or frustrating lack of proper distinctions 11 00:00:56.720 --> 00:00:59.440 between certain groups that he talks about. 12 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:04.280 And because of those lack, because of the improper distinctions that are made, it leads 13 00:01:04.280 --> 00:01:10.720 to improper conclusions when we take the general overall use of this, or general overall article 14 00:01:10.720 --> 00:01:13.280 of Rothbard's and then seek to apply it to political economy. 15 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:21.120 It leads to some, I think, some wrong conclusions simply, I guess, as we try to generalize history. 16 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:38.840 If we take this article and use it as a, you know, some place to kind of, or a jumping-off point to interpret history and interpret, say, or try to predict the outcomes of certain types of religious groups entering into the political discussion. 17 00:01:38.840 --> 00:01:47.340 If we take Rothbard's article as jumping off point, we could lead to improper, wrong, imprudent conclusions, I guess. 18 00:01:47.340 --> 00:01:56.840 And so, and North addresses the very problem that I, the very frustrating problem that I had. 19 00:01:56.840 --> 00:02:06.840 I'll start with this article at the back of the article where North kind of sums up his position. 20 00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:31.840 Rothbard, in his article, seems to, basically makes the point that the progressive movement was largely, was in large part due to what he calls Protestant-Pietist-Post-Millennialist. 21 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:39.840 and their influence and their wanting to bring about a kingdom of God here on earth. 22 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:51.840 Now, I think that that is too broad and sweeping of a statement because Rothbard doesn't quite, I think, get certain definitions correct. 23 00:02:51.840 --> 00:03:02.840 And North, in his corrective, states that for progressivism, secularization was the key. 24 00:03:02.840 --> 00:03:19.840 It was secular post-millennialists of the secular social gospel types that Rothbard does talk about like Richard Ely, James Dewey, John Dewey, and his people, Rockefeller. 25 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:28.340 Those people, even though using, say, religious terminology, by that point had been completely co-opted by secularist modernism. 26 00:03:28.340 --> 00:03:42.340 So that although they were talking about things like God and the Kingdom of God, those terms were divorced from their historical scriptural meaning. 27 00:03:42.340 --> 00:03:45.340 So for North, secularization is the key. 28 00:03:45.340 --> 00:04:01.340 The secular post-millennialists of the progressive movement joined forces with the theological liberals in Protestant denominations, and they fused the social gospel movement, and it was that social gospel movement that was propelling the secularized social gospel that was propelling progressivism. 29 00:04:01.340 --> 00:04:12.340 Where did Rothbard go wrong? Rothbard emphasized two streams of American church history in the 19th century, liturgical and pietistic, and the pietistic post-millennialists. 30 00:04:12.340 --> 00:04:19.660 For North, he said that that's the wrong distinction. The liturgicals, Lutherans, 31 00:04:19.660 --> 00:04:25.700 Roman Catholics, were not set on changing the world because, as North points out, 32 00:04:25.700 --> 00:04:33.100 that they tend to come from an amillennialist eschatological perspective, okay? And I'll explain 33 00:04:33.100 --> 00:04:40.500 why this is important. But it doesn't hinge on necessarily liturgy, high church versus low 34 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:48.500 as Rothbard seems to indicate, the crucial distinction is our view on the end times, our eschatology. 35 00:04:48.500 --> 00:04:57.500 And not only that, but on an eschatology that's divorced from any type of biblical restraints in our activity. 36 00:04:57.500 --> 00:05:03.500 So the secularized post-millennialists who believe that there is going to be a literal kingdom of God on earth, 37 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:23.500 They want to obtain this through the state, through state activity. Whereas, say, a more biblical, say, Northean post-millennialist believes that there are restraints, biblical mandated restraints in the power of the government to do anything. 38 00:05:23.500 --> 00:05:43.500 So you have this right off the bat secularized versus say more biblical, for lack of a better term, post-millennialism distinction that I think Rothbard kind of muddies, not intentionally necessarily, but nonetheless I don't think he makes the right distinction. 39 00:05:43.500 --> 00:06:11.500 All millennialism, well, I guess I won't make that case yet, anyway, Norris' basic point is the key difference is not eschatology, or was eschatology, a particular type of eschatology driving progressive movement, not liturgy, or not a type of church or their particular views on say, booze or what have you, okay, it's not those types of things that was driving the progressive movement. 40 00:06:11.500 --> 00:06:17.500 Now, in order to get to this conclusion, this North begins by asking several questions. 41 00:06:17.500 --> 00:06:25.500 First is, what is millennialism? If we're going to talk about millennialism and its effects on social theory or on political movements, 42 00:06:25.500 --> 00:06:31.500 we have to understand what is millennialism. And two, he says, what are the differences in millennial views? 43 00:06:31.500 --> 00:06:36.500 Three, why does it matter? If there's no differences in millennial views, we can just lump everybody, 44 00:06:36.500 --> 00:06:47.500 We don't have to distinguish between post, pre, and all millennialists. We can just lump everybody into one millennialist camp and then continue with our reasoning. 45 00:06:47.500 --> 00:06:54.500 So it's important for him, for North, to point out why does different millennial views matter. 46 00:06:54.500 --> 00:06:58.500 Then he goes on and asks the question, for what is pietism? 47 00:06:58.500 --> 00:07:13.500 and this again is crucial to see, is Rothbard's conclusions correct from his, reasoning from his ideas of what pietism is or is North more correct or are they, does everybody have the same definition? 48 00:07:13.500 --> 00:07:21.500 And five, the most important question he says, perhaps says North, is who were the post-millennial pietists? 49 00:07:21.500 --> 00:07:40.500 So, North begins by discussing what is millennialism, and I thought it was a pretty good, say, six, seven page description of the four dominant views on millennialism, in terms of laying out what they actually are. 50 00:07:40.500 --> 00:08:00.500 Now, North, of course, has a certain viewpoint, and of course, he's stressing his viewpoint throughout, but he starts out by saying that all Christians agree regarding the end of the world, that it will be produced by the bodily return of Jesus from where he's at right now in heaven. 51 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:14.500 So all Orthodox Christians believe that. The various denominations are also agreed about the events immediately preceding the bodily return, that there will be some type of rebellion against the Church before His return. 52 00:08:14.500 --> 00:08:27.500 The debate comes regarding the time period preceding this rebellion, and it hinges on the interpretation of something called the Millennial Kingdom. 53 00:08:27.500 --> 00:08:33.380 The Millennial Kingdom is described in the book of Revelation chapter 20 and it talks 54 00:08:33.380 --> 00:08:40.460 about Jesus' reign for a thousand years and it's this notion of the millennium that was 55 00:08:40.460 --> 00:08:43.340 where the differences for our purposes begin. 56 00:08:43.340 --> 00:08:49.580 The question is how will Jesus rule in this millennium in person on earth or from his 57 00:08:49.580 --> 00:08:50.580 throne in heaven? 58 00:08:50.580 --> 00:09:02.580 There are three dominant viewpoints, the amillennial viewpoint, the post-millennial viewpoint, and the premillennial viewpoint. 59 00:09:02.580 --> 00:09:16.580 North then talks about the two categories of premillennialism, which is, say, historic premillennialism and dispensationalist premillennialism. 60 00:09:16.580 --> 00:09:26.580 Okay. Now, Amillennialism simply means that the millennial reign of Christ is described in Revelation 20 as neither geographical nor physical. 61 00:09:26.580 --> 00:09:33.580 It is exclusively spiritual, tracing its beginning to the Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts. 62 00:09:33.580 --> 00:09:40.580 When the New Testament era's institutional church began and when the church first received the Holy Spirit, 63 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:45.580 most Amillennialists have argued that things will get worse and worse and worse as time goes on. 64 00:09:45.580 --> 00:09:51.580 Amillennialists argue that attempts at social reform are morally valid but not biblically mandatory 65 00:09:51.580 --> 00:09:57.580 and that all of such attempts will inevitably fail to change permanently the secular realm of politics. 66 00:09:57.580 --> 00:10:14.580 Because of this less than optimistic view of the way things will generally go in terms of morality, in terms of ethics, in terms of how people will respond to God, 67 00:10:14.580 --> 00:10:21.580 and respond to God. They tend to see, as time goes by, a kind of a general decline. 68 00:10:21.580 --> 00:10:33.580 And because of that general decline, Northwood argued that people that are all millennial do tend not to be that concerned with trying to change the world, 69 00:10:33.580 --> 00:10:48.580 with trying to get overly involved in political affairs, because try as we want to, with the social means, to change the way, to make the world better, 70 00:10:48.580 --> 00:10:57.580 try as we want to make the world better, prophecy tells us that things aren't going to ultimately get a whole lot better, 71 00:10:57.580 --> 00:11:01.580 that we're going to be on this general decline until Jesus comes back, okay? 72 00:11:01.580 --> 00:11:09.820 And so we're kind of spinning our wheels if we try to make things better through the political process, 73 00:11:09.820 --> 00:11:16.340 either by restricting freedom or restricting liberty or pushing for more liberty. 74 00:11:16.340 --> 00:11:20.700 Ultimately, it's not going to be that consequential. 75 00:11:20.700 --> 00:11:30.420 The premillennialist view believes that the coming of Jesus, after the coming, well, let's see, 76 00:11:30.420 --> 00:11:37.860 that the coming millennial kingdom, the coming reign of Jesus will be literal on earth, okay, 77 00:11:37.860 --> 00:11:44.780 for a particular period of time, and a lot of them believe it's going to be the literal thousand years it's talked about in Revelation 20. 78 00:11:44.780 --> 00:11:52.780 Now, North, again, distinguishes between historic premillennialism and dispensationalist premillennialism. 79 00:11:52.780 --> 00:11:59.580 And I don't think the distinctions are that important for the relevancy of the paper, 80 00:11:59.580 --> 00:12:10.480 other than just to say that dispensationalist premillennialism is the most, 81 00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:18.080 It's certainly the most common, the most popular form of premillennialism in existence today in American Protestantism. 82 00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:28.680 And it can lead to some kind of contradictory, it's what the North calls schizophrenia, 83 00:12:28.680 --> 00:12:31.880 intellectual schizophrenia on the New Christian right. 84 00:12:31.880 --> 00:12:36.380 But they also tend to believe, by the way, that things are going to get worse and worse and worse, 85 00:12:36.380 --> 00:12:39.780 even more so than the amillennialists, some of the amillennialists I've read. 86 00:12:39.780 --> 00:12:46.780 The Church will be taken up out of the grave or out of the earth and will meet Jesus in the clouds and they will kind of sit and observe the Church. 87 00:12:46.780 --> 00:12:57.780 And they believe, however, that before this coming tribulation period, the Church will be raptured, the dispensationalist will believe the Church is all going to be caught up. 88 00:12:57.780 --> 00:13:07.780 So every living, every Christian, dead or alive, will be taken up out of the grave or out of the earth and will meet Jesus in the clouds. 89 00:13:07.780 --> 00:13:36.780 You give away all their worldly belongings and that kind of thing? 90 00:13:36.780 --> 00:13:41.780 It's not necessarily, but just that their outlook is towards different things like evangelism. 91 00:13:41.780 --> 00:13:46.780 There are certain things that last forever. That's the Word of God and the souls of men. Those are the two eternal things. 92 00:13:46.780 --> 00:13:53.780 The Word of God and the souls of men. And if that is the case, and we think things are going to get worse and worse and worse, 93 00:13:53.780 --> 00:14:02.780 so it doesn't pay us to try to make things better on earth through, say, social change, through politics, things like that, 94 00:14:02.780 --> 00:14:14.780 Then we need to get out and start evangelizing because the thing that really matters in the whole scheme of things is a person's relationship with Christ. 95 00:14:14.780 --> 00:14:19.780 And because the return of Christ may be imminent, we may not have, we don't have a whole lot of time right now. 96 00:14:19.780 --> 00:14:23.780 So we have to put our, basically it's an allocation of resources, okay. 97 00:14:23.780 --> 00:14:30.780 We think that evangelism is the most productive thing we can do given what prophecy tells us and gives us the state affairs we're in now. 98 00:14:30.780 --> 00:14:38.780 now. So we spend more and more time doing evangelism and thinking in those rather narrow terms as opposed to thinking more broadly about social theory. 99 00:14:38.780 --> 00:14:48.780 Okay. And as North does point out, though, that there's this intellectual schizophrenia on the new Christian right, like people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, 100 00:14:48.780 --> 00:15:03.420 tend or claim to be dispensational pre-millennialists, but they're also, since the 1980s in particular, really, late 70s, early 80s, 101 00:15:03.420 --> 00:15:15.180 have become increasingly more politically active. And so in evangelical protestism now, or at least in the Baptist Church where I go to, 102 00:15:15.180 --> 00:15:26.100 But there is this kind of, to me again, kind of rather frustrating discontinuity or dichotomy 103 00:15:26.100 --> 00:15:33.220 between people that know that they think that they should cast an informed vote, they're 104 00:15:33.220 --> 00:15:38.020 not happy with the government, a lot of them want government off their backs, but they 105 00:15:38.020 --> 00:15:41.560 haven't thought it through clearly and they're not willing to put a whole lot of time into 106 00:15:41.560 --> 00:16:05.560 If you're researching philosophy or even spend that much time in academic pursuits at all, anyway, because, again, we don't have a whole lot of time, because the return of Christ is imminent, and so we spend times better spent placing it towards things that are more eternal, like evangelization and making sure that your own house is in order, that kind of thing. 107 00:16:05.560 --> 00:16:11.800 Then, okay, so we've passed over Amillennialism and Premillennialism, 108 00:16:11.800 --> 00:16:17.080 the North then goes to the Post-Millennialism. Post-Millennialists teach that, according to North, 109 00:16:17.080 --> 00:16:23.560 the Kingdom of God began with the manifestation of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and that the entire 110 00:16:23.560 --> 00:16:28.840 church era can be regarded as the Millennium. Now that, they are in agreement with the Amillennialists 111 00:16:28.840 --> 00:16:43.840 The point of departure is that at some point in the future, a great period of Gospel success in evangelism will take place, wherein billions of people will come to accept Christ as Savior. 112 00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:48.840 So there will be a large conversion to Christ as a result of the preaching of the Gospel. 113 00:16:48.840 --> 00:16:56.840 This period will result in great external blessings, whether it will last exactly a thousand years or not is not much discussed. 114 00:16:56.840 --> 00:17:04.840 Until the world experiences a long era of Christian culture, Jesus will not come again to end history and judge the world. 115 00:17:04.840 --> 00:17:08.840 Thus, Jesus will return post-millennially. 116 00:17:08.840 --> 00:17:15.840 So there's going to be this extended period of something that they could call perhaps the Kingdom of God on Earth. 117 00:17:15.840 --> 00:17:24.840 As more and more people become Christian, they will begin to affect laws, etc., to make them more, society more Christian. 118 00:17:24.840 --> 00:17:46.840 and then after this long period of large converts, large numbers of people being Christian, then Jesus will come back and provide the new heaven and the new earth for Christians and then cast all the non-Christians into eternal perdition. 119 00:17:46.840 --> 00:17:52.780 okay so there's those that's laid that lays out the gee that lays out the 120 00:17:52.780 --> 00:17:59.200 millennial views and what is pietism North says that pietism is basically an 121 00:17:59.200 --> 00:18:07.160 eye a viewpoint that places a lot of emphasis on your person your own your 122 00:18:07.160 --> 00:18:12.080 own personal salvation your own personal Christian living okay and that things 123 00:18:12.080 --> 00:18:16.720 that aren't connected with that or tend to be tend to be second than that 124 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:23.920 are not that important. So the pietists will tend to be, say, more concerned 125 00:18:23.920 --> 00:18:29.960 about smoking, more concerned about booze, more concerned about gambling, those 126 00:18:29.960 --> 00:18:37.040 kinds of things. So five topics dominated its list of social concerns in North 127 00:18:37.040 --> 00:18:40.960 States. The use of alcohol, the use of tobacco, attendance at plays or movies, 128 00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:45.560 dancing, except for traditional folk dancing and maybe square dancing, and 129 00:18:45.560 --> 00:18:52.480 and gambling, other social issues such as laws against prostitution and 130 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:57.840 pornography or the enforcement of laws against commerce on the Sabbath have not 131 00:18:57.840 --> 00:19:04.240 been unique to Protestantism that they've also well actually I don't know 132 00:19:04.240 --> 00:19:08.520 about that I have some comments there's just too much there's a lot of this 133 00:19:08.520 --> 00:19:13.040 article that needs to be discussed and I don't have time to discuss it all but 134 00:19:13.040 --> 00:19:20.040 I have problems with certain North definitions as well, so just to not let North off the hook. 135 00:19:20.040 --> 00:19:36.040 Anyway, the important thing for North when describing the pietists is that pietists tend not to be overly concerned with changing the social political atmosphere. 136 00:19:36.040 --> 00:20:05.040 They tended to be anti-theoretical, anti-intellectual. They didn't put a whole lot of stake in, say, Christian scholarship, for instance, because they thought that the academy, for instance, would become more and more secular. 137 00:20:05.040 --> 00:20:13.040 They thought that they were generally opposed to any form of Darwinism, the pietists were, 138 00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:30.040 and therefore tend to associate scholarship and science and learning with evil, with biblical fallacies or things that were not in accordance with the Bible. 139 00:20:30.040 --> 00:20:41.040 to spend their time in studying scripture and not spend a whole lot, which is fine, good, but not, they didn't, they didn't tend to, they tended not to think too systematically about, about things. 140 00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:59.040 And you can see this, he has got, in a, let's see, I don't want to make sure, you can see this kind of come to fruition in William Jennings, in William Jennings' Brine, where it's, his attack on brine is, is, is, I think, one of the best parts of the paper. 141 00:20:59.040 --> 00:21:04.280 paper. I mean, it's just utterly devastating. It just paints Brian to be... I did not realize 142 00:21:04.280 --> 00:21:10.800 that Brian was such a socialist, such a hardcore socialist. And it was... I mean, the only thing 143 00:21:10.800 --> 00:21:15.000 I knew about Brian was that he was from my home state, which was Nebraska, and he was 144 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:21.080 the boy orator of the Platt, and that he did some Chautauqua stuff and then kind of embarrassed 145 00:21:21.080 --> 00:21:23.960 himself at the Scopes Monkey Trial. That's pretty much all I knew about him. So I thought, 146 00:21:23.960 --> 00:21:24.960 well, at least he was... 147 00:21:54.960 --> 00:22:05.960 That's definitely not, I know that's more in line with Tucker's theology, but nonetheless 148 00:22:05.960 --> 00:22:11.960 it's definitely not in line with say Calvinist Presbyterianism, which is a tradition out 149 00:22:11.960 --> 00:22:16.120 of which Brian came. 150 00:22:16.120 --> 00:22:21.640 Then North, in illustrating his main point is to point out that not all post-millennials 151 00:22:21.640 --> 00:22:36.520 North tries to divide the post-millennialist, broadly interpreted into two basic, what I 152 00:22:36.520 --> 00:22:40.140 consider two basic groups or historical groups. 153 00:22:40.140 --> 00:22:46.540 One, basically it's the status of post-millennialists versus the non-status post-millennialists. 154 00:22:46.540 --> 00:22:55.540 As I see it, Rothbard tended to just lump all post-millennialists into the status post-millennial group. 155 00:22:55.540 --> 00:23:06.540 And North, I think, makes a more proper distinction in tracing out, say, the old school Presbyterian post-millennialists 156 00:23:06.540 --> 00:23:14.540 and, say, the pietist post-millennialists of, say, the Jonathan Edwards, his era of post-millennialism, 157 00:23:14.540 --> 00:23:22.460 as being non-statist. And then you have the secularized social gospel post-millennialists 158 00:23:22.460 --> 00:23:28.780 who were very statist, who led to, rolled into the pre-millennial, or the, I'm sorry, the progressive 159 00:23:28.780 --> 00:23:36.700 movement. And he points out people like, you know, he cites several times people like J. Gresham, 160 00:23:36.700 --> 00:23:46.140 J. Gressen Machen, for instance, as an old-school Presbyterian Whig post-millennialist who was 161 00:23:46.140 --> 00:23:52.920 probably the closest thing to a libertarian we see in American Protestantism, except with 162 00:23:52.920 --> 00:24:00.660 the exception of perhaps Mark Brantley, but up to this point, he was probably the most 163 00:24:00.660 --> 00:24:06.260 libertarian writing in terms of and again in terms of his writings probably most 164 00:24:06.260 --> 00:24:11.220 libertarian of all say the American Protestantism up to the say the 70s or 165 00:24:11.220 --> 00:24:21.300 80s so so the I guess the point is that the the crucial the crucial distinction 166 00:24:21.300 --> 00:24:27.420 is not just are you post-millennial or not the distinction is what type of 167 00:24:27.420 --> 00:24:33.620 Post-Millennialism, is it a more secularized, social gospel post-millennialism, or is it 168 00:24:33.620 --> 00:24:41.100 a more biblical post-millennial, orthodox Christian biblical post-millennialism? And 169 00:24:41.100 --> 00:24:47.300 also... 170 00:24:47.300 --> 00:24:52.060 So if you're a pietistic post-millennialist, you tend to be less statist. 171 00:24:52.060 --> 00:25:03.060 Yes, exactly right. And then I guess that's where I'll stop and open up to questions. I know it wasn't as clear as I wanted it to be, but yes sir. 172 00:25:03.060 --> 00:25:12.060 I didn't access the World War I article, but I did look back and I found an article that Rothbard wrote for American Family and the State. 173 00:25:12.060 --> 00:25:20.060 It was edited by Pydon. It was in 1986, so it's about three years before the publication of this. 174 00:25:20.060 --> 00:25:23.060 I don't know if this is an earlier article or not, depending on how I'm not sat around. 175 00:25:23.060 --> 00:25:31.060 But I think Rothbard, whether or not he made it in the World War I article or not, I think he knew about this distinction. 176 00:25:31.060 --> 00:25:40.100 She talks about pietists, and he defines them as specific creeds or various churches of 177 00:25:40.100 --> 00:25:43.940 sex do not matter, neither disobedience to their rituals or liturgies of a particular 178 00:25:43.940 --> 00:25:44.940 church. 179 00:25:44.940 --> 00:25:49.540 What counts for salvation is only each individual being born again, a direct kind of confrontation 180 00:25:49.540 --> 00:25:54.340 between individual and God, a mystical and emotional conversion in which the individual 181 00:25:54.340 --> 00:25:58.420 achieves salvation, and then he talks about baptism. 182 00:25:58.420 --> 00:26:04.700 And then he also makes another distinction later on between two different types of pietism, 183 00:26:04.700 --> 00:26:10.860 a northern and a southern basically, and he says that the southerners, at least until 184 00:26:10.860 --> 00:26:17.500 the 1890s, became salvationist pietists, and that is they believed that emotional experience 185 00:26:17.500 --> 00:26:22.580 of individual regeneration or of being born again was enough to ensure salvation, religion 186 00:26:22.580 --> 00:26:31.580 Man was a separate compartment of life, a vertical, individual-God relation, carrying no imperative to transform man-made culture and inter-human relations. 187 00:26:31.580 --> 00:26:42.580 Then, in the next paragraph he talks, in contrast, the northerners, particularly in the areas inhabited by Yankees, adopted a far different form of evangelical pilotism. 188 00:26:42.580 --> 00:26:47.580 Basically, they believed that man could achieve salvation by an act of free will. 189 00:26:47.580 --> 00:26:56.580 They also believe that it was necessary to a person's own salvation and not just a good idea to try his best to ensure the salvation of everyone else in society. 190 00:26:56.580 --> 00:27:02.580 What was the last part? The northern evangelical salvation via free will. 191 00:27:02.580 --> 00:27:08.580 And what was their social view that you should, you could or you should? 192 00:27:08.580 --> 00:27:18.580 Yes, it's not just a good idea. It's not just a good idea to try its best to ensure salvation of everyone else on this side. 193 00:27:18.580 --> 00:27:24.580 Yeah, as he says in page 83 of the World War I fulfillment article, he says, 194 00:27:24.580 --> 00:27:40.080 Evangelical pietism held that requisite to any man's salvation is that he do his best to see to it that everyone else is saved and doing one's best inevitably meant that the state must become a crucial instrument in maximizing people's chances for salvation. 195 00:27:40.080 --> 00:27:46.000 and then so that oh go ahead no please I just say so so so in order for me to be 196 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:51.000 saved I have to be out there working to make sure that everybody else as many 197 00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:56.200 people as possible become saved and and in order to do that I've got to use the 198 00:27:56.200 --> 00:28:00.600 state to remove impediments from people that might lure people away from being 199 00:28:00.600 --> 00:28:04.480 saved like alcohol or what have you I think they also want public schooling 200 00:28:04.480 --> 00:28:09.600 etc right you know so much of this dispute to turn turns on this question 201 00:28:09.600 --> 00:28:11.840 and what constitutes pietism, right? 202 00:28:11.840 --> 00:28:15.000 I mean, they agree on the millennial question. 203 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:16.920 I mean, it seems like North wants 204 00:28:16.920 --> 00:28:19.040 to make more distinctions among the post-millennials 205 00:28:19.040 --> 00:28:22.360 than Rothbard's willing to. 206 00:28:22.360 --> 00:28:24.920 But I thought it was significant that when North 207 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:27.880 is discussing eschatology, he's talking in theological terms. 208 00:28:27.880 --> 00:28:30.120 When he turns to the question of pietism, 209 00:28:30.120 --> 00:28:32.600 he talks exclusively in historical terms 210 00:28:32.600 --> 00:28:35.960 and never seeks to give a theological definition 211 00:28:35.960 --> 00:28:36.960 of pietism. 212 00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:43.960 Well, I think he's done this deliberately, which is why I think this article is so wrong-headed. 213 00:28:43.960 --> 00:28:50.960 Really, the difference between... the reason why Rothbard makes a distinction between liturgicals and pietists 214 00:28:50.960 --> 00:28:55.960 is not because some people ring bells at mass and other people don't or something. 215 00:28:55.960 --> 00:28:58.960 It has nothing to do with high church, low church as such. 216 00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:01.960 It's that these are proxies for a particular view of sin. 217 00:29:01.960 --> 00:29:08.260 The Piousistic view of sin is basically a neo-Gnostic view of sin. 218 00:29:08.260 --> 00:29:19.260 It rejects the traditional Christian view of sin, that is that a sin is any thought, word or deed that violates certain scriptural mandates. 219 00:29:19.260 --> 00:29:28.260 The Piousists go on further, and they dispense with the thoughts, they figure you're totally depraved, there's no way you can purify your thoughts. 220 00:29:28.260 --> 00:29:40.260 So, you need to go after your words, which you can purify, your deeds, which you can purify, and most importantly of all, things, that there are certain things that are inherently evil. 221 00:29:40.260 --> 00:29:48.260 Liquor, in and of itself, embodies evil. It's not what you do with it. It's by its very existence is evil. 222 00:29:48.260 --> 00:30:18.260 And this is a pietist doctrine that really is not part of orthodox Christianity, but goes to the heart of the distinction between, you know, the liturgical branches of Christianity associated with Catholicism, Lutheranism and Episcopalianism, and the more radical Anabaptist sects that were later secularized in progressive era that Rothbard identifies as their view of man's nature and their view of sin. 223 00:30:18.260 --> 00:30:48.260 I think that, for example, like nowadays, you can sort of almost define these groups by the institutions which are associated, for example, that the pietists which Jeff was talking about are, you know, Bob Jones University, if you can say Bob Jones, you know, and I guess I had the distinction of being brought up with fundamentalism in both the north and the south, and basically the difference I saw was that you were allowed to smoke in the south and still be a Christian. I'm serious. 224 00:30:48.260 --> 00:30:54.260 When ultimately people came down to distinctions, how was the distinction? You could smoke in the south. 225 00:30:54.260 --> 00:30:57.260 By the way, there's pietism on the left too. 226 00:30:57.260 --> 00:31:04.260 Pietism in politics would constantly seek to stamp out, say, discrimination. 227 00:31:04.260 --> 00:31:10.260 A good example of something that's inherently sinful. 228 00:31:10.260 --> 00:31:13.260 There's no way you could discriminate and be good about it. 229 00:31:13.260 --> 00:31:15.260 There's no way you could have a drink and do it in moderation. 230 00:31:15.260 --> 00:31:17.260 It has to be utterly destroyed. 231 00:31:17.260 --> 00:31:22.020 which is why pietism led to statism. So that's my critique of the North Paper. 232 00:31:22.020 --> 00:31:40.260 Let me say something real quick. I think the word pietism is misapplied. I think you'd be taken out of this whole argument and you'd still end up with a record. 233 00:31:40.260 --> 00:32:04.260 Let me tell you why. It kind of points on page 136, the article. It talks a little bit about, and I'm a Presbyterian, I know a little bit about the history of the Presbyterian Church, so I'm familiar somewhat with the debates and that sort of thing that went on in the late 19th century, that sort of thing. 234 00:32:04.260 --> 00:32:09.500 And in this last paragraph on this page, it talks about what the debate essentially was 235 00:32:09.500 --> 00:32:16.860 in the Presbyterian Church during that time, and what it was, it was between what was a, 236 00:32:16.860 --> 00:32:24.900 what you might call a pietist type viewpoint, which is one, this is how I've learned to 237 00:32:24.900 --> 00:32:31.620 define pietism, it's something, the difference is, pietism defines, as you say, certain deeds 238 00:32:31.620 --> 00:32:37.980 in and of themselves wrong, evil, and basically says that every deed can be put 239 00:32:37.980 --> 00:32:43.420 into some category in some way. While the traditional tradition, the tradition for 240 00:32:43.420 --> 00:32:47.140 Luther for instance, basically said there was a whole host of deeds which are 241 00:32:47.140 --> 00:32:51.460 neither black nor white, good nor bad, anything in and of themselves, they're 242 00:32:51.460 --> 00:32:59.220 just acts which are out of the realm of spirituality. And basically that was the 243 00:32:59.220 --> 00:33:22.220 and the debate between the leftist, let's say, and the conservative element in the Princeton Theological Seminary which was traditionally the conservative bulwark and the most powerful, in that sense, in the Presbyterian Church, and probably still is, even though it's not conservative. 244 00:33:22.220 --> 00:33:29.220 So in that sense, it was very clear. Tiatism lined up with social activism. 245 00:33:29.220 --> 00:33:34.220 Well, those against Tiatism lined up against social activism. 246 00:33:34.220 --> 00:33:38.220 I don't think that that's clear throughout the whole spectrum. 247 00:33:38.220 --> 00:33:46.220 I believe that Tiatism has been the dominant form of Protestant Christianity in America. 248 00:33:46.220 --> 00:33:54.220 In a lot of traditions, to an extent even Lutheran, to an extent, definitely to an extent Baptist, very much so, 249 00:33:54.220 --> 00:33:58.220 and yet they have not necessarily aligned with social activism. 250 00:33:58.220 --> 00:34:06.220 I just think it just happened to be in this case that the debate of the Presbyterian Church came down along those lines, 251 00:34:06.220 --> 00:34:10.220 but I do not believe that that is something that can be generalized to all Protestants. 252 00:34:10.220 --> 00:34:14.220 I don't know if people from other traditions may agree or disagree, 253 00:34:14.220 --> 00:34:26.220 I think the Baptist religion is very pietist in its background and yet not necessarily very social activist in that sense, at least to some extent. 254 00:34:26.220 --> 00:34:27.220 James? 255 00:34:27.220 --> 00:34:36.220 Oh, and then another thing with the criticism of Rothbard's treatment of Rock, 256 00:34:36.220 --> 00:34:41.220 of the Forest Man and the Rockefellers. 257 00:34:41.220 --> 00:34:42.720 I don't know if that's valid. 258 00:34:42.720 --> 00:34:49.220 One of the things Rothbard implies in saying that is that this sort of says that while 259 00:34:49.220 --> 00:34:55.720 these people may go secular, that basically once you're a post-mil piadist, you're always 260 00:34:55.720 --> 00:35:02.220 a post-mil piadist, and that if you're brought up in these ways that you, even though you 261 00:35:02.220 --> 00:35:17.220 You may become an atheist, you may become a secular Unitarian or whatever I think he refers to in here somewhere, that you still bring this baggage with you, this Post Mill book, this baggage with you. 262 00:35:17.220 --> 00:35:29.220 While they may have switched over, Rothbard, by calling them Post Mills is not denying the fact that they switched over to the church, but he's just saying that they've got this baggage with them, they took it with them. 263 00:35:29.220 --> 00:35:45.220 Right, right, yes. I think there's no disagreement there. I would just argue that it was, that the more likely one is to make the switch into secularism, then the more likely one is actually to become an activist status. That would be my, that would be my... 264 00:35:45.220 --> 00:35:52.220 One quick thing on page 140, I think you get a shorthand look at North's actual critique of Rothbard. 265 00:35:52.220 --> 00:35:59.220 Rothbard says the problem in much of Christian history has been the advent of the post-millennial pietists. 266 00:35:59.220 --> 00:36:02.220 But if you look at the first paragraph under the conclusion, he has this sentence, 267 00:36:02.220 --> 00:36:06.220 but they were not pietists in the historical meaning of the word, and then he gives a short definition of it, colon, 268 00:36:06.220 --> 00:36:10.220 Christians who elevated religious experience about social transformation. 269 00:36:10.220 --> 00:36:18.220 So in North's view, by definition, almost, you can't have a post-millennial pietist. 270 00:36:18.220 --> 00:36:20.220 I don't think you're... 271 00:36:20.220 --> 00:36:23.220 But I think you're wrong about that. That's what North's really arguing. 272 00:36:23.220 --> 00:36:29.220 No, that's not true at all, because the post-millennial pietists tend to believe, they tend to... 273 00:36:29.220 --> 00:36:54.220 Post-Millenniopitis would tend to argue that the millennium will come about practically almost as a necessary consequence to more and more Christians becoming receptive to the Gospel and living integrable Christian lives. 274 00:36:54.220 --> 00:37:24.220 So that there's no need to go out and actively even say, you know, even to act actively change laws according to, you know, the Old Testament or anything, anything like that, because people will just, there'll be a kind of a natural progression towards this, whereas the, say, the reconstructionist branch that also argued that, you know, this is all going to, you know, any type of king, any type 275 00:37:24.220 --> 00:37:29.180 of Millennium on Earth is going to be after you know this is going to be in 276 00:37:29.180 --> 00:37:39.620 this golden age after a mass conversion then I mean they still argued that they 277 00:37:39.620 --> 00:37:44.660 would still argue that this this would only happen as this would happen as a 278 00:37:44.660 --> 00:37:47.980 natural consequence but they would be they would tend to have more developed 279 00:37:47.980 --> 00:37:52.300 social social theory but you know the pious post-millennialists would still 280 00:37:52.300 --> 00:38:01.300 The Golden Age is going to come, but we don't have to write a social theory about it. 281 00:38:01.300 --> 00:38:05.300 Well, aren't Quakers, for example, pietistic, post-millennialists? 282 00:38:05.300 --> 00:38:07.300 They're probably pre-millennialists. 283 00:38:07.300 --> 00:38:09.300 I don't know about that. 284 00:38:09.300 --> 00:38:11.300 I would say the modern Quaker has a theology on that. 285 00:38:11.300 --> 00:38:13.300 I don't know what the modern Quaker is. 286 00:38:13.300 --> 00:38:42.300 But I've talked to Murray about the pietistic point in particular and I think he did view the term with a small p as James sort of indicates that the people themselves were pietistic in the basic sense that they didn't smoke, that they didn't drink, they were very frugal and they felt successful, they were pragmatists 287 00:38:42.300 --> 00:38:53.800 and they felt that they could give that to other people. They could give these keys of life and success, which of course most people were in the United States. 288 00:38:53.800 --> 00:39:02.300 They could give them to everybody else. If you didn't drink, you didn't smoke, and you saved, and you invested, and you worked hard, and you did X, Y, and Z, then you too. 289 00:39:02.300 --> 00:39:04.300 There's even more to it than that. 290 00:39:04.300 --> 00:39:07.300 That's where the pietism breaks out into more... 291 00:39:07.300 --> 00:39:12.700 But the reason they're contrasted with the liturgicals is that the liturgicals reaches 292 00:39:12.700 --> 00:39:17.540 back to the whole tradition of iconoclasm and the stripping of the altars after the Reformation. 293 00:39:17.540 --> 00:39:21.580 And the reason they stripped the altars is that the pietists thought there was something 294 00:39:21.580 --> 00:39:25.260 inherently suspect about material decadence. 295 00:39:25.260 --> 00:39:29.180 That's why you see this breakdown between the liturgicals and the pietists. 296 00:39:29.180 --> 00:39:31.980 By definition, there would be something wrong with material decadence. 297 00:39:31.980 --> 00:39:32.980 It's decadent. 298 00:39:32.980 --> 00:39:37.980 Well, they thought a candlestick was decadent, you know what I mean? 299 00:39:37.980 --> 00:39:39.980 Well, it may have been, in that context. 300 00:39:39.980 --> 00:39:45.980 I mean, of course, they're reacting against a thousand years of abuse or corruption. 301 00:39:45.980 --> 00:39:53.980 But what I understand, it seems to me, though, that you talked before about this definition of sin, 302 00:39:53.980 --> 00:40:00.980 where sin doesn't become any more thought, where there are actions inherent in things. 303 00:40:00.980 --> 00:40:04.980 and you say we don't worry about thoughts because people are totally depraved 304 00:40:04.980 --> 00:40:08.980 but if people are totally depraved then how can they... 305 00:40:08.980 --> 00:40:12.980 what sense does it make then to concentrate on actions or things 306 00:40:12.980 --> 00:40:15.980 or people consuming things if people are totally depraved? 307 00:40:15.980 --> 00:40:17.980 It's a mechanistic view of salvation. 308 00:40:17.980 --> 00:40:21.980 Totally depraved has nothing to do with pietism, the definition of pietism. 309 00:40:21.980 --> 00:40:25.980 The idea of the Presbyterian Church debate has everything to do with that 310 00:40:25.980 --> 00:40:27.980 because the conservative branch of the Presbyterian Church, 311 00:40:27.980 --> 00:40:33.980 The anti-pietist group were staunchly Calvinist, staunchly total-of-the-bratical. 312 00:40:33.980 --> 00:40:40.980 My argument doesn't hinge on the total-of-the-piety point. That was just a gratuitous thinking. 313 00:40:40.980 --> 00:40:49.980 I would argue it, but I don't think it's necessary to accept that, to accept the view that Rothbard is identifying 314 00:40:49.980 --> 00:40:56.980 pietism with a particular view of ethics and salvation. And North never quite picks up on that. 315 00:40:56.980 --> 00:41:04.980 But it seems to me, well, I don't know. 316 00:41:04.980 --> 00:41:10.980 He never quite, even on this footnote early in the thing, he says something about the liturgicals and he says, 317 00:41:10.980 --> 00:41:14.980 I mean, it's like he doesn't understand. Yeah, here it is, footnote 10. 318 00:41:14.980 --> 00:41:18.980 He says, this all-millennial's view has been the dominant astrological viewpoint of the Roman catholicism, 319 00:41:18.980 --> 00:41:22.980 the Lutheranism, the Episcopalian, with their high church, quote unquote, liturgies. 320 00:41:22.980 --> 00:41:29.280 liturgies, then it just goes on, as if there's nothing to it, as if liturgy is just an accident. 321 00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:32.880 But it's not. I mean the churches with liturgies tend not to be pietistic. 322 00:41:32.880 --> 00:42:02.880 Well, in the example of Continental, the Reformed Church, the Presbyterian of the Continental Calvinistic Churches, typically which are very, were not high church, also be, and then he also makes a good distinction between post-millennialists that were activists and those that weren't, which I think what the problem is, I still think that you can take hiatus out of the whole thing, just take it out and you can still come up 323 00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:09.120 with a side that is socially activist and post-millennialist and not so and you can 324 00:42:09.120 --> 00:42:13.240 be a pietist that believes that if you enforce laws on other people that that's 325 00:42:13.240 --> 00:42:16.520 gonna bring about some kind of change and you can be a pietist that believes 326 00:42:16.520 --> 00:42:19.800 nothing of the sort. I think Norris probably goes a little too far in the other 327 00:42:19.800 --> 00:42:23.960 direction. He tries to define pietism as someone that's totally concerned almost 328 00:42:23.960 --> 00:42:28.440 with his or herself and not with anything else but you can, to me, you can 329 00:42:28.440 --> 00:42:31.600 be either. I mean you can be a pietist that believes social activism can 330 00:42:31.600 --> 00:42:35.040 in Congress something and you can be a scientist that believes neither and you can be not a 331 00:42:35.040 --> 00:42:39.560 scientist at all and be a social activist. I mean I just don't see where that's adding 332 00:42:39.560 --> 00:42:41.040 a whole lot to the debate. 333 00:42:41.040 --> 00:42:48.680 I mean, one of the things to remember is that the whole progressive era, a lot of the, there 334 00:42:48.680 --> 00:42:55.840 are a whole lot of strains of progressivism. What tended to join the anti-Darwinists, and 335 00:42:55.840 --> 00:43:00.160 this is another thing he really doesn't touch on very much, the huge split between the Darwinists 336 00:43:00.160 --> 00:43:05.720 The fundamentalists and anti-Darwinists, the fundamentalist modernists, but where the anti-Darwinists 337 00:43:05.720 --> 00:43:12.080 tended, the fundamentalists tended to join into this whole progressive movement was on 338 00:43:12.080 --> 00:43:17.600 the issue of prohibition, because they felt that drinking was sinful, and certainly at 339 00:43:17.600 --> 00:43:22.280 the time, at the turn of the century, alcoholism was a problem in America, and these guys, 340 00:43:22.280 --> 00:43:26.840 these preachers would go down to Skid Row, and that's where they started their union 341 00:43:26.840 --> 00:43:34.120 and Gospel Missions, which exist to this day, but they tended to really focus upon Prohibition, 342 00:43:34.120 --> 00:43:40.360 not so much some of the other aspects of progressiveism that we think of in regulation and the like. 343 00:43:40.360 --> 00:43:44.680 Granted, William Jennings Bryan did, but Bryan also strikes me as a person who really had 344 00:43:44.680 --> 00:43:48.000 never worked out much theology or worked out much of anything else. 345 00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:53.240 It's just sort of just this populism, whatever appeals to the people, but Prohibition really 346 00:43:53.240 --> 00:44:18.240 I'm reviewing a paper right now on progressivism and what it is, and that is one of the problems, is progressivism is really the historical manifestation of all of these groups, progressives from religious bent or not, that have come together and still exist to a certain extent, well obviously do, to a large extent.