William Adams and Religion Beyond the Walls of the Church

Ever since the founding of the American Republic, authors have contemplated the relationship between Christianity and the world outside of the church, whether it be government, the arts and sciences, or other intellectual pursuits. The Sabin Americana database at the Jerry Falwell Library provides a number of insightful examples of historical works that elaborate on the myriad of discussions regarding this relationship. The purpose of this blog post is to highlight two of them as a roadmap to further research regarding the importance of Christianity in early American history. Our focus will be on William Adams, the pastor at the Central Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Our first example is Adams's Christianity and Civil Government: A Discourse Delivered on Sabbath Evening, November 10, 1850. According to Adams, the purpose of this discourse was to "explain the duties of citizens according to Christian ethics." Adams outlined what he believed were important doctrines of the New Testament as they related to government. First, government was ordained by God and therefore the people should respect their government. And second, while God ordains civil government, He does not advance or prescribe a particular method of government. Despite this, Adams concedes that there are appropriate circumstances in which it is permissible to resist government, and cites the American Revolution as an example. According to Adams, a patriotic Christian citizen should be required to show that "the authority of God requires that resistance." To do this, people must discern God's will through their conscience:

We arrive at that high conviction by the calm exercise of our own reason; by intelligent thinking; by honest judgments, and by the use of all human and inspired wisdom which we can command. It will not be communicated to us miraculously. We must think; we must study; we must compare; we must judge; we must pray. 

Adams concedes that Christian ethics cannot give weight to a judgment of the constitutionality of any particular law. That is the province of the courts. Adams concludes that Christian ethics support the right of the people to revolution when they believe that God's will requires it, but that they should not do it rashly. Rather, they should come to that determination.

The second example is an address that Adams gave to his alma mater (Yale) in 1847. Entitled "Christianity the End and Unity of All Sciences and Pursuits," Adams argued that Christianity is the basis upon which everything else is built. According to Adams:

[The Cross of Christ] is the one fact which is central to all other facts; the one knowledge which is ultimate to all other departments of knowledge. We announce it here not merely as the Sabbath-day religion of the pulpit ; but as a great intellectual truth before an university of scholars, that the true philosophia prima is the knowledge of Christ; that the only object which gives relationship, harmony, unity, connection, to all this world's affairs, is the grand purpose of God to diffuse a stable and substantial happiness over the world, through the all-pervading beneficence of Christianity, as the central power ; and consequently, that our true interest and duty, in all the variety of our pursuits, is to devote ourselves to the service of our race, in seeking to make the world better.

According to Adams, the Enlightenment philosophy in continental Europe (especially in France) presaged an antagonism between science and religion. But in the United States, science and religion worked in concert and this would be the basis for intellectual advancement.

These two examples are representative of Adams's larger body of work which stressed the importance of Christianity beyond the walls of the church. Adams saw a larger role for religion in both civil government and in the advancement of arts and sciences.

References

Adams, William. Christianity and Civil Government: A Discourse Delivered on Sabbath Evening, November 10, 1850. New York: C. Scribner, 1851. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 (accessed February 13, 2020).

Adams, William. Christianity the End and Unity of All Sciences and Pursuits. New York: Leavitt, Trow & Company, 1847.

Adams, William, and New England Society in the City of New York. An Address Delivered Before the New England Society in the City of New-York, December 22, 1852. New-York: J.F. Trow, 1853. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 (accessed February 13, 2020).