>> hello, everyone. welcome back from lunch. i'm danielle smith, our social media manager here at the museum. i'm excited about this next panel. it has been a really fun morning. if you have friends or family that you would like to share part of this event with, point them to our facebook page and you will find our little logo. andwe are also on twitter instagram, and you can use museum of bible as our handle. i hope because check us up there and engage with us on social media. we will begin very shortly. thank you, danielle. good afternoon, everyone. i hope you enjoyed your time at lunch and in the museum. please take a moment to silence

your cell phone and any device you might have with you. lee's join me in giving our speakers around of applause. they have done an outstanding job. [applause] today has been an interesting look at how the bible influenced people and events in our nation's founding. i'm going to thank those who have submitted questions and randomly go to these for our speakers. we will start with dr. kidd. quoted, god helps those who helps themselves. can you put that in the context of your remarks? >> that's an example of franklin, that poor richard's proverbs andull of , think that type of philosophy

that god helps those who help themselves, is an excellent example of this type of emphasis of virtue and morality and industry and frugality that were the hallmarks of franklin's religion andout morality. that statement in particular i think the centers god -- decen way his calvinist forbearers would not want him to do. you don't just need god to help you, you need god to change her life, and what needs to happen inverted by gods's grace transforming power, and then we are unable to live in a godly world. i think that type of philosophy of god helps those who help themselves is more of god is a

supplement, that if you follow god's principles i do work hard and you are honest to that will go well for you. it's a classic kind of american somewhat it may sit uncomfortably with the council of scripture. >> would you say that was a deist statement? yes, it has a kind of deist flavor to it in the sense of god may be being active but also, you need to take responsibility for yourself. the god's work, god's power is not the first thing you need. the first thing you need in the kind of formula is your own so i think god is ntered a little bit, knowing what i know about franklin, a sense that god is secondary or distant. >> another question from our

audience, i understand our inernment is a republic are so many people in america say it is a democracy. can it be both, or is it both? explicitlytitution makes reference to a republican form of government but i certainly don't think these are inconsistent in some ways which they manifest themselves. if we take the words and look at ,t in its purest definition there might be some restrictions. but let me just remind you of the core of what republicanism would have meant to most 18th-century americans, which thegovernment by consent of governed as exercised by representatives. and that second aspect could come into tension with democracy in its purest form, but i think as these words might have been used at this time in history, they would not have seen such a sharp clash between the two and

they certainly did not view that some expressions or manifestations of the people's voice is being intentioned with republicanism as they understood it. >> i like to jump in there. you know, when i explain this to my students, the founders' view theydemocracy, which would've thought was a really bad idea, is as if every single question at any level of government deals with, than the people have to vote on, say a popular referendum on every question you do they have the expertise to make these sorts of decisions? it's an issueif about some complex foreign-policy issue or a financial issue, banking issue or something like that. so the ideal, the ideal is that you elect people who do have

sufficient expertise in these kinds of areas, and the founders would have hoped that these people would also be virtuous, knowledgeable, independent who then on behalf of the people can make informed decisions on these various policy issues. so that is why i think, we definitely have become more 1776, 1787,ince because number one we have a lot more kinds of people voting. let's just start with women. minorities now participate when they couldn't have at the time of the founding. but it think it's fundamentally democratic republic that we have, as opposed to a pure democracy that the founders would have considered to be ill considered and chaotic. republicanism is another way of putting a check on the exercise of power.

again, that comes back to this biblical anthropology that we are fallen creatures and we need as many checks and restraints as we can possibly manage in the way we frame our government. >> thank you. dr. byrd, this one is for you. more onu please expound thomas jefferson's religious views? >> thomas jefferson's religious views? >> yes. >> well, i didn't mention thomas jefferson. [laughter] >> i might jump in. jump in.y be able to my basic understanding of thomas jefferson is that he was a little more purely deistic in what he had to say. he famously trimmed the bible of certain texts that were miraculous because he mainly

wanted to concentrate on the morals of jesus and see jesus as this example of morality, which was a key thing for him. i don't knowat, much else about jefferson's religious views. >> i sometimes use the term, he was an adherent to the natural religion where he saw human reason is the final arbiter at the end of the day, when -- which gave him pause when he encountered the transcendent claims, the miraculous claims he encountered in the bible. if he couldn't explain it or understand it with reason than he had to question, or had reason to doubt it. having said that, he thought jesus of nazareth was the greatest moral teacher there ever was and there was great value in studying that. the kind of religion he would have warmed to would have been nondogmatic. it would've been non-hierarchical. i think is very distrustful of

churches in which the government or very hierarchical, oriented or red bishops, for example. so i think he had a certain affinity, even though he might not have embraced the specifics, of more congregational type of religions, the baptists in their church governance, he like the kind of governance apart from the belief system. but i think we're talking about a very nondogmatic, a religion that could be explained in rational terms. >> famously, he got a well that's got along well with baptists because they shared religious views. they agreed on the separation of church and state. he had a fascinating relationship with baptists. john welland, one of the major baptist figures of the era, who and new southern england, he moved around and preach, he loved thomas jefferson.

he actually talked about thomas jefferson. and he was a very fervent, bible-believing baptist but he left jefferson. he but jefferson was a gift of god. and he knew about jefferson to an extent, but jefferson's theology, that he disagreed with , but he thought jefferson was just such a gift to the nation because of jefferson's politics. and he knew about jefferson to . and he spoke about him like he was a biblical figure or something, so he had religious meaning and value even for baptists who disagreed with him. and he valued the baptists' take on politics because they read so well with what he thought of, as you were saying describing his view of religion as basically about morality and freedom for individuals. his accountok in books, he was very generous in giving money to ministers. he maintained friendships with many ministers, including ministers that he would not have agreed with on theological matters. was of some importance to him.

when you look at jefferson's views, especially some of the anticlerical statements that he makes, and he makes some very harsh ones. i think it's always useful to look at the context in which he makes them. for example, some of the harsh, anticlerical statements he makes are right in the midst of the war, where he sees so many, especially anglican ministers, leaving. they are siding with the loyalists. but at the same time he's expression great admiration with other anglican ministers who have sided with the patriot cause. the same comes up in the election of 1800. he's harshly attacked by the congregationalist ministers in again, i think he is deeply and personally wounded by some of the things he say -- some of the things they say about him. i think you need to look at the context in which he makes some of the harsh statements around -- harsh statements about

clergymen around the election of 1800. and he runs into conflicts with clergymen in central virginia over who are going to be professors at his new university in virginia. and there were presbyterian ministers in his own community that were not keen on some of the people he wanted to hire. and again, he kind of lashes out in some very harsh, anti-clerical statements. so i think it's always useful to look at the political context in which he makes some of these statements, to understand where he's coming from with that kind of expression from jefferson. >> thank you. this next question is for dr. kidd. franklins knowledgeable but not doctrinal phase make him a better bridge builder between religious groups? and did a similar thing work for lincoln? think it did. he was a very friendly terms with lots of different kinds of churches and ministers. when he was in philadelphia, the

most commonly would attend the cities anglican church, or the church of england -- the city's anglican church, or the church of england. his wife was more devout. and she was an anglican and he would go with her to church and he gave money for the anglican church to be expanded. it was becaused he wanted a steeple for his electrical -- for his electoral experiment, what i think he got the church was a good thing. money to help build a synagogue in philadelphia. so it wasn't just charity and benevolence extended to different types of christian denominations, but even to jews, too. so i thinks that -- i think to franklinside nondogmatic approach. and he definitely thought, in a

way that jefferson didn't, i think, he thought institutional religion even is a good thing, so he was keen to help a lot of different kinds of churches. and if your member from my talk this morning, your member john adams sang every christian group thought he was probably part of them, and the reason for that is because he was so friendly to a lot of groups in a very harsh time of interdenominational conflicts, especially between catholics and protestants. but when franklin had the opportunity to visit the he was very europe, complimentary towards catholics and catholic churches. he never quite got over some of bread anti-catholic -- p-bred, anti-catholic

sentiments that he grew up with. but he was definitely a bridge -- and that reflected the fact that he basically had a positive view of religion and churchgoing and that sort of thing, just as long as you didn't use it to beat people over the head with doctrine. thing works similar for lincoln? >> i don't know as much about lincoln. maybe professor bird can say something about this. i think that lincoln definitely, especially as a leader, washington was like this too, of making sure to reach out to different, to leaders of different denominations to say, we need your support and you are valued here, this sort of thing. washington and lincoln's case, that you see the kind of principled outreach to different kinds of denominations. >> i think that's true and would lincoln, there is so much

consistency in that comparison. and that's why i think it is helpful. the only distinction that we might make would lincoln is that he had as strong a sense of .rovidential is him as anyone he clearly believed in providence. however, he had a very pessimistic kind of providence and part of this was his time, part of it was probably the war, and you can see this even in his famous speeches, where he talked about, we need to be on god's side, he talks about, maybe god is not really favor -- really in favor of what we are doing. maybe we are going down the wrong road in various ways. so he had a strong sense of god's judgment on the nation, and that i think may have been .omething somewhat unique and again, it's easy to think of these figures as just kind of

hyper intellectual world -- hyper intellects who were reflecting out of body. instances withic jefferson you have to think about the context, and the same is true of lincoln. his entire presidency, and he's the only president you could say this, his entire presidency was bounded by war. from the time he took office, it was a conflict, and that is what he dealt with. i noticed when i read david mcculloch's biography of john adams, that john adams, wherever he was, different church services, different to nominations, and i found that to be unusual compared to how we intend church today. it seems like we go to our denomination. you feel like visiting various mentioned, that was bridge building with our earlier founders. is that something that could help us with that today?

right, in that you're the 1700s there is such intense conflict between, especially catholic and protestant but also baptists and congregationalists, arguing about the difference between presbyterian and andregationalists policy, that's like an issue that you shed blood over. and it speaks to a time when were number one come on let more theologically conversant than we are today. but they also take these things so seriously. and i think in retrospect he think, especially in our day and time, when you can't take christian commitment for granted in the culture, it doesn't seem like you want to be fighting about those kinds of issues anymore, but i think one of the real breakthroughs came with the

new evangelical movement of the 1730's and 1740's. to the museum's bygone america exhibit, you have seen george whitfield and the great awakening theater they have here. and one of the things that was a so distinctive about whitfield, who was the greatest evangelist of that era, was that even though he was an anglican minister, a church of england minister, especially in america, he cooperated very avidly with non-anglicans, anybody who was supportive of his message of the new birth of salvation, being born again, this is the experience that all people need to have. he was quite willing to preach in their churches and to preach alongside them, and he was upbraided by anglican authorities who said, why are you cooperating so much with the

dissenters, the baptists, the presbyterians, the congregationalists, the quakers? he said, because i see born-again people among all denominations. orne,at's a unity that's b to me, out of a specific kind of religious principle, which is a belief in the need for conversion and being born again. so there is a way in which i think these two trends toward religious unity are happening at the same time. one is the evangelical unity around the new birth of salvation. one is the enlightenment kind of trend, saying, we need to stop fighting about differences in theology. we need to stop having wars and murdering people over small, apparently differences in the elegy. but these of a surging at the same time so you end up getting people like jefferson and john leland, as you mentioned before, who have very different personal

views about theology, who have identical views about the role of religion in american public life, which is that we need to have full religious liberty, that the government sudden -- the government shouldn't persecute people because of their religious leaders, that you should let people meet in their own churches in freedom, that they shouldn't pay religious taxes to support a church they don't attend mo which is what most people in the colonial era had to do. so i think this is why that tradition of religious liberty is so important. mean, we don't have time to attend everybody's churches zendaya stand that, but we should least follow their example and say, religious liberty is for everybody. i think there is a couple of interesting things going on when you look at some of the communication that the founders and in particular, early presidents had with religious

society. washington, especially around the time of his inauguration, communicated with two or three dozen religious societies across the spectrum. these were main religious groups but also religious groups from sort of the minority communities. is several there things going on here. what is he was to reassure them that they are part of this american experiment. he wants to bring them into the they areensure that full participants in the american experience. using this aso is an opportunity to communicate to the american public at large. lets her member, this is a time when there are limited ways in which a political figure can speak to the american public at large. and writing letters to religious societies and groups was one of those ways to communicate to a broad audience. and all of our early presidents used letter writing to religious

societies as a way to communicate some pretty important ideas. washington is talking very systematically about conceptions of religious liberty. let us not forget, thomas jefferson used a letter to a baptist association to express that famous metaphor of a wall of separation of church and state. a few years later at the closing days of his presidency, he raised to a methodist society in which he says, he says the dearest part of our constitution is that part that protects liberty of conscience. so they are using these communications to really express, i think, some heartfelt issues, some important issues, but i also think it is important to focus on these communications because these societies are o. andicating with them to they are communicating what their concerns, what their fears are. there are concerns about their

liberty -- and whether matters of liberty and religious freedom are going to be respected. a liberty that would include them. >> thank you. this next question is a long one. >> take notes. >> you reference david as a model for war, m&f are god's own heart and yet a man of war. but god said today that because he was a man of war and shed much blood on the europe, david would not be the one to build god e-house, a rather his son solomon, a man of peace. so god showed his displeasure. please reconcile these two as you can. ? ok. i think it's fascinating that opponents of war did not use that text, that reference. and i think part of the reason

could be that there were other texts that were less of your, more sort of to the moment in terms of something like sermon on the mount. obviously, someone who is a patriot who tried to argue for people to go to war isn't going to mention that. it is a valid point in many ways. it doesn't, though, undercut the point, the larger point that god wasome ways when david going to war, when he was selling goliath, scripture -- ,hen he was slaying goliath scripture tells us that he was doing god's work when he was doing that. so it's a complicated question but i didn't see it, at least in the research i did come i didn't see anyone pointing that out, i didn't see anyone saying, those of you calling david a warrior might want to think about this. it just wasn't one of the text that they drawn. however, it is an interesting point and again, it would have

helped to reinforce the argument for not only pacifists, but those who weren't pacifists technically, but didn't exactly support the war for one reason or another. >> thank you. ezraidd, do you suppose stiles sent a follow-up letter to benjamin franklin about christ before his death? >> i don't know that he did. he didn't have much time left because he was can do be dead -- because he was going to be dead five weeks after franklin responded. but it is true that there were people all through franklin's were very directly imploring franklin to accept christ as his savior. this is one of the reasons why i don't see franklin as a traditional christian, is the traditional christians around franklin didn't think he was a christian.

example think the best is george whitfield, who imagined a minute ago. whitfield and franklin were friends and business associates and they had a very transparent relationship about understanding that they were not on the same page spiritually, and whitfield thought franklin needed to do something about that. and so whitfield would hold no punches and say, you need to put your faith in christ for salvation. and franklin would sort of say, i am all set. and they would have these conversations. the favorite is in the 1750's, whitfield wrote a letter to franklin, and again their business partners, franklin publishes a lot of whitfield's stuff, and whitfield is saying, i need you to take care of this publication and so forth.

and now, by the way, i've noticed a much success you have had in electrical experiments and you've made so much progress in understanding the mysteries of electricity. now i am for you to consider the mysteries of the new birth in christ. and you can just imagine franklin kind of rolling his eyes and so forth. but whitfield was constantly talking to him and i just wonder private conversations that were unrecorded, i wish i could have been there for some of those conversations. but franklin and his sister jane had conversations like that. there was one time when franklin, after he had kind of made it a in publishing, went back to boston from philadelphia to visit his family. and it is clear that jamie come and ben franklin -- that jane and ben franklin fought.

that's one of the struggles you have when writing a biography oman -- a biography of almost any 18th-century figure like this. almost all of the letters that jane wrote to ben franklin are cares about this 18th-century woman. let us just throw this in the trash. it breaks your heart. listening to a phone conversation where you only hear the one side. ben franklin writes back to her later and he says i am sorry we fought. he sends her some cloth as a gift. it is clear they were fighting about whether you need god to be moral. him,learly was saying to you need to have god change your heart or you can never be truly moral. he was saying i do not think you

do. they fought about that. that franklin, throughout his life, that is why i find his response to stiles kind of exasperating. people have been asking him about this his entire life. it was a constant theme for him. >> thank you. and hererica constitution were established with knowledge and reverence to the bible, how long can we man -- how long can we maintain these establishments if we continue to move away from biblical foundations? >> that is a hard question. i would start by saying that i think it is important that we understand where these ideas came from. i also think that you understand why they were perceived as

important in their own time and then we can ask if those reasons are still pertinent to us today. my own view of politics likeally is that things constitutions cannot be divorced from a political culture. you can take a constitution like the american constitution and i believe it is a well conceived constitution and you can put it in a different, dutch a different cultural context and it will not work. i think this is true not only with our own constitution but we it with other constitutions around the world. useful toys understand a context in which the constitution is written and in which it is designed to work. my own view is that the founders viewed religion as essential to their project. washington speaks of this in his farewell address.

he says of all the disposition which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable. he does not flesh out what that expression of religion looks like, but he is telling us that religion and morality are indispensable to this political project. i think we are also clear in that he is not thinking in terms of a religious establishment, the kind of formal establishment that had been part of europe since the time of constantine. rather, he sees a vital role, informal role for religion in maintaining this political order. i think to underscore how important this is to washington -- washington is not been outlier -- washington is not an outlier. there is no dissent on this

point. what does he say in the next sentence, having said that religion and morality are --ispensable to political it vain with that man labor who would work to supplant these props of human happiness. having said religion and morality are indispensable supports, he goes on to say that if you are seeking to undermine those pillars of religion and more out a you cannot call yourself a patriot. think for at least washington as representative of his own time, he would have seen the role of religion in the culture as absolutely essential to the survival of an experiment in republican self-government. agree, and the founders would have taken that as a given -- there are cautionary notes.

, critics ofhink what american culture has become today might sometimes take a rosy view of what american culture was in 1787. there were notable problems back then. slavery, hello. they have their own issues. even though you cannot see your own blind spots, they would have at least agreed that virtue is essential. ,his issue comes up today people on the secular left, you will hear that you mean abortion or gay marriage, these kind of hot button issues, i'll is explained to my students, i think that almost everyone in

america believes we will be better off if we have a virtuous society, at least on some things. the example i'll is give is the financial crisis of 2008 -- the example i always give is the financial crisis of 2008. we had a complex and greedy and selfish things going on in the financial industry, credit default swaps and these kinds of things. it is all about trying to make money for me. what we have done better as a if everyone involved in the financial sector had agreed that we need to be working in the best interests of the public at all times while also making money, which you can do that, and i think left, -- wouldoever said we say we probably would have done better if we had more pervasive

virtue and public spiritedness. that is what the founders meant -- i am responsible for my fellow person. i cannot act selfishly because i have to be responsible to the public interest. we had a financial meltdown that pervasive a result of -- of the pervasive spirit of greed and selfishness. we are all connected to it. as a republic, we would have done better if we would have had more virtue. i like to go to that kind of example because it is more a political. most people can say we could have stood to have more virtue in an area like that. we are not going to agree about abortion and marriage and these kinds of things. i have my own opinions about that. anyone who would say virtue and , people, that is passe

should just be able to do what they want. have saidrs would that is a formula for chaos and social breakdown. that is an expression of licentiousness which is at war with the concept of liberty. this off talking about the constitution, the influence of the bible on that. the three of you had an opportunity to go down to the second floor and see the exhibit. how would you describe the influence of the bible on the mayflower compact? you start with who these people were that crafted this document. .hey were pious people not everyone who was on that ship were pilgrims, it was a mix of people which is part of what prompted the crafting of the document. we start from the proposition

that these were people who were on a godly mission as they understood it. themselves- they saw in a unique position in human history. to wipe an opportunity clean the slate of human history, to undo some of the bad mistakes of the past and to try to build a new political system that would avoid some of those mistakes. i think we begin to see reflections of that, even in a document like the mayflower compact. it is a very brief document -- it does not tell us a lot. it is a compact in the sense that they are promising to work together in a righteous way for something in the future, for some kind of structure. i do not know that we get a lot of insight into constitutionalism through the mayflower compact itself. there are certainly the seeds of ideas of our constitution and

these are seeds that are going to replicate themselves throughout american constitutional history. example, all american constitutions begin with a statement of for whom this document is created. mayflowers in the compact, we see this in united states constitution. insee a statement of purpose the preamble to the united states constitution. there are three distinct statements of purpose in the mayflower compact. it is interesting in which the order comes. it is for god and the propagation of the gospel and finally do we get around to the king. the fact that they still affirm their allegiance to the king is remarkable. they are fleeing the persecution of the king. i think he goes back to the healthy respect for authority that they would have read in romans 13 and 1 peter 12.

that in itself reflects a biblical understanding of authority and how you begin to structure a government. add to thathing to is that under guarding all of is the concepts .f covenant sometimes we miss the ramifications of what that meant to them. from a reformed point of view, god is sovereign, god does what god wants, god is omnipotent, god is omniscient, but god makes covenants with humans which is a remarkable statement of love that god puts forth. they read the bible as a series of interlocking covenants. all of their lives are based on covenants, covenants for

churches, covenants for cities, covenants for family. this concept of covenants which is so influential overall, they take from scripture. it is in the back of their minds and sometimes at the front of their thoughts as they enter into any of these deals or understandings or negotiations of who they are in the new world. >> thank you. members of our audience would like to hear more details about the database and what you are gathering and cataloging. >> this is interesting. for thebase revolutionary war project, i basically designed using a program called microsoft access which is in microsoft office.

i went into different primary sources and entered first by verse by verse, everything that i found. after i hadend, read as much as i could find, i ran it and then printed out the text and then i could find out where they were. it is a cumbersome thing. , it is civil war project a much more streamlined process, i've been helped by a professor of history. he is also an incredible coder. he used programming to sleep through an algorithm that can sweep through 2000 primary s.urce text so much largers than the revolutionary period

database because you can do so much more with the text in the 19th century and in part because you can scan them and pick out and understand them. try that with something in 1776. the computer is just going to get -- something written by ben franklin to his sister will look like a recipe for chocolate cake. that is what it is. it was a time-consuming process of assembling data. >> i hope you have some graduate students helping with that. >> i have graduate students helping with some things but i do not want to persecute a graduate student, that is too much punishment. >> this is another long question. used in bible is political settings and debates, there is often the concern that biblical text will be used without regard to their biblical

context in order to serve a partisan agenda. do you see evidence of this in the time period you're been discussing today and are there examples of the bible being taken out of context for political goals? concernss one of the that i wanted to focus on when i wrote this book on the bible and the founders. i was not only interested in what kind of text they were drawn to, but i was interested in whether they were using these texts in ways that were consistent with the biblical context in which we find them. the record is next. -- the record is mixed. there are examples where you see waysers using texts in that are more faithful to its context then we use it. for example, you see quite a few references in the founding

literature to the use of micah -- what does the lord require of thee? in my adult life i have heard a dozen or so sermons on that and it is focused on my individual virtue -- this is what god requires of me individually. the you see this in literature of the american founding they understood that this is what theologians call a covenant lawsuit text. this was god's grievance against the nation of israel. in the end of that text, the children of israel having been convinced that they have broken the covenant with god say much -- what must we do to make things right. this is when god says you must do justice and love percy and walk humbly. and walk calmly. this is about a grievance that god has with his people then

god's instruction to me as an individual. there are other texts where they are misappropriating a biblical text. i made a reference to this in my talk this morning. take for example uses of new testament language on liberty. americans in this period love new testament texts that use the word liberty. 5:1.tioned galatians other similar texts. the sun cell shut -- the sun's out -- the sun shall set you free. this is more about christian liberty than political liberty. this debate over whether the use of these texts is appropriate arises even in their use in the 18th century. there would be those who said

not so fast, that is not about political liberty. we often heard this from loyalist ministers who were calling out these patriots for their misuse or misappropriation of the language of liberty, and there was a back and forth about that. is it appropriate to use this language of liberty which is more about spiritual matters than about political matters in these political pamphlets. quite often, the response you would hear from the patriots is i think god's understanding of liberty will incorporate political liberty even that we might appreciate the spiritual side. there was an ongoing debate even at that time. i think a much more consequential debate is the one mentioned,sor byrd which is how do we interpret a text like romans 13? see a veryre we

different interpretation of romans 13 by the loyalist then we see by those who are favoring independence. each is going to call the other side out and say you are misinterpreting this text and we know why you're misinterpreting it. there was a genuinely lively debate between loyalists and patriots over what does roman 13 -- romans 13, the idea of submission to those -- what does that mean? you can understand why this is a lively debate, because it goes to the legitimacy of those who suggest we should resist or rebel against england. it is a very heated conversation that we find. it is over the proper interpretation of scripture, whether we are misappropriating to advance a political objective of the moment. >> would either of you care to elaborate on that? >> i always perk up when i see

someone -- we are mostly talking about the founding period -- when someone loses something because of their commitment to follow what the bible said. you have somebody on your hands who is committed to the scripture. is avorite example of this presbyterian pastor in savannah, georgia. delegate to the first continental congress from georgia. he was as bothered as anybody about the taxes and concerns about british authority in the colonies. saw775 and 1776 when he that the trend was heading towards independence and revolution, rather than resistance, he said we cannot do that as christians. we cannot rise up against thesement because of

romans 13 reasons. i do not think that argument is what myi do not know position would have been, whether i would have a patriot or loyalist, but he resigned from the communal congress and became a loyalist, opposed to violent revolution. he lost everything he had. he ended up having to live in a swamp in south carolina. he lost his church, he lost his property, he lost everything because he was acting in accord whathis conscience and in he saw going on in 1 peter and in romans. it is debatable whether he is right about that interpretation. that is a good sign -- you do see instances like that where people will act according to their conscience even to the point of great personal loss. i find those examples inspiring

and i think in a lot of cases -- it is like today. -- in the time of the founding you do have people using the scripture is window dressing. they are not being insincere, but it is not as if they are paying any price of conscience to cite the bible for that purpose. what that tells us is that the bible was the coin of the realm. it was the language everyone knew how to speak. >> part of what is fascinating about this to me, the history of the interpretation of scripture, is that if you think about it. various people across time in various places with various presuppositions, reading this text over time, so that people who do not have much in common at all meet together across time over romans 13 or some particular text. it is fascinating to see how people read at -- how people

it and interpreted based on their situation. it is easy breast to say that of course the loyalists will use roman 13 to support their position because they're being selfish. but we all read from our position in a certain situation. they look to scripture for insight, for guidance, they meditate on scripture, not everyone, but a lot of people did, and they look to find where they were in the story. it was only natural in some cases for people to see their side. is easy for us to condemn that reading, i think we have to do it as we do any other situation in history. we have to look at it from their point of view and try to think

about it from their point of view. it is also fascinating to see the other side on the same text and how others can read that same text. sometimes both arguments seem pretty good. this is where the bible's history as well as the history of the interpretation gives so much to us. it gives us insight into the people we are studying. i do not know how many times i would be reading a secondary historian's take on something, and there were biblical references in the primary text that the historian does not recognize and they are just thinking this is an interesting insight. maybe it was just genesis. i think it gives us insight into the people we are studying because it was so much a part of their lives. it gives us insight into the scripture and how deep the text can be and how multifaceted.

>> very interesting. this question is addressed to all speakers. please reflect on religion and masonry and the founders franklin and george washington and other founders. i get asked this a lot. ben franklin was a freemason and a lot of the major founders were freemasons. that has remained a controversial subject through the present day. franklin, his membership in the masons was significant but he does not talk about it a lot. some people will say it is because it is a secret society. i do not get the sense that it was a really central issue for him. i do not think the masons in the

conch -- were quite as were quite as controversial as they became later on. minimal -- it fits right along with what franklin's ,verall religious beliefs were minimally doctrinal and very focused on service and benevolence. it is the opinion me of -- it is the opinion me -- it is the ep o tome of the religion of the enlightenment. how can we do the most good in society? -- it also a show social was also a social club for them. this was the great area -- this was the great era of the social club. when franklin went to france he connected with masons there for a short time. he end for care were members --

he and voltaire were members of the same lodge in paris. representativeng of a fairly elite social club that has these religious overtones but they do not argue about any kind of doctrine. stated.nk that as well kidd, can you give us examples of the ways the bible itself affected franklin's writings? >> in my talk i mainly cited episodes where it would just show up. that is a lot of the ways it would come up. you were talking about the bible showing up and not even knowing it is the bible, i have to admit

that happened to me a few times with franklin because it was so omnipresent that i would not notice, even though i try to read the bible every day is a believer, there were things that were going over my head. one of my favorite examples is a passage that franklin cited in "is pamphlet, "plain truth, which was one of the first political pamphlets and american history. it is about the pennsylvania militia, it is not important to get into the details, but he is pushing for raising a pennsylvania militia and one of the arguments he makes is based -- theexpedition of expedition in judges 18. does anybody remember this very well? i had to remind myself about the expedition.

to him, without going into the details, it was the basic -- the basic point was not being prepared and being deceived and some of these themes. he thought that it was like thomas payne in common sense, he thought that just like thomas 8ine is citing 1 samuel because people will know this, franklin's thinking that the people in philadelphia will immediately see the relevance of judges 18 because they know it and understand the point he is trying to make. i thought this is a lost world of biblical literacy that i do not inhabit, even as someone who tries to go to church and stamp with the bible. -- and stay up with the bible. they are so biblically literate that it goes over your head. that not only tells you how

literate franklin is in the scripture, but also how literate the culture is. philadelphia, it is true in boston and parts of the south. >> we have just a few seconds left. would anyone like to make a closing remark or a comment about today? >> i will add to what was just said that let us not forget that this was a literate culture apart from biblical literacy. one of the reasons it was such a literate culture is that they read the bible and the bible was an or did -- was an ideal tool for teaching literacy. it was a useful tool in literacy education. thatis a generation would've been raised learning how to read with a bible in front of them. that is how they would have known so much about the stories from scripture. >> thank you very much. please join