Forgot your password?
SERMON: None Dare Call it Treason by Jack Lawrence
The original title of this sermon was “The Birth of English Unitarianism Coincides With Blasphemy Becoming Seditious, Muggletonians, Oxonians, Penn's Penitence, the Two Penny Act and the Toleration Act, lead Jefferson to pen the Establishment Clause” or short title “Non Dare Call it Treason.”
The short title actually gives you an indication of what inspired this sermon. It is a book by the Pulitzer Prize winning historian Leonard W. Levy entitled Treason Against God. The book is about the historical origins of the crime of blasphemy. Let me read briefly from the preface of Levy's book:
The subject of blasphemy, which historians have neglected, forms the basis at least for implicitly for a study of the struggle for intellectual liberty in general and of religious liberty in particular. My first book included a chapter on the blasphemy case of Abner Neeland in the 1830s. When I wrote a study of the origins of the free speech and free press clauses in the first amendment, I focused mainly on seditious libel but discovered that another major category of libel was blasphemous libel. When I studied Jefferson's record on civil liberties I learned about his life long interest in opposing blasphemous laws and opposing the rule that Christianity was part of the law o the land. When writing Origins of the Fifth Amendment (which was his Pulitzer Prize winning book) I learned that persons resorted to the claim that they should not be forced to incriminate themselves in cases of political crimes (seditious libel and treason) and in cases of religious crime (heresy and blasphemy).
One thing that Levy's book makes quite plain is that we as Unitarians, because of our religious beliefs-particularly the one against the Trinity, have frequently been weighed in the scales of justice and been found lacking. Not just in the age of the Inquisition but also in this country and this century. I'm going to begin by providing you with a few examples. In Butler, Pa. In 1971, two shop keepers were charged with blasphemy under a 1794 statute. They were arrested for displaying posters which contained only the following words:
“Jesus Christ – Wanted for sedition, criminal anarchy, vagrancy and conspiracy to overthrow the established government. Dressed poorly, said to be a carpenter by trade, ill nourished, associates with common working people, unemployed and bums. Alien, said to be a Jew.”
In Westminister, Md. In 1968, a 1723 statue which carried a six month sentence for blasphemy defined as cursing God or using profane words about Jesus Christ, the Trinity or any persons constituting the Trinity, had already resulted in fines for several people. When a man being arrested for disorderly conduct, was self righteous enough to tell the police officer to “keep your G-- D--- hands off of me”, his conviction went through two appeals before the First Amendment finally held sway in 1970, two years later.
Maryland's 1649 Act of Toleration, was not even as tolerant as the 1723 statute. In fact it tolerated only Trinitarians. Unitarians, Jews and unbelievers received the death penalty. This law was greatly ameliorated in 1699, by saving the death penalty for the third offense. However, Virginia's Colonial statue provided death without waiting for speaking impiously about the Trinity. Only with all other profanity did death await the third offense. Another device incorporated in the statute to make it more humane of course was the bodkin driven through your tongue for the second offense thereby largely precluding the third offense. Quite obviously, no one waisted any words after the second offense.
Those who were convicted of being a Quaker in Massachusetts only had their tongue bored through with a red hot iron. That occurring after you lost an ear for each previous offense. Again, this hear no evil speak no evil therapy also featured self cauterization so you might want to consider it an improvement.
What is ironic about all this is that blasphemy was also the cardinal sin for which Caiphas sought to execute Jesus. But to crucify Jesus, the Romans had to stretch Jesus' words into treason, a crime. What actually happened was that when Caiphas asked Jesus if he was indeed the son of God, he gave him a reply that has been variously interpreted as “I am” or “I am that you say that I am” and various and sundry other things which probably was just Jesus turning the question around on his questioner like he had done with Pilate. But, Caiphas didn't see it that way and turned him over to the Romans. The Romans couldn't crucify Jesus for that which was only a Jewish sin so they had to turn it into Jesus claiming to be king in place of the Emperor, which was treason. Historically anti-Trinitarians like ourselves have largely been the martyrs once Jesus supposed sin again became a crime after the end of Roman rule.
In our country today, the United States of America, just as in Jesus' time, this ancient sin has been sustained as a crime through connection with sedition. But it was not always so. To take blasphemy away from the ecclesiastical courts in England, the common law courts first needed the trial of Sir Charles Sedley, a poet, playwright and member of Parliament who described himself as follows:
"And little Sedley for simile renowned, Pleasure has always sought but never found. Though all his thoughts on wine and women fall, His are so bad, sure he never thinks at all. The Flesh he lives upon is rank and strong, His meat and mistresses are kept too long. What we unmistakably take for sin, Are the only rules of this old capuchin. For never hermit under grave pretence, Has lived so contrary to common sense. And 'tis a miracle we may suppose, No nastiness offends his skillful nose. Which from all stink can with peculiar art, Extract perfume and essence from a fart. Expecting supper is his great delight, He toils all day but to be drunk all night.”
When Sedley died, rather than eulogies his friends wrote satires. For example, this came from the pen of the Earl of Halifax. I want you to notice that it opens with a pun on the lost prodigal. Instead of calling Sedley the lost prodigal son, Halifax calls him the loose prodigal.
“Go let the fatted calf a victim burn, For Sedley the loose prodigal has returned. Sedley the bold, the witty and the gay, Whose tongue has led so many maids astray. He saw with wonder in that thieving town, How they can squeeze three fleeces into one To Make them pass the custom house for none. This contemplation did his soul surprise, And thick scales fell from his enlightened eyes. And what said he shall my dull reason doubt, Did in religion which these rogues make out, May there not be three persons in one god, As here there are three fleeces in a tod. His faith from the strange vision did proceed, Thus date the herald of Sedley's Creed, Who though a reprobate before, a very Saul, Shall, after this conversion be, St. Paul.”
What led to Sir Charles trial occurred June 16, 1663 when at the age of approximately 24, he, Lord Buckhurst and Sir Thomas Ogle all got roaring drunk in a Covent Garden tavern, stripped themselves naked and relieved themselves while sitting on the balcony railing. Then Sedley preached a sermon which featured all carnal postures. He finished by washing his manhood in his drink and toasting the king. After preachers, Sedley began parodying quack doctors and enlarged upon the merits of having a powder that would have all the women of the town run after him. The crowd of about 1000 which had gathered, feeling that Sedley had “abused the scriptures” began to stone the trio. The trio, not to be out done, replied by throwing their beer bottles back. A riot ensued and all the windows were broken out of the tavern. (Well, perhaps now we know where John Tower got some of his ideas.) Remember Charles Sedley-certainly not as example, because blasphemy became legally associated with sedition after his trial by a common law court.
In American cases, as Jefferson noted, you will always see the pervasive rational that blasphemy is subversive of good social order and left unchecked will destroy society's foundations. Only with that odious pronouncement can the police power be conferred on the state. And in actuality this rationale is probably only a relic of a time when people thought acts of god were the result of a blasphemy which had invited god's curse. This actually happened in Colonial Virginia in the same century that Jefferson was born. Lightening struck a courthouse and set it afire. The locals blamed the local minister for a sermon he had given. Fortunately our church does not have a steeple, so that can't happen here!
The next year, 1664, was Ludowick Muggleton's turn. You want to remember the name Ludowick Muggleton, because Muggleton was probably one of the first English Unitarians. His followers, the Muggletonians, discussed the Bible, but had no prayers or rites. They also repudiated the Trinity. Muggleton himself believed he had the power to damn eternally. So as fate would have it while he was traveling through Nottingham, Muggleton got into a dispute with some Quakers and other non-conformists and damned several of them who then complained to the parish priest. When Muggleton was brought in for questioning naturally the priest asked him the signal question of whether he believed in the Trinity. For his reply, Muggleton was not only charged with blasphemy but was proclaimed to be on of the witnesses described in Revelations 11.3 because he claimed the power to damn and save. He was therefore held for trial. His prosecutors made the mistake of taking his horse, which at that time surely meant a lawsuit and thereby involved the local Earl who was a trifle better read and the matter was dropped.
Enter William Penn, who like John Locke was expelled from Oxford for his nonconformity. Penn finished college with the Huguenots in France. Shortly after becoming a Quaker in 1668, he published the book Sandy Foundations Shaken in which he called the Presbyterian version of the Trinity a fiction. He showed that if each of the three is also three then they are nine, and if each of the nine is also three then they are 27 and so on ad infinitum. This is known in logic as infinite regression. While Penn was confined in the Tower of London for eight and a half months without a charge, his cause was taken up by the Socinians and Muggletonians whom Penn and the Quakers would just as soon have done without. Penn won his release by abandoning his Socinian friends like Thomas Firmin and writing an apologistic treatise revealing that he was only a Sabellian and not a Socinian. A Sabellian only saw the three persons of the Trinity as different manifestations or aspects of the same god. It was at this time that Henry Hedworth and Thomas Firmin became the first English Unitarians to wear the name. Unitarians were what Anti-Trinitarians were known as in a religiously free Holland.
The concern was really an image concern. In fact, the greatest English minds of the 17th century, who included Milton, Locke, Sir Isaac Newton and others were meeting secretly at the wealthy merchant Thomas Firmin's mansion as a Unitarian movement within the Anglican church. The Anglican rector Stephen Nye was among them. Unitarianism began to be intensely debated within the Anglican church and many anonymous pamphlets were published. Between 1687 and 1697 Nye published anonymously both a Brief History of Unitarianism and The Unitarian Tracts, the latter work preserving John Biddle's earlier works. These two works are monuments to the type of Unitarianism you practice today.
By now Muggleton had damned so many Quakers that even Penn was engaging in printed exchanges with him. Again Muggleton faced trial for a reply which he wrote to Penn which was not in itself blasphemous because it omitted any discussion of the Trinity. As his court appointed attorney pointed out, Muggleton's anti-Trinitarian book had been written prior to a Parliamentary amnesty and could not now be used against Muggleton. The judge charged the jury if they did not find Muggleton guilty, they would share in Muggleton's sin. When the verdict was shortly returned one judge said he had enough and got up and walked out. The recorder (who Muggleton was by now calling Pilate) announced the sentence that Muggleton was to be pilloried at three places in London with his book to be burned before him each time. Muggleton, who was poor, could not pay his fine and had to serve it out in Newgate Prison. To be sure, Muggleton did complete his autobiography while in Newgate Prison. Now having experienced a degree of damnation himself, it was only published posthumously – like Milton's Anti-Trinitarian works.
The date of Muggleton's release, July 19, 1677, became a holy day for Muggletonians. You should mark that day as a red letter day on your calendar because you recall that Jefferson prophesied that some day Unitarians would become the majority religion, and when that happens, we will have our own holidays. And, of course, we want to celebrate Muggleton's release from Newgate Prison.
Fortunately for us, prisoners in the Tower were permitted pen and paper. In both his pamphlets and later trial William Penn borrowed heavily from John Lilburne who had been imprisoned in the Tower only shortly before. William Penn brought Lilburne's practice of Libertarian pamphleteering to America, which later became the primary means that the Revolution spread among the Colonies. See what the printing press can do!
Jefferson adapted Penn's insight that 'the only protection against inquisitions is a fence against wrong of absolute natural rights' to safeguard the free exercise of individual conscience, - that thing we now call the Bill of Rights. Don't forget that the metaphor was a fence of absolute natural rights. That is where Jefferson got the wall of separation between church and state.
PART II
An easy illustration as to why blasphemy should not be a crime is Jesus' Trial before Caiphas. Between 6 and 66 A.D. The Sadducean, Annas each of his five sons, and his son-in-law, Caiphas, were hand picked by the Roman governor to be the quisling high priests of the Sanhedrin. We know that the 50 member of Sanhedrin never considered death for Jesus because that sentence required unanimity. Two of its members were Jesus' devotees and best friends Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimithea. The Sandhedrin could not meet on the Sabbath and Passover had already begun. Instead, Caiphas, motivated by the fear that Jesus' revolt at the Temple would lead to Roman suppression of the Jews, convened a handpicked council at his home charging Jesus as a threat to destroy the Temple. And we all know Jesus defeated the initial charges. After all it wasn't so bad that someone was practicing miracles on the Sabbath because you really didn't have that many people around who could perform a miracle. Then Caiphas asked Jesus to “Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus reply varies. It appears that he said either, you have said so, I am, or I am that you say that I am. Just as he did with Pilate, Jesus was probably turning the question around on his accuser. Having the awaited blasphemy made to his face, Caiphas tore his garment in a mockery of shame and grief. Some of those present either spit on Jesus or struck him. As always the blasphemy was in the eye of the beholder. This is something you have to watch because blasphemy will sneak up on you.
Each gospel argues that Caiphas himself blasphemed by bearing false witness against Jesus. Now I ask you if indeed Jesus chose this to be his accusation wouldn't this also argue very strongly against so readily accusing others of blasphemy. Blasphemy was then only a cardinal sin, not a crime. To crucify Jesus the Romans had to stretch his statement into a treasonous utterance.
How then have we in our free country allowed blasphemy to become a crime again? Blasphemy is directed toward God, - so it is uniquely God's concern. Society's intervention as arbiter denies God the power to punish or forgive. If we can now speak directly to God through private revelation it would seem that profanity or expostulation when we are not trying to speak to God should not be blasphemous because it carries no interpersonal meaning. Our prayers themselves are unheard by others and remain in God's confidence. So how can blasphemy arise?
Finally, blasphemy is at most, an instrument of oppression. Its legal definition must always be vague and squid-like enough to include all possibilities while obscuring its real function. A charge of blasphemy is no less an agent of expedience or vituperation than treason is. Castellio, defending Servetus, said that no heresy but tyranny and persecution engender sedition. Blasphemy as a crime is therefore anti-religious.
As I conclude, I am going to read the definition of blasphemy contained in Funk and Wagnal's encyclopedia (copyright 1958):
“Blasphemy: In the common law, the criminal offense of speaking or publishing words vilifying or ridiculing the divine being, the Bible, the Church or the Christian religion. The offense is a misdemeanor and two reasons have been established for considering it a crime: 1. It tends to produce a breach of the peace between the blasphemer and those outraged by his words. 2. Christianity is a part of the common law and blasphemy tends to subvert the law. The manner rather than the content of the utterance or publication renders it blasphemy. Thus a serious statement of opinion however heretical is not punishable as blasphemy. Although blasphemy is still a crime in England and most states of the U.S., prosecutions for the offense are now rare.”
PART III
The stage is now set for a frontiersman's son, born in frontier regions of Anglican Virginia where religious nonconformists could settle- some of them were settled there to work the mines- to derive the Establishment Clause, as the Supreme Court gave him credit for doing in the 1947 Everson Vs. Board of Education opinion.
Thomas Jefferson, like Milton, kept a commonplace book. As a law student in the 1760's he concluded from study of the common law court's seizure of ecclesiastical offenses that Christianity had never been a part to the common law. His study, found in an 1814 letter to his publicist Dr. Thomas Cooper shows that various black letter legal authorities had perpetuated a 1613 mistranslation of a term meaning ancient writings as holy scripture. The term was ancien scriptens. By 1662, the same common law courts assuming jurisdiction of blasphemy cases were also burning witches at the stake. What was so very insidious about the way this mistranslation was perpetuated as law is that it persisted for a very long time only in treatises in secondary authority and actually awaited a great jurist like Sir Matthew Hale to pick it up and use it in cases as he did to burn two witches at the stake under a more recent statute. The problem of course is that the error appeared in Sir Matthew Hale's Pleas of the Crown, a book that went through numerous editions and was one of the main books on common law procedure in the Colonies. That is how the error was spread and made manifest.
Contemporaneous with his study, Jefferson was greatly impressed by Patrick Henry's defense in one of the cases called the Parsons' Causes. A parish was sued by its parson for wages lost due to Virginia's 1758 or 1759 Two Penny Act, under which its clergy could be paid in tobacco or in corn, tobacco then being as good as gold. In both 1758 and 1759 there had been drought that had caused massive crop failures. The two Acts each of which only ran for 10 months, were looked upon by the Colonists as debtor relief. However, the devaluation that the Two Penny Act caused resulted in the Clergy being paid roughly half of what it would be paid if they had received tobacco, which was now scarce, as payment in kind. The Privy Council vetoed the Act but during the year it took to come back to the Colony on appeal the measure became immensely popular.
Patrick Henry could have counted on one hand the previous jury nullification cases: John Peter Zenger had been acquitted of seditious libel in approximately 1735; Thomas Maule a Massachusetts Quaker whose 1695 book had allegedly blasphemed Salem's clergy acquitted when the jury found that it would take a jury of divines to decide his case; and William Penn's 1670 case. Those were all there was.
Henry's charge to the jury lasted an hour. He argued that this instance of royal misrule dissolved the political compact and left the people at liberty to consult their own safety. Further, Henry argued that the King had forfeited the right to the people's obedience by contravening a solemn act of the general will. This argument met with cries of treason from the audience. But more importantly, Patrick Henry said the only use of an established church and clergy in society is to enforce obedience to civil sanction and the duty in our church would be tithing. When the clergy ceases to perform these parts of this contract “The community has no further need of their ministers and may justly strip them of their appointment.” Henry then conceded that under the court's charge on the law something would have to be awarded as damages but that a farthing would suffice. After only five minutes the jury returned verdict of one penny as damages. That, incidentally, is still the record.
Now we see why Jefferson mentioned trial by jury and not due process in The Declaration of Independence in the same year that he wrote in the draft constitution for Virginia “All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion. Nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.” If you are still debating over blasphemy's status as a crime, please then consider President Jefferson's 1802 Danbury Baptist letter in which after declaring that religion is solely between man and his God, Jefferson added, “I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.'” Is the wall of separation not the same as the fence of absolute natural rights? Can we construe this language as the Supreme Court apparently did in the Vally Forge Case?
Before sending this letter to Danbury, Jefferson requested the approval of the Attorney General in the following language: “The Baptist Address now enclosed admits of a condemnation of the alliance between church and state under the authority of the Constitution. It furnished an occasion to which I have long wished to find of saying why I do not proclaim fast and thanksgiving days as my predecessors did.”
So if you are ever in the position of Henry David Thoreau, having to look out at Ralph Waldo Emerson and ask what are you doing out there?, because as a devout Unitarian, you have found reason to doubt the Trinity, you might recall for your captors the exact language of Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom: “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever.”
In 1644, Roger Williams wrote that such a wall preserved the integrity of religion and that if God would ever restore paradise, he must necessarily wall out corrupting influences. That of course is why the English dissenters who settled this country were called Separatist as early as 1611.
Laws against blasphemy are unjust because they defend a God from insult who can turn the other cheek, who does not need defending. Thus even your average juror, urged to reach verdict based on jury nullification, may find that unlike Robert Frost, there is still something that loves a wall.
In closing, I would like to read two quotations. One by Thomas Jefferson and reads as follows:
"Almighty God had created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion. No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinion or beliefs but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion. I know of but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively."
The other quotation is from Mark Twain:
“It is by the goodness of God that we have in our country three unspeakably precious things: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Conscience and the prudence never to practice either.”
Postscript
Muggleton may have only been a satirist 'a;ping' religion. For example, when he damned people, he made allowances for dispensations.
Also, at his trial, he said:
“As for my mouth being full of cursing, that is my commission... I know that God is well-pleased in the damnation of those I have cursed and I am wondrous well satisfied in giving judgment upon them according to the tenets of my condition."
