Modern Property Rights

Glory and Ignominy

The bloodless revolution--otherwise known as the Glorious Revolution--of 1688 in England has often been celebrated as one which rejected absolute government and replaced it with a government of limited and mutually balanced powers.  But it also represented much more.   Historian, Christopher Dawson has a theory:

It is true that the Revolution of 1688 was apparently a defeat for the principle of Toleration since it was directed against the Declaration of Indulgence, and demanded the reinforcement of the Test Act and the Penal Laws.  Actually, however, it marks the end of the attempt to base society on a religious foundation, and the beginning of the progressive secularization of the English state.

According to John Locke, the philosopher of the Revolutionary Settlement, the prime duty of the Government is not to defend the Christian faith, but to secure the rights of private property, "for the sake of which men enter into society."  Thus, as Lord Acton says, the English Revolution substituted "for the Divine Right of Kings the divine right of Freeholders."  For two centuries and more England was to be the Paradise of the Man of Property. [Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion: An Historical Enquiry (London: Sheed and Ward, 1945),  p. 188.]

It is arguable that Locke was one of the great apostles of secularism.  However much he and his colleagues spoke about god, in fact his deistic theology meant that the deity he was invoking was nothing more than a warranting concept, a sky-hook from which to hang his notions of freedom and property.  Deism proclaims an "absent God", Deus Abscondis : therefore, Deism is in practice, if not in principle, a thoroughly secular world-view.

But history relentlessly works out the implications of bad philosophies, because human history is a collective expression of the human heart.

Church and State--Whither Now?

Constantine Versus the Apostle of the Secular Public Square

The issue of church establishment is one which Christians need to start thinking seriously about again and commence reading, writing and debating the teachings of Scripture and of the historical church.  In the West our debates and discussions and research will of necessity be largely academic and theoretical (although not completely so) because of the small (and shrinking) proportion of the population that is Christian and because of the dominant strength of secularism. 

The same cannot be said of other regions and countries, where Christian growth is explosive.  It is also true that in countries where Christians live under authoritarian governments and the church continues by means of state permission, the issue of church and state is alive and very pressing. 

But we in the West have one great contribution to make to this discussion: we have proven that a secular public square, neutral to religion, is a chimerical myth.  It is an oxymoron.