I see that I’ve been blogspotted once more by Harry Seabrook of Little Hitlers…uh…I mean…Little Geneva.
This is a minor league cult of wannabe Confederates.
Seabrook et al. identify themselves as “Reformed Confederate Theocrats,” and attempt to ride on the coattails of Rushdoony, Dabney, and Van Til.
They also identify themselves as “homocentric environmentalists.”
Evidently, Little Geneva is headquartered in a San Francisco bathhouse.
It’s interesting to see them rewrite church history as well as American history.
It’s true that Dabney and Thornwell supported the “peculiar” institution of Southern slavery—although Dabney was originally a proponent of gradual manumission.
In one respect that’s consistent with Reformed theology. In particular, it’s consistent with the “remnants of corruption” (WCF 13) in Dabney and Thornwell.
However, Southern Presbyterian theology was hardly committed to slavery. Seabrook is big on “kinism,” but Warfield’s kin fought with the Union, and Warfield defended the admission of the first black student to Princeton.
Likewise, the PCUSA condemned slavery as far back as 1818, and reaffirmed that position in 1863/64.
John Newton was a Calvinist. Newton was also instrumental, through his protégé, William Wilberforce, in abolishing the English slave-trade.
Beyond his anti-Black racism, Seabrook is also a Jew-hater. But this is directly at odds with the Reformed tradition, which is distinguished by its philosemitic sympathies.
Cromwell was responsible for the readmission of the Jews into England.
Protestant Scotland was far more tolerant of the Jews than were the Catholic or German Lutheran countries.
Jews found haven in the Reformed theocracy of Holland. And it's no coincidence that Corrie ten Boom's family were Dutch-Reformed.
The Pilgrims were quite philosemitic. Cf. A. I. Katsh, The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy (Ktav 1977).
Neither Rushdoony nor Van Til shared a shred of Seabrook’s anti-Semitism.
Most ironically of all for Seabrook’s revisionism, the antebellum South was another bastion for Jewry, a number of whom were to serve with distinction in the Confederacy. Cf. R. N. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates (USC Press 2000).
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.15599/article_detail.asp
Further, it was the Calvinistic Independent Cromwell who allowed the Jews to settle in England, there to be free from the pogroms of the continent.
ReplyDeleteOne of the Medieval Henry's expelled them in an excess of anti-semitism.
Oh, and Wilberforce and Wesley were both excellent and consistent Christians for opposing the treatment of human beings as property.