Book Review

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American Heretics:

Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order

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By Jerome E. Copulsky, 2024

Copulsky’s “heretics” are Christians who believe the American Constitution got fundamental things wrong from the beginning. He labels them “Heretics” because they reject the secular American consensus, which bases law on the will of the People, not the Law of God. Copulsky writes about Catholic heretics (The Roman Catholic Church is properly the Established Church in every nation, the teaching of pre-Vatican II Popes Pius IX (1846-78) and Leo XIII (1878-1903), for example, as opposed to the for-a-time-silenced by the Pope American Jesuit John Courtney Murray (1904-67), a Copulsky hero); about secessionist Southern Presbyterians (Thornwell: Slavery is natural and good for slaves); and about the 1970s “Theonomists” (Rushdooney: American Law should be based on Mosaic Law). Are Rushdooney’s ideas influencing some of Donald Trump’s Evangelical and Pentecostal loyalists, especially those called Dominion Pentecostals, some of whose ideas can be traced to Rushdooney? Very Bad!

However, the most persistent critic of the 1787 American Constitution has been the Covenanter (Reformed Presbyterian) Church. Copulsky devotes two of his seven chapters to them and gives them a fair hearing, in part because of their consistent and adamant anti-slavery and anti-racist stance (In his Acknowledgments he thanks the librarian of Geneva College). This book review will focus mainly on the Covenanter (Reformed Presbyterian) critique of the American Constitution as a departure from the governing traditions of Christendom, from the first revolutionary documents, and from the duty of all Christians, even rulers, to honor Christ publicly as well as privately.

Covenanters jubilantly joined the American Revolution. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress published a Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. In the name of “Nature’s God,” it declared that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It ended, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions… And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” It was an almost Christian document, honoring God as the Creator, the Providential ruler of the world, and its Judge, but it made no mention of Jesus Christ, often acknowledged in the colonial constitutions.

On November 15, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted Articles of Confederation. It acknowledged the Great Governor of the World who had inclined the hearts of the legislature to adopt these Articles. In other words, he is active in this world, not a distant deistic god.

Ten years later, on February 21, 1787, Congress endorsed Alexander Hamilton’s plan to revise the Articles of Confederation. Elected delegates met in Philadelphia from May 25, 1787, to September 17, 1787. They chose not to do their assignment. Instead, in absolute secrecy, they wrote an entirely new Constitution. They then sold it to the states in a series of newspaper articles known as the Federalist Papers. After nine of the thirteen states ratified it, the new Constitution went into effect March 4, 1789.

Anti-Federalists, like Patrick Henry, George Mason, and Samuel Adams, bitterly opposed the new Constitution. Henry was a devout Anglican, Adams a devout Congregationalist, and Mason a conventional Anglican. They lost the debate. American opinion united behind their new Constitution. Soon, Americans were praising the Founders, almost without limit. Some suggested that God had inspired them to write such a wonderful Constitution. The Covenanters dissented.

Organized in 1798, the dissenting Covenanters would not swear allegiance to the Constitution, vote, hold office, or serve on juries. Why? The Constitution had two ruinous faults. It did not even mention God, let alone Jesus Christ, and it protected slavery, even allowing the execrable African slave trade to continue until 1808. Both faults were utterly contrary to the Bible and to the traditions of Christendom. Two small books explained their stance: Samuel Wylie’s 1803 Two Sons of Oil and Alexander McLeod’s 1802 Negro Slavery Unjustifiable. Their 1806 Testimony made Political Dissent official church doctrine and practice.

In 1800 the Covenanters could do no more than dissent. They were few and they were unpopular. When James Renwick Willson, a leading Covenanter minister, preached the sermon “Prince Messiah” to the New York legislature in Albany, daring to criticize George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, he was burned in effigy and chased out of town.

By the time the Civil War began, much of the North agreed with the Covenanters on slavery. The Second Great Awakening (c.1790-1835) had made the country far more devout than it was in 1776, when many revolutionary leaders were Freemasons and Deists. It was time to do more than dissent. Copulsky tells how Covenanter ministers met with President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, and again in 1864, to press for immediate emancipation of all slaves, and for acknowledging Christ’s reign in the Constitution. Northern victory secured the slaves’ manumission. For some decades after the Civil War, the Covenanter Church used a new political organization, the National Reform Association, to agitate for a Christian amendment to the Preamble of the American Constitution. They secured congressional committee hearings in 1874, 1875, and 1896. A floor vote on the proposal in the House failed in 1875. The Covenanter Church continued a narrowed political dissent: members were prohibited from voting or taking any office that required an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. By 1900, the National Reform Association and the Covenanter Church gave up trying to amend the Constitution but continued promoting various social reforms.

World War II came. During the War there seemed to be a national turning towards God, which made a Christian Amendment again seem possible. In the 1950s on any given Sunday about half the population could be found in church, and over 90 percent of Americans told pollsters they were Christian. Congress in 1953 added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1956 Congress replaced “E Pluribus Unum” as the country’s motto with “In God we trust.” America’s coins bear that motto, a practice begun on some coins during the Civil War. Persistent Covenanters tried again to use the amendment process to make the Constitution Christian.

Beginning in 1943, the Covenanter Church began promoting a Christian Amendment to the Constitution and formed the Christian Amendment Movement. Covenanters got Congressmen and Senators to introduce their Christian Amendment into Congress many times, but they got only one hearing in 1954. After 1968, the Christian Amendment Movement faded and closed shop for good in 1975. The times had become unpropitious. Furthermore, the Reformed Presbyterian Church no longer believed, as it formerly had, that “the Constitution of the United States is a sinful and malignant document from which the United States Supreme Court must necessarily continue its legal attacks on all remaining Christian traditions and laws in our land” (Samuel Boyle, last Executive Secretary of the Christian Amendment Movement, writing in 1964, quoted in William J. Edgar, History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, 1920-1980, p 211). In 1967, the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church ruled that voting in elections would no longer be an act subject to church discipline, thus bringing the church’s practice of Political Dissent to an end.

In a country predominantly Christian in personal profession, why did the effort to make the secular Constitution explicitly Christian fail so completely? Why did the Founders write a secular Constitution in the first place? Copulsky cites two reasons. First, from the beginning in 1776 there were a plurality of churches. Three states established the Congregational Church and five had an Anglican (later Episcopal) establishment, all eventually repealed by 1833. By 1970 the religious pluralism of Protestant churches had expanded to include Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and nones. Many feared that trying to base American life on explicitly Christian faith would run the danger of reigniting the 16th and 17th Century religious wars of Europe. Second, America’s ruling classes have always been deeply committed to the liberal program of privatizing religious faith. Few of the Founders were themselves devout Christians. Beginning in 1947, the Supreme Court progressively moved the Bible, prayer, and Christian faith out of public view, ruling that their presence amounted to an unconstitutional “establishment of religion.” Copulsky helpfully enumerates these rulings.

In a lame concluding chapter, Copulsky seems to understand the long-term problem for a polity with no agreed upon understanding of what is good, right, or true. “Americans in the twenty-first century find themselves in a deeper and more radical situation of pluralism than did the revolutionaries of 1776… And the moral consensus that Tocqueville believed that he had seen in his [1830s] travels no longer pertains (if it ever had).” The unofficial establishment of mainline Protestant churches that limped into the 1960s is no more. He concludes, “If it is to endure, America’s liberal democracy will have to be sustained in the absence of a moral consensus or clear-cut spiritual foundations.” Sustained how? Copulsky makes no suggestion. All that remains is the power of the powerful, with fickle and dangerous popular opinion (populism!) a sometimes-destabilizing opposition. His last chapter makes it abundantly clear that he hates and fears Donald Trump and the Evangelicals and Pentecostals who support him.

A final problem for the American experiment that Copulsky never considers: What if God wants his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be honored and obeyed as the Covenanters insisted from the beginning? Jesus himself commissioned the Apostle Paul to witness about him to kings – only for their own personal salvation? What if God detests rich and powerful nations that allow unborn babies to be killed, pretend that doctors can change men into women and women into men, and claim that it, not God, defines marriage, so that men may “marry” men, and women “marry” women? What if God does not agree that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of life?” as Justice Kennedy notoriously wrote in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision? A nation where everyone does what is right in his own eyes will not be a happy one. Are we a happy nation? How long will God Most High patiently allow such a country as ours to prosper? God rules all nations, raising one high and bringing another low. Copulsky seems not to have taken that fact into account, as he ably researched and wrote about American “heretics,” who believe that there is something deeply amiss at the foundation of our polity.

Copulsky’s book gives a full and fair hearing to all his “heretics.” Until his last chapter where Trump appears, he mostly keeps his liberal bias to himself. Mostly. The writing is dense and covers way more material than this review can. American Heretics has been widely noticed, perhaps because the Donald Trump phenomenon makes it timely. It might be worth your time to read it.

– Bill Edgar

P.S. At the same time as Copulsky’s scholarly book on American “heretics” was being widely reviewed, so was another book, Hard Neighbors (2024) by Colin G. Calloway. Like Copulsky’s 2024 book, Calloway’s book is the work of a professional historian, well researched, full of details, and not the sort of book most readers enjoy. Calloway writes about the Scotch-Irish immigrants on the frontiers of the English colonies from before the French and Indian War (1754-1763) through the Revolutionary War (1775 – 1783), and on to Texas joining the Union in 1845. His focus is on their interactions with the different Indian nations, authority on the Atlantic seaboard in the different colonies, their relentless growth in numbers with insatiable land hunger, and their constant sense of grievance and disregard of political authority. The book climaxes with the Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). “ ‘Jackson never really championed the cause of the people; he only invited them to champion his.’ (footnoted) It is, perhaps, not surprising that Donald Trump placed a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office.” With that sentence I understood the appeal of these two books to reviewers. Each volume helps to illuminate the sort of folk lined up behind Donald Trump, “white Christian nationalists,” and violent, land-grabbing Scotch-Irish rabble. So! Covenanters are American heretics, and they were also mostly Scotch-Irish in origin, even though they defined themselves mostly in opposition to other Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. It would be hard to be more “deplorable!”

5 Models for the Christian Life: Warfare

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We present this reprint from the Covenanter Witness April 19, 1978, as a demonstration of the spiritual warfare all Christians find ourselves in. Dr. Ganz waged uncompromising war against our Lord's enemies, calling out sin without apology wherever he encountered it. He enthusiastically encouraged Christians to engage in vigorous debate with unbelief and tirelessly led by example. – ed.

Innocent Blood

Harrisburg, PA

October 21, 1977

MEMBERS OF THE SENATE:

Thus says the Lord: “Do justice and righteousness and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of the oppressor. Also, do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow.” (That is, do not harm those who are powerless and defenseless.) “AND DO NOT SHED INNOCENT BLOOD IN THIS PLACE. For if you men will indeed perform this thing, then ...” (there will be blessing). “But if you will not obey these words, I swear by Myself,” declares the Lord, “that this house will become a desolation.” Jeremiah 22: 3,4

These are the words of God, spoken through His prophet Jeremiah, as found in the Old Testament Scriptures – but it is also God's Word proclaimed to you this day! And who am I? I too am a servant of the living God. I am a Jew by birth, a Christian by belief. I am a doctor of clinical psychology, a biblical counselor and a teacher and preacher of the Word of God. I believe that the Scriptures are the revealed will and law of God, the only rule for faith and life, and that in moral dilemmas, such as this present abortion issue, they can guide us in the way of righteousness. I am a spokesman for many people of the same mind.

My opponents might ridicule such a belief – a modern man? a professional? in our society? in the twentieth century? believing in the Bible?? Preposterous!! However, it is interesting to note that my belief simply demands the love of God and the love of human beings.

On the other hand, my opponents, who (for the most part) view themselves as “enlightened humanists,” deny the existence of God and in so doing, deny any basis of human love. How ironic that these “humanists” have no scruples about killing unborn children! They speak of “civilization” and “human progress” – yet pursue the ancient and barbaric practice of murdering humans within the womb.

Abortion is not new. Only the massive scale and comparative ease of its performance is new. My opponents claim to be defending “human liberty” and “individual's rights” – but in the same breath they support the slaughter of people who are voiceless to demand their rights and defenseless to protect their lives. Let us be honest. What the pro-abortionist is defending and promoting is not love and liberty; it is sexual license, parental irresponsibility and human cruelty.

Human beings belong to God. Even a person living within another person, as the unborn child lives within his mother, cannot be considered the “private property” of another without there being limitations upon this “ownership.” Listen to the Lord's Word through the prophet Ezekiel:

“...you took your sons and your daughters whom you had born to Me,

and you sacrificed them to idols to be devoured...

You slaughtered My children and offered them up to idols...

'Woe, woe to you!' declares the Lord God” Ezekiel 16:20-23.

At this time in America, we too are sacrificing our children to idols. What are the idols that this nation serves? The comforts of affluence! The pleasures of immorality! The conveniences of technology! The liberties of godlessness! America's unborn children are being devoured by her idols. We have abandoned the service and worship of God. “Woe, woe to you! declares the Lord God.”

Members of the Senate of the State of Pennsylvania, you have been given authority to govern in the realm of legislation, an authority which bears with it a great responsibility. How do you decide what is right? Upon what basis do you make your decisions? Either you believe there are universal moral laws to which man must submit himself or you believe there is nothing beyond man and his own reason, passions and imagination. If there is no standard beyond man, then there is nothing sacred; there is nothing secure. To protect human beings or to destroy them is not then a moral dilemma. It is irrelevant. It is merely a utilitarian problem, the solution of which easily results in the extermination of millions.

But if there is a moral law, then man must obey! Our consciences have informed us, and the Scriptures have revealed to us that moral law, the law of God. THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT MURDER. God is not fooled, nor our consciences deceived, by the devious declaration that the unborn child is not a person. The moral dilemma before us today is not determining right from wrong; it is determining whether, or not, we will do what is right. Senators, you have been given the rare opportunity to make a decision for righteousness that can result in the saving of millions of human lives.

It is my responsibility as a preacher and counselor to instruct men in the way of righteousness, to exhort them to follow that way and to warn them of the consequences of departing from that way. As representatives of the people, as senators of this state, your actions influence the course of this entire nation. God judges nations – and He will surely judge our country for the legalized atrocities of abortion.

Is it possible that here in America we have such disregard for human life that we now destroy it in our hospitals and dispose of it in trash cans? Human life! Human beings!
 

But God does not forget the cry of the afflicted. God judges nations. God also judges individuals. If you cast your vote against the unborn child, you will never have to stand before that child and explain to him why you chose to destroy his life. In your dreams, perhaps, you will see such a person … but in reality you will never have to face him. However, you will stand before the Living God. You will be accountable to Him for your actions. “Thou shalt not commit murder.” If by your vote you side yourself with murders, you shall be held accountable by God for murder. For the person who does what is right in the sight of God, there is blessing. For the person who does evil, God's wrath abides on him.

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“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,

Nor stands in the path of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of scoffers!

But his delight is in the law of the Lord...

The Lord knows the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish” (Psalm 1:1,2,6).

Senators, it is my prayer for you and exhortation to you that you will do what is right. Listen to the words of the prophet Micah:

“He has told you, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8

Gentlemen, I pray that you will not allow your hands to be stained by the blood of little children.

– Rich Ganz

At the time of this speech, Ganz was a Psychiatrist with the Christian Counselling and Education Foundation in Laverock, PA, and a member of the Syracuse, NY, R.P. Congregation.