Great Is Diana of the Americans

During the past few years, as I’ve become increasingly concerned about the engagement of professing-Christians in the political melee in the United States, John Newton has become an historical mentor to me in thinking, teaching, and behavior. This mentorship is particularly pronounced in the area of politics and nationalism.

In August 1775, four months after Colonists and British regulars fought at Lexington and Concord, Newton, Anglican priest and author of Amazing Grace, writes to a young friend concerning Britain and the Colonies:

“As a minister and a Christian I think it is better to lay all the blame upon sin. Instead of telling the people Lord North [the Prime Minister] blunders, I tell them the Lord of hosts is angry. If God has a controversy with us, I can expect no other than that wisdom should be hidden from the wise…I believe the sins of America and Britain have too much prevailed, and that a wrong spirit and wrong measures have taken place on both sides because the Lord has left us to ourselves.

“It seems to me one of the darkest signs of the times, that so many of the Lord’s professing people act as if they thought he was withdrawn from the earth…instead of unavailing clamors against men and measures they would all unite in earnest prayer, we might hope for better times, otherwise I fear bad will be worse.”

As the letter continues, Newton turns his attention to the idea of liberty; turning to Jeremiah the prophet Newton writes:

“He [Jeremiah] preached against sin and foretold judgment, but I do not find that he made a parade about liberty…He does not seem to have troubled his head, who was scribe or recorder, or who was over the host [that is, who was in charge of government and the military], for he knew that whoever had the management, the public affairs would miscarry because the Lord fought against them. When I hear the cry about liberty I think of the old cry, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians’ [italics mine]. Civil liberty is a valuable blessing, but if people sin it away, it is the Lord [who] deprives them of it…

“However a believer has a liberty with which Jesus has made him free which depends upon no outward circumstances. It grieves me to hear those who are slaves to sin and Satan, make such a stir about that phantom which they worship under the name of liberty, and especially to see not a few of the Lord’s people so much conformed to the world in this respect [italics mine].”

When I first read the above letter, a year or two ago, I was taken with Newton’s image (no pun intended) of Diana of the Ephesians from Acts Chapter 19. A few days ago I realized that Newton’s use of Diana preceded his 1775 letter, for in a 1773 letter he writes to a fellow minister:

“On the other hand, you and I, dear sir, know how much they are to be pitied who are frantic for what they call liberty, and consider not that they are in the most deplorable bondage, the slaves of sin and Satan, and subject to the curse of the law, and the wrath of God. Oh for a voice to reach their hearts, that they may know themselves, and seek deliverance from their dreadful thralldom! Satan has many contrivances to amuse them, and to turn their thoughts from their real danger; and none more ensnaring, in the present day, than to engage them in the cry, ‘Great is the Diana Liberty!’ [italics mine].

“…And already in some pulpits, (proh dolor!) [Latin: oh the grief!] a description of the rights of man occupies much of the time which used to be employed in proclaiming the glory and grace of the Savior, and the rights of God to the love and obedience of his creatures.”

It seems to me that Christian nationalism, and Christian political engagement, whether it be from the “right” or the “left”, or even the “center” – is a snare to the professing-church in that it obscures our witness to Jesus Christ and His Gospel as it exalts our “rights” and “liberties” and “personal freedoms”.

There is a sense in which, for the disciple of Jesus Christ, there is no “personal freedom”, for we are called to be servants of Jesus Christ; indeed, since we have been purchased and redeemed by Jesus Christ, we are no longer our own possession – to echo Paul, we are not our own, we are bought with a price.

The People of God are called to be distinct from the world, the flesh, and the devil. We are called to be distinct from the “right”, the “left”, the “center”; our Gospel is to be for all mankind without regard to ethnicity or national flag or economic system.

We are to discern the difference between the Bible and the constitutions of nations, the political systems of nations, the economic systems of nations, and the foreign policies of nations. If the Gospel of Jesus Christ is transcendent then the Church of Jesus Christ ought to express itself, in Christ, transcendently. How can this be otherwise, unless professing - churches within national boundaries prostitute themselves in the service of the world? Babylon the Harlot rides the beast until the beast destroys her (Revelation Chapter 17). Can we not be a foolish people?

We have been taught to make idols of liberty, prosperity, pleasure, our founding national documents, our foreign policy, our economic policies – and we seek our identity in these things rather than in Jesus Christ. As we fail to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven (Philippians 3:20) we fail to be good neighbors to our fellow earthly citizens and neighbors.

When we adopt a faulty sense of our national identity in place of a true sense of “a better country, a heavenly country” (Hebrews 11:16) and we cease to live as pilgrims and strangers we, as Esau, sell our birthright for a mess of pottage; we trade our high calling for short-term pleasure and gratification. We forego identification with the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ for temporal agendas that will turn to dust. The beast will eat us and we are so drunk with the world that we won’t even know it – it devours us even as I write this.

Newton chose Christ above everything. When other ministers of the Gospel attempted to pull him into political and nationalistic orbits Newton resisted, when others appealed to “liberty” Newton recognized the danger of liberty outside of Jesus Christ. Newton saw the that great need of mankind was not political liberty, but rather liberty from sin and death. Newton saw that Christ held him accountable for preaching the Gospel, and that not a day was to be spared in the service of temporal movements outside of the Gospel.

Newton saw that the turmoil of his nation and world could only be the result of sin, and that there is no political remedy for sin.

Lest we forget, Newton was engaged is serving the fatherless, the widow, the hungry, and the slave; the Gospel of Jesus Christ for John Newton included serving the “whole person” – John Newton knew, as we should know, that the only hope for this world was, and is, Amazing Grace.