The Divine role of Emperor or King seems to be making a comeback.
The Return of Sacral Rulership?:
Ancients would learn, and our Founders too, that the language of sacral rulership is incompatible with a functioning democracy or republic. In 1787 Ben Franklin famously declared that with the Constitution, the founders had given America “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin knew well the perils faced by republics because he had an extensive understanding of the broader ancient world. He even advocated that an exhaustive work on ancient history—stretching far beyond Greece and Rome—be required reading of all children in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It was in part his understanding of the ancient world and the seemingly inevitable collapse into either chaos or sacral rulership that concerned him. I think he along with many founders would be alarmed by “God Made Trump,” and likely would see in it a real threat to the Republic.
“If you can keep it,” indeed.
From an essay by the Chair of the History Dept. at Grove City College. It gives word to what’s been bothering me about the language that’s becoming increasingly common from people who claim that they’re religious, but who admit that they don’t attend any worship services. Except maybe political rallies.
I’m an 11th generation Rhode Islander and a Berkeley influenced New Haven Tuttle, and I literally stumbled across this as I was investigating the E.D.R.I’s Royal Choir College current status, and as I’ve just said, literally stumbled across this, and apparently the same day that you transcribed it! This must be (Jungian) Synchronicity of a sort!
First of all, “a Republic, if you can keep it.” I just had cause to quote these very words of Franklin and in the very same context! What a relief, my Lord Bishop, to find that I am not the only one…”see in it a real threat to the Republic”, I think you called it. (And having seen so much of my family’s money go to the Rhode Island Chafees, I am particularly disturbed by those who have evidently made of contemporary Republicanism a “Night of the Long Knives”! )
Secondly, I’m delighted to discover that you are a qualified astronomer! I’ve also had cause recently to mention this to our recently retired U.C.C. President as it seemed to me that Sunday mornings might be better spent displaying wide angle vistas from our most recent Hubble & Webb images and describing what they mean in terms of the science of the Cosmos and a more contemporaneously useful paradigm of the infinitude of the Godhead in a contemporary society where “an exhaustive study of ancient history” is out of the reach of the contemporaneously poorly-educated. (I’m reminded of the excellent perennialism of St. John’s next to Annapolis, which if more were so educated, we could deal with Infinitude’s Great Ideas through other means!
How’s that for a start!
(We’ll save the Religionswissenschaft/Science of Comparative Religion(s) & Dance/Movement until later!)
Cheers, from Barry Hale Browning & namesake of Matunuck’s Summer visitor & U.S. Senate Chaplain & Boston Unitarian the Rev. Edward Everett Hale!