The Reformed Christian Legacy of Dominion

by Dan Ford, July 13, 2009

Today Americans have an opinion that our national government is the ultimate sovereign in our nation. We tend to think that those in positions of power in Washington are the final arbitrators of whatever privileges Americans have, even to our homes and private estates. Such opinions are diametrically opposite to those of our nation’s founders. To them, the legitimate role of civil government was to secure the blessings of property for those who held it peaceably in private estates. The right of private dominion was an essential component to American liberty, and the issue of governmental encroachment was key to our founder’s cause against the centralized British regime.

Until the War for Independence, the question remained unanswered as to who had the ultimate title to the land the colonists possessed. Was it the king or perhaps the parliament, or was it rather the colonies or the colonists themselves? The issue of sovereignty between America and Britain was only finally settled after years of battle and ultimate success on the part of the continental patriots. In the 1783 Definitive Treaty of Peace, Britain formally yielded every claim of propriety over the United States of America. More explicitly, the treaty’s first article stated:

His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, . . . to be free, sovereign, and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.^[1]

At that point, sovereignty and all questions of “propriety,” or ownership rights of land and property, were settled as far as Great Britain was concerned. No longer would a king or a parliament lay claim to authority over Britain’s former holdings. Liberty and property were then acknowledged as the firm possessions of a free and independent people.

The Dominion Mandate

The right of private dominion was essential to the original idea of American liberty. In 1768, the representatives of Massachusetts Bay were put in a position of defending their property against new British revenue laws. The colonials viewed property as both an asset as well as a sacred holding, saying, “there are few men who will not agree that property is a valuable acquisition, which ought to be held sacred.”^[2] With property held with such an exalted regard, the Massachusetts House then concluded that the British encroachment on colonial resources tended to “destroy both property and government.”^[3]

If we read the piles of grievances against Britain during the founding era, we find that their private property was more than a valued asset; it was regarded as central to the whole idea of godly dominion. Unlike those of our day, those of the founding era evoked property rights as an indelible duty owed to the Creator. Silas Downer, one of the most prominent leaders of The Sons of Liberty in Rhode Island, was typical in expressing property rights in such obligatory terms, declaring “that we do not yield the Garden of God and our birthrights to the sons of ambition.”^[4]

With such examples, we can see that many colonists related their property rights with the original dominion mandate decreed in Paradise. But, we might wonder: Where was the connection made between the colonists sacred regard for their property and the original mandate by God for men to multiply and subdue the earth? That connection was made early on in the first principles of English colonization.

Colonies as the Plantings of Families

The earliest book devoted to a massive English immigration to America was The Planter’s Plea published in 1630 by John White, a key founder of the Massachusetts Bay Company. He saw a sweeping colonial immigration as the greatest hope of English Puritanism. “Colonies,” began pastor White in his Planter’s Plea, “have their warrant from God’s Word direction and command, who . . . set them to their task to replenish the earth and to subdue it, Genesis 1:28.”^[5]

White was explaining colonization in terms of the biblical mandate for families to possess and subdue the earth. White also evoked John Calvin, who had similarly commented on the dominion mandate that God related to Noah’s family in Genesis 9:1. Quoting Calvin’s original Latin, “Iubet eos crescere & simul benedictionem suam destinat.”^[6] White noted that from the beginning families had been given God’s blessing to increase and subdue the earth.

Calvin himself had also drawn richly from the Book of Isaiah in seeing God’s mandate to plant the Kingdom of Christ throughout the earth. The Prophecy of Isaiah expressed the means of spreading Christ’s Kingdom abroad by the metaphor of planting vineyards. In vivid terms, Isaiah 65:21 explained, “they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.” Calvin then explained the implications of that Isaiah blessing:

[T]he prophet speaks not only of life, but the peaceful conditions of life; as if it had said, You shall plant vineyards, and shall eat the fruit of them; and you shall not be removed from this life before receiving the fruit, which shall be enjoyed not only by yourselves, but your children and your posterity.^[7]

Thus, for Calvin and the Reformed Christians, the metaphor of planting vineyards was associated with the planting of families abroad unto the ends of the earth. And, although properly speaking, the Biblical metaphor of planting vineyards was a picture of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, the means by which the Lord accomplished that end was seen by Reformed Christians as generations of families spreading themselves abroad by extending the private dominion of the home. The establishment of household dominion, then, was the means of advancing both the spiritual dominion of Christ and establishing propertied dominion of families by one and the same Biblical metaphor of a “planting.” And, the idea of a colonial plantation in America originally had far deeper theological implications than we now tend to recognize.

For Reformed Christians of England in the seventeenth century, nothing fit the dominion mandate more than colonizing North America. That feat would best be accomplished by sending waves of hearty, healthy families, the society given God’s calling to propagate and take procession of the earth. Families were in fact considered to be small colonies, which was also a point made by that first great proponent of Massachusetts Bay, John White in 1630: “Now what are new families,” he asked, “but petty Colonies?” He then added: “Removing further and further, they overflow the whole earth.”^[8]

Dominion by the Divine Right of Kings

That decidedly Reformed Christian approach to the dominion mandate marked the character of English colonization. It was, however, in stark contrast to the character of the Spanish colonies that preceded the English colonies by over a century. For the Spanish crown, dominion meant conquest. It also meant gold, silver, and land for the crown along with souls and supremacy for the Catholic Church. The conquest of America brought not only souls under the dominion of the Roman Church, but the property and labor of the native people for the aggrandizement of a European king. The Spanish model of colonization resulted in crusading and conquering armies sent on behalf of the church and state to subdue the peoples and resources of America. That sanction came in the form of a decree of divine right initiated by a papal bull known as the Inter Caetera of 1493. The Inter Caetera was drawn up by Pope Alexander VI shortly after Columbus returned from his maiden voyage west, and it granted dominion over his discoveries to the Spanish crown.

It was, in fact, a self-conscious comparison with the divine right pretenses of the Spanish crown that drove the arguments of the Americans against eighteenth century British encroachments. In an important early defense of the New England Charters in 1721, Massachusetts’ colonial agent Jeremiah Dummer argued:

The first planters, far from using the barbarous methods practiced by Spaniards on the southern continent, which have made them detestable to the whole Christian world, sought to gain the natives by strict justice in their dealings with them. . . . [T]hey did not come among them as invaders but purchasers, and therefore called an assembly of them together, to inquire who had a right to dispose of their lands; and being told it was the Sachems or Princes, they therefore agreed with them for what districts they bought, publicly and in open market^[9].

The justice and equity of the first English planters were argued on behalf of colonist’s property rights. Jeremiah Dummer and many others argued that the property of the colonists was not the purview of the English crown as it was with that of Spain. There was no divine right in America apart from the original dominion mandate given private property. However, later that century, the methods of England’s George III were beginning to resemble the crown of Spain rather than that of a Reformed Christian realm.

The American Cause

The American cause against Britain was based, not in rebellion, but in submission to the biblical mandate for private families to take dominion and subdue the earth. That, the colonists knew, was not the purview of an English king, nor a parliament, nor a government of any kind. In February, 1761, Massachusetts Superior Court convened in Salem to address the legality of crown agents invading the homes and property of the colonists. Boston attorney, James Otis, Jr. addressed the court in a powerful speech lasting over four hours. A younger Boston attorney, John Adams, who was privileged to hear it, later explained its monumental significance. Said Adams, “American Independence was then and there born.”^[10] He also reported: “Otis was a flame of fire!”^[11] The speech was a monument to American liberty because it took on British agents as an affront to one of the most essential branches of English liberty:

Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s home. A man’s home is his castle, and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle^[12].

When the British crown continued to encroach upon the property of the colonists, they compared its schemes with the feudal idea of divine right. In 1773, royal governor Thomas Hutchinson told the Massachusetts House that all colonial land was held by the “doctrine of the feudal tenure,” and “all our lands are held mediately or immediately of the Crown.”^[13] The representatives argued back: “that form of government served the purposes of oppression and tyranny . . . calculated by the Roman Pontiff to exalt himself above all that is called God.”^[14]

They argued that their property rights were secured by their forefather’s purchase from the natives under the oversight and approbation of the crown. “But,” they also questioned their governor, “how the grantees became subjects of England, that is, the supreme authority of the Parliament, your Excellency has not explained to us.”^[15] The point was that the English model of colonization followed the reformed Christian view of property rights, as they stemmed, “from the time of the Reformations . . . which darted its rays upon the benighted world.”^[16]

It was in the defense of family, home, and property rights that caused many colonial Americans to resist the growing centralization of the British regime. That sense of duty in one’s property will ever serve Americans well. It will always be the hallmark of a people who know their own mandate by God, and it will serve the interests of their nation against governmental interference upon that which was divinely decreed long ago as a sacred dominion.