The 400th anniversary of the Mayflower Landing and the Mayflower Compact

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WEDNESDAY, 6th September, the wind coming E.N.E., a fine small gale, we loosed from Plymouth, having been kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling; and, after many difficulties in boisterous storms, at length, by God's providence, upon the 9th November following, by break of the day we espied land, which we deemed to be Cape Cod; and so afterward it proved. And the appearance of it much comforted us, especially seeing so goodly a land, and wooded to the brink of the sea; it caused us to rejoice together, and praise God that had given us once again to see land. And thus we made our course S.S.W., purposing to go to a river ten leagues to the south of the Cape; but at night, the wind being contrary, we put round again for the bay of Cape Cod; and upon the 11th November we came to an anchor in the bay, which is a good harbour and pleasant bay, circled round, except in the entrance, which is about four miles over from land to laud, compassed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood. It is a harbour wherein a thousand sail of ships may safely ride. There we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and refreshed our people, while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to search for an habitation. There was the greatest store of fowl that ever we saw. — Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation in George Barrell Cheever, The Pilgrim Fathers: or, The Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, New England, in 1620 (1849)

The Pilgrims who sailed to America from England and The Netherlands in 1620 did so trusting in God to preserve them through stormy seas and an unknown wilderness. The hand of God brought them to Cape Cod on November 11, 1620 (O.S.) [November 21, N.S.], where they signed the Mayflower Compact and first stepped ashore at Provincetown Harbor.

Signing the Mayflower Compact 1620, a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1899).

The following month (December 11/21) the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Harbor — tradition locates the spot at Plymouth Rock — where they would begin to build a home, Plimoth Plantation. After a harsh first winter, assistance provided by Native Americans, and a bountiful autumn 1621 harvest, leading to a Thanksgiving celebration — the story of which is told by William Bradford, Edward Winslow and others — the Pilgrims’ story became embedded in the American consciousness (see Timothy Alden’s story of John and Priscilla Alden). It is a narrative that is challenged by some today, but the story Pilgrims’ journey in search of freedom to worship God without fear of persecution was treasured by many 19th century American Presbyterians.

"Daily the Pilgrims turned their eyes westward, hoping for a sight of the new land. They had shaped their course for the Hudson river, of which the Dutch navigators had made favorable reports. As the voyage lengthened, their longings for the land increased. They had been tossed on the sea now sixty-five days, when, on the 9th of November, the long, low coast-line of the New World gladdened their eyes. They thanked God for the sight, and took courage. On the 11th of November they dropped anchor within Cape Cod. Sixty-seven days they had passed in the ship since their final departure from England, and one hundred and twelve since the embarkation at Delft Haven. They were weary, many were sick, and the scurvy had attacked some. They might well rejoice that they had reached these shores." — Charles W. Elliott, The New England History, quoted in William Carlos Martyn, The Pilgrim Fathers of New England: A History (1867)

In this quadricentennial of the Mayflower Landing and the Mayflower Compact, we remember the sacrifices and faith of the Pilgrims, the contributions of the Native Americans, and the legacy of faith and Biblical civil government which the Pilgrims brought to America, as cherished by American Presbyterians.

Pilgrim Anniversary, 22d Dec., 1842

Two hundred and twenty-two years
Have flown over Fore-fathers' rock,
Since th' era our home-love endears, —
There landed the brave little flock.

The ocean, the air and the land
Bent on them a stern winter frown,
But in faith and devotion that band,
Bold founders of empire, sat down.

The Pilgrims! a patriarch race,
Left country and kindred to find
For religion and freedom a place,
A home for th' oppressed of mankind.

The frail little Mayflower bore
The germ of a nation to rise
From East to Far West's distant shore,
And brave every clime 'neath the skies.

Ye fathers of millions,
I gaze with thrilling emotions on you,
My spirit goes back to your days,
Pure virtue, firm valor to view.

Your children now sip every stream
That waters our wide-spread domain,
Who of them so base as to dream
Descent from the pilgrims a stain. — James Lyman Merrick (1803-1866), Missionary to Persia, The Pilgrim’s Harp (1847)

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An early 18th century joint statement on religious liberty by a Presbyterian and a Reformed Baptist

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The case of Edward Marston, an Anglican minister in Charleston, South Carolina was remarkable for its time, because at the time he delivered his controversial sermon on the Fifth Commandment (October 15, 1704) the colony of South Carolina was governed by the Anglican establishment — but it was some notable Dissenters who came to his defense. Marston argued in his sermon that ministers of the gospel were superior (not accountable) to civil authorities (in spiritual matters), while at the same time claiming that ministers were due monetary maintenance “by Divine Right.”

We (Ministers of the Gospel do not arrogate too much to our selves, nor take too much upon us, when we affirm, That we are superior to the People, and have an Authority over them in Things Spiritual, and appertaining to God.

These claims angered the legislature, which had recently passed the Establishment Act and the Preservation Act, intended to assert more government control over the pulpit, and, it was said, led to his public whipping.

Daniel Defoe, the noted novelist and Presbyterian Dissenter, published two tracts about the church and state conflicts that took place in in early colonial South Carolina, the second of which is titled The Case of Protestant Dissenters in Carolina, Shewing How a Law to Prevent Occasional Conformity There, Has Ended in the Total Subversion of the Constitution in Church and State (1706). Within this fascinating volume, Defoe included an 1704 affidavit by the Reformed Baptist minister William Screven (c. 1629-1713) and the Scottish-American Presbyterian minister Archibald Stobo (about whom we have written before here). These two ministers jointly affirmed that they had reviewed Marston’s sermon and agreed with him that he should be free from civil review of his sermon, and also that it was proper from him to receive government maintenance. Moreover, they noted that the quote about ministerial superiority was derived from the 1692 Exposition of the Ten Commandments by Bishop Ezekiel Hopkins, a clearly approved Anglican source.

Ultimately, the case of Edward Marston was decided by the British Parliament, which ruled that the aforementioned Acts were in violation of the religious freedom guaranteed under the South Carolina Constitution. Queen Anne then nullified those two Acts, which restored the earlier 1697 Act for Granting Liberty of Conscience. Thus it was that two ministers - a Reformed Baptist and a Presbyterian - with help from Daniel Defoe, came to the aid of the Anglican Edward Marston, for the benefit of South Carolina Dissenters. The affidavit by Screven and Stobo can be read here.

A critique of the U.S. Constitution by two 19th century PCUSA ministers

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While the U.S. Constitution was largely approved of by the Presbyterian Church of the 18th and 19th centuries (it is perhaps not a coincidence that the Synod of Philadelphia and New York, meeting in Philadelphia at the same time the Constitution Convention was meeting in the same city in May 1787, proposed amendments to the Westminster Confession of Faith, including to the chapter on the Civil Magistrate, which were approved of in 1788), there were some notable Presbyterian critics of our national charter.

Most famous was RPCNA pastor James Renwick Willson, who was burned in effigy in Albany, New York for the preaching and publication of his sermon “Prince Messiah's Claims to Dominion Over All Governments; and the Disregard of His Authority by the United States, in the Federal Constitution” (1832). Many objected to his argument that Christ and His law should be recognized in the U.S. Constitution, and others objected to his questioning whether George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were in fact Christian.

But Willson and the RPCNA generally were not alone in their concerns about the most fundamental principles embedded in the U.S. Constitution.

George Duffield IV (1794-1868) was a PCUSA pastor who preached an 1820 sermon titled "Judgment and Mercy: A Sermon, Delivered...On the Day of 'Humiliation, Thanksgiving, and Prayer.'" In this sermon he identified mercies granted by God to the United States, as well as particular national sins which incurred God's judgments. His grandfather, by the way, was a chaplain for the Continental Congress.

There is one [sin] strictly national, that commenced in the adoption of the federal constitution, which is the want of an acknowledgement in it of a Supreme Being, and of a divine revelation. Although an eminent Judge of a neighbouring state, one of the guardians of that constitution, has happily decided, that it is assumed in it, that the United States are a christian nation, and Christianity the religion of the country, yet, that all important engine of our national prosperity, is, in form at least entirely atheistical. Undoubtedly it were a great sin, to have forgotten God in such an important national instrument, and not to have acknowledged Him in that which forms the very nerves and sinews of the political body. He had led through all the perils of the revolutionary struggle, and had established us in peaceful and plentiful security, and then, to have been forgotten, in the period of prosperity, certainly demerited his rebuke. Therefore hath the voice of his providence proclaimed, and even still it sounds in our ears, I did know thee in the wilderness in the land of great drought. According to their pasture so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore I will be unto them as a Lion: as a Leopard by the way will I observe them. Hosea, 13, 5–7.

Another sin for which we suffer, is a want of due respect, to the moral and religious qualifications, of those that are elevated to offices of trust and power. The question is too seldom asked, 'have such the fear of God before their eyes?' while on the other hand the sole inquiry instituted is 'will they suit and seek the interest of my party.' By the fear of the Lord, saith Solomon are riches and honour, Prov. 22, 4, as He himself had found it, and the fear of the Lord is not only the treasure of an individual, but forms in rulers, the chief permanent security of national wealth.

His proof texts for the second proposition were 2 Sam. 23.2-3 and 2 Chron. 19. Here he is addressing Art. VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution.

Another prominent critic of the U.S. Constitution, who nevertheless famously sided with the Union during the War which split both the nation and the mainline American Presbyterian church, was George Junkin, Sr. (1790-1868), father-in-law to Stonewall Jackson (and also a character in the 2003 movie Gods and Generals), published The Little Stone and the Great Image; or, Lectures on the Prophecies Symbolized in Nebuchadnezzar's Vision of the Golden Headed Monster (1844), in which he wrote (pp. 280-281):

The grand defect in the bond of our national union is the absence of the recognition of God as the Governor of this world. We have omitted — may it not be said refused? — to own him whose head wears many crowns, as having any right of dominion over us. The constitution of these United States contains no express recognition of the being of a God: much less an acknowledgment, that The Word of God, sways the sceptre of universal dominion. This is our grand national sin of omission. This gives the infidel occasion to glory, and has no small influence in fostering infidelity in affairs of state and among political men. That the nation will be blessed with peace and prosperity continuously, until this defect be remedied, no Christian philosopher expects. For this national insult, the Governor of the universe will lift again and again his rod of iron over our heads, until we be affrighted and give this glory to his name.

These comments by prominent 19th century American Presbyterians who were outside of the RPCNA reveal a remarkable inter-denominational alignment in their understanding of the relationship between church and state, one that is not well-remembered in the 21st century, an age which does not give much consideration to the concept of “national sins,” but which is nevertheless worthy of notice.

There is Another King, One Jesus: A.A. Hodge

After observing the events in Washington, D.C. this week, the words of warning from the 19th century Presbyterian theologian A.A. Hodge come vividly to mind:

In the name of your own interests I plead with you; in the name of your treasure-houses and barns, of your rich farms and cities, of your accumulations in the past and your hopes in the future, — I charge you, you never will be secure if you do not faithfully maintain all the crown-rights of Jesus the King of men. In the name of your children and their inheritance of the precious Christian civilization you in turn have received from your sires; in the name of the Christian Church, — I charge you that its sacred franchise, religious liberty, cannot be retained by men who in civil matters deny their allegiance to the King. In the name of your own soul and its salvation; in the name of the adorable Victim of that bloody and agonizing sacrifice whence you draw all your hopes of salvation; by Gethsemane and Calvary, — I charge you, citizens of the United States, afloat on your wide wild sea of politics, There is Another King, One Jesus: The Safety Of The State Can Be Secured Only In The Way Of Humble And Whole-souled Loyalty To His Person and of Obedience His Law. (Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, p. 287)

Christ's Law and Immigration

RPCNA minister James Mitchell Foster (1850-1928) served as pastor of a congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio for nearly a decade before assuming the position of Secretary of the National Reform Association (the same position which this writer currently occupies). Among his many writings is a remarkable study of the kingship of Christ entitled Christ the King (1894). 

In this book Foster examines many aspects of Christ's mediatorial kingship, considering those who came before him as typical representatives, and his kingly rule especially as it relates to the state and society. Many particular societal issues are specifically addressed by Foster in this volume, including the subject of immigration, a matter concerning which 19th century American Covenanters and other Presbyterians were very concerned to address (see William Speer's writings here, for example). The perspective from which Foster examines this and many other topics is well articulated by John Alexander in his introduction: "I would suggest that ...  the Kingship of Christ and the supremacy of His law from which all our proposed reforms logically emanate." 

The chapter on "Christ's Law and Immigration" is highlighted here today not because this writer necessarily concurs with all that the author says, and not because Log College Press takes a particular position on political questions faced by 21st century America, but rather because it is a striking example of how one 19th century Presbyterian minister viewed a topic that almost appears ripped from today's news headlines. 

Foster begins thus: "The law of Christ is the solution of all national questions. He has been exalted to the throne of universal dominion. The wheels of providence in their intricacy, mystery, sublimity and universality are subject to His hand. He is head over all things to His Church. He is the Lawgiver, King and Judge. The legislative, executive and judicial departments of government are under law to Christ. He executes the judgments of God upon rebellious nations. He bestows the blessings of heaven upon obedient nations. All national questions are to be referred to Him." 

Foster then makes a crucial point that the Christian statesman and citizen must consider with respect to the matter of immigration: "Paul said to the Athenians on Mars' Hill: 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.' By precept and example Christ taught that Roman Centurion, Samaritan women, Phoenician, Greek, and Syrian, were as dear to Him as the Jew. Peter was taught by a vision to call no man of the Gentile nations common or unclean. The great principle of Christ's kingdom is thus announced: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free; but ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' Christ's kingdom is made up of representatives from all kindreds and nations and tongues and people. Under Christ, whether a man be white, black, yellow or red -- 'A man's a man for a' that.'" 

He reminds the reader that "This country was settled by immigration originally. The Pilgrim Fathers came to Plymouth, the Hollanders to New York, William Penn and the Quakers to Pennsylvania, the Germans to New Jersey and Virginia, the Scotch-Irish to North Carolina, the Spanish to Florida, the French to Louisiana and the Northern Lakes.

This country has grown great by immigration. The hand of God is in it, and man can no more arrest it than he can keep back the rising tide. As long as there are lands untilled to be occupied and mines unworked and sources of public wealth undeveloped they will continue to come and we cannot hinder them. The under-currents of supply and demand which sends oranges to Maine, potatoes to New York, tobacco to Wisconsin, cotton to California and money everywhere, sends laborers where they are needed. The Chinese, to exclude the invading hordes from the North and West, built a great and high wall, 1500 miles long on their western border. But it did not serve any good end. We cannot build a wall of legal enactments that will keep out immigrants. As well try to dam up Niagra." 

While Foster desired to see America welcome immigrants of all sorts (notably, he spoke against the then-current anti-Chinese immigration laws), he also desired overall reform in our national system of government. "So let immigrants comes to us from every land. But this nation must adopt and enforce the law of Christ. There must be a constitutional recognition of Christ as King of nations. A constitutional provision must be made for the exclusion of the enemies of Christ from places of office and trust and making the friends of Christ only eligible to office." 

With the aim of applying the principle of Christ's kingly rule to America, Foster thus tackled a difficult subject. Read him for yourself, on immigration and other matters. One might not agree with him in all particulars, but all Christians may unite in the desire to see our country honor Christ the King in all its laws and in how it treats immigrants to this land. 

The National Reform Association

A movement that began among 19th century American Reformed Presbyterians, and included support from many other various Protestant denominations, was known as National Reform. This movement sought to promote the national recognition of the crown rights of King Jesus within the U.S. Constitution by the amendment process, and hence, it also came to be known as the Christian Amendment movement.

Meeting were held by interested parties in Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1863, but the National Reform Association was officially founded on January 27, 1864, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, although its origin is traced to an 1861 resolution adopted by the Lakes Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA) calling for the U.S. Constitution to be amended “to acknowledge God, submit to the authority of his Son, embrace Christianity, and secure universal liberty.” The organization’s original name was the National Association for the Amendment of the Constitution, but it was changed to the National Reform Association in 1875.

It is reported that members of the NRA actually met with President Abraham Lincoln before his death in an effort to advance their goals with his support. “A large and influential Committee was appointed to wait upon President Lincoln for an official endorsement of the work proposed by the Association. He responding said that in as far as he had opportunity to understand the purpose of the Association, he heartily favored it. Some time previous to this a number of Christian men had waited upon Mr. Lincoln and had requested of him the accomplishment of two measures. First, the abolition of American slavery, and second, the adoption of a suitable recognition of the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Constitution of the United States. To a few of the men who were on the Committee of the National Reform Association he privately said, ‘Gentlemen, in your former visit you requested of me two things. During the first term of my administration I was able to secure your first request. It is my hope that during my second term I will be able to secure your second request.’” (David McAllister, Christian Civil Government (1927), p. 24)

The list of early Presidents, officers and members include notable names such as William Strong (U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Presbyterian ruling elder); Archibald Alexander Hodge (Presbyterian minister); Charles Hodge (Presbyterian minister); Joshua Hall McIlvaine (Princeton Seminary professor); James Renwick Wilson Sloane (Reformed Presbyterian minister and Reformed Presbyterian Theological School professor); Thomas Patton Stevenson (Reformed Presbyterian minister); and Sylvester Fithian Scovel (Presbyterian minister and president of Wooster University); among other representatives and members from the Protestant Episcopal Church and other backgrounds, including Methodist and Baptist bodies.

The official publication of the NRA, The Christian Statesman, was founded by T.P. Stevenson and David McAllister in 1867. Proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution received significant popular support in the latter half of the nineteenth century, resulting in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, which tabled the proposal in 1874, and in hearings before Congress in the 1890s and 1910s.

Over time, a number of issues have been the focus of the NRA’s labors, beyond its primary goal of advancing a Christian amendment to the US Constitution acknowledging national submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, including Sabbath laws, religion in public schools, pro-life concerns, and other matters of interest to those who hold to Christ’s mediatorial kingship over both church and state.

It is this fundamental doctrine of Christ’s mediatorial kingship over all things, publicly avowed by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, and affirmed by many Reformed and Presbyterian ministers and churches in America over the years (Francis Robert Beattie, Alexander Craighead, Robert Lewis Dabney, Samuel Davies, Robert James Dodds, Robert James George, David McAllister, James Calvin McFeeters, Alexander McLeod, Gilbert McMaster, Alfred Nevin, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, William Swan Plumer, William Sommerville, David Steele, Thomas Patton Stevenson, James Henley Thornwell, Geerhardus Vos, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, James McLeod Willson, James Renwick Willson, Richard Cameron Wylie, and Samuel Brown Wylie, are among such men represented at Log College Press), that undergirds the mission of the National Reform Association.

Who can forget the profound words of A.A. Hodge, in particular, on behalf of the "crown rights of Jesus"? 

"And if Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings, if he is really the Ruler among the nations, then all nations are in a higher sense one nation, under one King, one law, having one interest and one end. There cannot be two laws for Christians—one to govern the relations of individuals, and the other the relations of nations. We must love our neighbor-man as ourselves, so the Master says; therefore we must love our neighbor-man as our own. The rivalries, jealousies, antagonisms and cruel wars between nations are all hideous fratricidal contests and satanic rebellions against Christ our common King. How miserably small and narrow and selfish is the form of so-called patriotism which our poor children are taught is so great a virtue, in comparison with that holy, uplifting passion which comprehends all nations as inseparable parts of the one living universal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Suppose your enterprise in the great competitions of manufacture and trade surpasses theirs, and you grow rich and gild your palaces with the spoils of their poverty; suppose your sinews of war or your personal prowess and valor surpass theirs, and your empire grows great out of the ruins of their commonwealth,—what are you, after all, but the betrayer of your brother's peace or the destroyer of your brother's life and the disloyal render of the body of your common Lord? Alas, that we have yet to learn that the so-called code of honor among nations is just as mean and vulgar a thing as the code of honor among individuals!

And if Christ is really King, exercising original and immediate jurisdiction over the State as really as he does over the Church, it follows necessarily that the general denial or neglect of his rightful lordship, any prevalent refusal to obey that Bible which is the open lawbook of his kingdom, must be followed by political and social as well as by moral and religious ruin. If professing Christians are unfaithful to the authority of their Lord in their capacity as citizens of the State, they cannot expect to be blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in their capacity as members of the Church. The kingdom of Christ is one, and cannot be divided in life or in death. If the Church languishes, the State cannot be in health, and if the State rebels against its Lord and King, the Church cannot enjoy his favor. If the Holy Ghost is withdrawn from the Church, he is not present in the State; and if he, the only "Lord, the Giver of life," be absent, then all order is impossible and the elements of society lapse backward to primeval night and chaos.

Who is responsible for the unholy laws and customs of divorce which have been in late years growing rapidly, like a constitutional cancer, through all our social fabric? Who is responsible for the rapidly-increasing, almost universal, desecration of our ancestral Sabbath ? Who is responsible for the prevalent corruptions in trade which loosen the bands of faith and transform the halls of the honest trader into the gambler's den ? Who is responsible for the new doctrines of secular education which hand over the very baptized children of the Church to a monstrous propagandism of Naturalism and Atheism ? Who is responsible for the new doctrine that the State is not a creature of God and owes him no allegiance, thus making the mediatorial Headship of Christ an unsubstantial shadow and his kingdom an unreal dream?

Whence come these portentous upheavals of the ancient primitive rock upon which society has always rested? Whence comes this socialistic earthquake, arraying capital and labor in irreconcilable conflict like oxygen and fire? Whence come these mad nihilistic, anarchical ravings, the wild presages of a universal deluge, which will blot out at once the family, the school, the church, the home, all civilization and religion, in one sea of ruin ?

In the name of your own interests I plead with you; in the name of your treasure-houses and barns, of your rich farms and cities, of your accumulations in the past and your hopes in the future,—I charge you, you never will be secure if you do not faithfully maintain all the crown-rights of Jesus the King of men. In the name of your children and their inheritance of the precious Christian civilization you in turn have received from your sires; in the name of the Christian Church,—I charge you that its sacred franchise, religious liberty, cannot be retained by men who in civil matters deny their allegiance to the King. In the name of your own soul and its salvation ; in the name of the adorable Victim of that bloody and agonizing sacrifice whence you draw all your hopes of salvation; by Gethsemane and Calvary, — I charge you, citizens of the United States, afloat on your wide wild sea of politics, There is Another King, One Jesus: The Safety Of The State Can Be Secured Only In The Way Of Humble And Whole-souled Loyalty To His Person and of Obedience His Law." (A.A. Hodge, Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, pp. 284-287)

While Eph. 1:21-22 is considered by many to be the locus classicus showing Christ’s mediatorial reign over all things (sometimes Matt. 28:18 too), McAllister argues from several other Scriptural passages thus in Christian Civil Government, p. 158:

"The Scriptures Teach that Christ is Ruler of Nations

1. Jesus Christ as Mediator, has all power and universal dominion committed to him, which must include authority over nations.

MATTHEW 28:18. – ‘And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.’

JOHN 5:22, 23. – ‘The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent him.’

ACTS 10:36. – ‘Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all.’

1 CORINTHIANS 15:27. – ‘He [the Father] hath put all things under his [the Son’s] feet.’

PHILIPPIANS 2:9-11. – ‘God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.’"

William O. Einwechter, “The Judgment is God’s” in Explicitly Christian Politics: The Vision of the National Reform Association (1997), p. 81, writes:

“The Judgment is God’s: Christ’s Reign

According to the Old Testament prophetic Scriptures and the New Testament revelation, the statement that the ‘judgment is God’s needs to be further defined to declare that in this age of fulfillment ‘the judgment is Christ’s.’ This declaration concerning the Lord Jesus Christ reflects the fact of His current mediatorial reign over the nations. At the time of the resurrection and ascension, the Lord Jesus Christ was invested with all authority in heaven and earth and given dominion over all the nations. The Father has committed all judgment to the Son who presently rules at His right hand. Let us briefly consider three important biblical texts that lead to the conclusion that now the judgment is Christ’s."

Einwechter (a Reformed Baptist mininster and former vice-president of the NRA) then goes on to discuss Psalm 2, Psalm 110 and Daniel 7 and how these particular passages teach that Christ, in his mediatorial office of king, has unlimited scope of authority and dominion over all things.

The current mission statement (2017) of the NRA includes this statement:

“In order to honor the commandment of Scripture to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over the nations of the earth (Psalm 2:7-12; Matt 28:18; Eph 1:20-22; Col. 2:10; Rev 1:5; Rev 11:15) and to progress with fulfillment of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), the mission of the National Reform Association since 1863 has been to work with political leaders, pastors, and lay leaders to promote reformation in government and society, and to secure an amendment to the United States Constitution modifying it as needed, particularly in its Preamble and First Amendment, to recognize Jesus Christ as King and Supreme Governor of the United States. The wording of the new Preamble would be proposed as such:

WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior and Lord of all, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Thus, from the mid-19th century to the present, the NRA, organized with both Reformed Presbyterian leadership and ecumenical support, continues to testify on Biblical grounds that the United States has an obligation to acknowledge the kingship of Christ and to submit to his mediatorial reign over the nations. To read more about this organization and its principles, please consult 1) George Price Hays, Presbyterians (1892), pp. 420-421; 2) Robert Ellis Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian in the United States (1895), pp. 280-283; 3) David McAllister, Christian Civil Government (1927); 4) James H. Moorhead, Princeton Seminary in American Religion and Culture (2012), pp. 227-228; and 5) Explicitly Christian Politics: The Vision of the National Reform Association (1997).

Note: The author of this post serves on the Board of the National Reform Association as Secretary and Treasurer.