The Jon Rowe Archives

I have not heard of this scholar before. But he comes to similar conclusions on the definition and understanding of "deism" as Joseph Waligore . He properly gets the "nuances."  > The relat...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2024/04/kenny-pearce-on-deism.html

Biblical conspiracy theorists hypothesize about the identity of the "revived Roman Empire" who will host the Antichrist during end times or something like that.  I'm not getting into that. Man...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2024/02/america-revived-roman-republic.html

See Part I here . More from Sen. Hawley: > God gave rulers authority to command and coerce, BUT ONLY INSOFAR > AS THEY PROTECTED THE LIBERTIES OF THE PEOPLE. God instructed�...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2024/02/observations-on-senator-josh-hawleys_16.html

He wrote this for First Things , a respected scholarly journal. Let me note up front I'm not interested in fighting political-cultural war battles over the "Christian Nation" issue. Plenty of fol...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2024/02/observations-on-senator-josh-hawleys.html

This post is intended to be a brief overview of Dr. Joseph Waligore's new book on deism . I plan on having much more to say, but in this post, I try to hit some main points. Waligore obse...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2023/07/how-dr-waligore-categorizes-different.html

  I've been absent from blogging for a few months because of a busy work-life (better to be busy than not!), but I've been planning on writing a great deal on this book by Dr. Joseph Wal...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2023/07/dr-joseph-waligores-new-book-on-deism.html

A short time ago I briefly engaged an author who wrote a book on Christianity and the American Founding that purported to "defend" America in a "trial" sense of the term. I only engaged him on on...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-american-and-french-revolutions.html

First off, I'd like to thank "Rational Rant " for alerting me to this. I've long known that the below mentioned Patrick Henry quotation is fake; but only recently figured out the origin. I know...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-bogus-patrick-henry-quotation.html

I recently was involved in a discussion where, alas, the name of David Barton came up. At this point, I think Barton is a distraction from the issues that interest us on religion and the America...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2023/03/denominational-affiliation-tells-us.html

Writing at the Washington Post , Jennifer Rubin has an article entitled, "Think America Is A ‘Christian Nation’? George Washington Didn’t."  I saw this from Dean Paul Caron's site . Quoti...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2023/02/rubin-on-george-washingtons-approach-to.html

If it's fair to even call it "communion." If we want to understand the political theology of the American founding and its attendant religious liberty and establishment issues, we need to unders...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/12/samuel-seabury-leverages-church-of.html

This is another post of mine from 2008 on John Adams' response to one Jedidiah Morse on the concept  of Unitarianism.  Adams was a fervent theological unitarian who militantly and bitterly r...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/11/john-adams-fu-letter-to-jedidiah-morse.html

I wrote this in 2008 . It's not bad. Though, I think I could have written a stronger piece. The point I take from intensely studying George Washington's personal and political theology is that, a...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/11/revisiting-george-washington-and.html

This is is very thorough and well argued article from a brilliant young scholar, Gordon Dakota Arnold. He sympathizes with the perspective of more accommodation of traditional, conservative Chri...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/10/arnolds-article-on-james-madison-anti.html

In 2022 .  Dr. Peter Lillback, President of Westminster Theological Seminary has done some legitimate scholarly work on the history of theology. I've criticized  his 1200 page book  that pur...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/09/lillbacks-repeats-phony-quotation.html

I am still around and blogging, just busy with some work/life issues which is why you haven't heard from me in a while. One of the highlights of my Summer (2022) was peer reviewing a book on Deis...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/09/bolingbrokes-deism.html

This very dense article by one Kevin Slack is found here . There are many good things in this article, most of which I've already seen; but it did manage to deliver something I hadn't noticed bef...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/05/cambridge-article-on-ben-franklin-and.html

For some time I have featured the work of Columbia law professor Philip Hamburger's "Separation of Church and State " with critical commentary. I just hope my criticisms are fair.  The chapter ...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/04/hamburger-separation-of-church-and.html

Philip Hamburger's book "Separation of Church and State " turns 20 years old in 2022. Hamburger is a brilliant scholar and Ivy League Professor of Law (Columbia), and as such his work is always w...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2022/03/article-by-philip-hamburger-on-justice.html

> "Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar > theory. They have supposed, that the deity, from the relations, we > stand in, to himself and to�...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2021/12/hamilton-cited-blackstone-for-opposite.html

On page 161 of "The Closing of the American Mind ," Allan Bloom wrote:  > More serious for us are the arguments of the revolutionaries who > accepted our principles of freedom�...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2021/10/liberalism-v-republicanism-and-american.html

This passage from Gregg Frazer's thesis made an impression on me when I first read it. He discusses some of the sermons from America's founding era that argued on behalf of the patriots' cause. T...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2021/10/rousseau-and-hebrew-republic.html

This article from 2014 by John Fea (note I am quoted here) features one of the more interesting quotations from Ben Franklin, who was neither an orthodox Trinitarian Christian or a strict deist,...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2021/09/did-ben-franklin-believe-in-purgatory.html

This was from the Winter 2016 edition of National Affairs by F.H. Buckley. It's on Bolingbroke's influence on the American founding. A taste: > While they abhorred the corruption of Bri...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2021/08/fh-buckley-patriot-kings-american.html

Thomas Jefferson, after around 1800 was under the influence of the unitarian Joseph Priestley. And Priestley did, if I understand him right, think "the plenary inspiration of the Bible" was a "co...

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2021/08/jefferson-priestley-and-bolingbroke.html