Sources of American Federalism: Founders, Reformers & Ancient Hebrews

Federalism was originally created to fight against the predictable tyrannical nature of top-down hierarchical governments, existing globally in the ancient and medieval worlds. The ultimate source of this theory was the federal theology developed by the Reformers, battling to distance an all-powerful Church. This formula was then taken by political reformers, like the Founding Fathers and Framers, to be used as a diagram for how effectively to run a state. Federalism is the most flexible and nuanced government theory in history.

Daniel Elazar, in his "Covenant and Civil Society," traces New World federalism to the doctrines of Reformed Protestantism. This is ultimately linked to a single state -- Switzerland, and two main areas, Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich, and Calvin in Geneva. These early sources then filtered out and influenced the French Huguenots, the Dutch Reformed, the Scots Covenanters, and the English Puritans. And it was the Puritans who then developed the most sophisticated theory on federal theology.

As the Enlightenment developed and grew, Puritanism diminished. Such influential philosophical writers as John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc helped secularize covenant theory. One result was the American Constitution. All of this was articulated in the commonplace of natural law, understood to be divine in origin, but worldwide in application.

A British founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop came to the New World in 1630. A wealthy lawyer, Winthrop was a deep-thinking, pious Puritan who became Governor of Massachusetts. According to Edmund S. Morgan, in "The Puritan Dilemma, The Story of John Winthrop," he and other Puritans believed their sworn covenants with God would bring a blessing if they also followed his Commands, but a curse, if they did not.

The ancient Jews developed the first federal system of government. But after the land was judged by Yahweh, and subjugated, the practice fell into disuse. It was not implemented again until the Reformers began studying the Old Testament form of government for clues on God’s approach to civil society. As a result, the Puritans and others spent centuries developing the ideas of covenant and federal theology, eventually transferred to America, where it blossomed into civil government theory....
....As the Enlightenment developed and grew, Puritanism diminished. Such influential philosophical writers as John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc helped secularize covenant theory. One result was the American Constitution. All of this was articulated in the commonplace of natural law, understood to be divine in origin, but worldwide in application....

....A British founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop came to the New World in 1630. A wealthy lawyer, Winthrop was a deep-thinking, pious Puritan who became Governor of Massachusetts. According to Edmund S. Morgan, in "The Puritan Dilemma, The Story of John Winthrop," he and other Puritans believed their sworn covenants with God would bring a blessing if they also followed his Commands, but a curse, if they did not....

Federal theology. Now that’s interesting. The study of God at the local level. Except that federal systems necessitate higher levels of jurisdiction. You and I can buy our own tomatoes. We cannot declare our own truth or declare our own war.

Moreover, the characterization of federalism as a purely Protestant idea is patently wishful thinking. The Catholic idea of subsidiarity is much older—and it was well enshrined in canon law since time immemorial.

The author suffers from a common, truncated view of history where civilization and thought and wisdom mysteriously disappear at some point in the ancient world only to spring forth from the mind of the 16th century Reformers. The intervening years are treated like a swampy backwater. Remind me when the Magna Carta happened again? Oh, right. The Middle Ages.

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