The question of the Bible and Biblical authority defined debates among nineteenth century American Protestants as they appealed to the Christian scriptures to justify positions in political debates. Most Protestants in the Early Republic understood that the Scriptures exercised some sort of authority, but they also hewed Christianity much closer to the Classics than twentieth century Evangelical Protestants were aware of. Ancient Rome and Greece, Eric Adler notes, served as mainstays of the curriculum even in sectarian Protestant colleges. Antebellum Princeton blended the Classics and Christianity, but in doing so stood within the mainstream of Protestant educational commitments. The generation of Protestant churchmen active in the first half of the nineteenth century viewed Christianity as not so much a departure from the Classical tradition, but instead as an inheritor of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. George Washington Doane, second Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey, saw Medieval and Early Modern Christianity’s wars of religion against Islam as an continuation of the Greeks’ wars against their classical enemies. Christian wars of religion, and by proxy Christianity in the United States, were simply updates of the “sons of the Greeks’” ancient fight for liberty. [1]
“SONS of the Greeks, arise!”
And gird your armour on;
Your bleeding country’s rights assert,
Avenge your fathers’ wrong.
Sons of the helméd brave
Who held Thermopylæ,
Dare, as they dared, the turbaned slave,
And Greece shall yet be free.
Shades of the brave, who bled
Along Cithaeron’s steep,
And still, round glory’s hallowed bed,
Your watch of ages keep;
Say—shall yon tower-crowned hill
No more be Freedom’s home?
Her flag, no more, in triumph float,
Amid yon ocean’s foam?
Yes! soon again as pure,
Ilissus’ wave shall flow,
And soon, on famed Hymettus’ hills,
As fragrant flowers shall blow ;
For freedom’s sun shall rise
On Attica once more,
And wind and wave, shall lash and lave,
The free Ægean shore.
Shades of the mighty dead,
Whose ashes still repose,
Where Eta rears his star-girt head,
Where cold Eurotas flows,
Inspire each patriot’s heart,
To dare, as you have dared,
Till nerved be every manly arm,
And every falchion bared.
Light, light the quenchless flame,
In every warrior’s eye;
Rouse, rouse the glorious battle-cry,
For Greece – for Victory!
Nor let the combat cease,
While Moslem shall remain
To mar fair Freedom’s festal rites,
Her heritage, to stain.
Hark! ’tis the trumpet’s clang,
The squadron’s tramp, I hear;
Clashes, the bright broadsword, again,
And ring, the shield and spear :
See! ’tis the pluméd helm,
The banner streaming wide;
The Athenian horsemen mount again,
And Spartan, side by side.
‘Tis up the glorious strife,
By field, and tower, and town;
And palace, mosque, and minaret,
And frowning fort, are down:
The Ottoman retreats,
The Crescent veils its ray,
And holy hands, in Stamboul’s streets
The cross of Christ display.
“Sons of the Greeks arise!”
Rise in your fathers’ might,
With sword girt on, and spear in rest,
Wage Freedom’s holy fight;
Swear-’twas the father’s oath,
And well befits the son –
Swear, free to live, or firm to die,
“By those in Marathon!”[2]
[1] Eric Adler, The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 72-73.
[2] George Washington Doane, “Sons of the Greeks,” in William Croswell Doane ed., Songs by the Way: The Poetical Writings of George Washington Doane DD., LL.D., (Albany, NY: Joe Musnell, 1875), 32-35.