Papers by Nicholas Miller
Ellen White’s opposition to fugitive slave laws, her support of the abolition of slavery, as well... more Ellen White’s opposition to fugitive slave laws, her support of the abolition of slavery, as well as her promotion of prohibition and temperance legislation is well known. What is less explored is her underlying philosophy of law and rights, and how this philosophy guided her actions in relation to social reform movements. This paper explores the thought of Ellen White in relation to her view of natural law and civil rights, and how it helped guide her social activism.
This paper has three parts: the first will explore Ellen White’s engagement with biblical and Protestant concepts of natural law; the second will examine how her conception of natural and moral law shaped her thinking about natural individual and civil rights; third, it looks at several examples of how her activism drew on these underlying ideas and concepts and applied them to real world problems and injustices. In conclusion, it draws lessons about how these insights can provide guidance for appropriate Christian social activism today.
A recent controversy at a Seventh-day Adventist university in relation to the teaching of biologi... more A recent controversy at a Seventh-day Adventist university in relation to the teaching of biological evolution highlighted differences within the Adventist Church over how to read and understand the Bible. 2 A well-known church evangelist objected to some class materials and a syllabus that revealed that some of the university's science teachers were teaching the theory of "naturalistic evolution" as the actual description of the way life originated and developed. The evangelist protested in a letter to church leaders that the university's teaching was undermining his evangelistic efforts as well as the church's teaching on biblical creation.
Books by Nicholas Miller
Traditional understandings of the genesis of the separation of church and state rest on assumptio... more Traditional understandings of the genesis of the separation of church and state rest on assumptions about "Enlightenment" and the republican ethos of citizenship. In The Religious Roots of the First Amendment, Nicholas P. Miller does not seek to dislodge that interpretation but to augment and enrich it by recovering its cultural and discursive religious contexts--specifically the discourse of Protestant dissent. He argues that commitments by certain dissenting Protestants to the right of private judgment in matters of Biblical interpretation, an outgrowth of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, helped promote religious disestablishment in the early modern West.
This movement climaxed in the disestablishment of religion in the early American colonies and nation. Miller identifies a continuous strand of this religious thought from the Protestant Reformation, across Europe, through the English Reformation, Civil War, and Restoration, into the American colonies. He examines seven key thinkers who played a major role in the development of this religious trajectory as it came to fruition in American political and legal history: William Penn, John Locke, Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, William Livingston, John Witherspoon, and James Madison.
Miller shows that the separation of church and state can be read, most persuasively, as the triumph of a particular strand of Protestant nonconformity-that which stretched back to the Puritan separatist and the Restoration sects, rather than to those, like Presbyterians, who sought to replace the "wrong" church establishment with their own, "right" one. The Religious Roots of the First Amendment contributes powerfully to the current trend among some historians to rescue the eighteenth-century clergymen and religious controversialists from the enormous condescension of posterity.
Book Reviews by Nicholas Miller
This book is based on papers from a scholarly conference at the University of Toronto, about the ... more This book is based on papers from a scholarly conference at the University of Toronto, about the growing conflict between religious freedom and equality rights. It focuses primarily on the legal system of Canada, though some attention is given to the United Kingdom as well. The importance of this book is not limited to Canada, or even Commonwealth heritage legal systems. Rather, this is a report from the front lines of a more advanced stage of a legal conflict that is already underway in the United States and in many other places around the world.
The United states tends to be about a decade or two behind its neighbor to the north in the process of secularization. Whatever political and legal conflicts Canadians experience between religion and secularity today, will very soon be on the agenda of the US. These same conflicts are already well under way in various countries of northern and western Europe, as well as in South and Central America. Thus, legal practitioners and scholars in virtually any country connected with a European law heritage who wish to understand the growing legal conflict between religious freedom and equality rights will find this book of real value.
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Papers by Nicholas Miller
This paper has three parts: the first will explore Ellen White’s engagement with biblical and Protestant concepts of natural law; the second will examine how her conception of natural and moral law shaped her thinking about natural individual and civil rights; third, it looks at several examples of how her activism drew on these underlying ideas and concepts and applied them to real world problems and injustices. In conclusion, it draws lessons about how these insights can provide guidance for appropriate Christian social activism today.
Books by Nicholas Miller
This movement climaxed in the disestablishment of religion in the early American colonies and nation. Miller identifies a continuous strand of this religious thought from the Protestant Reformation, across Europe, through the English Reformation, Civil War, and Restoration, into the American colonies. He examines seven key thinkers who played a major role in the development of this religious trajectory as it came to fruition in American political and legal history: William Penn, John Locke, Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, William Livingston, John Witherspoon, and James Madison.
Miller shows that the separation of church and state can be read, most persuasively, as the triumph of a particular strand of Protestant nonconformity-that which stretched back to the Puritan separatist and the Restoration sects, rather than to those, like Presbyterians, who sought to replace the "wrong" church establishment with their own, "right" one. The Religious Roots of the First Amendment contributes powerfully to the current trend among some historians to rescue the eighteenth-century clergymen and religious controversialists from the enormous condescension of posterity.
Book Reviews by Nicholas Miller
The United states tends to be about a decade or two behind its neighbor to the north in the process of secularization. Whatever political and legal conflicts Canadians experience between religion and secularity today, will very soon be on the agenda of the US. These same conflicts are already well under way in various countries of northern and western Europe, as well as in South and Central America. Thus, legal practitioners and scholars in virtually any country connected with a European law heritage who wish to understand the growing legal conflict between religious freedom and equality rights will find this book of real value.
This paper has three parts: the first will explore Ellen White’s engagement with biblical and Protestant concepts of natural law; the second will examine how her conception of natural and moral law shaped her thinking about natural individual and civil rights; third, it looks at several examples of how her activism drew on these underlying ideas and concepts and applied them to real world problems and injustices. In conclusion, it draws lessons about how these insights can provide guidance for appropriate Christian social activism today.
This movement climaxed in the disestablishment of religion in the early American colonies and nation. Miller identifies a continuous strand of this religious thought from the Protestant Reformation, across Europe, through the English Reformation, Civil War, and Restoration, into the American colonies. He examines seven key thinkers who played a major role in the development of this religious trajectory as it came to fruition in American political and legal history: William Penn, John Locke, Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, William Livingston, John Witherspoon, and James Madison.
Miller shows that the separation of church and state can be read, most persuasively, as the triumph of a particular strand of Protestant nonconformity-that which stretched back to the Puritan separatist and the Restoration sects, rather than to those, like Presbyterians, who sought to replace the "wrong" church establishment with their own, "right" one. The Religious Roots of the First Amendment contributes powerfully to the current trend among some historians to rescue the eighteenth-century clergymen and religious controversialists from the enormous condescension of posterity.
The United states tends to be about a decade or two behind its neighbor to the north in the process of secularization. Whatever political and legal conflicts Canadians experience between religion and secularity today, will very soon be on the agenda of the US. These same conflicts are already well under way in various countries of northern and western Europe, as well as in South and Central America. Thus, legal practitioners and scholars in virtually any country connected with a European law heritage who wish to understand the growing legal conflict between religious freedom and equality rights will find this book of real value.