"He shall have dominion also from sea to sea"
Knox, 3 July, 2011 © Scott McAndless
Deuteronomy 15:1-11 (NIV), Psalm 72, Luke 18:1-8, James 2:14-17 (KJV)
The history of Canada’s relationship with the King James Version of the Bible goes back to the very beginning. In 1864, political leaders from various colonies in British North America gathered in the city of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to talk about the possibility of forming some s ort of federation. One of the more contentious issues on the agenda was what this new political entity would be called. The name Canada was more or less settled, of course. But there is usually more to a name than just one word.
There were those, for example, who thought that it should be called the Republic of Canada, but that was clearly not acceptable to the majority perhaps because it reminded people too much of the nation that the Americans had formed to the south. A certain John A. Macdonald, the delegate from Upper Canada, thought that there was no question but that the new country should be called the Kingdom of Canada as a clear statement of their loyalty to Queen Victoria. But apparently the Colonial Office back in London was not too keen on that idea and it was also feared that such a name might antagonize the Americans.
So it was a bit of a problem and the conference got bogged down until Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, the Premier of New Brunswick, saved the day. He was a spiritual man, and was reflecting on the scriptures when he came upon a passage in his copy of the Bible. It was the King James Version, of course. Tilley was reading in his Bible in the 72nd Psalm when he stumbled upon the eighth verse, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea.”
The verse seemed to fit the dream that these founding fathers had for this nation – a great and vast land that would be united and stretch from the Sea Atlantic even unto the Sea Pacific. The name just seemed right even if the dream of a true nation from coast to coast would not be realized until the completion of the Canadian National Railway. And so it was that when the new federation was finally formed, it was given the name: The Dominion of Canada. So you might say that the King James Version of the Bible is so important to the history of our country that it gave it a name.
Today, as we are often reminded, Canada stretches not only from sea to sea but also to another sea in the north. Indeed, our present government has made it a special priority to defend our Canadian sovereignty along that northern coast. But what does it really mean to have dominion from sea to sea to sea?
It says, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea.” Who is he? Well, in the psalm it literally refers to the king. But we today in Canada are not directly ruled by the British Crown in any effective way. But I don’t believe that that makes the 72nd Psalm any less an appropriate starting point for Canada today than it was back in 1864.
Although the psalm is about being a good king, it also applies to government in general and, even more important, about building a strong society where there is prosperity for many. As such, it probably has a lot to teach us still today. So I would think that it is time to reclaim not only the eighth verse but the entire psalm for Canada. Certainly I don’t think it would hurt for the political heirs of Sir John A. Macdonald and those other founding fathers to take it to heart!
When we think of words like dominion, rule, authority, we see them as power words. Dominion is about who has the power to make people do what they want. Kingship (at least as Sir John A. saw it) is about somebody having the last word about everything. So, given that this psalm is about the idea of kingship and dominion, you might expect it to spend all its time talking about matters of power – about how the king will lead his military, about national defence and perhaps diplomacy. There is some of that, of course. There is talk of the king’s enemies licking the dust and the kings of places like Tarshish and Sheba offering him diplomatic favours. But you can hardly say that these things are the main concern in the psalm.
What are clearly much more important are the domestic policies of this “dominion.” And there is a particular interest in how a particular segment of the population is treated. Now, in a way, I don’t suppose that is very surprising. We are used to having those who govern us pay special attention to certain segments of society. This is usually taken as a sign of good government. For example, there is an expectation that they will take special care of the business community – that they will lower business taxes, get bothersome regulations and “red tape” out of the way of the entrepreneurial class. You know, that kind of thing. So surely, you would think, this psalm has a lot to say about the government’s relations with business. But no, no, no, that doesn’t seem to be a concern.
Well, maybe they didn’t exactly have a business class back then. But the other group that we’re always being told that the people in charge have to take care of is the wealthy. After all, they are the ones who create the demand that creates the markets that create the jobs. Isn’t that right? That’s what we’re always told. If we don’t keep the rich happy with really low taxes and special perks, they’ll just get up and take their money to another country that will give them a better deal. So surely there is something in this psalm about looking out for their interests. Wealthy… wealthy… rich… …no, no, not a thing!
So, what particular segment of society is this ideal ruler supposed to look out for? Let’s see, this is what it says: “he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.” “For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.” And how about this one, “He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.” That’s saving three times over.
There is also a lot of talk about “judging” the poor and acting towards them with “judgement.” But we might misunderstand that. We have been trained to think that judging the poor means catching them when they perform the crimes that the poor sometimes do – petty theft, drug dealing and the like – putting them in jail and throwing away the key. It’s like a news story I read recently. A poor man, desperate to cover the rent, went and robbed a bank of $100. He immediately regretted it and went and turned himself in to the police the very next day. When the case went to trial, the judge judged him really well and threw him in jail for 15 years. We look at that and say, “Yes! That’s justice. That’s what it’s all about.” And maybe, to a certain extent it is.
Of course, at the same time there was a story about a CEO of a lending mortgage company who was convicted of leading a massive fraud that stole about $3 billion from the little people. Guess how much time he got in jail. He got just a little bit more than three years in prison. But that is justice – that is how we are used to it working. If you’re poor and steal $100 you get 15 years. If you’re rich and steal $3 billion, if they bother to prosecute you, you get 3 years. At least that is how most people in our world today tend to think about justice – especially poor people.
But when the Bible talks about doing justice to the poor, it doesn’t generally have that sort of justice in mind. Justice, from the Bible’s perspective is more about making sure that the goods of the earth are shared out as equally as possible than it is about putting people in jail for petty theft. And so when this psalm talks about the king judging the poor, what it actually means is that it is the king’s job to make sure that the rich or the powerful or the mortgage default swap traders do not conspire together and use their considerable resources to take away the things that the poor need to survive and thrive in the world.
And if that was what the king’s primary job was, then it is no wonder that this psalm is constantly talking about him looking after the poor and needy. When you think of all the schemes that some people have come up with to try and get absolutely everything into their clutches, it has got to be a full time job to look out for the interests of those who are in despirate need of a protector.
So there you have it: the verse from the King James Bible that inspired the name of our country. But I guess that my question is, did it inspire anything more than a really good name? The eighth verse clearly spoke to these founding fathers about their great vision of one vast but united country stretching from sea to sea. But did the rest of the psalm inform their understanding of this country and what would be important in its administration? Did they see themselves and their political heirs as necessarily taking up the task assigned to the ancient kings of defending the weak against their oppressors, of looking out for the needs of the poor ahead of their wealthier brethren, of building a country where everyone might be given the chance to prosper and not just those who got a leg up because of all the money that they inherited from daddy? Dare I ask the question? Did they think that they were founding a country that would have socialist values?
Well, I don’t know how much some of them might have appreciated that label, but to a certain extent, the answer to that question is yes. These men (and, yes, given the political realities of the time they were all indeed men) were very much aware of the duty that they owed to the weakest members of society. They did indeed found this country under a basic assumption that it would have Christian values. Of course, that meant something a little bit different over a century ago. When they spoke about Christian values it was in a context that was almost universally Christian so they didn’t really mean Christian over and against somebody else’s set of values. And they certainly understood that those Christian values were about more than just sexual morality. (We sometimes sadly assume that they are only about that.) They understood that at the heart of Christian values was the question of who would take care of the weakest members of society.
If Canada was to be a dominion, the obvious question was who would exercise that dominion over the country. The political answer to that question at the time was clearly that the Queen (Victoria was on the throne and would remain on it so long that most Canadians could not imagine another head wearing that crown) – she would exercise that dominion and do it through her representatives in the parliament. But, in many ways, the fuller answer to that question was that God would exercise true dominion in this country but only when the true values found in the seventy-second psalm were ingrained in the life of this country – only when the weakest members were given the true protection that they needed and allowed to thrive. Are we there yet? Is that the Dominion that we live in today? No, it is not. But we are all called to do our part to construct such a country.