An Appeal to Heaven
An ancient political phrase and a historic flag of the United States has entered the discourse as a flag of Christian Nationalism, insurrection, and the question of Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alitoās objectivity to rule on cases.
So how did we get here?
The Eastern White Pine tree in the history of North America dates back to before British North America.
Legend says that when the Iroquois Confederacy was established, the leaders of the five nations agreed to a pact of peace between them and buried their weapons beneath a great pine tree.
When British colonists arrived in New England, they immediately saw the commercial value of the tree: Strong and tall, the tree was worthwhile for building construction and shipbuilding. Wealthy colonials started buying land to harvest the trees, creating a worldwide industry shipping them all the way to the Far East and Africa.
The United Kingdom was an empire due to its powerful navy, depending on a continual supply of wood, particularly for masts and spars. The Empire was concerned its sources could be cut off by other great powers. As such, Parliament in 1691 passed a law reserving all trees in the Empire with a diameter of 24ā as property of the Crown, to be marked with the Broad Arrow when surveyed. (The Broad Arrow is a heraldic symbol denoting Crown property.) A new law was passed in 1722 reserving all trees with a diameter of 12ā.
The penalty for taking the trees was the huge sum of Ā£50.
The Province of New Hampshire General Court (also the official name of the state legislature today) then passed a law to bring the province in line with the United Kingdom.
The Crown Surveyor of the Kingās Woods for New Hampshire was ordered in 1732 to undertake a survey of sawmills to see if trees had been illegally harvested. The Surveyor identified six such sawmills. In a riot, the Surveyor was run out of Weare, New Hampshire, in whatās now known as the Pine Tree Riot. (An annual festival is held there every year to commemorate the event.)
Throughout the 1750s and 60s demonstrations and riots protesting the Crownās seizure of a lucrative commodity became part of the fuel leading to dissatisfaction with colonial rule.
As for the phrase āAn Appeal to Heaven,ā John Locke first wrote of it in 1690. Locke opposed the Divine Right of Kings. He argued that people, when faced with oppressive or tyrannical government, would āappeal to Heavenā to deliver them from tyranny. (This is similar to Karl Marxās idea of religion being the opiate of the masses, usually taken out of context to oppose religion. Marxās idea was similar to Lockeās.)
Since there were no international rules of law at the time between states, Locke theorised that there must be a superior power to nations (God) which would deliver retribution to states which did not uphold rights, as many philosophers and theologians of the day felt such rights axiomatically flowed directly from God.
The phrase was also invoked by Patrick Henry in his famous āLiberty or Deathā speech, and by the Second Continental Congress.
When the Continental Congress authorised George Washington to establish a navy for the Army, he commissioned his secretary to come up with an ensign (shown) to fly to identify its ships. This flag became the first flag flown by the seven ships commissioned in the Continental Armyās service to protect the New England coast. His fleetās seizure of tons of arms and ammunition from British shipping for the Army added to the popular opinion that the colonial cause was righteous and the āappeal to Heavenā showed Godās favour.
Usage of the flag rapidly spread to fly over churches, town halls, and public grounds as a growing symbol of rebellion against tyranny.
Later, the flag also flew over the nationās capital in Philadelphia. It was adopted as the first flag of the State of Maine in 1901 until 1909, modified by removing the phrase and adding a blue star in the upper left, representing the North Star. It is the official flag today of the Massachusetts Navy (also without the phrase above the pine tree).
After the original US flag was adopted, the Pine Tree Flag fell out of favour, becoming mostly a curiosity, flown by history buffs, Revolutionary War reƫnactment buffs, and the annual Pine Tree Riot festival.
Fast forward to the XX Century and the Christian Nationalist movement of the New Apostolic Reformation [NAR].
Theologians of the NAR believed that the upheavals of the Civil Rights Era (desegregation of schools and the attempt to dismantle Jim Crow), Second Wave feminism, gay rights, immigration, and other gains represented an intolerable affront to God. NAR worked with as many different Christian denominations as possible to promote the idea the Christianity was under attack and the only way to bring about Godās proper rule in the USA was an Appeal to Heaven. The NAR recommended churches adopt the flag to represent protest against the tyranny of the US government and progressivism.
It is in the modern context of the flag, not the historic one, that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) flies the flag outside his office, that the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021 carried that flag and the Cross onto the Capitol grounds in their attempt to overthrow the government, and the deflection from right-wing groups trying to explain it away as a historic US flag rather than a symbol of Christian fascism.