Douglas Wilson's Theocratic Libertarianism Is Not Theocratic: Esoteric Writing in the Service of Religious Liberty

Pete Hegseth and Douglas Wilson Praying Before a Worship Service at the Pentagon.

Douglas Wilson is a Calvinist pastor in Moscow, Idaho, who has become the most influential proponent of American Christian Nationalism.  His influence extends into the Trump Administration, as indicated recently by his being invited by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deliver a sermon at the Pentagon.  Tucher Carlson has said: "Pastor Doug Wilson is the Christian Nationalist they warned you about."

Wilson identifies himself as a "theocratic libertarian."  But if you study what he says carefully, you will see that he's not theocratic at all because he's really a Lockean classical liberal who embraces religious liberty and toleration, and therefore he's closer to the liberal America of Roger Williams than he is to the illiberal America of John Winthrop.  

As evidence for this, I'll be relying mostly on two texts:  his most recent book--Frequently Asked (Shouted) Questions About Christian Nationalism (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2025) and Ross Douthat's interview with Wilson at the New York Times ("He Believes America Should Be a Theocracy," Oct. 9, 2025).  I'll refer to the book as FAQ and the interview as NYT.

Let's start with a definition of the word "theocracy."  As I noted in my previous post, the English word "theocracy" is a translation of the Greek word theocratia that was coined by Josephus as a term for ancient Israel as ruled by the Mosaic laws.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines "theocracy" as 

"A form of government in which God (or a deity) is recognized as the king or immediate ruler, and his laws are taken as the statute-book of the kingdom, these laws being usually administered by a priestly order as his ministers and agents; hence (loosely) a system of government by a sacerdotal order, claiming a divine commission; also, a state so governed: esp. applied to the commonwealth of Israel from the exodus to the election of Saul as king."

This is not libertarianism.  On the contrary, it looks more like the theocratic regime sought by conservative Catholic integralists who argue that politics must order the lives of citizens to direct them to the eternal salvation of their souls, and for this the temporal power of government must be subordinated to the spiritual power of the Church.  Some integralists point to the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX in medieval France as their model.  This is a Christian version of Israel under the Mosaic law or of Plato's theocratic city in the Laws. 

This suggests to me that deciding whether a God-centered metaphysics requires a theocratic political regime will depend upon whether one is looking to the God of the Old Testament or the God of the New Testament.  As I have indicated in a previous post, Roger Williams was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for denouncing the Puritan rule there as a theocracy enforcing Mosaic law that was contrary to the New Testament, where the Christian churches were voluntary associations that did not persecute heretics or unbelievers.  In Rhode Island, he established a political order that tolerated all religions and even atheists.  This showed how God-centered Christians could reject the theocratic God of the Old Testament and embrace the Lockean liberal principles of toleration and religious liberty suggested in the New Testament.  One can see this, for example, in the Christian Lockean liberalism of C. S. Lewis.

Therefore, to identify Wilson's Christian Nationalism as theocratic, we would have to see him clearly argue for returning America to Winthrop's Puritan theocracy based on the Mosaic laws of the Hebrew Commonwealth as incorporated into the "Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts" (1647).  

I emphasize that we would need to see him clearly argue for this because while I admit that what he says conveys a superficial impression of an argument for Puritan theocracy, I never see him clearly and explicitly saying this.  I see him engaging in what Leo Strauss used to call esoteric writing: Wilson wants to convey a secret teaching to his careful readers that will not be seen by the less careful readers who would be shocked by the secret teaching.  

There are two reasons for believing that Wilson is a secret writer.  First, the weaknesses in his arguments for theocracy are so clear that any attentive and well-informed reader can see them.  That's one of the main techniques of the secret writer: he makes his arguments for his surface teaching so easily refutable that the careful reader suspects that the writer is not taking these arguments seriously, and he is inviting his reader to look for the secret teaching. 

The second reason for thinking Wilson is a secret writer is that he contradicts himself in a way that is easily noticed by the meticulous reader, which is another technique of the secret writer.  Wilson seems on the surface of his writing to be arguing for a theocracy like that of Winthrop's Puritans in Massachusetts.  But if you look carefully at what he proposes, you will see that it does not follow the model of the Puritan theocracy, and it actually looks like the sort of liberal social order that Williams established in Rhode Island.  

Wilson then distracts his theocratic readers from seeing this contradiction by promising them that his final goal is the "ideal theocratic republic," but he puts this off to the distant future--"like 500 years from now," as he says to Douthat.  So those who want theocracy will have to wait at least 500 years!  And even that promise depends on Wilson's debatable interpretation of chapter 20 of the Book of Revelations as teaching a postmillennialist eschatology. Until we reach the "end-times," Wilson advises his theocratic readers that they should be happy to live in a liberal regime that secures their religious liberty in a pluralist society.

WEAK ARGUMENTS

The first question in FAQ is "What is Christian Nationalism?"  Here's Wilson's answer:

Fundamentally, Christian nationalism is the belief that human societies require a transcendent anchor to hold all our cultural, political, and social assumptions in place, and that this transcendent anchor should be the true and living God, not an idol.

All ethical judgments, in order to be ethical judgments, rely on some form of "Thus saith the Lord."  Otherwise, they are not ethical judgments at all, but rather the opinions of some guy.  For an atheist, they are the burbling of certain protoplasmic chemicals, reacting as they always would under these conditions and at this temperature.  Whatever the case, they have no authority at all.  This is a foundational principle, one that every Christian accepts, at least implicitly.  Justice is not arbitrary--it's rooted in the character of God himself.  But the thing many Christians miss is that this principle applies to communities as well as individuals. A law is either righteous or unrighteous in the same way that an action is either righteous or unrighteous.  The basic reality doesn't change just because the scale is larger.  If we want a standard for right and wrong--regardless of whether that standard is going to be applied to a next-door neighbor or to Congress--we need God's word for it.

. . . At the end of the day, if our standard of judgment originates from somewhere other than God, then the only authority it possesses is that of power. . . .

Christian nationalism thus holds that we cannot order our corporate lives without reference to the divine. . . . (1-2).

This conception of Christian nationalism assumes a Divine Command Theory of ethics--that the only standard of right and wrong is the command of God: whatever God commands to be done is right, and whatever God commands not to be done is wrong.  And since the only standard of right and wrong is supernatural, there can be no purely natural standard.  The truth of this claim depends on at least two factual assertions about human history. 

First, there's the Fact of Supernatural Law--that the true God has clearly revealed his supernatural moral law to all human beings who sincerely want to know it.  

Second, there's the Fact of No Natural Law--that human beings cannot know a natural moral law by natural human experience without any supernatural revelation.

Wilson does not provide any strong arguments or evidence to support these two factual claims about human history.  On the contrary, much of what he says indicates that both of these factual assertions are false.

Supernatural Law?

In chapter 13 of FAQ, Wilson asks: "Is Christian nationalism fine with other forms of religious nationalism?  Hindu nationalism in India?  Jewish nationalism in Israel?"  His answer is no.  "Generic religious nationalism is no good."  The only good religious nationalism is Christian nationalism because "Christianity is the true religion."  Therefore, the Hindus in India should become Christians and establish India as a Christian nation with Christian laws and government.  And the Jews in Israel should become Christians and establish Israel as a Christian nation with Christian laws and government.

There are two claims here.  God has clearly revealed to all human beings that Christianity is the only true religion.  And God has also clearly revealed to all human beings that every nation should establish a Christian theocratic government with Christian laws.  Can Wilson give us proof--or at least plausible arguments and evidence--to support these claims?  If not, then they are just "the opinions of some guy."

Wilson seems to assume that most of his readers will be Christians, and therefore he does not have to argue for Christianity being the true religion since his Christian readers will take that for granted.  But if so, doesn't that mean that the foundation of his whole argument is not some clear revelation from God but just "the opinions of some Christian guys"?

Now, of course, the Christians will say that it's not just a matter of their "opinions" because they look to the clear revelation of God's commands in the Bible.  But then the Jews will say that the Hebrew Bible is a clear revelation of Judaism as the true religion and the God of Israel as the one true God.  After all, God revealed Himself to Moses, speaking to him out of the burning bush, telling him that he was to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt.  God then revealed his name--Yahweh, which is usually translated as "the Lord" in English Bibles (Exo. 3:1-15).  Later, Yahweh met Moses on Mount Sinai and gave him his law summarized as Ten Commandments (Exo. 19-20, Deu. 5).  

The first commandment was "You shall have no other gods before (or besides) me" (Exo. 20:3).  Although this is often said to be the first declaration of monotheism, it's unclear what exactly is being said here.  Notice that Yahweh speaks of "other gods."  So it's not clear whether Yahweh is really saying that He is the only god who exists (monotheism), or that He is the one god among many that the people of Israel should choose as their god (henotheism), or that He is the only god among many who is worthy of worship (monolatry).

There is some evidence in the Hebrew Bible that the people of Israel had to choose from among the many gods that were believed to exist.  Genesis 33:20 says that Jacob "set up an altar and called it El Elohe Israel," which means "El is the God of Israel."  In the ancient Levant, El was the white-bearded king of the gods who ruled over an assembly of the gods.  So it's possible that El was the first patron deity of the people of Israel.  Notice that "El" is even part of the name Israel (yisra-El).  But it seems that eventually the people of Israel chose Yahweh as their god, who was a subordinate god of weather and war.  They might have chosen him because they needed a more militarized theology.  That Yahweh was not the only god is suggested elsewhere in the Bible--such as Psalm 82, where Yahweh "presides in the great assembly" and "renders judgment among the gods."  The Bible thus creates some doubt as to whether Yahweh is the only god that exists.

But even if we set that aside and say that Yahweh the god of Israel is the only true god, that creates a problem for Wilson. How can he say that Judaism is not a true religion?  Because the New Testament has revealed Jesus as the son of God who established Christianity as the true religion that supplanted Judaism?  But apparently that revelation was not clear enough to persuade most of the Jews to convert to this new religion.  Presumably, Wilson will say that the revelation of Christ was perfectly clear, but most of the Jews were stubbornly resistant to that revelation.  But couldn't the Jews respond to this by saying, "this is just the opinion of some Christian guy"?

If the revelation of Christ was perfectly clear, we should be able to define the content of that Christian revelation in a way that all Christians will accept.  Wilson suggests:

The definition of Christian in this context is straightforward.  It refers to the system of belief expressed by the Apostles' Creed, with those beliefs being accepted and received as the truth of God, by means of faith alone.  In the American context, the expression of this faith is by and large Protestant and evangelical (FAQ, 5).

Here's an English translation of the Latin Apostles' Creed:

I believe in God the Father almighty,

Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

The origin of this text is unclear, but it was probably developed in southern Gaul sometime around the middle of the 5th century.  It is shorter than the Nicene Creed adopted in 381, and unlike the Nicene Creed, it does not explicitly define the divinity of Jesus or the Holy Spirit, although it does affirm the Trinity of God, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It's called the Apostles' Creed because it originally was believed to have been written by the twelve Apostles, and some copies of the text even divide it into twelve parts, with each of the Apostles contributing a part.  But there's no clear historical evidence that the Apostles had anything to do with this.

The most obvious question here is why do Christians need these "creeds" at all?  If the text of the New Testament is clear in its teaching to all Christians, there should be no need for an interpretive summary of its doctrines in the form of a creedal text composed by some church council.  If the Protestant Reformers were right about their principle of sola scriptura, the meaning of revelation as conveyed in the Biblical text should be clear enough that all Christians can agree on what it means without the need for priests or church traditions to interpret the Biblical text for them.  But then the Catholic Church argues that the Protestants are simply wrong in assuming the perspicuity of the Bible--that the meaning of the Bible is clear to all believers--because the Bible is actually so obscure that it needs to be interpreted by the tradition of the Church as expressed in the councils of the church that agree on the various creedal statements.  This is suggested in the Apostles' Creed by the affirmation of "the holy catholic Church."  And, of course, the Roman Catholic Church can claim to be the one true Church by virtue of the Apostolic Succession of the Popes from Saint Peter.  A Protestant like Wilson must reject this.  But this illustrates the problem, Christians can't agree on what exactly is revealed in the Bible because that Biblical revelation is obscure.  And that's why there have been hundreds of heresies and schisms in the Christian church over the past two thousand years.

This Illumination from a 13th-Century Manuscript Shows the Twelve Apostles Writing the "Apostles' Creed," While Receiving the Inspiration from the Holy Spirit (the Dove at the Top).

This illustrates what I have called the problem of the Holy Spirit or the problem of religious pluralism.  Notice that in the Illumination, the Holy Spirit (symbolized as a dove) hovers over the Apostles to inspire them with the correct interpretation of the Biblical revelation.  But if that shamanic spirit really speaks to Christians, he does not speak clearly enough for them to agree on what he is saying.  Consequently, as John Locke observed, "everyone is orthodox to himself," and "every church is orthodox to itself." And if that is true, that means that any coercive theocratic interpretation of orthodoxy imposed on a nation is just "the opinions of some guy"--or the opinions of some priestly tyrants.

Moreover, you should notice that while Wilson points the Apostles' Creed as the defining statement of Christianity, the Creed says nothing about Christian nationalism or theocracy, and thus it provides no support for his argument.  God's supernatural revelation in the New Testament does not include a clear revelation of God's command that his moral law be enforced by a Christian theocratic government just as it was previously enforced by a Hebrew theocratic government.

Actually, Wilson admits that there is a "conspicuous absence" in the New Testament of anything like the Mosaic theocracy that was present in the Old Testament (NYT).  That was Williams' point in his debate with Winthrop--that the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts was a turn away from New Testament Christianity, because the Christian churches in the New Testament were voluntary associations that did not have and did not seek theocratic political power.

Wilson says that while for the early Christian churches, enacting civil penalties in the name of Christ "was still centuries out," they were "nevertheless preparing for that day" (FAQ, 52).  But Wilson cannot cite any passage in the New Testament where the early Christians say they are preparing for the day when they will have theocratic political power.  Wilson is simply reading into the New Testament his own personal preference.  Similarly, Wilson says: "What Paul did was preach the gospel, plant churches, and wait for three centuries" until the "conversion of the Roman empire," when he could have "his audience before Caesar"--that is, Constantine.  But, again, Wilson cannot cite any passage in the New Testament where Paul says or even implies that he's waiting for a Roman Christian theocracy (FAQ, 138).  This is not a supernatural revelation of God's command in the New Testament.  This is "the opinions of some guy."

Natural Law?

If God's revelation of his supernatural moral law is so obscure that human beings cannot agree on what it means, then we have to wonder if there is a natural moral law that human beings can know by their natural human experience.  Wilson says no, because as a Divine Command Theorist, the only standard of right and wrong for him is the supernatural law of God's command: "Thus saith the Lord."  And if that is true, then there can be no stable moral order in any society without some theocratic enforcement of God's commands.

This was the fundamental issue in the dispute between Roger Williams and John Winthrop.  Williams argued that not only did the Christian religion not depend on the support of human laws, but the civil government did not depend on an established religion, because as Williams indicated, the "civil peace" of a political community did not depend on the "spiritual peace" of a true church.  After all, Williams noted, native American Indians and pagans have kept the peace of their communities without belonging to the true church of God.  Here Williams agreed with Pierre Bayle that a society of atheists could live together in a peaceful social order based on their natural moral sense without any religious beliefs in a supernatural moral law.

This natural moral sense is what C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man called the Tao--the universal sense of right and wrong rooted in human nature.  Remarkably, although Wilson recommends the reading of The Abolition of Man, he says nothing about Lewis's account of natural moral law and how that supported Lewis's rejection of theocracy (FAQ, 9, 151). 

Lewis saw the Tao as manifested in three levels of social order--human nature, human traditions, and human judgments. At the first level, the Tao is "Natural Law" (56, 95). Natural law is natural in the sense that it belongs to "the very nature of man," because it provides "a common human law of action" (31, 84). The Tao is "the Tao of Man," it is the "only known reality of conscience" that distinguishes human nature from the rest of nature (62, 90).

The nature of Lewis's natural law is not cosmic nature as a whole, but human nature in particular. Cosmic nature cannot provide values for human life, Lewis suggests, because "nature as a whole, I understand, is working steadily and irreversibly towards the final extinction of all life in every part of the universe" (50).

Although natural law is often assumed to come from a supernatural lawgiver, Lewis insists that understanding the Tao as natural law does not require any belief in the supernatural. He writes:

Though I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian, I am not here attempting any indirect argument for Theism. I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reasoning as having absolute validity: that any attempt, having become skeptical about these, to reintroduce value lower down on some supposedly more 'realistic' basis, is doomed. Whether this position implies a supernatural origin for the Tao is a question I am not here concerned with (61).

At the second level of social order, the Tao corresponds to human cultural traditions--"the human tradition of value," "traditional values," "traditional morality," or "traditional humanity" (54-55, 76, 78, 85). In the Appendix to his book, Lewis provides "Illustrations of the Tao" that consist of short quotations from some ancient texts of moral teaching from Egypt, Babylonia, Israel, Greece, Rome, India, China, Scandinavia, and Anglo-Saxon England, and a few texts from early modern England. Lewis's Appendix shows great cultural variability in the moral traditions of human history. But it also shows recurrent themes that reflect how universal human nature constrains these moral traditions--as manifested in Lewis's eight categories of classification: the law of general beneficence, the law of special beneficence, duties to parents, elders, and ancestors, duties to children and posterity, the law of justice, the law of good faith and veracity, the law of mercy, and the law of magnanimity.

At the third level of social order, the Tao allows for individual judgments of value, but only within the broad constraints of human nature and human tradition. Lewis admits that traditional moralities show many contradictions and some absurdities, which invite criticism and improvement. Although the Tao does not permit criticisms and changes coming from outside the Tao--because there are no standards of value outside it--the Tao does permit development from within. So, for example, we can recognize that the Christian version of the Golden Rule--"Do as you would be done by"--is a real improvement over the Confucian version--"Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you"--because we can see that the new positive statement of the rule is an extension of the old negative statement (57-58). Individuals have authority to modify the Tao only insofar as their modifications are within the "spirit of the Tao" (59).

Lewis saw that this natural law of the Tao did not require coercive enforcement by a theocratic government because for Lewis the primary aim of government was securing individual liberty in private life:

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life.  A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging his own garden--that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time (Mere Christianity, 169).

Notice that the State's concern here is with human happiness "in this life"--not in the next life.  A government that would be directed to eternal salvation would be a theocracy, and Lewis said that "theocracy is the worst of al governments," because any government that would pretend to have the power of salvation would be tyrannical.

Lewis thought that government did not need to promote Christianity in order to provide a common morality for society because Lewis believed that God had imprinted His moral law on every human heart, whether or not that person had come to faith in Jesus Christ.  Consequently, Lewis accepted the Lockean argument for the toleration of all religions.

One good illustration of how the Lockean moral law arises naturally in the human mind is in Lewis's essay "Delinquents in the Snow."  He tells the story of how some young hooligans had been caught stealing and vandalizing Lewis's home, and how they had not been properly punished by the legal system.  He complained that "according to the classical political theory of this country," we "surrendered our right of self-protection to the State on the condition that the State would protect us" (98-99).  But if the State does not protect our natural rights, including the right to property, the natural right to protect ourselves and our property reverts to the individual.  This is what Locke called the natural "executive power of the state of nature."  This natural right to protect oneself, one's property, and one's family from attack arises naturally in the human mind without any need for a Christian faith that such a natural law is divinely ordained.

Although Locke denied that government needed to inculcate virtue, Dyer and Watson observe, his Thoughts on Education is all about inculcating virtue.  So that even without the legal enforcement of virtue, which would threaten individual liberty, Locke assumed that the education of children in their families, their churches, and the wider society would shape the moral and intellectual virtues. Lewis agreed.  In fact, his fantasy writing for children--such as the Chronicles of Narnia--was intended to contribute to the moral education of children supervised by parents rather than the State.

So, as a Lockean liberal, Lewis denied that Christian citizens have any right to use their political power to coercively impose their Christian morality on their political community.  This is particularly clear in the way Lewis speaks about homosexuality, religious education in schools, and divorce law.

Although Lewis was clear about homosexuality being a sin, he saw no justification for the State punishing that sin as a crime.  In a letter, he observed: "Of course, many acts which are sins against God are also injuries to our fellow-citizens, and must on that account, but only on that account, be made crimes.  But of all the sins in the world, I should have thought homosexuality was the one that least concerns the State.  We hear too much of the State. Government is at its best a necessary evil. Let's keep it in its place."  Lewis's view of homosexuality was probably influenced by his life-long friendship with Arthur Greeves, who was a homosexual.

In the passage just quoted, Lewis seems to assume John Stuart Mill's harm principle--that the only justification for limiting anyone's individual liberty is to prevent harm to others. While this seems to be a uniquely modern principle, it can be found in the premodern natural law tradition.  It's stated by Thomas Aquinas: "Human law is framed for the mass of men, the majority of whom are not virtuous. Therefore, human law does not prohibit every vice from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more serious ones from which the majority can abstain, and especially those that harm others and which must be prohibited for human society to survive, such as homicide, theft, and the like" (Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 96, a. 2).

Lewis also showed his Lockean liberalism in which he said about the place of religion in public education.  He saw England as becoming increasingly secularized, and if most of the public school teachers are not Christian, we cannot expect them to teach Christianity.  Christians should raise their children as Christians and send them to Christian schools, without expecting the public schools to inculcate Christianity in the children.

A third illustration of Lewis's Lockean liberalism is in what he said about marriage and divorce.  Since Christianity teaches that marriage is for life, Lewis observed in Mere Christianity, divorce is not normally allowed. But he saw no justification for legally enforcing this Christian condemnation of divorce.

. . . I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused.  The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question--how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself, you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the  British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. This distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not (101-102).

If we bring together what Lewis says here about marriage and what he says about homosexuality, we might infer that Lewis could have supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, with the understanding that the rules of marriage enforced by the State will differ from the rules enforced by the Church.  In fact, I have argued that a Lockean natural law argument can be made for legalizing same-sex marriage.

 

CLEAR CONTRADICTIONS

Although presumably Wilson would disagree with Lewis's claim that "theocracy is the worst form of government," he often contradicts his arguments for theocracy in ways that invite his careful readers to wonder whether his secret teaching agrees with Lewis's condemnation of theocracy.

No Rerun of "Christendom 1.0"?

Wilson told Ross Douthat: 

I've been arguing for a mere Christendom, or a Christendom 2.0, OK?  Christendom 1.0 had some bugs in it.  I don't want a rerun of Christendom 1.0--don't want that.  The Christians screwed it up in different areas.  "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," as Monty Python taught us--and I don't want the Spanish Inquisition again, OK?  I want a Christendom that learns from history.

Elsewhere in the interview, Wilson explained: "I really do want Christendom 2.0 to have learned the lessons of criminalizing things that were sins, not crimes."  

If the whole point of Christian theocracy is to punish sins as crimes, then Wilson has just declared that Christendom 2.0 will not be theocratic.  For example, the Mosaic law in the Old Testament and the "Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts" (1647) both treat the sin of adultery as a capital crime.  But Wilson agrees with Douthat that adulterers should not be put to death.

And yet, there are at least two sins that Wilson clearly wants to criminalize--abortion and homosexuality.  But even so, it's notable that he does not say that these should be capital crimes.  Homosexuality was a capital crime in Puritan Massachusetts.  Nothing was said about abortion.  Perhaps this was because the Bible says nothing about abortion.

The Ten Commandments begin with commandments about the proper worship of God, and therefore theocratic regimes have punished people for not worshiping God in the right way.  But Wilson told Douthat that he was "a libertarian on how people worship," and so he would allow Catholics and Jews to worship as they please.

This is very different from the laws of Massachusetts Bay, which required that anyone teaching "damnable heresies" should be banished from the Colony.  The laws also excluded Jesuits and all priests or bishops of the Catholic Church.  They were to be banished.  And if they returned after being banished, they were to be put to death.  Clearly, that's what Wilson does not want for Christendom 2.0.  But that means that his Christendom 2.0 will not be theocratic.

When Douthat warns Wilson about "pushing toward Puritan New England," Wilson responds: "the warning is well taken."  Indeed.

A "Godless" Constitution?

The United States Constitution as ratified in 1789 and as amended in 1791 supports religious liberty and the separation of church and state in three ways.  First, unlike most of the state constitutions, the national Constitution is literally "godless" in that it says nothing about any divine being, which suggests that the national government does not need the support of a national religion.  Second, there is the provision in Article V of the Constitution that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."  The third way is the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Wilson insists that "our Constitution was written by Christians--and the goal . . . was to create and preserve a Christian community" (FAQ, 108).  But Wilson does not explain why these Christians who wrote the Constitution refused to introduce into that document any reference to God, Jesus, or Christianity.  Nor does Wilson say anything about the long history of Christians complaining that the Constitution was "godless," and that it needed a "God Amendment."  The most prominent example of this movement to put God into the Constitution was the National Reform Association that emerged during and after the American Civil War.  This was a movement of evangelical Protestant ministers, theologians, academics, lawyers, and judges, who claimed that the Civil War was God's punishment of America for having a godless Constitution, and that this showed the need for amending the Constitution.  They formally petitioned President Lincoln and the Congress to support an amendment.

They proposed an amended version of the Preamble to the Constitution--with the new language in italics:

We the People of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America (National Reform Association 1874, p. 7).

They could persuade neither Lincoln nor the Congress to take their proposal seriously.

Wilson says nothing about this history, although he does admit that there needs to be "an acknowledgement of Christian orthodoxy at the federal level, in the Constitution" (FAQ, 122).  He thus invites his reader to wonder, why hasn't this been done?

Wilson accepts the "no religious test" clause because he thinks the Founders "didn't want to introduce denominational strife" at the federal level (FAQ, 87).  But he is silent about those many Christians who have complained that without a religious test that requires public officers to be Christians, America cannot be a Christian nation.  For example, one speaker at the Massachusetts constitutional ratifying convention warned that having no religious tests "would admit deists, atheists, etc., into the general government; and, people being apt to imitate the examples of the court, these principles would be disseminated, and, of course, a corruption of morals ensue."  

Wilson points out that the "no religious tests" clause applies only to federal offices, which allows religious tests at the state and local level, and he notes that at the time of the Founding, "they were commonplace at the local level."  He does not tell his readers, however, that by 1800 all of these religious tests at the state and local level were eliminated.

Wilson accepts the no establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment because he agrees that having a national church like England had would have been a mistake.  He points out, however, that the no establishment clause applies only to the national Congress, and thus it leaves the states free to establish state churches.  In fact, he observes, at the time that the First Amendment was ratified, nine of the thirteen states had established a Christian denomination.  But he does not tell his readers that by 1833 all state establishments of religion had been abolished.

Remarkably, Wilson says he thinks having established churches at the state level is "a bad idea" (FAQ, 21).  So, here again, we see a remarkable contradiction in his arguments.  On the one hand, Wilson argues for a theocratic Christian nationalism.  On the other hand, he argues that an establishment of religion at either the national or the state level is a bad idea.  His careful readers have to suspect that his apparent argument for Christian theocracy is not his true teaching.

The "Boniface Option"?

In Wilson's FAQ, the final question is: How do we get a Christian nation?  He says there are three common answers to this question: the Benedict Option, the Bonaparte Option, and the Boniface Option.  Wilson defends the Boniface Option as a deft combination of the other two options.

In my next post, I will try to unravel Wilson's ambiguous account of this Boniface Option.

A Rebuttal of Jonathan Leaf's Rebuttal: Combining Phylogenetic and Convergent Evolution Explains Human Nature

Jonathan Leaf loves straw man arguments.  In my review of his book The Primate Myth for Law & Liberty, I criticized him for making a straw man argument.  Now he has written a reply to my criticism by . . . making a straw man argument.

In my review, I pointed out that evolutionary biologists and anthropologists generally agree that to explain the evolution of human nature--or of any animal nature--they need to consider both phylogenetic evolution and convergent evolution.  Phylogenetic evolution explains why human beings are similar to other primates with whom they share common genetic descent.  Convergent evolution explains why human beings are different from other primates and similar to non-primate animals that have evolved adaptations for environments of evolutionary adaptation similar to the human environments of evolutionary adaptation.

Convergent evolution explains why a dolphin looks like a fish: it has evolved to have the fish-like anatomy that allows it to swim smoothly through its aquatic habitat. But phylogenetic evolution explains why a dolphin is not a fish but a mammal: it has all the mammalian traits that it inherited from its mammalian ancestors that were originally adapted for a terrestrial habitat.

Similarly, we need to consider both phylogeny and convergence in explaining the evolution of the human mind.  Leaf correctly argues that the convergent evolution of the earliest human ancestors, as adapted for collaborative hunting, set them apart from other primates, who show very little collaborative hunting.  But we also need to understand the phylogenetic evolution of the human brain.

Leaf criticizes what he calls the Primate Myth--the idea that humans are most like primates and unlike all non-primate animals--because this denies the convergent evolution that makes humans more like herd and pack animals than primates.  But this Primate Myth is a straw man because most evolutionary scientists recognize both the phylogenetic similarities of humans to other primates and the convergent similarities of humans to herd and pack animals.

So, for example, Frans de Waal could see how similar humans are to chimps and bonobos because they share a common phylogenetic ancestry.  But he also could see how similar humans are to some non-primates because of convergent evolution.  For instance, de Waal recognized that while chimps and bonobos were sexually promiscuous, with no enduring pair-bonding of sexual mates, convergent evolution had made humans more like the pair-bonding animals.  He observed: "The intimate male-female relationship, which zoologists have dubbed a 'pair bond,' is bred into our bones.  I believe this is what sets us apart from the apes more than anything else."

Therefore, in attacking the Primate Myth that phylogenetic evolution counts for everything, and convergent evolution counts for nothing, in explaining human nature, Leaf is attacking a straw man.

In his rebuttal, Leaf criticizes me for "asserting that leading primatologists have not said that their study of apes is a means by which we might infer aspects of human nature."  "Actually," he says, "they have been saying this for decades."  Then he quotes from the first page of Chimpanzee Politics de Waal's remark that "apes hold up a mirror to us."

So here we go again with another straw man.  I have not asserted that leading primatologists have never said that the study of apes can illuminate some "aspects of human nature."  What I have asserted is that leading primatologists like de Waal have said that we need to study both phylogenetic evolution and convergent evolution to see how humans can be similar to apes in some ways but similar to non-primate animals in other ways.  

It's the same for explaining the evolved nature of other animals.  Emergent evolution explains why dolphins look similar to fish.  Phylogenetic evolution explains why they are actually mammals and not fish.

Would Leaf have to say that since dolphins are so similar to fish that must mean that they really are fish and not mammals?  Should his next book be all about dolphins with the title The Mammal Myth?

Or are we constructing a straw man here?

James Talarico Revives the Christian Liberalism of Roger Williams

 

James Talarico Questions the Texas Republican Bill Forcing a Display of the Ten Commandments in Public Schools

            

          Stephen Colbert's Interview of James Talarico, Which CBS Refused to Broadcast

                         Joe Rogan Tells James Talarico: "You Need to Run for President"

James Talarico is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Texas.  He will be running against either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton.  Amazingly, recent opinion polls suggest that he could defeat either of them.  If he does win, this would be the first victory for a Democrat in a state-wide race in Texas since 1994; and this would signal the beginning of the collapse of Trump's Republican Party.  If they can't win in Texas . . . ?

Talarico has been a member of the Texas House of Representatives since 2018.  Prior to that he was a middle school teacher.  While serving as a state representative, he earned a Master of Divinity degree from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.  He has a B.A. in Government from the University of Texas and an M.A. in Education from Harvard.  He was born in Round Top, Texas.  His family roots in Texas go back for 8 generations to when Texas was part of Mexico.

What is most distinctive about his political career is that he cites his Christian faith and devotion to the teachings of Jesus as the prime motivation for his political service.  He says that Jesus simplified God's laws as reducible to two commandments: Love God and Love Your Neighbor.  He obeys the commandment to love God through his theological studies and his preaching.  He obeys the commandment to love one's neighbor through his governmental service, which he sees as serving his constituents. 

In contrast to his Republican colleagues in the state legislature who are devout Christians and advocates for Christian Nationalism, Talarico condemns Christian Nationalism as an unchristian denial of the teachings of Jesus.  Christian Nationalism, he argues, is "worship of power, not worship of Christ."  Unlike many of his Democratic colleagues who also condemn Christian Nationalism, Talarico justifies his rejection of Christian Nationalism as an expression of his Christian faith.  (He laid out his general line of thinking in talking with Joe Rogan last summer, particularly in the first half of the two-and-a-half-hour interview.)

What I see here is a renewal of the debate between Roger Williams and John Winthrop, in which Talarico speaks for the Christian liberalism of Williams against the Christian illiberalism of Winthrop.  As I have said in previous posts, this was the original debate between liberal America and illiberal America, and ultimately liberal America prevailed.  I will argue that in this new debate, the stronger argument is still on the side of liberal America.  One sign of this is that even the leading proponents of Christian Nationalism--like Douglas Wilson--cannot really defend the Christian illiberalism of Winthrop, and they actually--at least implicitly--embrace the Christian liberalism of Williams.

Talarico recognizes that he belongs to the Baptist tradition of Williams that affirms religious liberty and rejects theocracy.  His grandfather was a Baptist preacher.  And he often speaks about the Baptists who settled America early in the 17th century as they fled from persecution in Europe.

Williams originated the phrase "wall of separation," which was later used by Thomas Jefferson.  And like Williams, Talarico argues for separation of church and state not because he's hostile to religion but because he believes the entanglement of religion and government is corrupting for both.  

Talarico agrees with the proponents of Christian Nationalism in worrying about the decline of religious faith in American life.  "We're conducting an experiment on humanity in real time of what happens when you take this believing species and rob it of any community to make sense of the world," he says.  "I honestly believe that's why we see higher rates of anxiety and depression, especially among young people, because they're growing up in an incoherent universe."  Notice that in talking about "this believing species," Talarico suggests that the desire for religious understanding is innate in human nature.

This doesn't sound like the typical Democratic politician.  Indeed, Talarico admits that most people aligned with the Democratic Party don't take religion seriously, and many are actively hostile to religion.  There are some exceptions.  For example, the only active clergyman in the U.S. Senate is Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia and the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Martin Luther King's church.  The black church has often been a spiritual influence in the civil rights movement and the Democratic Party.

But since in general Republicans are more likely than Democrats to talk about the importance of religion in America, and particularly American Christianity, you might wonder why Talarico has not joined the Republicans.  His answer is that too many Republicans, particularly those in the Texas State Legislature, have mistakenly embraced Christian Nationalism and thus rejected the separation of church and state.  Their mistake is in thinking that religious faith can be promoted by legal coercion.  So, for example, Republican state legislators believe that legislation mandating that every public school prominently display the Ten Commandments on a poster will instill in school children a respect for God's law. What's more likely to happen, Talarico has argued, is that for many school children, this will confirm their cynical view of politically established religion as more about power than faith.

Like Williams, Talarico traces the history of this mistaken Theocratic Christianity back to the fourth century.  During the first three hundred years of Christianity, the early Christians formed churches as voluntary associations of believers who never sought the political power to coercively enforce their faith.  The New Testament shows that churches could punish disruptive members by excommunicating them, but there was no violent persecution of anyone for having the wrong beliefs.

But then in 312 AD, the Emperor Constatine gained control of the western part of the Roman Empire, and he converted to Christianity in the same year.  He made Christianity a legally recognized religion.  And he sponsored councils of Christian church leaders to settle theological disputes.  Most notably, he called the Council of Nicaea in 325 to resolve a dispute over the doctrine of the Trinity.  That council approved the Nicene Creed as the preeminent statement of Christian orthodoxy, and anyone who denied any part of that creed was declared a heretic.  Then in 393, Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.  

From that point on, the Catholic Church could call on political rulers to punish heretics, apostates, and unbelievers--anyone who denied Christian orthodoxy as defined by the Church.  After the Protestant Reformation, the Church declared all Protestants heretics who should be persecuted.  Even many of the Protestant churches persecuted Catholics or other Protestants who were not regarded as orthodox.  Only those Christians like the Baptists resisted this tradition of persecution and argued for religious liberty and toleration of religious pluralism, which they saw as expressed in the teachings of Jesus and in the rest of the New Testament.

But while Theocratic Christianity has no grounding in the New Testament, it can find some support in the Old Testament, particularly in the Mosaic law that governed the Hebrew people from their exodus from Egypt to the kingship of Saul.  Indeed, the very word "theocracy" is the translation of the Greek word theocratia that Josephus (the first century Roman Jewish historian) coined as the term for ancient Israel as ruled by the Mosaic laws.  

But the point made by those in the Baptist tradition--from Williams to Talarico--is that Jesus and New Testament Christianity supersede the Hebrew Law of the Old Testament.  Jesus simplifies the Law into two commandments: Love God and Love Your Neighbor.  And he makes clear that the punishment of sinners comes not from any earthly government in this life but from God in the next life.

But still, the proponents of theocracy today like the Christian Nationalists say that God wants governments to punish sinners, and He's particularly angry about two kinds of sin--abortion and homosexuality.  As Talarico observes, the Christian Nationalists are obsessed with sexual misconduct that impedes reproduction--abortion, homosexuality, and perhaps also transgenderism.  It is remarkable, however, as Talarico says, that Jesus says nothing about these issues.  

Not only does Jesus say nothing about abortion, but there is also nothing clearly said about abortion anywhere in the Bible.  (I have written previously about the abortion debate.) Now, of course, the Bible does condemn murder; and the opponents of abortion insist that abortion is clearly murder.  That assumes, however, that an embryo or a fetus is a "person" because human life begins at conception.  But the Bible never says that.  And for thousands of years, particularly in the common law tradition, it was assumed that life begins later in a pregnancy, perhaps at "quickening," when the mother feels movement in her womb.  Moreover, it's clear that most of the opponents of abortion don't believe life begins at conception because they make exceptions to the ban on abortions for cases such as rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother.  These exceptions make no sense if all abortion is murder.

The Bible does have a few somewhat obscure references to homosexuality.  (I have written previously about homosexuality.)  Two references are part of the Mosaic law: "You will not have intercourse with a man as you would with a woman.  This is disgusting" (Lev. 18:22).  Also: "The man who has intercourse with a man in the same way as with a woman, they have done a hateful thing together; they will be put to death" (Lev. 20:13).  Notice that nothing is said about lesbians.  Are they free from condemnation?  Notice also that this is a capital crime.  And indeed homosexuality has been a capital crime in Western European and American law until early in the 19th century.  It's strange, therefore, that the Christian Nationalists have not argued for reinstating this Biblical law for executing homosexuals.  Is this too extreme even for them?

The one passage in the New Testament that seems to refer to homosexuality is in the first chapter of Pauls Letter the Romans.  He speaks of God's retribution against the Gentiles, who should have known God as revealed in nature's laws, but they turned away from Him.  "That is why God abandoned them to degrading passions: why their women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural practices: and the men, in a similar way, too, giving up natural relations with women, are consumed with passion for each other, men doing shameful things with men and receiving in themselves due reward for their perversion" (Romans 1:26-27).

Notice that here Paul includes lesbians, unlike the Leviticus passage.  But notice also that unlike the Mosaic law in Leviticus, Paul does not say that they should be legally punished with death.  Instead, they are left to suffer the self-inflicted punishment that comes from living in their perversion.  This fits with the rest of the New Testament, which condemns the sins of disobeying God's laws, but does not identify these sins as crimes that should be punished by government.

The Hebrew government in the Old Testament was a theocracy because it punished sins as if they were crimes.  But in the New Testament, government has the authority to punish crimes that inflict physical harm on people, but it does not have the authority to punish sins that inflict no harm on others. (See Romans 12:14-13:7.  I have written about this previously.)

Actually, even the advocates of Theocratic Christian Nationalism recognize, at least implicitly, the distinction between sins and crimes, and that a government that punishes sins as if they were crimes is tyrannical.  In other words, they are not truly theocrats because they are on the side of Williams' Christian liberalism rather than Winthrop's Christian illiberalism.  

In my next post, I will show that to be the case for one of the most influential of the Christian Nationalists--Douglas Wilson.

The Evolution of the Natural Desire for Music: Patrick Savage's Comparative Musicology

 

           Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show Received Over Four Billion Views 

                                        Snowball the Cockatoo Dances to the Back Street Boys

Last September, I wrote a couple of posts on the natural desire for music and on the political history of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

I argued that the desire for music is one of the 20 natural desires of our evolved human nature.  It belongs to the category of "aesthetic pleasure from art, music, dance, and storytelling."  But to explain the evolution of music, we need to distinguish music and musicality.  While musicality is biologically universal, music is culturally variable.  Musicality includes components such as melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic cognition; and it is that part of our biological nature that gives human beings in all cultures the capacity and the propensity to generate and enjoy all forms of music.  But music in all its variety is culturally constructed through the biological power of human musicality.  Music then is like language in its biological universality and cultural diversity.  All human beings normally have a biological instinct for learning and using a language.  But different human beings will learn different languages in different cultures.

There are at least five evolutionary theories of music.  For me, the most persuasive one proposes the social-bonding hypothesis that human musicality is a coevolved system for social bonding.  As already indicated, musicality denotes the biological capacities of all human beings that allow us to perceive and produce music.  Social bonding refers to all kinds of affiliative connections that bind two or more people into a group.  Coevolved means that musicality has evolved through a process of gene-culture coevolution.  In my post from last September, I surveyed the five kinds of evidence for this social-bonding theory.  

Since Patrick Savage (a professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand) is one of the leading proponents of this theory, I was pleased to see that Oxford University Press has just published his new book--Comparative Musicology: Evolution, Universals, and the Science of the World's Music.  Remarkably, this book is freely available as a downloadable pdf file at go.nature.com/4akfrne).

Savage has outlined some of his thoughts in that book in an article--"Music Is Not a Universal Language--But It Can Bring Us Together When Words Fail," Nature 650 (2026): 819-822.  He briefly considers five questions.

1. What can science say about music?  Some scientists have found in cross-cultural anthropological studies evidence that all cultures have something that we can identify as music, which seems to show that music is the "universal language of mankind," as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed in 1835.  But some ethnomusicologists have argued that cultural diversity is so deep that there cannot be any human universals.  And others have argued that even if music were universal in some sense, its meanings might not be.  The debate comes down to how we define "music" and "universal."

2.  Can we define music?  In 1997, some ethnomusicologists recorded the sounds of some men in Papua New Guinea engaged in a secret ritual.  It was described as "sounds of large and small friction blocks, a swung slat, ribbon reeds, and human moaners" (see go.nature.com/4abgwjp).  The ethnomusicologists who recorded this thought it was music.  Since this was part of a secret ceremony, the men did not disclose its meaning.  Nor did they even say whether they considered it to be music.  Savage says these sounds do not satisfy a working definition of music as "sound organized into regular pitches or rhythms," which characterizes 99% of the world's music.

3.  Is music uniquely human?  While spoken language is unique to human beings, Savage observes, singing and dancing are not.  Some capacity for singing is found in songbirds and cetaceans.  And dancing--synchronized movements to a beat--is shared with other animals--like the dancing cockatoo Snowball.

4.  Is music a universal language?  Cross-cultural studies have shown that listeners from distant cultures can sometimes detect some of the intended emotional meanings in each other's music.  For example, "fast and energetic music tends to be perceived as happier and is more likely to accompany dancing, whereas slow and less energetic music is often considered sadder and more likely to be used in calming genres, including lullabies."

But this is not always the case.  In one study led by Elizabeth Margulis at Princeton University, scientists curated a same of 32 instrumental music recordings--16 by Western composers and 16 by Chinese ones.  They then asked some 600 participants in the United States and China to describe the kinds of story they imagined as they listened to the music.  For instance, when they listened to an excerpt from Guan Pinghu's Strains of Spring Morning, some Americans thought of "cowboys," while some Chinese people thought of "sorrow" (see go.nature.com/4rvzyw6).  Then, when they heard an excerpt from Ferde Grofe's Sunrise from his Grand Canyon Suite, some Americans heard "birds," while some Chinese people heard "man" (see go.nature.com/46dfoyj).  Like those other Americans, I definitely hear "birds."  But that could be because I know the title is Sunrise.

This seems to show that music cannot be "the universal language of mankind" in any literal sense because the narrative meanings of musical sounds are not transmitted clearly across cultures.  Savage concludes from this that "while music is universal, its meaning is not."

5.  Is music beyond words?  Even though music is not a universal language, Savage argues, it can still be used to improve cross-cultural understanding, because the near universality of music is not in its meaning but in its structure.  Savage et al. (2015) have identified 18 features of musical structure that are widespread in all or almost all cultures.  And here "widespread" means they are "statistical universals"--that is, nearly universal but not absolutely.  Most of these support coordinated music-making:

Throughout the world, humans tend to sing, play percussion instruments, and dance to simple, repetitive music in groups, and this is facilitated by the widespread use of simple-integer pitch and rhythm ratios, scales based on a limited number of discrete pitches (usually no more than 7), and isochronomous beats grouped in multiples of two or three. . . . The widespread use of simple, discrete meters and scales also enables multiple people to memorize and coordinate their performances.  These widespread musical properties have few direct parallels in language.  Group coordination provides a common purpose that unifies the cross-cultural structural regularities of human music (Savage et al., 2021, 8).

This is impressive cross-cultural evidence for the near universality of musicality as an evolved instinct of human nature that supports social bonding.

Savage explains:

These statistical universals are important because they can help us to synchronize and harmonize our singing, dancing or playing to diverse types of music from around the world, even if we have no idea of the intended meaning of the piece.  I have experienced this while participating in genres as diverse as Inuit throat-singing, Ghanaian highlife, Japanese Bon dancing, Māori haka, Papua New Guinean song and Senegalese drumming.

An indication of the intercultural universality of music is how musical traditions from around the world can be blended in pleasing ways.  For me, the most exciting example of this was when my wife and I attended a performance of Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, some years ago.  The Silk Road Ensemble combines Western and Eastern styles of music.  Yo Yo Ma has said that this is his attempt to show how music can bring people from different cultures together as an expression of a shared humanity. 

 

                                                   Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

A similar example of intercultural music making is related by Savage.  He tells the story of several hundred music scholars from around the world gathering in Wellington, New Zealand, for a conference.  Savage lives in Wellington, and he invited some of these scholars to his home for food and drinks, after which they started singing and playing music from their home countries.  He writes:

My favorite moment was when a colleague who was attending this conference for the first time, Gedisa Jacob, who researches music at the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies in Port Moresby, started to sing a song from his home in Morobe province (see go.nature.com/4aaxbma).  At first, the rest of us just listened.  But as he moved into the chorus, which used non-linguistic "vocables" such as "oh yah oh" (similar to "tra la la" in English songs), I felt like I was starting to understand the rhythmic and melodic structure, which used the same five-note (pentatonic) scale and four-beat meter found in many songs worldwide.

I started to join in, harmonizing with his melody on the piano.  One of the other guests, Cara Brasted, started to improvise her own complementary melody on the violin.  My dad, Mike Savage, started to improvise on his guitar and my student, Marin Naruse, joined in on her sanshin (an instrument originating from her home, the Amami Islands in Japan).  Gradually, more of us joined in, singing and playing together: "Oh yah ooooh oh yah oh."

None of us, other than Jacob, had any idea what the song was about.  Afterwards, he explained that it concerns the mayam tree, the leaves of which his people use to make traditional medicines.

But it really didn't matter.  Singing and playing these near-universal scales and rhythms collectively had bonded us together in ways that couldn't be expressed in words.  That is the power of music.  Music is not a universal language--but it can bring us together when words fail.

But then Savage concludes by suggesting that Darwin might have been right in proposing that language originally evolved out of music: "Even if music is not a universal language, it might hold the key to understanding the origins of language--and perhaps even what makes us human."

Imagine that our earliest Paleolithic ancestors had music but not language.  And then one day, while they were making music together, someone sang "Oh yah ooooh oh yah oh."  Could that singing have become the words of a protolanguage--once they agreed to associate "Oh yah ooooh oh yah oh" with the leaves of a tree that had some medicinal powers? 

A similar thought is suggested by Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  When the baritone soloist first shouted "Oh friends, not these sounds!", that was the first time that a singing voice had entered a symphony.  The search for "more joyful sounds" required a combination of instrumental and vocal music--a choral symphony.  Thus did the 9th Symphony perhaps suggest the evolutionary emergence of language out of music through singing.

The natural desire for speech could thus have evolved out of the natural desire for music.