William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1820-1894) was an American Presbyterian Theologian. In a time of political unrest and ecclesiastical turmoil, Shedd stood alongside the likes of Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and James Petigru Boyce as a defender of historic Calvinism. He ardently defended the “Old School” Calvinism of New England’s Puritan forefathers. He wrote extensively in defense of an orthodox view of eternal punishment and the immortality of the soul. As a historian, literary expert, and theologian, he combined his broad academic experience in writing Dogmatic Theology, a three-volume defense of Reformed, orthodox doctrine.

This short work combines three short essays that Shedd wrote on American political life. They were originally published as part of a larger collection of essays titled, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in 1883. In the first essay, he warned against what he called “excessive devotion to the business of self-government.” For Shedd, political involvement was important – to a degree, he argued it was even a duty – but a “false estimate” of its importance, “as compared with other subjects,” is a danger to the republic. In the second essay, Shedd wrote of the dangers that accompany office-holding in the context of human depravity. “No one stops to consider,” he wrote, “the risks to character and morals” that a man “incurs by getting office.” He suggested that the cure, if there be one at all, “must begin with a sense and acknowledgment of the disease.” In short, men must be self-scrutinizing, lest their optimism be their downfall (I Cor. 10:12). In the final essay, Shedd dealt with political fanaticism. “Looking over the field of American politics,” he observed, “any candid observer must say that there is much political fanaticism in the American people.” American life, in Shedd’s estimation, seemed to revolve around political events. This imbalanced and immoderate approach to politics is not patriotism – it is political fanaticism, and it is sin.

While Shedd speaks from a different time, as some of his illustrations demonstrate, his call to moderation and self-scrutiny is timeless. Hopefully, these short essays will serve to stir up God’s people to love and good works as they navigate the tension between earthly commitments and heavenly citizenship.

“Patriotism, though not piety, any more than family affection is holiness, is an instinctive feeling implanted by the Creator that is amiable and attractive. It belongs to man’s constitution, and is to be cultivated and especially to be sanctified. But one chief mode of cultivating and sanctifying the sentiment is to moderate it. If it be allowed to become rampant and drive out other and higher sentiments and subjects, then patriotism becomes fanaticism, and this fanaticism is wrong. Its utterance is: “My country right or wrong; my party right or wrong.” The claims of a man’s country are inferior to the claims of God upon him. Politics is second to religion. Hence if a man devote his time, his strength, and his thoughts so excessively to the political party to which he belongs as to neglect the concerns of his own soul and the religious welfare of his family and society, then his so-called patriotism is a sin.”