July 4, 2008
FROM THE ARCHIVES: A PRINCIPLED LOT:
In God We Trust: The history books tell us that the founders of this country were heavily influenced by the principles of the Enlightenment. True enough. But the history books neglect an influence that proved even more important-religious principles. (Michael Novak, Hoover Digest)
[I] want to do something relatively rare these days. I want to give a sense of the religious energy behind the American founding. For a hundred years scholars have stressed the role of the Enlightenment and John Locke in particular. But there are also first principles that come to us from Judaism and Christianity, especially from Judaism. The religious principles in the founding were and are important to many citizens, and they are probably indispensable to the moral health of the Republic, as Washington taught us in his Farewell Address: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." Washington said "indispensable." Reason and faith are the two wings by which the American eagle took flight.When our founders talked religiously about politics they borrowed mostly from the Jewish testament, not the Christian. Scholars often mistakenly refer to the God of the founders as a deist God. But the founders talked about God in terms that are radically Jewish: Creator, Judge, and
Providence. These were the names they most commonly used for him, notably in the Declaration of Independence. For the most part, these are not names that could have come from the Greeks or Romans but only from the Jewish Testament. Perhaps the founders avoided Christian language to avert divisiveness, since different colonies were founded under different Christian inspirations. All found common language in the language of the Jewish Testament.If I stress the religious elements of the story, it is because for the past century scholars have paid too much attention to Jefferson in these matters and ignored the other top one hundred founders, most of whom were profoundly religious men. The crucial point is that all the Founding Fathers-Jefferson included-shared in common a belief that a people cannot maintain liberty
without religion. They understood the power of religion to their cause yet worried that in the eyes of God they would be found wanting. Here is John Adams in 1776: "I sometimes tremble to think that although we are engaged in the best cause that ever employed the human heart, yet the prospect of success is doubtful, not for want of power or of wisdom but of virtue." [...]In the first days of September 1774, from every region, members of the First Continental Congress were riding dustily toward Philadelphia, where they hoped to remind King George III of the rights due to them as Englishmen. As these delegates were gathering, news arrived that the king's troops were shelling Charlestown and Boston, and rumors flew that the city was being
sacked, robbery and murder being committed. Those rumors later turned out not to be true, but that's the news they heard. Thus, as they gathered, the delegates were confronted with impending war. No wonder their first act as a Continental Congress was to request a session of prayer.Mr. Jay of New York and Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina immediately spoke against this motion because (they said) Americans are so divided in religious sentiments-some Episcopalians, some Quakers, some Anabaptists, some Presbyterians, and some Congregationalists-that all could not join in the same act of prayer. Sam Adams rose to say that he could hear a prayer from any gentleman of piety and virtue, as long as he was a patriot. Adams moved that a Reverend Duche be asked to read prayers before Congress on the next morning. The motion carried.
Thus it happened that the first act of Congress on September 7, 1774, was an official prayer, pronounced by an Episcopalian clergyman dressed in his pontificals. And what did he read? He read a Jewish prayer, Psalm 35 in The Book of Common Prayer:
Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of buckler and shield, and rise up for my help. Say to my soul, "I am your salvation." Let those be ashamed and dishonored who seek my life. Let those be turned back and humiliated who devise evil against me.
Before the Reverend Duche knelt Washington, Henry, Randolph, Rutledge, Lee, and Jay. By their side, heads bowed, were the Puritan patriots, who could imagine at that moment their own homes being bombarded by the fleet or overrun by the king's troops. Over these bowed heads the Reverend Duche uttered what all testified was an eloquent prayer for America, for Congress,
for the province of Massachusetts Bay, and especially for the town of Boston. The emotion in the room was palpable, and John Adams wrote to Abigail that night that he had never heard a better prayer or one so well pronounced: "I never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seemed as if heaven had ordained that that Psalm be read on that morning. It was enough to melt a stone. I saw tears gush into the eyes of the old, grave pacific Quakers of Philadelphia."In this fashion, right at its beginning, this nation formed a covenant with God that is repeated in the Declaration: "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." The founders pledged their fidelity to the will of God and asked God to protect their liberty. They would continue to enact this covenant in the years to come in many later acts of Congress.
It was the Quaker and supposed deist or athist (whichever is being claimed these days), Benjamin Franklin, who proposed starting a day of the deliberations on the Constitution with a prayer, when they'd gotten themselves stuck on a few points. The proposal was only voted down because it was feared they'd appear panicky. And the first act of the Congress they created with that Constitution was the hiring of official chaplains for the respective legislative bodies..
[originally posted: 2003-09-28]
When one of those groups founds a country worth living in we'll ask them.
Posted by: oj at September 28, 2003 1:02 PMJimmy -
Your tirade leaves me wondering if you even read the article. Obviously, the point was not that everything the Founders did was correct (a straw man), but to counter the pernicious leftist myth that they were closet deists, agnostics or atheists paying lip service to the religious beliefs of the masses. The sheer volume of their statements concerning religion contradicts this myth.
"The crucial point is that all the Founding Fathers - Jefferson included - shared in common a belief that a people cannot maintain liberty without religion." I doubt that your postulated slaves, women or [American] Indians would disagree with this sentiment or with the prayer quoted. You seem to believe that people who disagree necessarily disagree about everything. Your anti-religious prejudice is showing.
I'm not prejudiced against religion, just Religions of Hate.
Seriously, we don't trust in God. Ostensibly. We trust in whomever we darn well please (and the right to do so is correctly protected), if anybody. Why is this so hard to grasp? The crucial barrier between church(es) and State is also a good thing (as Mr. Jefferson, too, believed). Course, Jefferson also thought the masses were George W. Bush stupid. His infallibility ain't exactly, y'know, Papal.
Posted by: Jimmy at September 28, 2003 3:54 PMJimmy, you appear to be in the wrong thread. That, or you just don't make any sense.
Posted by: Timothy at September 28, 2003 4:24 PMI have wondered if the language used by the Founders was actually intended to be denominationally neutral rather than "deistic". Several of the colonies had established religions (denominations) that were at theological odds with each other. The Founders were men eminently sensible to the difficulty of maintaining comity between individuals holding strong beliefs regarding denominational purity standards. The selection of the public language used may have been so intentionally broad as to give rise to theories proposing that they were deists.
There is also the fact that, at that time and in most of the colonies, a man's religious beliefs were held to be private matters not subject to public inquisition. The cleavage between private and public matters had a clarity then that is regrettably lacking today.
Posted by: RDB at September 28, 2003 4:26 PMIt seems to me that the most important idea in the post is that all of the founders had some sense of reverence for something higher than themselves. Kids today could use a bit of that in their education. (Heavens, am I an old codger now?)
Posted by: jerry dodge at September 28, 2003 6:28 PMRDB:
Unfortunately the fact that there were established religions, supported by mandatory tithing in some cases, makes the notion that religion was essentially private incoherent.
Posted by: oj at September 28, 2003 6:32 PMJimmy:
It's because Jefferson was right about the general stupidity of the masses that it is so dangerous to strengthen the State and weaken churches.
Posted by: oj at September 28, 2003 6:39 PM"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" asked one thelogian, and "Plenty" came the reply from the rest of them. Three times the West has had to negotiate the relation between faith and secular learning: once at the dissolution of the Roman Empire, then again during the High Middle Ages, and yet again following the Reformation. Each time, rather than choose "either-or," the West has opted for "both-and." Biblical principles were made the foundation; the bricks and mortar could be taken from any source that didn't undermine the foundation.
We're at the same juncture again -- have been for a while -- and the tenor of the times is to tear down the old building and start with a new foundation. This time, instead of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Locke, Burke, etc., etc., society is going with the upstarts who promise to do it better, cheaper, faster. The old authors have done all they are able. Only the living can give them voices.
Posted by: R.W. at September 28, 2003 7:29 PMSuper post, Orrin. I forgive you for tarring and feathering my great(+) grand-daddy.
Posted by: Peter B at September 28, 2003 7:34 PMRegardless of the Founders' individual religious beliefs, the Declaration reads exactly as if its foundations are Deist. There is no reference to scripture in it anywhere; rather, an assertion that these self evident rules are the ones the Creator laid down.
That, it seems to me, is part of the genius of the document. The use of the word "Creator"--not God, or Jehovah, or Yaweh, or G-d--is almost pointed. The result is to provide an assertion that is equally valid no matter one's sectarian beliefs. And since the force of those central ideas had only come apparent since the Enlightenment--one would have been hard pressed to find a religion espousing a universal inherent right to life, liberty & happiness previously--even atheists would find those assertions true.
As it has turned out, as the results have demonstrated, those truths are in fact universal and self-evident. One's religious beliefs are fundamentally irrelevant to that fact.
Which makes the whole debate about the Founders' beliefs seem, well, pointless.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 29, 2003 7:54 AMJeff:
That's based on your extended reading of Deist texts?
Of course, atheism offers no basis for a right to life, having denied the inherent value of human life. If man is just another animal and is bound by no absolute laws then there's neither any basis for restraining his actions, except for the brute force of he State, nor for judging those actions, irrespective of what they are.
Posted by: oj at September 29, 2003 8:36 AM"Even atheists would find those assertions true".
Jeff- Recent history is loaded with examples that easily disprove your thesis. Atheists in power, that is in control of the coercive power of the stste while committed to materialism unencumbered by a theistic foundation are without exception tyrants. Why? If results are the determining factor regarding "fitness" one would think caution regarding institutionalized materialism would at least be the prudent approach.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at September 29, 2003 9:14 AMAnyone notice how those who continually rant on regarding the various examples of "hate" are the same ones who rely on ad hominem attacks in describing those who disagree?
Pick the oppressive class du jour, listen to the socialist description of said class and there you have it: the party of hate is the modern Democratic party.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at September 29, 2003 9:21 AMHistorians have taken the founders' concerns about
sectarianism and state-established churches to
mean that they were someone how all deist unitarians for something like that. I think
this has been done often intentionally to downplay
the importance of (basically) Orthodox Christianity in most of the colonies.
Come on Jimmy,
If you are willing to move to Europe and live as
a peasant you can think like that. Otherwise
your critique of American colonization rings
rather hollow. Your simplistic lumping of
women,Africans and Indians in the same breath
seems like this triumvirate might have been etched in your brain by some leftist professor or
book.
J.H.:
The Founders were manifestly not concerned about state estalishments since theyexpressly forbade Congress to interfere with the several that existed.
Posted by: oj at September 29, 2003 11:04 AMTom:
In what way are the goals of the atheists you describe different from 20 (okay, thanks to secularism, 17) centuries of religious tyranny?
OJ:
No, it isn't based on extensive reading of Deist texts. Rather, it is based on an intellectual weakness of mine that words actually have meanings. The text of the Declaration fits the meaning of the word "deism" precisely, even to the point of using a completely sect neutral term for God.
You should stop caricaturing atheism (and, since, absent spelling, there is little difference between the two, Deism). It is perfectly within the realm of atheist thought to find all lives equally valuable.
Unlike, say, religionists. Right now Islamists find vast swaths of humanity eligible for the soonest possible slaughter. And, in centuries past, Christians easily found value in the lives of fellow sect members, while denying it to everyone else.
We are bound by the absolute law of human nature, which finds the most fertile ground in the assertions of the Declaration.
My point is that they founders wanted to
prevent the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT from having
the right to establishment (therefore it was a concern). I think some of the
neutral language was to avoid sectarian conflict
rather than because the founders actually supported (en masse) unitarian deism.
As far as the "Creator" vs. God, every Sunday
those of us that recite the greed say...
"We believe in one God Creator/Maker of heaven
and hearth".
God the creator is major image to this day. I
do not believe that the term "Creator" is used
to assuage deistic sympathies.
Now you're just drifting into cloud-cuckoo land, Jeff.
The assertion that a belief in God, but one which refuses to choose amoing various human understandings of that God, is the same thing as atheism which begins with the denial that there is a God?
Human nature grows in a document which seeks to restrain it?
Jefferson spoke well to the delusional belief that human nature should be given free reign:
"In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."
Posted by: oj at September 29, 2003 12:04 PMWords for God fall in and out of favor by
different groups at different times (sometimes
for theologically irrelevant reasons)...
Homework assignment. Find 10 different words used
to refer to god over the past 300 years in America (I'm up to about eight).
OJ:
One can't give free-reign to that which itself is not free. Human nature is, from the vantage point of any human lifetime, or even many human lifetimes, immutable.
Its kind of like giving free rein to continents. They might move, but not so as anyone is going to notice.
I think you all are misreading my first post. The genius of the document was to essentially redact anything remotely sectarian. That leaves an unspecified Deity that laid down the inviolable laws of nature, one of which being the self evident (although unheard of prior to the Enlightenment) that all men are created equal, etc.
There is no appeal to scripture, and the assertion is open to inspection by anyone, regardless of their religious starting point.
Deism believes there is a God that set up the universe and the laws that govern it. An atheist believes there is a universe and laws that govern it. The why may differ, but the what is the same.
In saying that the Declarations assertion is the most fertile for human nature is simply an observation based on results. Human nature is no different in Nazi Germany, Baathist Iraq, or Hanover, New Hampshire. But the environments are completely different, and one will produce far better results than the others.
Those results are on prominent historical display.
Hence my assertion. The language in the Declaration is deistic, if that word has any meaning. The Constitution itself is notable for its virtually complete absence of religion. And whether the Founders' were Christian, Deist or Atheist is utterly irrelevant to the truth value of their assertions.
To what extent the Founders were religious is irrelevant to how well their "self evident" ideas would work. And if those ideas were not inherently superior to everything else tried so far, we wouldn't be here talking about them now.
Which, as I said above, adds a layer of "so what" to discussions about the Founders' religiosity.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 29, 2003 1:42 PMNow you're just being intentionally obtuse. The Deist believes God established moral laws; the atheist believes in naught but physical laws. There being only physical laws, any talk of equality is inherently foolish. Wilt Chamberlain is not equal to Albert Einstein--they differ in too many ways. It is only Judeo-Christianity that teaches that both were made in the image of God and are therefore imbued with a dignity that makes them equal in His eyes.
As always, I admire your refusal to follow where your philosophy necessarily leads, even if your refusal leads to incoherence.
Posted by: oj at September 29, 2003 1:54 PMOJ:
Where is it written that natural (your physical) laws require a supreme being to be observable?
Human nature is, over any time span even remotely as short as a human life, essentially immutable.
Human nature is also observable.
That immutability and observability is not dependent upon one's religious outlook, although religious outlooks have been known to skew the observations.
So an atheist may make the same observations and draw the same conclusions as a religionist: the what is the same.
Plenty of religionists, Christians among them, have denied any sort of universal imbued human dignity before God's eyes.
And plenty of atheists view the inherent circumstances of any birth identical to all the others, hence the inherent dignity of any human equal to all the others.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 29, 2003 4:05 PMJeff:
They don't.
It's not nature if it only lasts a lifetime.
How?
What is it?
What are they?
They were wrong.
Huh?
Posted by: oj at September 29, 2003 4:12 PM"As always, I admire your refusal to follow where your philosophy necessarily leads, even if your refusal leads to incoherence."
OJ, how is it that Christians have managed to avoid following where their philosophy "necessarily leads" for some 1600 years?
Posted by: Robert D at September 29, 2003 8:55 PMOJ:
You misunderstood what I wrote. The rate of change of human nature is so close to zero as to be unobservable over humanly comprehensible time spans--it is for our purposes, immutable. Just as, for essentially all purposes, the continents are stationary. Even though they aren't.
Islam, so far as I know, takes predestination seriously. That will skew their observations. Some religionists take the point of view that "I'm right, you are wrong, go to hell." That will skew their observations.
The same as yours.
They can quote scripture chapter and verse to justify God imbuing other with far less humanity than God has imbued the True Believers. Who are you to say they are wrong when the Bible says they are right?
The last para is syntactically and logically correct. If you can't take it on board, don't blame me.
Your position is that understanding certain assertions--the what--is impossible without invoking God.
That makes exactly as much, or I should say as little, sense as saying that unless one is a rational materialist, understanding Thermodynamics is impossible.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 29, 2003 8:58 PM
But we can see that the continents once fit together and find matching rock & stuff. Where's the evidence human nature ever changed?
I don't think Islam believes in predestination, does it? But don't all obsereves proceed from a belief that what they believe is right? Isn't that part of immutable human nature?
We don't depend on observation. We believe what God told us about ourselves.
The two are separable. You can burn a witch for their actions. You can't cite scripture in support of lynching a black person for being black.
?
No. I think you can make an assertion based on your own opinion. You can't ground it across a society without God or the State.
Why does Thermodynamics violate metaphysics?
Posted by: OJ at September 29, 2003 9:20 PMRobert:
Because it's really demanding. Far easier not to.
Posted by: OJ at September 29, 2003 9:23 PMThey were wise men, many of those Founders, and not the kind to erect vast edifices of policy based on a few general assertions.
Besides Aquinas and all those others, they knew their Coke and their Roman lawyers. They were not the Christian obscurantists that Orrin would make them into. The Hoover Institution article at least genuflects to the notion that they were, in politics, syncretists.
Whether they were in their personal beliefs was, to them, and should be, to us, immaterial.
They did write Article VI, the first time in history a group of political leaders detached government from religion.
It's worked well ever since, though many people hate it.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at September 30, 2003 1:41 AMHarry/Jeff
You are distorting again. The idea that the Founders were the first to detach religion from government is nonsense. St. Augustine did it more than a thousand years earlier. You may believe the pre-revolutionary West lived under theocracy, but it never did. The West has never known theocracy. In fact, competition between princes and popes is THE major political theme in in pre-revolutionary Western political history, and neither side called for the extinction of the other.
There were two great revolutions in the late 18th century. What was radical/original about them both was democracy, not the relative roles of church and state, which had been debated and fought over since the year dot. The French decided to try and abolish relgion and thus their revolution failed and adumbrated all the great totalitarianiams. The Americans understood that democracy had to be built upon a reverant population with a sense of common morality and thus created one of history's great success stories. That is what your judge in Alabama understands very well.
When you guys fight against Christmas trees in public and the ten commandments in courts, you are heirs to revolutionary Jacobinism, not the Founders.
Posted by: Peter B at September 30, 2003 5:03 AMChrist did it 2,000 years ago--"Render unto Caesar..."
Posted by: oj at September 30, 2003 7:42 AMOJ:
There's mountains of evidence human nature has changed. At one time there were no humans. Over time human ancestors, and their natures' involved into humans and human nature as we know it today. Given the immense time span of that change, there wouldn't be any specific evidence of it over the mere 3000 years of recorded history, would there?
But Harry makes the point I was trying to make at the top of this very well:
"Whether they were in their personal beliefs was, to them, and should be, to us, immaterial."
That is because the assertions and contract they bequeathed us are universal in their applicability--beyond sect, beyond religion. That, to my mind, is a singular stroke of genius.
Therefore, what their particular religious beliefs are may be of historical interest, but hardly of any import to the observable efficacy of their ideas.
Peter:
Do you mean to tell me the Catholic Church wasn't fighting for every bit as much papal control as it could possibly attain?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 30, 2003 8:15 AMJeff:
50,000 years ago men left their old folks on ice floes and inconvenient babies exposed to the elements. What's changed?
Posted by: oj at September 30, 2003 8:19 AMJeff:
Different issue. The Republican party fights to win every election it stands in. Does that mean it stands for a one-party state?
Point me to a papal call for the abolition of secular authority and imposition of theocratic rule. And no squirming out this time. Find it, because your position is that is what the church wanted for 1800 years. (And, Jeff, I said "Papal". Don't pull a Harry and dredge up some obscure eccentric priest.)
Posted by: Peter B at September 30, 2003 4:58 PMCanossa.
Interdiction of Henry II of England.
I could go on and on.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at September 30, 2003 9:26 PMI have examined my conscience, Peter, and I'm sure I don't know of any eccentric, obscure priests. Except Father Feeney, and I've never mentioned him here, I think.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at September 30, 2003 9:28 PMPeter:
Well, you are right. None since the Enlightenment and the 30 Years War. You should read Durant's History of Civilization, The Age of Faith. Until then there was constant battle between secular and ecclesiastical authorities over who would get to rule.
And maybe "none" was a bit too hasty. What do you suppose the Mormons were attempting to do in the 1800s?
And there is one other difference. The Republcans can get voted out of power. When has that ever happened to a theocracy?
OJ:
Civilization.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 30, 2003 10:09 PMLet's get one thing straight: theocratic rule does not mean the priests or mullahs or Popes rule. It means God does - directly. So far as I know, that only has only happened with Moses, Joshua, and a few obscure 'judges'. Anytime a man says I am ordering you to do thus, because God said so (and has a sword to your throat to enforce it), that it not theocracy, it is thuggery. Most religious (political) leaders are of that type, so we are familiar with it. But please keep the words straight.
Posted by: jim hamlen at September 30, 2003 10:29 PMHarry:
How were they an attempt to impose rule? They were statements that certain acts of rulers placed them outside acceptable Christian behavior. As Fareed Zakaria points out, that alternate authority is a chief wellspring of our Western liberty.
Posted by: oj at September 30, 2003 10:50 PMHarry/Jeff
I didn't say they weren't fighting about it and I didn't say they had a nice, noble Founders-like accommodation between church and state, and I didn't say the Church wasn't oppressive at times or didn't have too much temporal power. I said the idea that the West should be ruled exclusively by the Church in all matters temporal and spiritual was not a feature of the pre-Enlightenment West.
The experience of the Mormons, Amish Dhoukobours, etc actually supports my point. They kept on having to flee and were forced to accept secular authority in some ways. Surely you don't point to these as expressions of mainstream Western thinking.
Harry, if you want to use Canossa and Henry II to show something broader than a personal or specific political dispute, wouldn't you have to show the Pope interdicted ALL monarchs in Europe for the crime of existing?
Posted by: Peter B at October 1, 2003 6:18 AMJim:
I don't have a dictionary at hand, so I can't be certain, but as far as I know, theocracy is analagous with bureaucracy.
No one thinks Allah is directly running Iran, but everyone refers to Iran as a theocracy.
Peter:
In the West the balance between Church and State changed drastically from before the Enlightenment/30 Years War and after.
Around roughly 1000 AD the Pope (name escapes me at the moment, Gregory, perhaps?) excommunicated Frederick I (could be II, but doesn't really mattet) with the stated goal of overthrowing him because Frederick didn't toe the Church's line. If that isn't an attempt at establishing theocratic rule, than what does it take?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at October 1, 2003 9:03 AMJeff:
So impeaching Clinton was an attempt to establish the rule of the House of representatives? There are certain things you can't do and remain in the Church's good graces, even if you're a ruler. The fact that we had a moral authority outside the State is why we are uniquely free. You envcision a world where only the State has any say in what's right and wrong--then who will defend your liberty?
Posted by: oj at October 1, 2003 9:08 AMOJ:
I didn't have time for the rest of the story. The pope fielded armies, too. Besides, apparently what Frederick couldn't do was anything the Pope didn't want him to.
Peter was asking about a case of theocratic rule. If that isn't, what is?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at October 1, 2003 9:26 PMJeff:
You're right, there are no serious instances in the West.
Posted by: oj at October 1, 2003 9:34 PMThe Church claimed ultimate civil authority, as well as religious. That's theocracy.
Europe was a rough place, and not everybody put up with the Church's pretensions. But that does not mean it did not make the claim.
That we are free is the residue of many things, but largely of the greed and violence of local thugs who would not submit to God.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 1, 2003 11:25 PMThe Church has ultimate authority. Hitler was a legitimate democratic ruler, but he was illegitimate in the eyes of the religious.
Posted by: oj at October 1, 2003 11:29 PM
Well, the Founding Fathers said/did it, so it must be The Right Thing! I'm postulativng that slaves, women, and [American] Indians might offer a different view. I wonder which one is correct?
Posted by: Jimmy at September 28, 2003 12:58 PM