Feb15 |
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How Christian were the founders? Who cares?The most popular story at NYTimes. com this hour focuses on the never-ending story to define the Founding Fathers in religious terms.
The narrow answer to the question, of course is that some of the Founders were Christians and some, like Thomas Jefferson, were deists at best, and thus “Christian” only in the sense that Unitarians are Christians — which is to say, not really Christians at all. The broader answer to the question of whether the Founders were Christians, though, is this: Who cares? As a thought experiment, let’s consider asking a similar question: How slavery-loving were the Founders? The answer would be about the same; some were, some weren’t — and it doesn’t really matter all that much today. Truth is: The Founding Fathers thought a lot more about slavery than religion in putting together the Constitution: The clause that designates slaves as three-fifths of a person appears in the fifth paragraph of the document. The entire structure of the legislative branch — the bicameral thing — was designed to let slave-owning states feel comfortable the free states wouldn’t run roughshod over them. Religion, meanwhile, makes no appearance until the First Amendment; it’s an important amendment, but — coming four years after the main body of the Constitution had been adopted — a bit of a historical afterthought. And rather than enshrine religion, of course, the First Amendment serves to keep the state and the church out of each other’s ways. In thinking back to the Founders, too, it’s important to remember that they lived in a much less ecumenical age than we. The Catholics of Maryland probably thought the Puritans of Massachusetts were going to Hell — and vice versa. Connecticut and Rhode Island were, in fact, founded by religious splinter groups that found the Massachusetts colonists too stifling. If the Founding Fathers had sought to enshrine Christianity is the state religion, then, they would’ve had to answer a critical question: Whose Christianity? It’s likely the whole project might’ve died in the cradle. It’s fair to say, then, that the United States exists because the Founders sidestepped the question. So the project to confer a “Christian” history upon the United States then, isn’t merely annoying — it’s also deeply dishonest. But still: Who cares? The Founding Fathers should be treated with respect and a bit of reverence, I suppose, but we often seem to be in danger of fetishizing them. We of course live with a government and Constitution that were created by those founders. To the extent that parts of their vision haven’t been repealed — like the whole slavery thing — we Americans have continued to assent to live under those laws. And there’s a lot of good that has come from that. But we also need to figure out a correct balance between the Founders’ vision of America and our own. We are the ones who live here, after all. The vision of the Founders can, should and does inform our present decisions about how to govern ourselves — but it shouldn’t be limited to that. The good Christians who try to shoehorn the Founders into their religious vision are working, really, to trump the rest of us who live in a secular world and are happy to keep it that way. Should they (improbably) prove that the Founders wanted every American to become Presbyterian, it shouldn’t actually matter — because that’s not what we want. The desires of men long dead should only count for so much. |
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PhillyNow | PW Style | Make Major Moves | The Trouble with Spikol
thank you.
i have a good friend who became a fundamentalist christian. he spent years ranting about how the US is a christian nation, and complaining about muslims who want to kill us, we need to bring prayer and the bible into classrooms, blah blah blah. He refused to grasp that the wall between church and state didn’t so much limit his religious freedom, as it protected it. He didn’t understand that having a secular state protected religious minorities.
Then his job transferred him and his family to India, where they were the religious minority for the first time ever. Dude came back with a much healthier and respectful approach to other religions, decided that most muslims weren’t interested in killing christians, and that he was really lucky to live in a country that doesn’t endorse one religion over the others.
As a Christian (theologically conservative but (mostly) politically liberal) I know that Christians who demand this Christian Nation business are doing far more harm than good to the cause of Christ. They are cheapening The Way by trying to force it upon people who have not personally committed themselves to it.
The underlying and I think very real ulterior motive to this movement is sheer laziness. Making everyone else do things their way is a way of protecting themselves, of not having to learn why they believe what they believe, and keeping them from having to pass that knowledge along to their children. If we were to no longer be a Christian nation with conservative politics then people might have to go back to their faith and reexamine what the Bible really does say. They may have to learn what Jesus really did teach and consider how it may have to impact (and inconvenience) them in the way that they live.
I love my brothers and sisters in Christ, but gee whiz some of them need an education.
People on both sides of this issue are missing the point. It seems that, for lack of a better term, the secularists want to deny the influence that the religious beliefs of the founding fathers had on their decisions and the form of government they produced. Going so far as to try to rewrite their biographies and leave religion out entirely. This cannot be done with honesty. They were religious, holding to varoius forms of Christianity, Deism, and atheism. The genius of the Fathers was they protected everyone’s religion without writing any particular one into the Constitution. But that does not mean that their beliefs had no influence on it. The moral values of the Judeo-Christian system are present in a very real and beneficial way. On the other hand, there are those from the religiously conservative side that want to make each of the founding fathers a Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Catholic, or whatever, after their own image. This cannot be done with honesty either. They were what they were, even if what they were is pleasing to any of us or not. One other comment: The First Amendment does not “keep the state and the church out of each other’s ways.” It does keep the government from intruding into the affairs of church, synogogue, mosque, temple, etc. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Nowhere does this state that people of faith cannot be involved in the affairs of government and vote their conscience, even if that conscience is informed by strongly held religious beliefs, any more than it prohibits an atheist from being involved and voting his conscience informed by his atheism. Enough said. Have a great day!
Dave: Let me clarify a little bit. I don’t doubt that individual Founders were influenced by their own religious sensibilities — Jefferson, we’ve noted, was a deist, while I gather John Adams was much more overtly Christian. I don’t doubt that those sensibilities influenced their actions … the way that folks in the 21st century are influenced by their relative religiosity or secularism. Even if one wanted to ban such influence from such considerations at the voting booth or in our public debates, religion (or lack thereof) is so deeply intertwined with our individual senses of self I don’t know that you ever could.
But…
There’s a huge difference between noting and acknowledging that the Founding Fathers were influenced by a Christian civilization more than a thousand years in the making and saying that Christianity itself is embedded in the law so deeply (if subtly) that Christians must be given the advantage in our public debates and policy. That seems to be the desire of the folks who are trying to “Christianize” our history, and as I say: I think they’re wrong — both as a matter of history and as a matter of how we should run the country today.
“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.” Thomas Paine
“Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Lighthouses are more helpful than Churches”, Benjamin Franklin
Small item: John Adams actually was also a Unitarian. http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/johnadams.html
Good post, Joel.
the “us is a christian nation” people would do well to read Thomas Paine’s “age of reason”.
The founding fathers seem to have been at varying degrees of a spectrum between Christianity and atheist, such as agnostic, deist, unitarian, etc. But maybe that’s only because the Christian church had eliminated all serious competitors, due its many centuries of violence and persecution of pagans and pagan religions.
I’ll bet if Wicca were around in the 1700’s, Ben Franklin would have found that a much more appealing religion than Christianity. Maybe Thomas Jefferson would have leaned towards Hellenic paganism, and John Adams towards Kemetic paganism. Heck, even Thomas Paine might have embraced Asatru and worshipped the old pagan Gods of the Norse.
Yeah, okay – it’s all speculation. But the point is this: even way back when there were pretty much No Other Religions to choose from, quite a few of our founders chose to opt out of Christianity. If there had been other viable religious options to choose from — that is, if the Christian church had not engaged in a violent spree of religious bigotry, oppression and genocide against pagans and pagan religions for several hundred years — then we might well be talking about how America had been founded as a pagan nation.
After all, the bold new ideals that the founders expressed — individual freedom and diversity — were much more in line with pagan values than with Christian ones.
And, of course, the author of this article makes a good point in saying that, whatever our founding fathers believed, it should not limit our choices today. So, America did not start out as a pagan nation, due to an accident of history: namely, the Christian persecution of pagan religions and the imposition of compulsory monotheism. But so what? America can still become a Pagan nation in the future, as the exuberant rebirth of pagan religions in America today demonstrates so well.
Jonathan Kirsch wrote in his book “God Against the Gods: A History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism” about how the values embraced in America today — especially freedom of religion and tolerance of diversity — are really values that we inherited from pagan cultures. True religious diversity means not only many religions, but more importantly: Many Gods. Religious pagans revel in the diversity of many religions, many Gods, many pantheons. And that is exactly what monotheistic religions have always opposed, with their fanatical claims of “only one true god.”
The false claim of “only one god” leads directly to the idea of “only one right religion” and from there to “holy wars” to slay the infidels, and all like that. The best way to understand monotheism is that it started as a declaration of war against all other religions, which at that time were polytheistic pagan religions. Out of hundreds of religions in the history of the Earth, the vast majority have been polytheistic pagan religions. Only a small handful of religions are monotheistic, but those are generally the ones that are most militant and aggressive and bigoted, the ones most responsible for “holy wars” of various kinds. But this should really not be a surprise, nor should it be taken as an indictment of all religions. Monotheism is religious bigotry in its purest form.
The vast majority of people are not going to stop being religious, because we have a strong inner drive towards religion. But the most natural human religious drive is towards some sort of pantheistic, polytheistic pagan religion. How can we know this? Because that’s just exactly the kind of religious expression that arises naturally and spontaneously, whenever the coercive oppression applied by the monotheists is removed. So that is the best hope for a secular government and true separation of “church and state.” Because polytheistic religions naturally embrace religious diversity and free religious choice of all kinds, including freedom for atheists as well.
People need to stop thinking in terms of a static, one-dimensional spectrum between bible-thumping monotheism at one end versus militant atheism at the other end. Instead start thinking of religions as a dynamic living field or ecosystem, thousands of different kinds of flowers in a vast field of human religious diversity. How wonderful that there are many kinds of flowers, and they’re not all petunias! They’re all beautiful, they can all contribute to the ecology, so long as they don’t pose the ecological threat of trying to wipe out all the other flowers.
That vision — a harmonious and vibrant diversity of many religions and many Gods — is a pagan vision. And, because humans are not going to all cease being religious as the militant atheists keep fantasizing, it’s the only plausible way to have real freedom for all religious and non-religious viewpoints. (Or at least, all religious viewpoints that are not out to oppress and/or kill the other viewpoints.)
“we also need to figure out a correct balance between the Founders’ vision of America and our own. We are the ones who live here, after all…”
So; what you are saying is, that modern Christians, who live in the USA, should be given a place at the table in shaping the destiny of the nation? Good post!
“trent equal” — not a bad name for a private eye!
@ Dee: “The false claim of ‘only one god’ …”
Heh. So happy to see that someone smarter than Newton, Moses, Darwin, Jesus of Nazareth, Galileo, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, etc., etc., finally figured this out!
Rhodes burgess
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