"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"
Deism And Founding Father Links
If Our Founding Fathers Were All Good Christians,
Why Did They Say These Things?
Jefferson's Advocacy For Protection Of Jew, Gentile, Mahometan, Hindu And Infidel
Deism And Founding Father Links
If Our Founding Fathers Were All Good Christians,
Why Did They Say These Things?
Jefferson's Advocacy For Protection Of Jew, Gentile, Mahometan, Hindu And Infidel
Deism And Founding Father Links
If Our Founding Fathers Were All Good Christians,
Why Did They Say These Things?
Jefferson's Advocacy For Protection Of Jew, Gentile, Mahometan, Hindu And Infidel
Opinion polls indicate that many Americans hold vague, if not explicit, ideas about the nation’s religious foundings. According to a 2008 study by the First Amendment Center, over 50 percent of Americans believe that the U.S Constitution created a Christian nation, notwithstanding its express prohibitions on religious establishments and religious tests for public office holding. A similar study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life revealed even higher numbers, noting that “Americans overwhelmingly consider the U.S. a Christian nation: Two-in-three (67%) characterize the nation this way.” Other studies indicate that a majority of Americans believe that the nation’s political life should be based on “Judeo-Christian principles,” if the nation’s founding principles are not already.
Assertions of the nation’s religious origins and of divine providence behind the crafting of the governing instruments are especially popular among politicians. In fact, religious declarations by elected officials are so common today that they have become routine, if not banal. Frequently, allusions of God’s providence are ambiguous and are used simply as a ceremonial flourish, obviating the need for further elaboration. President Ronald Reagan, who was not a devout churchgoer despite his support from the evangelical Religious Right, regularly alluded to the nation’s providential past, remarking in one speech, “Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe free?” One could argue that Reagan’s embrace of a providential past was uncritical, if not undisciplined: in his acceptance speech at the 1980 Republican National Convention, Reagan displayed his legendary disregard for consistency by declaring America to be “our portion of His creation” while praising the contributions of the deist Tom Paine! One particularly delicious statement is Dwight Eisenhower’s iconic remark that “our form of Government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is!” Usually, such rhetoric does little more than affirm a national “civil religion,” where the nation’s institutions and its destiny take on an indeterminate, quasi-sacred quality. Such utterances largely fulfill a unifying, ceremonial purpose.
Many politicians, however, have gone farther by advancing specific claims about America’s religious past and its significance for the present. At times, Reagan embraced a fuller notion of the myth. In a 1984 prayer breakfast, he declared that “faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation,” asserting that the Founders had affirmed this relationship. “Those who created our country,” Reagan remarked, “understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order.” The Founders viewed the government as “a form of moral order,” which found its basis in religion. Reagan was not alone among politicians on the conservative spectrum. In May 2010, former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin declared on Fox News that people should “[g]o back to what our founders and our founding documents meant. They’re quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments. It’s pretty simple.” And no modern politician drew more allusions to the nation’s religious heritage than did George W. Bush. A conservative evangelical, Bush frequently revealed his belief in America’s Christian origins, once affirming that “[o]ur country was founded by men and women who realized their dependence on God and were humbled by His providence and grace.” The Founders did more than simply acknowledge their obligation toward God, however; for Bush, America was specially chosen, “not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation” but because “God moves and chooses [us] as He wills.” For Bush, this history had practical applications for present policies, legitimizing his enlistment of religious organizations to operate government-funded social service programs from a “faith perspective” (i.e., the “Faith-Based Initiative”). It also supported an active religious (i.e., Christian) voice in the public realm: “The faith of our Founding Fathers established the precedent that prayers and national days of prayer are an honored part of our American way of life,” Bush insisted. As historian Richard T. Hughes has written about Bush, in his embrace of the myth, Bush “thoroughly confused the Christian view of reality with the purposes of the United States.”
Such rhetoric usually receives a pass from the mainstream press, perhaps because of its ubiquity. On occasion, the press criticizes a politician for too closely associating the nation’s history and goals with God’s purpose, but reporters usually consider such statements as being off-limits for critique. Possibly, this is because there is a long history of public officials from both political parties aligning the national will with God’s plan. Democrat Woodrow Wilson, our most evangelical president between Rutherford B. Hayes and Jimmy Carter, once said, “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.” And the nation’s most beloved president, Abraham Lincoln, regularly averred that the nation was subject to God’s will, and to his judgment. Still, not all religious allusions have been the same. Lincoln’s religious rhetoric was often in the form of a jeremiad, calling the nation to a moral accountability. Lincoln was careful not to align God with the Union side during the Civil War, noting in his Second Inaugural Address that both sides “read the same Bible and pray[ed] to the same God [while] invok[ing] His aid against the other.” And Jimmy Carter, a devout Southern Baptist, also drew a line between supplicating God’s blessings and sanctifying the nation. Despite the nuanced rhetoric of some of our political leaders, religious declarations by politicians perpetuate the impression that America was specially ordained by God and that the nation’s governing documents and institutions reflect Christian values.
The resiliency of a belief in America’s religious origins, particularly of its “chosen” status, is, in part, perplexing. American religious exceptionalism has not been taught in the nation’s public schools since the mid-1900s, though the theme was common in school curricula, either explicitly or implicitly, for the first 150 years of public schooling. Yet the narrative persists, much of it from a religious or patriotic perspective, fueled by popular literature and the media and promoted by evangelical pastors and conservative politicians and commentators.
One explanation for the popularity of this account is that the idea of America’s religious founding has a protean, chameleon-like quality. For many people, the concept may mean little more than that America was settled in part by religious dissenters who helped establish a regime of religious liberty unmatched in the world at that time. For a related group, it is the belief that religious perspectives and values pervaded the colonial and revolutionary periods, and that the Founders—however they are defined—relied on those values, among others, in constructing the ideological basis for republican government. Closely associated with this last understanding is the sense that people of the founding generation were at ease with public acknowledgments of and support for religion, and that the Founders believed that moral virtue was indispensable for the nation’s well-being. A majority of Americans likely hold the above views to one degree or another. And all of these perspectives find degrees of support in the historical record. The above views, however, do not necessarily involve claims that America was specially chosen by God in the model of Old Testament Israel or that promote a form of religious exceptionalism, that is, a belief in the unique status and mission of the United States in the world. The embrace of religious exceptionalism represents the chief ideological break between the above perspectives and the remainder.
The next view, in level of intensity, shares much in common with the last perspective but elevates the role of religion from being one of many ideologies informing the founding era to a status of prominence. It argues that religion—frequently defined as Calvinism—was the chief energizing propulsion of the founding ideology and that the American democratic system cannot be understood without appreciating its Christian roots. This perspective often emphasizes the religious piety of the Founders and their generation, disputing claims that a majority of the early leaders were religious rationalists or that the populace was generally non-churchgoing. The final perspective that can be distinguished under this broad taxonomy includes an additional claim of a divine intervention in the nation’s creation—that America was an especially chosen nation and that the Founders acted as they did due to God’s providential guiding hand. Under this last perspective, the nation’s past and founding documents assume an almost sacred quality. As can be appreciated, due to the variety of potential understandings and fluidity between perspectives, it can be difficult to decipher what one means when speaking of America’s Christian heritage or of it being a “Christian nation.” A vague assertion is likely to resonate with a large number of people.
Still, a distinctive argument about America’s religious foundings, one that encompasses the last two perspectives, has emerged in recent years, finding an audience among religious and political conservatives. Ever since the nation’s bicentennial, conservatives have raised claims about America’s Christian heritage in their efforts to gain the moral (and political) high ground in the ongoing culture wars. These arguments take on several forms, from asserting that the Founders relied on a pervasive Calvinist ideology when crafting notions of republicanism to claiming that the Founders were devout Christians and were guided in their actions by divine providence. As evidence, proponents point to public statements and official actions during the founding period—for example, thanksgiving day proclamations—that purportedly demonstrate a reliance on religious principles in the ordering of the nation’s political and legal institutions. A plethora of books have been published that attest to the Founders’ religious piety and to their belief about the role of religion in civil government. Although these books are usually weak on historical scholarship, they project a degree of authority by frequently “disclosing” previously “unknown” historical data, purposely ignored (allegedly) by professional historians. The common theme, as expressed by popular evangelical author Tim LaHaye (of the Left Behind series), is that an orthodox “Christian consensus” existed at the time of the founding and that the Founders intended to incorporate Judeo-Christian principles into the founding documents. As another writer summarizes the claim:
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