[| I, CWAS |]

Interesting that many of the same secularists who decry the rise of Christian Conservatism on the basis of the founding fathers beliefs, have a propensity towards the welfare state and statism in general.

Secular Rationalism? The founding fathers were slave owners, who wrote a constitution that ended up being pro-slavery through various degrees of seperation. Just goes to show secular utilitarians/"rationalists" will endorse slavery and slave owners for their political ends.

Contending Originalisms: Secular vs. Christian America
By Joseph Knippenberg

Not too long ago, I read Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming, an account, as the subtitle puts it, of “the rise of Christian nationalism.” Goldberg, clearly an urban secularist, worries that folks on the religious right will dismantle the America she regards as a secular state that is “one of the Enlightenment’s proudest legacies.”

On the other side of the barricades, her opponents often claim that America is a “Christian nation,” that our government and Constitution are built on Biblical or (in the oddly ecumenical formulation of the much-decried Texas Republican Party platform) “Judeo-Christian principles.”

To attempt to settle this debate in the course of this column would be to descend to the level of the combatants, citing proof-texts for one or the other side. As it happens, of course, there is—inconveniently enough—evidence available to support both views. As David L. Holmes observes in his recent (and well-received) The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, many of our Founders—especially the Virginians—displayed marked Deist and Unitarian tendencies. But there were others—among them Samuel Adams, John Jay, and Patrick Henry—who were devoted adherents of Christian orthodoxy.

What “we the [non-elite] people” believed is a different story altogether, and one equally hard to capture in sound bites. Respectable historians offer pictures of American religiosity in the colonial and early republican periods that are quite complex. Some, like Holmes, note that a vast majority of American Christians during the colonial era were influenced by John Calvin. Others, like Mark A. Noll, point to the growing influence of a uniquely American evangelicalism from the time of the Great Awakening on. Still others, like Jon Butler, argue that it is easy to overstate the religiosity, not to mention the orthodoxy, of the colonial and revolutionary eras.

One of the few things of which I am certain is that men like [Slave Owning Secularist] Thomas Jefferson, a notorious Deist who was quite unsuccessful in keeping his religious views secret, didn’t speak for the vast majority of their fellow citizens. A significant portion of America’s political and intellectual elite may have for a time been on its way to some sort of Enlightenment secular rationalism, but there was a substantial gap, not only between them and the rest of the country, but even between them and their wives and daughters—many of whom, as Holmes argues, were faithfully orthodox in their belief and practice.

Such considerations are important in today’s debates for a couple of reasons. In the first place, secularists who cite the rationalism and religious unorthodoxy of the founding generation thereby approach a kind of “originalism,” implying that the Constitution ought to be understood in terms of the intentions of the Founders. If they were rationalist and/or lukewarmly religious, then the document ought to be read so as to comport with this understanding.

Of course, one can respond that, strictly speaking, the views of those who voted to ratify the Constitution are at least as important as those of the document’s drafters. So far as I can tell, no one has made the argument that the men who assembled in the various states to debate and ratify the Constitution were as heterodox as were at least some of those who assembled in Philadelphia. If we actually care about what the Constitution meant to those who ratified it, then the religious opinions and actions of a few leading men are interesting, but hardly decisive.

This leads to the second way in which these arguments are said to be significant. The debate is less about the actual meaning of the Constitution’s words than about the “spirit” animating them. To care too much about the words is “strict constructionism,” anathema to many of today’s liberals. On this view, as it was written and adopted, the Constitution embodied an as-yet imperfectly realized project. Its logic would develop and its implications would unfold over time. If it was an expression of minds decisively influenced by the Enlightenment, then, regardless of the precise views held by its adopters, it’s the Enlightenment spirit that ought to predominate in its interpretation. Stated another way, the argument is less about the words in the Constitution than about American political culture, which could be said to constitute our “regime.”

While I have my doubts about this as an approach to adjudicating disputes about the meaning of our Constitution, I am willing to enter into the larger question of what we can learn from the Founders about the role of religion in our political culture. I’m willing, in other words, to inquire into the cultural “project” upon which they would have us embark as a nation.

What’s interesting in this regard is the private and public support many of the Founders gave to religion. For example, Holmes informs us that Benjamin Franklin “contributed to the construction budgets not only of every church in Philadelphia but also of the city’s one synagogue.” Others attended services with reasonable regularity and even served as vestrymen in their churches. Michael Novak reminds us both of George Washington’s insistence that his troops “regularly attend divine Worship,” and of these immortal words from his Farewell Address:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men & citizens.

Opinions like this help explain many of the political actions undertaken by the first Congress convened under the Constitution. As is well-known, that Congress proposed the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, which provided, first of all, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The meaning of the Establishment Clause’s odd locution has been much disputed, but it surely prohibits Congress from establishing—compelling public support of—a national religion and likely also prohibits it from overturning the state establishments that existed a that time. (The latter action would have to be undertaken by the states themselves; the last didn’t do so until 1833.) Thus in our federal system the First Amendment originally meant not a uniform, judicially-enforced “separation of church and state,” but rather simply a prohibition of the establishment of a national religion.

But the prohibitions and protections in the First Amendment didn’t preclude Congress from passing the Northwest Ordinance, which provided, in agreement with Washington’s views, that:

Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Imagine: Our Founders, those creatures and proponents of the Enlightenment, fully expected schools supported by their communities to promote religion.

If, then, there is a spirit of the Founding to which we’re supposed to hearken, it’s one that is quite friendly to public expression and support of religion. The Founders recognized its importance both as an expression of the innermost longings of the human soul and as an essential support for the civic virtue on which our republic relies. They would have approved this part of Justice William O. Douglas’ opinion in Zorach v. Clausen, if not necessarily the largely separationist framework in which he embedded it: “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

In sum, while it may well strain credulity to claim that at least some leading members of the founding generation were orthodox religious believers, it is equally incredible to regard them as rigidly bent on an absolute and inflexible separation of church and state, a wall high and impermeable. Whatever their private beliefs, many at least acquiesced in and even encouraged public expression of religion. They respected, admired, and worked with men like Samuel Adams (to be accurate, the beer label should say “Brewer, Patriot, Orthodox Calvinist”). They loved women whose religious orthodoxy they respected and did not discourage.

To my friends on the Christian Right, I say: You don’t have to stretch claims about the Founders to provide historical support for a religion-friendly public square. If your intention is to defend the rights of believers to worship and witness as they please, and to level the proverbial “playing field” as they seek to influence public policy, the founding generation would offer you plenty of aid and comfort. Your reform efforts fall squarely in an American tradition that includes abolitionism, the civil rights movement, the social Gospel, and the temperance movement.

To my friends on the secular Left, I say: a good portion of the moral energy that sustains our democratic republic has its roots in religious faith. The Founders recognized that and were able to accommodate and work with it. Remember the words of George Washington:

[L]et us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of a peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Source

[byosotld]

Did I miss something? Was slaverly not abolished?

Nice lesson in 200 year old history and modern speculation.[/i]

[itsnotsoccer]

the christian right have a big problem.....

[Blondie]

the christian right have a big problem.....

You're not making any sense at the moment. Elaborate.

[byosotld]

Interesting that many of the same secularists who decry the rise of Christian Conservatism on the basis of the founding fathers beliefs, have a propensity towards the welfare state and statism in general.

Interesting that many of the same nonsensical assertions which are treated as axioms by some fail to identify with anyone I actually know.

The majority of my friends, especially my college friends, and I shake our heads with the same vigor when discussing the radical religious right as we do when puzzling over activists' compassion for the apathetic and overly entitled masses of our country. For benefit of the thread originator, he/she often refers to these masses as the crack smoking employees of the local welfare baby factory.

[| I, CWAS |]

Interesting that many of the same nonsensical assertions which are treated as axioms by some fail to identify with anyone I actually know.

Why would it? Was all or 100% said?

The majority of my friends, especially my college friends, and I shake our heads with the same vigor when discussing the radical religious right as we do when puzzling over activists' compassion for the apathetic and overly entitled masses of our country. For benefit of the thread originator, he/she often refers to these masses as the crack smoking employees of the local welfare baby factory.

It is good to see others are catching on to the agenda.