History of the Early United States Kevin : Excellent site about Deism. And a well conceived summary of your beliefs. Very informative. You obviously have done serious research as part of your --don't know if the word "faith" is correct, maybe "identity" is better, but in any case how you think and think of yourself. I certainly can sympathize with a good number of your views., but would take exception with your generalization about the Founding Fathers. It is more historically correct than not, but there is more to be said. For instance, there was, in fact, an "evangelical" wing of the Patriot cause, epitomized by men like Patrick Henry and Pastor Muhlenberg. Still, about the Revolutionary War era, you are mostly right. I think that the historical facts are what they are and that contemporary Evangelical mythology to the contrary, America was Christian before the Revolution, sometimes in very strong ways ( think Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening ) and Christian from the early 1800s onward for many years, but not so much in the era ca. 1760 -1795 or so. Revolutions do that, whether our own, or France, or Europe in the 1840s, or Russia in the early 20th century, and so forth. With some major exceptions, the opposite, heightened religiousness in 17th century England, for example. That is, revolutions have sociological consequences, either ( temporary ) abandonment of religion, sometimes a new understanding of religion that minimizes the supernatural, OR heightened spirituality.
Anyway, there was a Deist Era, it lasted for about 35 or 40 years, and it was Very Important because it gave us our country --including a cast of heroes and leaders we continue to regard as great men. Its hard to do better than Jefferson and Franklin and Madison. I was going to say Hamilton, but by the 1790s he had converted to Christianity and favored a constitutional amendment to make the United States officially a Christian Nation. Similarly Washington, who never wasn't an Episcopalian but who was sort of Deist for a while, became increasingly religious late in life. Tom Paine was a staunch Deist all along, or his own kind of free thinker, but in the end he was increasingly isolated and fell into something like ill repute since he continued to take extreme stands long after the reason for them, the Revolution, had come and gone. The Deists of that time , as you say, were certainly not secular humanists. Their "universe of discourse" was intellectual Protestant in character. Even true, or more-or-less true, for Jefferson. Who, of course, was flat out wrong in predicting a Unitarian future for America. So, all told, if someone wants to make claims about the generation of the Founders, this is the picture. The Evangelical image, a generation of Christian believers sincere in devotion, well, while you can find examples of exactly that with no problem, really is a mischaracterization. As is, likewise, the Atheist myth of a generation of non-believers. But America sure became essentially Christian, in a big way, and it didn't take very long. The process was complete by the 1830s. However, there is a caveat. The 1830s also saw the rise of American ecumenism. Never a major theme until post WWII it nonetheless was important enough that the first World's Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago in 1893. You get Emerson and Thoreau as early examples, along with Hannah Adams, and you get all sorts of "real characters" at least somewhat influenced by this kind of thinking, certainly Joseph Smith, like Whitman ( not sure if that was for the good ), and later, Mark Twain --even if he may have been more influenced by what he knew of Deism. And so forth. About such matters maybe we can have more exchanges of views in the future. This is just a warm up. And I suspect that others may bring their own interpretations to the table in due course. My own outlook is that a form of religious "normality" reasserted itself in the decades following the Revolution, which did not metamorphize into something else until the WWI era and after. Still, as some of the items at the Deist website tell us, the Unitarian view was important and it had its own antecedents going back centuries --to Holland and to Transylvania. But let me desist in this kind of reflection for now. I'm curious about the extent of Deism in the here-and-now. Is there an organized or even informal Deist "movement" ? Thanks Billy --------------------------------------------------------------------- 10/30/2011 5:10:51 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Hello Radical Centrists: This gentleman has a lifetime of research on Deism and classical liberalism. _http://www.sullivan-county.com/deism/deism_list.htm_ (http://www.sullivan-county.com/deism/deism_list.htm) I came across his work while researching for my book, Discovering Possibility, last year. I had known about the Deistic emphasis of many of the Founding Fathers of the United States, but I had not understood just how ingrained their thinking was. Many of them were Christian in name only. Jefferson, for instance believed the life and message of Jesus was a powerful positive force for humanity. But he did not believe in any of the supernaturalism taught by the Christian Faiths. He rejected the concept of Divinity and Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection. This, more than any other fact, abolishes the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Jefferson is America. America is a Republic founded on Deistic principles that at the time of the founding was populated by citizens, the vast majority of which practiced the Christian Faith. Within Deism today there are many strains. The biggest debate centers around those that believe in a Marxist/redistributionist ethic that wishes to demonize Christianity as evil, magical thinking and those that see Christianity as largely a positive force for community albeit contaminated by some supremacist, fundamentalist man made traditions. I tend toward the latter camp. The other significant issue goes to the interventionist/noninterventionist belief system. Some argue that God started it all, creating an order to the universe but is not involved in day to day operations and does not intercede. Some see a more interventionist God. Psychologically speaking, adopting the former mindset may be the most difficult task when attempting to embrace Deism because it can summon acute existential despair. I've been through that journey. Many seek a bridge from intercession to non-intervention, finding a middle ground that might value prayer for instance, but without the belief in preferential treatment (God likes me more than you). Finally there is another interesting Deistic expression, Spiritual Deism, that is close to the Jeffersonian Deistic classical liberalism ideal but also makes room for Pre-Christian folk (Pagan) religion. This expression does not bash Christianity, but it believes that faith took some wrong turns very early on the Evangelism stage. It sees Paul as an Apostate marketer who was more interested in growing numbers than spreading truth. These folks believe supernaturalism was added to the great story in order to make the message more appealing to the masses, especially because other faiths throughout history included powerful divinity mythology. Spiritual Deism offers a bridge to Pagan Spiritualists, many of then closer to Atheism and typically Environmentalists and Progressives, but nonetheless seeking spiritual meaning. I find the Euro-folk pre-Christian ideas to be fascinating but there is a risk of ethnocentrism. I tend a bit more toward finding common values that can be universally appealing and unifying across humanity. Spiritual Deists tend to see any form of universalism as folly. This is how I talk about my own beliefs: Deism means that there is something powerful and grand in the universe that is bigger than us. It is larger than our ego's projection. Experiencing the Deity, how ever one does that (for me it is often being in the state of awe) diminishes our own tendencies toward narcissism and our controlling instincts. It helps us see order in things and brings peace. Deism motivates us to do good things in the world out of respect for that amazing order. It also humbles us. Deism also means that we strive to be rational in how we explain the world but we are also open to all other ways of knowing, such as emotional experience, intuition, or social intelligence. Deism also means that we claim no superior knowledge and seek to learn continuously from others. We do not criticize other faith traditions but we do point our where we believe we have reasonable interpretations that may be inconsistent with those other beliefs. Most importantly we approach life with realistic optimism and hope because we appreciate the wonder of the universe. Thank you for the conversation. Kevin Kervick 10/28/2011 [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) writes: Kevin : Which "revealed religions" ? They are, as you surely know, not all the same. Some are vastly different than each other. Within each faith tradition, moreover, there can be considerable differences. Mennonites and the Amish are Christian, but so are the Greek Orthodox and Anglicans. Among Jews, the differences between, say, the Haredim and synagogue-on-the-corner Conservative Jews is a difference of centuries and cultures. Do you just mean Abrahamic religions ? If so, what about Zoroastrianism, which is also based on revelation ? As well, there are a number of Japanese "new religions," as they are called, which started with Revelations, like Tenrikyo. Yes, there are problems with a good number of tenets of revealed religions. But that is really so over-generalized that it is uncertain what you mean. Tolstoy was a pacifist follower of Russian Orthodoxy. Jerry Falwell also followed a revealed religion but few people would lump him together with Tolstoy. Same for other pairings, Bonhoeffer and Torquemada, St. Francis and Charles V, or Roger Williams and Mel Gibson, for example. It would be nice to know what, specifically you are referring to. Billy -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm with Prager and have been fighting this battle for years from behind the lines in a very liberal profession. Leftist intellectuals are modern day McCarthy's in my opinion. But I think it is also time to challenge the specific tenets of revealed religion, some of which lead us to all or nothing solutions to complex problems. Kevin Real Clear Politics October 25, 2011 Are Evangelicals or University Professors More Irrational? By _Dennis Prager_ (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/?author=Dennis+Prager&id=15115) Last week, The New York Times published an opinion piece by Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens, a physics professor and history professor at Eastern Nazarene College, respectively. The authors take evangelicals to task for being anti-intellectual, anti-reason and anti-science. Their evidence: -- Evangelicals doubt man-made global warming, -- Evangelicals believe that gays can "pray away" their homosexuality. -- Evangelicals believe Earth is only thousands of years old and that men lived alongside dinosaurs. -- Evangelicals oppose same-sex marriage. Given how often they are made, it's worth analyzing these charges. With regard to man-made global warming, the accusation that all skeptics are anti-science is despicable and, indeed, anti-science. The list of prominent scientists who dissent -- including the scientist widely considered the dean of climate science in America, Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- is so long that there are entire websites that feature their names and credentials: There's a Wikipedia page titled "List of Scientists opposing the mainstreat scientific assessment of global warming" and a website called PetitionProject.org. The authors of the Times op-ed piece, like virtually all other left-wing intellectuals who comment on the subject, dismiss all skepticism regarding the Al Gore hypothesis that humanity is headed toward a worldwide apocalypse due to heat resulting from man-made carbon emissions. This is a reflection on these intellectuals' politics, not on their commitment to science. With regard to "praying away" homosexuality -- if it is indeed the normative evangelical position that all gays, with the right faith, can cease being sexually attracted to the same sex -- that position is wrong. But to the best of my knowledge, that is not the normative evangelical position; evangelicals believe that no more than they believe that prayer alone will end any undesired physical condition. At the same time, the opposite position -- the position of nearly all the liberal intellectual world -- that everyone's sexual orientation is fixed is a position also driven by ideology rather than by science. Society has a huge influence on how people act out their sexuality, including the gender of person with whom they choose to be sexual. Human sexuality -- especially female -- is far more elastic than the intellectual community admits. And the widespread liberal belief that, all things being equal, it makes no difference whether a child is raised by a mother and father or by two fathers or two mothers is hardly rational. On the issue of homosexuality, the intellectual left is just as driven by ideology as evangelicals. With regard to those evangelicals -- and for that matter, those ultra-orthodox Jews -- who believe that Earth is less than 10,000 years old and that there either were no dinosaurs or that they lived alongside human beings, my reaction has always been: So what? I believe that Earth is many millions of years old, that "six days" is meant as six periods of time (the sun wasn't even created until the third day, so how could there have been any days before then?) and that dinosaurs preexisted man by millions of years. But what real-life problem is caused by people who believe otherwise? Does it affect any of their important behaviors in life? Do they not take their children to doctors? Do they oppose medical research? Do they reject scientific discoveries that affect our lives? No. Not at all. Are there no evangelical or ultra-orthodox Jewish doctors? Of course there are, and apparently they are very comfortable learning and practicing science. Compared to the many irrational beliefs of secular, leftist intellectuals -- good and evil exist even though there is no God; male and female are interchangeable; international institutions are the hope of mankind -- evangelical irrational beliefs are utterly benign. And in regards to same-sex marriage, why is the normative Christian and Jewish belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman anti-science and anti-intellectual? What we have here is the usual left-wing tactic of smearing opponents. If you disagree with race-based affirmative action, you are a racist. If you disagree with the ever-expanding welfare state, you lack compassion. If you disagree with redefining marriage in the most radical way ever attempted in history, you are a hater. No wonder the left developed the foolish and destructive self-esteem movement -- no one has anywhere near the self-esteem leftists have. They are certain that they are better human beings in every way than those who have the temerity to oppose them. This Jew will take the evangelicals' values and the evangelicals' America over those of left-wing intellectuals' any day of the year. If evangelicals come with some views I find irrational, that's a tiny price to pay compared to the price humanity has paid for the left's consistently broken moral compass -- when it comes to America; Communism and Islamism; superiority of peace studies over waging war against evil; America's role in the world; _Israel_ (http://realclearworld.com/topic/around_the_world/israel/?utm_source=rcw&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=rcwautolink) ; the welfare state; Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and all the other left-wing dictators whom the left-wing has celebrated; the belief that men and women are basically the same; the greater worth of any animal than of the unborn human; and nearly every other major moral issue. If these professors typify the views of Eastern Nazarene, which is officially listed as a Christian university, it is reason for despair. Once left-wing values enter the evangelical bloodstream, there is almost no hope for America. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
