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Note: There are two large blank spaces at the beginning of the article; these resulted from my attempts to present clean and easy to read material without large photos to slow the reading process. After the blank spaces, this effect was achieved and the information in the essay should be valuable to you. BR <https://www.forbes.com/> 459,135 views Sep 25, 2012, 09:51pm Was America Founded As A Christian Nation? <https://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/> Bill Flax <https://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/> [Founding Fathers] Founding Fathers (Photo credit: cliff1066™) Few matters ignite more controversy than America ’s Christian roots. The issue reverberates anew this electoral season where the faiths of both major candidates have been questioned. Religion imbues politics. The battle over America ’s beginnings muddles wishful hero worship with efforts to commandeer America ’s past so to steer her future. The most vocal proponents of Christian America and their counterparts advocating a completely secular state necessarily cherry-pick data to prove exaggerations while discarding inconvenient details. By transforming our Forefathers into faithful servants of Christ the Religious Right risks compromising the biblical message. Baptist theologian Al Mohler warns advocates of Christian America have “confused their cultural heritage with biblical Christianity<http://www.albertmohler.com/2012/09/10/what-did-america%E2%80%99s-founders-really-believe-a-conversation-with-historian-gregg-frazer-transcript/>.” While Believers must exercise their views, cheapening what constitutes Christianity for political gain profanes the Gospel. Moreover, Believers should refuse Big Government operating in Christ’s name<http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2012/01/25/government_is_a_christians_worst_friend.html>. As empty pews in Europe testify, politicized religion impedes ministry. Beautiful cathedrals dot the Old World , but with scant congregants, they memorialize a funereal dearth of faith coming from state sanctioned pulpits. Meanwhile, those most ardently challenging America ’s Christian origins wrongly portray the Founders as rank secularists. They would seemingly reduce religious liberty to mere freedom of worship letting Believers pray in their hovels, but in public: Be seen and not heard. Some liberals seem inclined on expunging Christianity. Democrats nearly revolted over a fleeting reference to “God-given potential” at their convention. The hardcore Left once highlighted how they supposed the political establishment exploited religion to keep workers content. Karl Marx thought religion reflected a palliative. Modern denizens of political correctness reckon the Founders so irreligious that they had sought to diminish spiritual influence. Under this flawed auspice, the First Amendment justifies evicting crosses from parks, purging prayer from schools and ousting “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance<http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/07/09/the-true-meaning-of-separation-of-church-and-state/>. President Obama, champion of religious pluralism, can’t even credit our “Creator” when quoting the Declaration<http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-misquotes-declaration-independence-again_511412.html>. The most damning evidence of a non-Christian past is a humiliating 1797 treaty with the Barbary Pirates. President Adams sought to stem unremitting Muslim raids against Mediterranean shipping and protect American sailors from African slavery. This obscure treaty submitted, “The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” But diplomacy in North Africa through studied weakness proved as futile then as today, so Marines took action inspiring the snippet, “… to the shores of Tripoli.” By the 1800s, replete with a burgeoning navy, subsequent treaties contained no such obsequious bows to Islam. Still, the secularists rejoice. As historian John Fea notes<http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/America-Has-Always-Been-a-Christian-Nation.html>, “If the Treaty of Tripoli is correct, and the United States was not ‘founded on the Christian religion,’ then someone forgot to tell the American people... The idea that the United States is a ‘Christian nation,’ has always been central to American identity.” But debate rages over whether the Founders were Deists and why the Constitution bears no mention of God. Like today, the Founding elites were less spiritually pre-disposed than the overall populace. Then, as now, politicians appropriated Christian themes. Obama even invoked Jesus to support same-sex marriage. The Founders knew the talk too. But as Gregg Frazier illustrates, when Washington<http://www.forbes.com/places/dc/washington/>, Adams and Franklin appealed to Almighty God they didn’t necessarily mean Jehovah. In The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders<http://www.albertmohler.com/2012/09/10/what-did-americas-founders-really-believe-a-conversation-with-historian-gregg-frazer/>, (which I’ve not yet read) Dr. Frazier suggests designations of Deist or Christian are too simple. He describes the primary beliefs of core Founders as “theistic rationalism.” Frazier notes, “They took elements of Christianity and elements of natural religion and then, using rationalism, they kept what they thought was reasonable, was rational, and rejected what they considered to be irrational.” This hybrid, unlike Deism, per Frazier, developed a benevolent god who heard and answered prayers to impart justice. All thought Jesus a great moral philosopher, but many important Revolutionary leaders denied his Deity. But be clear, biblical Christianity isn’t mere morals. Dr. Mohler stresses, diluting the Gospel to “Christian values<http://www.albertmohler.com/2012/09/11/christian-values-cannot-save-anyone/>” won’t save perishing souls. Yet, Christians were well represented. Patrick Henry was Virginia ’s governor, the largest, most important state when most political authority resided in the states. He was also instrumental behind the Bill of Rights. John Jay became our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Roger Sherman<http://www.forbes.com/places/tx/sherman/> helped draft the Declaration, led the pivotal compromise at the Constitutional Convention and was the only man to sign all four founding documents. John Hancock, John Witherspoon, Samuel Adams and other Christians played prominently. Representing the rest as staunch secularists is clearly absurd. All the Forefathers matured through phases where their beliefs changed. John Adams and James Madison<http://www.forbes.com/places/wi/madison/> both appeared devout as young men, but may have backslid into Unitarianism. Alexander Hamilton reputedly converted to Christ later in life. In A History of the American People, eminent historian Paul Johnson<http://blogs.forbes.com/currentevents/> describes Washington as “probably a deist, though he would have strenuously denied accusations of not being a Christian, if anyone had been foolish enough to make them.” Jefferson described himself as “Christian” despite rejecting core doctrines, even excising from the Gospels anything resembling the Supernatural. Even Jefferson and Franklin perceived morality through a biblical prism, but distrusted the trappings of organized religion. They might have scoffed at the first four commandments, man’s duties before God (although Jefferson penned the Virginia bill prescribing harsh penalties for violating the Sabbath), but they absolutely esteemed (even if not always lived) the latter six commandments about loving others. All thought the Bible essential for just and harmonious society. Washington’s Farewell Address neatly summarized, “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensible supports.” Franklin warned the irreligious Thomas Paine, “If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?” In Vindicating the Founders, Thomas G. West relays that Gouverneur Morris, ambassador to France , predicted their revolution would fail because the French were “ridiculing religion.” Morris, a not particularly pious man, foresaw catastrophe since “religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments.” The Founders disagreed on much, but were nearly unanimous concerning biblical morality. They understood the relationship between state and society differently than progressive thinkers today: government cannot mold man. Righteous men must mold government which requires the inculcation of virtue through vibrant churches and the transmittal of values generationally via a social structure based on families. Usurping the First Amendment to obstruct public expressions of faith would leave the Founders aghast. Not only did the Constitution leave extant the official religions authorized in most of the states, as historian Thomas Woods explains, prohibiting prayer in public schools “runs exactly contrary to the Framers’ intent ... a stupefying departure from traditional American principles and an intolerable encroachment on communities’ rights to self-government.” Jefferson ’s “wall of separation” guarded faith, or lack thereof, against political interference. Far from uprooting our cultural moorings, the Forefathers embraced heritage. Historian Larry Schweikart notes, “The founding documents of every one of the original thirteen colonies reveal them to be awash in the concepts of Christianity and God.” Youth learned to read using Scripture. Universities were chartered to teach doctrine. Students could not even enter Harvard, Yale or Princeton without assenting to the Westminster Confession. America’s conception of Republican government mixed enlightenment rationalism and the retrenching of Biblicism spurred by the Great Awakening. This colonial wide movement essentially Americanized the Church knitting the colonies together. John Adams wrote, “The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the mind and hearts of the people: and change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.” Paul Johnson echoed, “The Great Awakening was thus the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible.” Adams concluded freedom sprang because the “pulpits thundered!” Johnson continued, “The American Revolution in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event. That fact was to shape … the nature of the independent state it brought into being.” John Adams noted, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.” Citing Calvinist doctrine, Adams credited the widely read Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos<http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=27906> as affirming that Christians could rightly revolt against ungodly despotism if led by lower magistrates. Unlike the Jacobins who disavowed French culture by enacting a new calendar, crafting the metric system and supplanting the goddess “Reason” over “Superstition,” colonial Patriots cherished their past. Independence came as the Founders asserted their ancient rights as Englishmen suddenly threatened from afar. They feared meddling by the impious British, a parliament so intrusive as to regulate and levy taxes without representation. When the Redcoats embarked to confiscate the colonial armaments, war commenced. The Patriots recognized disarmament as the necessary precursor to oppression. Minuteman Levi Preston later described the impetus behind the Battle of Concord, “We always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.” Per Paul Johnson, “The Declaration of Independence was, to those who signed it, a religious as well as a secular act, and the Revolutionary War has the approbation of divine providence.” The Declaration contains four clear references to God. Independence was predicated on the “laws of nature and nature’s God” because men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Continental<http://www.forbes.com/companies/continental/> Congress thought success dependent on “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” to whom they relied on for “the protection of divine Providence.” Secularists claim designations like “laws of nature” evidences Deism, not Christianity. Many Founders might agree. But that phrase also appears in the quintessential statement of Protestant faith, the Westminster Confession<http://www.reformed.org/documents/westminster_conf_of_faith.html>,where “light of nature,” meaning the same, appears repeatedly. John Locke, whose influence was indisputable, clarified that natural rights need to “be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e., to the will of God<http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr11.htm>.” And that legislation must be “without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made<http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr11.htm>.” Blackstone’s Commentaries, a pivotal support for America’s common law system, rests upon both sources for truth in Christian thinking. There is “special revelation” in the Holy Scriptures and “general revelation” of a complex, yet sublime world working according to an ordered design subject to discoverable natural laws. Why then is the Constitution devoid of biblical references? Perhaps, because as James Madison remonstrated regarding inserting “Jesus Christ” into earlier legislation, “The better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion.” But it’s more likely because the Constitution was crafted during what Paul Johnson deemed “the high-tide of 18th-century secularism.” Mirroring the Book of Judges, Americans relied on God in travails, but soon forgot Him, self-satisfied in plenty. With deliberations stalled, Franklin rebuked the Constitutional Convention for neglecting prayer. He reminded that the delegates had prayed daily during the war and that God answered<http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_628.asp>. Soon after ratification, a Second Great Awakening rippled through the new Republic. Alexis de Tocqueville found, “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention.” So pervading was Christianity that Tocqueville recounts a witness in New York who professed disbelief, “The judge refused to admit his evidence, on the ground that the witness had destroyed beforehand all the confidence of the Court in what he was about to say.” A newspaper noted, “The presiding judge remarked that he had not before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the existence of God.” America wasn’t founded as a Christian nation and many of our beloved Forefathers sadly were not, yet America was largely comprised of Believers. Liberty allows us to worship freely or not at all per conscience. America was never meant to be theocratic or homogenous religiously, but Christianity has always been indelible to our social fabric. The Founders, even non-Believers, considered that a blessing. -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
