Positive Liberty

Gregg Frazer’s Ph.D. thesis from Claremont Graduate University entitled The Political Theology of the American Founding came in the mail the other day. I’m reading it very slowly, savoring parts of it (I am also teaching 12 credits this summer, plus doing corporate training. Hey, I thought college professors were supposed to get the summers off!).

The thesis was completed in 2004. It’s nice to see how much of my independent research I’ve done on this blog over the past two years confirms Frazer’s thesis and vice versa. The Thesis, by the way, (found in this article) is briefly this: While there may have been a few strict Deists (meaning those who believed in a non-interventionist God, categorically rejected all revelation in favor reason, etc.) and more than a few orthodox Christians among the Founders, the key Founders — those most responsible for the ideas upon which we declared independence and constructed the Constitution (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Wilson, G. Morris, and a few others) — were neither, but rather somewhere in between. And while they may not have believed in the exact same things on religion, these key Founders were by in large agreed on certain basic tenets, which tenets put them outside both the “strict Deist” and “orthodox Christian” boxes.

His research also contributes a new term to the discourse. While this belief system has been recognized and given different names by various scholars and the Founders themselves, most of those terms are in some way inadequate, so Frazer suggests a new term: “Theistic Rationalist.” (Some of the terms used to describe this system have been liberal Christianity, Warm-Deism, Christian-Deism, Unitarianism. Before I read Frazer’s thesis I used the term “Deistic-Unitarian.”)

One of the confusing things about Founding times and public utterances on religion is understanding the historical context. They were coming out of and still living in a time where unenlightened practices still existed deeply entrenched in our nation’s traditions; yet, they declared independence and constructed the Constitution drawing predominately on enlightenment principles, which were relatively novel and still controversial in many social circles. And thus a conflict existed between their liberal ideals and their illiberal practices. The anecdote that perfectly highlights the context is that one key tenet of theistic rationalism is that Jesus was not God, but rather a great moral teacher. Yet, some states still imposed religious tests forbidding one from holding office if one explicitly denied the Trinity! Jefferson and Adams sometimes viciously attacked the Trinity. But most of those references are drawn from their personal letters and if made public probably would have ruined their public reputations. Thomas Paine wore his unorthodoxy on his sleeve and was publicly ruined for it. In one of Ben Franklin’s letters to a prominent orthodox Christian, he denies the Trinity, but must do so politely (and then ask that the contents of the letter remain secret) else his public reputation be ruined.

Yet, these Founders also thought such historical context to be absolutely tyrannical and violative of the natural rights of conscience. And they hoped that by founding America on the light of reason, theological Unitarianism would eventually displace Trinitarianism. Though it didn’t happen exactly as Jefferson so predicted, we did see Unitarian Congregations, for instance John Adams’s, start to replace the formerly Puritan Congregations during the Founding era.

When these key Founders publicly spoke, they parsed their words very carefully as not to offend the orthodox Christian sentiments of the public, but also not contradict their theistic rationalist beliefs.

One drawback then, to this whole issue is, because of the context, many Founders — for instance Washington, Madison, and others — didn’t leave “beyond a shadow of a doubt” evidence as to what they really believed (the smoking gun quotations that can be readily provided for the likes of Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin).

You do have to do a bit of putting pieces together and even reading between the lines with some of these Founders. Frazer draws on the work of some Straussians. Though Frazer doesn’t make the controversial huge leaps that some of the Straussians do (like Hobbes and Locke were secret Atheists; or that Locke secretly tried to destroy revealed Christianity with his coded arguments). Just little ones.

For instance, one of the tenets of theistic rationalism is that it denies eternal damnation and believes that basically all religions, Christian and non-Christian, are valid ways to God. Certainly Adams and Jefferson, in their letters, explicitly assert this.

What about Washington? One piece of evidence Frazer draws from is Washington’s Farewell Address (which the Christian Nation crowd, viewing it from a different perspective, often cites to prove Washington a Christian, when Washington never says anything about Christianity or the Bible, but rather generically references the term “religion”). Washington asserts in the 1796 address, “let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.” (This quotation, the Christian Nation crowd then said means “It’s impossible to govern without God and the Bible.” And that loaded paraphrased interpretation then got passed around by David Barton and William Federer as though Washington actually said it.)

The part of the Address that Frazer focuses on is Washington’s assertion that “[w]ith slight shades of difference, you have the same religion.” Now, even though the overwhelming majority of the populace were members of some Christian Church, Washington does not 1) specifically identify “religion” with “Christianity” and 2) though a minority, plenty of non-Christians — Deist, Unitarians, Jews and others — also existed in the population as well. And a reasonable textual reading of this line would seem to include them as well (indeed, other than invoking the notion of a warm-intervening Providence, Washington almost never spoke in exclusivist terms on religious matters).

Frazer provides much more than that (for instance, Washington once identified the notion of “God” with the Cherokee’s “Great Spirit”). However, when you are dealing with someone who held his religion card as close to him as Washington did, you inevitably have to parse worse and put some pieces of the puzzle together (as long as one does so in a reasonable manner).

Another fact Frazer draws on to prove Washington was a theological Unitarian with Universalist beliefs was Washington’s intimate involvement with the Freemasons. Contrary to the claims of the “Christian Nation” crowd, Washington was intimately not nominally associated with the Freemasons (he himself was a Master Mason) and often referred to God in Free-Masonic terms, as the “Great Architect of the Universe.”

And the Freemasons, in their official tenets, are theologically Unitarian (they don’t believe Jesus was God), and Universalistic in their belief that more or less all religions are valid ways to God. In short, there is a major inconsistency between the inclusive tenets of Freemasonry and the exclusive tenets of orthodox Christianity.

But as I said, Frazer offers much more than this on Washington and the others. One of the drawbacks though is because of the context of the time — the hold that orthodox Christianity had over many social institutions — there will always be *some* grounds for doubts on Washington, Madison and a few others, given the lack of *smoking gun* evidence on some exact beliefs which were very controversial for the time (indeed, they were termed “infidel principles” by the orthodox Christians, and it was well known that many if not most of the elite and educated Virginia Anglicans/Episcopalians, like Jefferson, Madison and Washington, privately held to such “infidel principles”).