Many Orthodox Christians Understand America isn’t a “Christian Nation”
Jonathan Rowe on Sep 6th 2006
As my readers know, I think the Christian Nationalism movement, spearheaded by folks like D. James Kennedy, David Barton, and others, is a dangerous movement with theocratic tendencies. I don’t think they represent mainstream Republican or Christian conservative thought. But they do have political influence, as well as millions of followers who believe their distorted and revisionist history.
As I’ve noted before, my own personal interest, as a libertarian, in debunking the Christian Nation nonsense is simply, if these folks understand they never “owned” our Founding as they have been erroneously taught, they’d be less zealous about trying to “reclaim” it, and consequently adopt a more “live and let live” attitude about government and culture.
When I share my ideas on various threads, sometimes those who believe the “Christian Nation” thesis get angry and attack me. Some of them are quite funny. For instance, one person remarked:
Jon Rowe is a militant secular pagan who specializes in the hapless task of trying to prove that the Founders were deistic-Unitarians. He trolls through correspondence and digs up passages, which, when taken out of context, cast doubt on the Founder’s faith. Essentially, he attempts to project his own views on the Founders in a clearly revisionist attempt to distort history. Eighteenth century deism and unitarianism influenced the Founders but with the exception of Paine and Jefferson they retained a mainly devout Christian religion.
Another writes, “Jon: I have absolutely no desire to ever again visit the posts on your blog, because they say the exact things over and over and over and over again. America was founded as a nation based on Christian principles and values, regardless of whether or not you believe that.”
However, because I go out of my way to be polite and civil, most people, even if they disagree, are polite and civil in return.
One of the biggest, and most pleasant surprises however, is just how many conservative/orthodox Christians are receptive to what I argue, many of whom never bought into the “Christian Nation” thesis to begin with.
Indeed, one of the most ironic discoveries I’ve made while researching the nation’s ideological origins is some of the most important and cutting edge research that has debunked the “Christian Nation” idea has come not from secularists or liberal Christians like John Shelby Spong, but rather from conservative and orthodox Christians.
It’s not just Gary North, who though an extreme Christian Reconstructionist, has an E-book which well understands America’s ideological origins. Neither is it only Dr. Gregg Frazer, an orthodox Christian who teaches at a conservative Christian college, and whose work (a comprehensive study of the key Founders’ religious beliefs and consequent connection with founding principles which debunks the “Christian America” idea) I have tirelessly trumpeted. It’s also Robert Kraynak, a devout conservative Catholic and on whose book Christian Faith and Modern Democracy (Notre Dame Press, 2001) Gregg Frazer’s Ph.D. thesis heavily relies. It’s also Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, George M. Marsden, whose book The Search for Christian America Frazer’s thesis also references. See this bloggers description of the three authors:
These three men are regarded as three of the finest historians on American religious history. And all three of them are evangelical Christians. Noll is Professor of History at Wheaton College, Hatch is President-Elect and Professor of History at Wake Forest University and former Provost and Director of Graduate Studies in History at Notre Dame, and Marsden is Professor of History at Calvin College.
Jim Babka, whose radio show featured me, generally supports my ideas on religion and the Founding and is himself a devout evangelical Christian. Jeremy Pierce tipped me to this post of Ben Witherington’s. Ben is a conservative Christian and positively reviews David L. Holmes’s excellent book, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers which argues that the key Founding Fathers were not orthodox Christians. Witherington writes:
More tellingly, none of the first five presidents would appear to have been orthodox Christians in any modern sense of the term. Indeed most modern Evangelicals would think of them as like either contemporary nominal or very liberal episcopalians (cf. Bishop Spong), if not actual heretics (e.g. in the case of Jefferson who rejected the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Jesus the Trinity, the inspiration and authority of the Bible as revealed religion and so on)….In short there is no encouragement here either for the secular humanist theory of America’s origins or for that matter for the ‘our first leaders were mostly orthodox Christians’ theory either. Sorry Timothy La Haye, and other Evangelical revisionist historians, but you need fact check as bad as Dan Brown did.
Finally, even conservative Christian home schooled high school and young college students are beginning to reject the “Christian Nation” thesis. See for instance, Virtue Magazine, which has connections to Patrick Henry College, one of the few places where the “Christian Nation” thesis is still viable in the academy. Oh, they have some writers who endorse the myth. See this column (the writer is only 17; that’s why I am not going to browbeat her with my research). But they also have this piece by Derek Wallace which debunks a Christian Nation myth about Jefferson. And Wallace is going to initiate a series of articles challenging the Christian Nation thesis. See the first one where he writes:
The purpose of this series will be to examine The Claim in more detail, and the beliefs that often go hand in hand with it. While the ACLU and any number of other people go too far when it comes to removing religious elements from school or public property, we submit that Christian conservatives go too far in the other direction. We also submit that their main justification or defense (”America was founded as a Christian nation”) is not necessarily accurate….
Filed in The Belfry, The Bureau
I have to say I’d gotten a bit used to seeing posts on this theme, but this is a nice update, interesting to see the movement you have, am following up on that Frazer thesis now…
You are much too calm and reasonable to make much impression on the “Christain Nation” crowd, but I for one appreciate the effort. But you need more expletives…. dammit!
Thanks!
Jon,
Count me as a Christian who supports your efforts. I believed in the Christian founding until I took an introductory American History class in college (and a very conservative college, at that).
I also support your reasoning: showing Christion Nationalists that they’re not returning to “our national roots” will (hopefully) take a lot of steam out of the movement.
There are those who go too far the other way, like Judge John E. Jones III, who essentially asserted that all of the Founders were a bunch of Voltaires and Rousseaus who rejected organized religion. Jones said in a commencement speech at his alma mater, “. . .this much is very clear. The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry.” Most of the Founders were simply ordinary men of their times — e.g., lawyers, judges, merchants, and farmers — and not great philosophers. It seems that only Jefferson left behind a lot of philosophical writings. There is no reason to believe that the religious beliefs of most of the Founders were substantially different from those of their compatriots. Anyway, I feel that the religious beliefs of the Founders are just of academic interest — I feel that those beliefs should not control us today.
Actually Larry,
Judge Jones was spot on about the intentions of the Key Founders; he wasn’t arguing they were a bunch of Voltaires or Rousseaus, but Enlightenment Rationalists who did indeed believe “true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry.” And the key Founders (Adams, Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, Morris, and Franklin) were of one mind with Jefferson on their personal religious beliefs.
Based on what I’ve read about you by Ed Brayton, I have a hard time taking your comments seriously. When you read someone’s words whose voice you have never heard, your mind constructs a voice. When I read your posts, I hear Tony DeLoge’s voice in my head. If you want to know who I am talking about see this.
It didn’t take you long to start censoring my comments, so to make you happy, I am resubmitting my comment with my personal attack against you and Ed Brayton deleted.
Jonathan Rowe said –
Judge Jones was spot on about the intentions of the Key Founders;
Dickinson College, Jones’ alma mater where he gave the commencement speech, was founded by a Founding Father, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and named for another Founding Father, John Dickinson. Ironically, the college’s seal — designed by Rush and Dickinson — has a picture of an open bible and a Latin motto which means, “Religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty.”
You say “Key Founders,” but the Constitution was signed by 39 men and all of their signatures have equal weight. Sixteen of the delegates did not sign.
It is possible to “prove” almost any interpretation of history, depending on what facts are selected and how they are interpreted. I suggest that you read the following article on my blog:
http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2006/07/judge-jones-wrong-about-founding.html
It didn’t take you long to start censoring my comments, so to make you happy, I am resubmitting my comment with my personal attack against you and Ed Brayton deleted.
1. In a private forum, it’s not censorship. You are an invited guest, not a citizen, at Positive Liberty.
2. It did not make me especially happy that you continued to post. But your admission of having made a personal attack was indeed gratifying. I suggest that you continue to refrain from such attacks in the future.
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, Wilson, & Morris = key Founders. They are key because they came forth with the ideas upon which we declared independence and constructed the constitution. And they played prime roles in leading the newly formed nation (we are, after all, talking about the first four presidents). And the judge’s statements certainly apply to them. They were rationalists who believed that the Truth — including religious Truth — was to be found primarily through free, rational inquiry. They were men of the Enlightenment who believed there was *some* Truth to be found in Christianity and the Bible. But they sought to “extract” that useful Truth with man’s Reason, and discard the rest. See Jefferson cutting out what he regarded as the Truth from the Bible and throwing out the rest. As I said before those other seven Founders were of one mind with Jefferson on this issue.
Jonathan Rowe said:
For one thing, Judge Jones did not say which Founders he was talking about — he certainly could not have been talking about Rush and Dickinson, founder and namesake, respectively, of his alma mater, whose design for the college’s seal includes a picture of an open bible and a Latin motto which means, “Religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty.”
Also, my blog noted that two different Christian Science Monitor book reviews say,
Also, if Jefferson was really a deist, then he probably would have supported intelligent design, because the teleological argument of design is a tenet of deism.
Also, if Jefferson was really a deist, then he probably would have supported intelligent design, because the teleological argument of design is a tenet of deism.
This is true but trivial. Intelligent design was virtually the only theory around at the time, and most scientists of all sorts accepted it. Now, a few of the atheist Enlightnenment figures had proposed that life could come about through other means, but they were never very convincing. It was not until Darwin — writing about three decades after Jefferson’s death — that a plausible alternative arrived.
Jason Kuznicki Says:
Yes, but supposedly a true originalist like Judge Jones should follow Jefferson’s thinking to the letter, shouldn’t he? If the “key” Founders were all-wise in matters pertaining to the interpretation of the Constitution, shouldn’t they have been all-wise in other subjects?
Over the past two years, I’ve researched these Founders’ beliefs in detail and confirmed my conclusions. Adams and Hamilton believed exactly as Jefferson did. Hamilton towards the end of his life, after doing his work founding the nation, converted to orthodox Christianity. John Adams did not. And there is no evidence that any of the other seven converted to orthodox Christianity before their deaths.
And none of them, by the way, were “deists,” who believed in a “distant” creator. Their creator was a warm intervening Providence. If “deist” is the proper word, it was a form of “warm” deism.
Jonathan Rowe Says:
Aren’t you redefining “deism” to be something that it is not? If “theism” is a “warm” deism, then is deism a “cold” theism?
I predict that the debate over the religious beliefs of the Founders is not going to end soon.
Fine then they weren’t “deists,” they were “theists.” The term I endorse is the one Gregg Frazer coined. They were “theistic rationalists.”
Jonathan Rowe Says:
Regardless of the name of the religion of the Founders (or “key” Founders), Judge Jones asserted the self-contradictory idea that their purpose in creating a constitutional separation of church and state was to establish that religion — which he called the “true religion” — as the official state religion! Jones said in his commencement speech,
Considering that the courts have ruled that even atheism is a religious belief for purposes of the First Amendment, then certainly Jefferson’s skepticism of the bible must also qualify as a religious belief for purposes of the First Amendment. Kaufman v. McCaughtry (7th Circuit, 2005, page 4) said, “The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a ‘religion’ for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions . . .”
Actually Larry, the dillema raised by your remarks is real and far more serious than you seem to realize. See these two posts, one by Law Professor Rick Garnett of Notre Dame, a conservative, and the other by me (responding to Garnett; he approvingly linked).
The dillema regarding the Establishment Clause, Separation of Church and State, and The Founding is this: On the one hand, the rights of conscience are so sacred that government should be neutral as possible between all of the different systems — between atheism, fundamentalism, and the potentially limitless varieties of theism and belief. In this respect government has no business talking about what is “true religion” or “right religion.” Madison’s position that government should never “take cognizance” of religion best corresponds with this view.
On the other, we, as liberal democratic society, do indeed want the “right” kind of religion — and the writings of the Founding Fathers are replete with references to “true religion.” However, the “right” kind of religion isn’t necessarily conservative Christianity, but rather that variety of Christianity (or any religion for that matter) which is most compatible with liberal democracy, which is that religion most consistent with the findings of “man’s reason and rationality,” and “the rights of man.” And it would thus logically follow that government should endorse this “right” kind of religion over the illiberal versions like Islamofascism.
It has been conservatives who argue that O’Connor’s endorsement test or the notion of strict separation, though they might have Jeffersonian or Madisonian overtones, is not the proper “originalist” position, that indeed, government ought to be able to endorse religion. Well, Judge Jones seems to understand the kind of religion that the key Founders would endorse.
Something else that is disturbing about Jones’ remarks in the commencement speech is that they imply hostility towards organized religion, raising doubts about his impartiality in the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision.
And again, which would make him a lot like Jefferson, Adams and company who displayed hostility towards the “priestcraft” and did indeed think true religion was discovered primarily through reason and not revelation or ecclesiastical authority.
Larry,
What Kitzmiller v. Dover came down to was the lack of evidence to support ID and an apparent attempt to mislead on the part of the ID/Creation movement.
The judge correctly saw through this attempt and ruled correctly. ID just has no science. The rest is just sour grapes your part
Actually, the judge wasn’t just saying that ID arguments aren’t based on science (which is false anyway, since they are based on scientific observations, just ones that most scientists interpret differently, but that’s a philosophical disagreement with the ID people and not a scientific one, at least if you want to make the absolute division the way ID critics do).
The judge also said that ID is creationism, which is usually ambiguous among many things, but he made it clear that he thought ID was exactly like the young-earth creationism of Ken Ham, when it’s pretty far from that. ID doesn’t take issue with the discoveries of science. It interprets them philosophically in a different way. ID doesn’t even require miracles in the sense of divine suspension of laws. Dembski argues in several places that the ID arguments (or at least most of them) are perfectly consistent with a designer of a universe having set up laws at the outset to guarantee a certain outcome that would be unlikely in a universe whose laws weren’t designed. Since ID is fully consistent with the standard evolutionary picture, those whop misrepresent it (and this does happen on both sides) as anti-evolution ought to be ashamed of themselves. This judge did have exactly the information he needed to see through all that, since it was in the testimonies. It may well be a faulty philosophical argument, but any judge who can misrepresent a position that badly ought to be judged incompetent.
A third thing he said was that the religious motivations for wanting to see more people believe in God via such arguments was tantamount to the arguments themselves being religion, which is just nuts. The arguments are classical philosophical design arguments, not religion. The motivations of Muslims for wanting to teach the violent history of Christianity are religious, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean the history is. The motivations of atheists to teach evolution are anti-religious, but that doesn’t make evolution anti-religious. It’s perfectly fine to teach evolution in school despite the motivations of many who favor such teaching on the anti-religious motive that would go against the free expression of religion in the first amendment. That doesn’t mean teaching evolution goes against it. The argument this judge gave against teaching ID seems to me to be exactly parallel except that the motivation is to win converts to theism, not to wean them from it. But either motivation is against the first amendment, and nothing follows from that about whether the thing should be taught.
In the end it may be a bad idea to teach ID in science classrooms. I’m not prepared to advocate such an approach. But surely it’s immoral to prevent people from even explaining what the argument is, especially since most who would want to do so would do it simply to explain why they don’t think the arguments are very good. It doesn’t even matter to me whether ID is science. Lots of metaphysics and epistemology appear in science classes already, so this wouldn’t add anything all that different. But I’m happy to concede that it’s inappropriate to teach it as science. Even with all that, it doesn’t excuse this judge’s total incompetence in misrepresenting the ID position. It’s not as if those misrepresentations are his own. They’re all over the anti-ID blogs. But the fact that you heard someone else telling a lie isn’t an excuse for you to tell it yourself, and that’s what this judge did.
No Jeremy. Judge Jones effectively ruled DI was a psuedo-science.
“which is false anyway, since they are based on scientific observations)…Please post one observation that proves or makes ID valid. …..Just one.
I just re-read your statement. You know nothing regarding science and the entire ID scam Behe, Demski, et al. are running on the faithful.
Where’s the beef???….Where is the reasearch that the DI promised???…Where is the data???….The peer-review documents????
They have nothing but, a false hope of identifying yet to be solved so-called gaps.
[...] Yet, as he must deal with, it’s not just “secularist” who debunk the “Christian Nation” thesis. Evangelicals on the left have also attacked America’s Christian history. In 1983, three leading historians collaborated on The Search for Christian America. They argued that “early America does not deserve to be considered uniquely, distinctively or even predominately Christian.” They further argued that “the idea of a ‘Christian nation’ is a very ambiguous concept, which is usually harmful to effective Christian action in society.” Eager to separate themselves from the Christian Right (the Reagan administration, the Moral Majority, and Jerry Falwell), the evangelical-lefties became vocal advocates of an unChristian America.15 [...]