Pro-Religious Pluralism
Jonathan Rowe on Jun 12th 2007 11:35 am |
Ilya Somin has an interesting post defending majority atheist societies. He writes:
There are numerous majority-atheist nations that show no signs of falling prey to communism or other similar ideologies. Consider the cases of Japan, the Czech Republic, and Denmark, among others – in all of which atheists are the majority of the population (for detailed stats, see here).
Indeed, those “atheistic” and more secular societies in Japan and Western Europe have fewer social problems than the US. And in the US, atheists, as a group, have more positive social indicators — less likely to commit crimes, go to prison, or be poor.
Atheists’ better social indicators, though, may not be a consequence of atheism; but rather both the atheism and positive social indicators may result from the same underlying cause — well-educated, brighter people are both more likely to be atheists and less likely to commit crimes or be poor.
Indeed, I wonder if, like controlled socialism, atheism works well only among small homogeneous groups. I don’t think if America became majority atheist, society would improve; indeed, we’d probably get a lot less interesting.
Though I am not a “multiculturalist,” I think, after our Founders, that religious factionalism can be a socially positive thing — so long as those factions are properly balanced in the right way with the right set of laws guaranteeing equal rights for all. More importantly, all factions ultimately must conform to the tenets of liberal democracy.
I like a society with atheists, agnostics, liberal Christians, traditional Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, etc., all of them respecting liberal democratic norms.
If any social group doesn’t respect the over arching principles of liberal democracy — i.e., the Declaration of Independence — then multiculturalism or multireligionism could be quite harmful.
As the Founders believed, “out of many, one” — the right way to do pluralism. On religious matters, they didn’t just embrace pluralism, but the key Founders thought nearly all world religions (including many non-biblical ones) were valid ways to God. Indeed, sometimes they oddly intimated that polytheistic religions worshipped the same one God — Nature’s God — they worshipped. For instance, John Adams wrote the following to Jefferson, Oct. 4, 1813:
[BTW: Could someone check my Greek. I did the best I could with it. If anyone owns the Cappon ed. of the Jefferson-Adams Letters, it's on pp. 380-82.]
θÎμίς was the Goddess of honesty, Justice, Decency, and right; the Wife of Jove, another name for Juno. She presided over all oracles, deliberations and Counsells. She commanded all Mortals to pray to Jupiter, for all lawful Benefits and Blessings.
Now, is not this, (so far forth) the Essence of Christian devotion? Is not this Christian Piety? Is it not an Acknonowledgement [sic] of the existence of a Supream Being? of his universal Providence? of a righteous Administration of the Government of the Universe? And what can Jews, Christians, or Mahometans do more?
[...]
Moses says, Genesis. I. 27. ["]God created man in his own image.” What then is the difference between Cleanthes and Moses? Are not the Being and Attributes of the Supream Being: The Resemblance, the Image the Shadow of God in the Intelligence, and the moral qualities of Man, and the Lawfulness and duty of Prayer, as clear[l]y asserted by Cleanthes as by Moses? And did not the Chaldeans, the Egyptians the Persians the Indians, the Chinese, believe all this, as well as the Jews and Greeks?…I believe Cleanthes to be as good a Christian as Priestley.
[For more of Adams' thoughts like this see the following.]
Joseph Priestly was, by the way, Jefferson’s and Adams’ spiritual mentor. Calling someone “as good a Christian as Priestley,” is probably as high a complement you can get from Adams on religion.
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If you squint hard enough, every x can look like a y.
A reading of the “key” Founders’ letters shows that they squinted, and hard. They knew little of theology, and even less about comparative theology. Adams’ cherrypick here of Zeus/Jupiter is laughable—Zeus/Jupiter was not the Creator, he was not all-good or all-wise; in fact, he was a bit of a bastard at times.
Neither are their post-1787 statements of any probative value: at least “signing statements” are coeval with the actual signing of documents. And we must also take into account that Jefferson in particular wanted his idiosyncratic musings on cosmology kept secret.
The omni-theism that “key” Founders tried to sell, that all religions are somewhat equally true, was based on ignorance, not knowledge. As Adams trolled around for a historical image of God that fit his druthers, there was none to be found. He may have decided that his God was not Triune and that’s fine, but it’s unmistakably the God of the Bible and no other. It is not the deity of the Hindoos (sic).
This is not to agree with those who baldly proclaim the United States as a “Christian Nation.” Certainly if a person didn’t want to regard Jesus Christ as divine, he was free to do so, and many exercized that freedom. The Founding is definitely neutral, in the best sense of the word, on that theological point.
The “key” Founders were well-read gentlemen, but they were acolytes of John Locke, not his equal. Locke, as a true philsopher and a scholar of the history of ideas, sagely wrote that most men do not realize where their philosophical baseline comes from, and the “key” Founders were no exception. I do not mean to make an argument from authority (a logical error), but I must quote Jurgen Habermas here. We’ll will be inclined to give Habermas his props as a philosopher and scholar, especially since he might be fairly classified as an atheist secularist:
“For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.”
Philosophically, then, unless one desires to pit his scholarship against Habermas’, it might be fairly said that philosophically, the United States is indeed a “Christian Nation,” Post-Christian, perhaps, but “Christian” figures in there somewhere, which is why I object to “theistic rationalist.”
To move to the rest of Mr. Rowe’s musings, I quite agree that the homogeneity that might provide other (post-Christian, post-Shinto) societies’ stability is not achievable in the polyglot that is America, and not necessarily desirable if it were. But we must recall that the USA is the old man here—the Czech, Danish and Japanese societies are brand spanking new, less than a century old.
It’s the view of some of us that they are running on the fumes of their now-discarded religious cultures and are beginning to sputter. As Chou en-Lai or somebody replied when asked about the value of the French revolution, it’s too early to tell. I prefer to let these other societies experiment with dispatching ethos before we Americans cross that Rubicon ourselves.
“Locke, as a true philsopher and a scholar of the history of ideas, sagely wrote that most men do know realize where their philosophical baseline comes from, and the ‘key’ Founders were no exception.”
Tom,
Did you mean to write “do not realize,” because if you did I can change it for you.
Adams and some of the other Founders were very well educated\read and they were also thoughtfull, its seems that they spent quit a bit of time reading, writing and thinking. My own late 20th century education doesn’t seem to have been as good as theirs in some respects. An uncensored, unbiased, comprehensive liberal arts education can make a big difference in broadening people’s outlooks and lives. Most people don’t get that broad education here in most public or even secondary schools.
Adams’ cherrypick here of Zeus/Jupiter is laughable—Zeus/Jupiter was not the Creator, he was not all-good or all-wise; in fact, he was a bit of a bastard at times.
The omni-theism that “key” Founders tried to sell, that all religions are somewhat equally true, was based on ignorance, not knowledge.>>
Nice post! That’s exactly what only a couple of them believed. The vast majority did not subvert the text of the bible like Jefferson and Adams.
Even Jefferson did not believe the lie of separation of church and state, showing his danbury letter has been misinterpreted by liberals. Jefferson believed the first amendment only referred to a sect of christianity:
“the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro’ the U.S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly;”
Thomas Jefferson To Dr. Benjamin Rush
(September 23, 1800)
[Rowe: Goswick's point is a non-sequitur: Of course Jefferson believed at the very least we couldn't have a sect of Christianity established. But it does not following from the above quotation that's all Jefferson believed it did. Indeed Jefferson time and time again stated it did more, for instance, that it forbade him from issuing religious proclamations as President.]
[...] So strong was the appeal of such syncretism or universalism that when the Founders “squinted” hard enough they could “find” monotheism, or the worship of one god in Hinduism or Pagan Greco-Roman worship. Indeed, Freemasonry may have influenced many non-Masons, for instance Jefferson and Adams, both of whose beliefs on all world religions worshipping the same one God perfectly paralleled the Masons’. [...]
“the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro’ the U.S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly;”
Thomas Jefferson To Dr. Benjamin Rush
(September 23, 1800)
[Rowe: Goswick's point is a non-sequitur: Of course Jefferson believed at the very least we couldn't have a sect of Christianity established. But it does not following from the above quotation that's all Jefferson believed it did. Indeed Jefferson time and time again stated it did more, for instance, that it forbade him from issuing religious proclamations as President.] >>
How classic, Mr. Rowe is violating a fundamental law in the interpretation of instruments. If Jefferson believed the first amendment encompassed more, knowing him, he would have mentioned it, but he didn’t, and so Mr. Rowe needs to add to the meaning of his words, which the framer’s rejected:
As explained by Founder Noah Webster, not only misinterpretation but serious error can result when original meanings are ignored:
[I]n the lapse of two or three centuries, changes have taken place which in particular passages … obscure the sense of the original languages … The effect of these changes is that some words are … being now used in a sense different from that which they had … [and thus] present wrong signification or false ideas. Whenever words are understood in a sense different from that which they had when introduced … mistakes may be very injurious.
President Thomas Jefferson to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson:
On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates,(the debates were on sects of xtianity) and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one(xtianty) in which it was passed. parenthesis mine.
James Madison declared:
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more that for a faithful, exercise of its powers….What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense.(which is what liberals are doing)
Justice James Wilson similarly explained:
The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.
Justice Joseph Story emphasized this same principle, declaring:
The first and fundamental rule in interpretation of all instruments[documents] is to construe them according to the sense of the terms and the intention of the parties.
Regards
The problem James is that 1) Jefferson did “mention it” and 2) the Founders didn’t adopt your language as the Constitution nowhere speaks of “Christian sects.”
In the following, Jefferson explains why the Constitution forbids a President from issuing Thanksgiving proclamations, so he believed it forbade more than just the erection of a “Christian” sect. Ditto with Madison who thought that even Congressional Chaplains were, in principle, unconstitutional:
http://www.churchstatelaw.com/historicalmaterials/8_8_7.asp
“SIR,–I have duly received your favor of the 18th and am thankful to you for having written it, because it is more agreeable to prevent than to refuse what I do not think myself authorized to comply with. I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, or religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the U.S. Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority. But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant too that this recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of proscription perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.
“I am aware that the practice of my predecessors may be quoted. But I have ever believed that the example of state executives led to the assumption of that authority by the general government, without due examination, which would have discovered that what might be a right in a state government, was a violation of that right when assumed by another. Be this as it may, every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U S. and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”
In the following, Jefferson explains why the Constitution forbids a President from issuing Thanksgiving proclamations, so he believed it forbade more than just the erection of a “Christian” sect. Ditto with Madison who thought that even Congressional Chaplains were, in principle, unconstitutional:>>
It has nothing to do with Jefferson’s views on the first amendment. A proclamation has nothing to do with establishing a christian sect as the national church, no one will buy what you’re selling. Jefferson violated separation of church and state.
Jefferson urged local governments to make land available specifically for Christian purposes.
Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Bishop Carroll on September 3, 1801 (in the Library of Congress, #19966).
In an 1803 federal Indian treaty, Jefferson willingly agreed to provide $300 to assist the said Kaskaskia tribe in the erection of a church and to provide annually for seven years $100 towards the support of a Catholic priest. He also signed three separate acts setting aside government lands for the sole use of religious groups and setting aside government lands so that Moravian missionaries might be assisted in promoting Christianity.
American State Papers, Walter Lowrie and Matthew St. Claire Clarke, editors (Washington, D. C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832), Vol. IV, p. 687; see also Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, at 103 (1985), Rehnquist, J. (dissenting); see also, The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, Richard Peters, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846), Vol. VII, p. 79, Article III, A Treaty Between the United States and the Kaskaskia Tribe of Indians, December 23, 1803; Vol. VII, p. 88, Article IV, Treaty with the Wyandots, etc., 1805; Vol. VII, p. 102, Article II, Treaty with the Cherokees, 1806.
There is no doubt the context of the first amendment is a sect of Christianity.
“Many wish to know what religion shall be established. I believe a majority of the community are Presbyterians. I am, for my part, against any exclusive establishment; buty if there were any, I would prefer the Episcopal.
Signer of the Constitution Henry Abbot. This religion is a national church of christianity.
At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect[denomination]. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendents…The clause speaks of “an establishment of religion.” What is meant by that expression? It referred, WITHOUT DOUBT, to that establishment which existed in the mother-country…They intended, by this Amendment, to prohibit “an establishment of religion” such as the English Church presented.
House and Senate Judiciary Committee 1853-54
“the debates were managed by persons of various denominations” “the delegates did not conceive themselves to be vested with power to set up one denomination of Christians above another.”
John Adams-Address of the convention, p.17
The Constitution of the State of Delaware (until 1792) stated:
Article XXII Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust… shall… make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit:
“I, _______, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the
Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore; I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old
and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.” [p.203]
Written by Signers of the Constitution Richard Bassett and George Read.
The Constitution of the State of Massachusetts (1780) stated:
The Governor shall be chosen annually; and no person shall be eligible to this office, unless, at the time of his election… he shall declare himself to be of the Christian religion.
Chapter VI, Article I [All persons elected to State office or to the Legislature must] make
and subscribe the following declaration, viz. “I, _______, do declare, that I believe the Christian religion, and have firm persuasion of its truth.”
Part I, Article III And every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law:
and no subordination of any sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.” [p.429]
Written by Signer of the Constitution Nathaniel Gorman.
Regards
“no one will buy what you’re selling.”
There are Ivy League Law Professors and members of the Supreme Court who have already “bought it.”
In that letter I reproduced, Jefferson noted he thought the Constitution forbade him from issuing Thanksgiving proclamations. I don’t know what you think I’m trying to “sell”; I’m merely reciting historical fact.
“Jefferson violated separation of church and state.”
He may well have violated it, but he also proposed the words “separation of church and state” as a metaphor for constitutional interpretation.