Blog Against Theocracy 2008
Refuting The Fake History of the Religious Right
The religious right in all its ever changing and evolving organizations has developed tremendous political influence in America. The Republican party since the Reagan era and now under the leadership of George W Bush has become, for the first time in American history, a religious political party with a theocratic agenda. Contrary to the intentions of the Founding Fathers, religious-cultural wars are becoming a ubiquitous part of the political landscape. Many of these issues are well known to us: discrimination against gay marriage, efforts to ban abortion, limitations on reproductive choices, the teaching of creationism as science, coercive prayer in our schools and government funding of faith-initiatives without congressional approval.
Perhaps not so well known is the influence of Christian eschatology on the country’s foreign policy: the desire to bring about the End-Times and the second coming of Christ by promoting strife in the Middle East. (For more see my Blog on The End Timers.)
To support their theocratic agenda it has become necessary for the religious right to revise history and claim that America was founded as a ’Christian Nation.’
America was not founded as a Christian Nation.
Its founding premise was not Christianity and it was not secularism, it was religious freedom.
Both sides of the culture wars have distorted the realities of the history of how we ended up with religious freedom in America, and the beliefs of the Founding Fathers.
Common Misconceptions include:
- America was settled as a bastion of religious freedom.
- The US was founded as a Christian Nation
- The Founding Fathers wanted religious freedom because they were themselves devout Christians
1. America was not settled as a bastion of religious freedom
Massachussetts became home to the Puritans; Pennsylvania, a safe haven for Quakers, Mennonites and other minorities; Maryland, an interesting exception to the rule of Protestant colonization, was for a while refuge to persecuted English Roman Catholics, until it too succumbed to a Protestant majority.
Ironically, the European practice of enforced uniformity of religion, which had driven many minority groups to seek safety in America, became a prevailing practice of many of the individual colonies.
The Puritans vigorously supported the very Old World theory of the need for conformity of religion that had oppressed them. Once in control of New England they proclaimed the need to break “the very neck of Schism and vile opinions.“ They declared that they were not champions of “toleration, but were professed enemies of it.“ They were to viciously persecute and expel dissenters and even to execute the Quakers within their midst.
Virginia, although originally founded for purely commercial motives, saw its populace (European and native American alike) converted to Anglicanism at the point of Governor Sir Thomas Dale’s sword. The Virginia Assembly then went on to further institutionalize religious intolerance by passing anti-Quaker laws.
Religion, marked as it was by a brutal and pervasive pattern of intolerance and persecution, continued to flourish in America well into the 18th C. Toleration, as such, was for Protestants sects only. Jews, Catholics and Atheists were forbidden to hold public office, denied the right to vote and had other rights withheld.
Assertions about America’s Judeo-Christian heritage are false; America’s heritage is Protestant, and following the first major religious revival of the mid 18th C. known as the Great Awakening, it became almost exclusively evangelical; Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers and Congregationalists were to be eclipsed by Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists.
2. America was not founded as a Christian Nation
America was originally settled by Christians wanting to found a new Christian country on American soil. But when the key Founding Fathers came to establish the principles upon which a new nation would be built they looked back on the previous 150 years of religious violence and intolerance and decided to turn to another model. They deliberately sought to create a constitution that was not Christian. Up until this point many of the documents produced by the Continental Congress had contained overtly Christian language. For example, the Articles of Confederation concludes with the observation that it “hath pleased the Great Governor of the World.” Numerous proclamations referred to a Supreme Judge and Ruler of the Universe, and many State constitutions declared Christianity as the true religion. The American Constitution was stripped bare of all such religious rhetoric and language, and was consequently criticized. It is clear then that this was a conscious, radical and not accidental strategy of the framers of the Constitution.
The Constitution guaranteed separation of Church and State at the level of National Government in the Article Six which states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." This allowed people of all or no religious beliefs to hold public office, and was a bulwark against the institutionalization of any single religious authority within the government.
However, it is also a fact that it did not disallow separation of Church and State at the State level. Article six only pertained at the federal level, which is to say that most institutions, as regulated by the colonies or states, were exempt. At the time the Constitution was passed some States still banned Jews and Catholics from public office; blasphemy was a crime and other religious penalties were imposable.
This was a great disappointment to the radical pluralist, James Madison, the author of the Constitution, who was forced to compromise the original document and adopt deliberately ambiguous language to ensure its ratification by all the States. He went on to write the Bill of Rights, the first of a series of Amendments to the Constitution, hoping to create a more effective set of checks and balances to limit the powers of special interest groups, applicable at both federal and state levels. He was forced again to accept a series of compromises for the Bill of Rights to become law.
The first of the ten amendments states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The first element of this amendment has become widely known as Establishment Clause.
A mechanism was created that prohibited Congress from favoring one religion over another religion through law, and protected the right to free exercise of religion, but again, only at the level of national government. Despite the limitations of its scope of application, Thomas Jefferson was to proclaim Madison’s achievements as the establishment of a wall of separation between Church and State.
It was only after the Civil War when President Lincoln and General Grant reorganized the basic pact on religious freedom and engineered the 14th Amendment that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were applied at both State and Federal levels.
Many of the Founding Fathers of America were profoundly influenced by Enlightenment-era ideals. Revolutions in scientific thinking had inspired the wider belief that rational enquiry could be applied to all areas of human activity including politics. Religion and the domination of society by hereditary aristocracies were singled out for attack by the European Philosophes. They believed these agents of superstition, tyranny, and ignorance could be replaced with the "light" of truth.
The central ideas of the Enlightenment were: progress, deism and tolerance.
The concept of progress embraced the notion that humanity would improve through developing an understanding of the natural world; overcoming the ignorance bred by superstition and religion; overcoming human cruelty and violence through social improvements and government structures.
Deism emphasized morality and reason; it rejected miracles and the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ.
Finally, religious tolerance for Christians and non-Christians alike, was viewed as essential to avoiding the crimes committed in the name of God and religion.
James Madison had skillfully articulated these fundamental Enlightenment values into the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, translating them into a radically new form of democratic and republican government.
George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson; John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, the main proponents of religious freedom, were not orthodox Christians. All had serious misgivings with church hierarchy and dogma.
Jefferson and Franklin did not accept the Bible as a literal document; nor did they accept Jesus as divine. Jefferson, was not secular however. He claimed to perceive the presence of the divine in his observations of nature and the universe. In this respect he could be regarded as a pantheist by modern standards.
Washington, although attending church once a month refused to participate in Communion. He did not see Jesus as a personal savior. He never said anything overtly Christian, although he often used religious rhetoric to refer to an omnipotent and constantly intervening God guiding the nation.
Needing to create alliances with French Canadians and also with Catholic France he recognized an additional pragmatic reason for religious tolerance. He eradicated the anti-catholic bias in the military, and persuaded the Continental Congress to stop passing anti-catholic resolutions. Realizing that he needed the support of these two French Catholic groups he knew that portraying religious tolerance as an American virtue would be an asset in winning their support.
The unlikely supporters of the Founding Fathers campaign to effect a separation of Church and State were the products of the religious revival, the Great Awakening. Not only was Madison influenced by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, he was also very close to the Baptist evangelicals who strongly believed that a separation of Church and State was essential for the vitality and growth of religious faith in America.This runs contrary to the currently held belief of evangelicals who believe in the need for less separation of church and state so that they can use the instruments of government to promulgate and impose their Christian vision on America. To help achieve their theocratic agenda some evangelical groups are trying to revise history and present the view that separation of church and state was in fact a myth. This could not be further from the truth. Not only that, it was the Baptist evangelicals of the 18th C that were more responsible than any other religious group in promoting the separation of church and state.
Links:
For a detailed analysis of the Establishment clause see the Center for Inquiry Position Paper
