Deism and the Founding Fathers

Armed and Dangerous ^ | June 16, 2008 | Eric S. Raymond

[Uncle Ralph]

There is a belief abroad in many conservative circles that the U.S. is "a Christian nation". This belief is found in perhaps its most extreme form in the Mormon doctrine that the Constitution of the United States is a divinely inspired document. Less extreme versions hold that Christian piety was an shaping influence on the thinking and writing of the Founding Fathers, and Christianity therefore has (or ought to have) a privileged position in the political and cultural life of the U.S.

The Mormon doctrine is unfalsifiable. But claims about the beliefs and intentions of the Founding Fathers are not, and the record is clear: they explicitly rejected the establishment of Christianity as the preferred or natural religion of their infant nation. . . .

[Congressman Billybob]

I took a look at the thread. It is an amalgam of bad research and incompetent understanding. Let's start with item one.

"Establishment of religion" has a meaning. It means a nationally state-supported and sanctioned religion. This is all it means. Notice the other phrase in the First Amendment, guaranteeing the free practice of religion.

Then there's the total lack of history of the Treaty of Tripoli. Hint: it has to do with the Barbary Pirates, and how we were trying to appease the Muslims of the day. That was 200 years ago, and appeasing Muslims is still a bad bargain.

Don't fall for badly researched articles on religion, or any other subject, when posted on FR.

Congressman Billybob

First three in the series, "American Government: The Owner's Manual" are here, and also on FR

Latest article, "Smart as a Whip, Dumb as a Hoe Handle"

[meandog]

But this is what the 10th president of the U.S. said about it: The United States has adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent — that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgment. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgment of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mohammedan, if he will to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the Constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political institutions… The Hebrew persecuted and down trodden in other regions takes up his abode among us with none to make him afraid… and the Aegis of the government is over him to defend and protect him. Such is the great experiment which we have tried, and such are the happy fruits which have resulted from it; our system of free government would be imperfect without it.

[wizr]

This land was established in the name of God, just as Israel was. As it bows to the god of money and tramples those in need of encouragement, it will suffer the same fate as the Jews were promised.

[contemplator]

It is fairly clear to me that the founders were shooting for a society where all religions stood on equal ground and no single religion exercised a controlling influence over government or citizens unwilling to follow their beliefs.

I have read arguments where people assert that the founders wanted this to be a predominately Christian nation. While several quotes attrbuted to various of the founding fathers can be produced which support this, the overwhelming bulk of evidence does not. The idea of a “Christian” nation does appear to have been bandied about and argued for but that argument did not carry the day and make it into the Constitution or any of the other keystone documents.

The “Deist” argument put forth in this article does appear to make sense and tie together the seemingly incongrous idea that our government should be free from religious control while at the same time it’s foundation is based on the idea that men are given certain rights by their ‘creator’. At the same time though, the “Deist” argument strikes me as being similar in style to the 2nd amendment argument revolving around the definition of “militia” in that specific words are picked apart and different factions are arguing about not only what the meaning of the word was then versus now but in the “deist” argument how the meaning of the word was interepreted by each individual in the founding father pantheon.

My particular philosophy is that we should be recognize that the tack the founders took was that the ideal they were shooting for is what’s important overall, not the semantics. The founders ‘kicked the can down the road’ on quite a few issues and left the details to future generations to work out. I find the ‘deist’ argument believable in that it provided a way for all sides to come to an agreement in such a way that they could move on to other issues. The sooner we can agree on the ideals we should be shooting for, the sooner we can get down to the business of the details.

Eventually there will have to be a generation which shoulders the burden of ironing out those details instead of “kicking the can” again.

[Lightfinger]

Again, there is a misunderstanding here.

The reason the president stated what he did is he, and the Founding Fathers, understood the wording of what they were putting into the Constitution would protect religions that Europe had forbidden.

This does not mean that the country was not founded under Christian principles. All it means is it would not prohibit others from the same benefits.

If you know history, there was an active treaty in Europe at the time of the founding of our nation that stated the ruler of the area could impose his religion upon the populace. This was gained after the Protestant rebellions in the Holy Roman Empire, when Lutheranism spread across the land in defiance of the Catholic Church.

The founders, many of whom were Puritans, an oppressed minority/faction of the Anglican Church, were denied worship, gained control of England for a period, and lost it again. The Founders were sick of the wars based on religion, and sought to prevent it by first coming to America, where the mother countries did not have the control to enforce the treaty, and then in the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by allowing religious freedom. It wasn’t because they weren’t Christian, they were...but they were Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Catholics, and other denominations that were sick of things like France’s Wars of Religion.

By protecting all the differing factions of Christianity, they knew they were also going to protect what was previously known as heresies, atheists, and religions of the ‘Mohammedans’ and ‘Brahmans’.

The fact atheists attempt to claim this proves the founders were not Christians through the same spurious logic that causes liberal whackos to claim the government caused 9/11, and that too many people believe that tripe, is very troubling.

[thefactor]

well, good morning to you too!

[thefactor]

article referring to the FF’s as “deists”. mostly jefferson quotes, but reference to GW.

[wizr]

Thanks...I think?

[stuartcr]

For more info;

http://www.deism.com/index.html

[polymuser]

All I know is that the Mayflower was full of Christians, the original colonies’ constitutions nodded heavily to Christianity, the majority of the Founders were Christians, and they wrote our Constitution to leave religion alone.

http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html

[avenir]

Jefferson’s rants against Christ have left a nasty impression on me.

[achilles2000]

I agree. BTW, Daniel Dreisbach and others have recently pointed out what used to be common knowledge; namely, that the religion clauses were intended to prevent federal interference with the then existing state establishments of religion and religious settlements. Those state establishments survived well into the 19th century. For example, Mass. didn’t disestablish Congregationalism until 1833. A federal government that could create and impose something analogous to the Church of England would have infringed the right of the states to settle their own religious affairs.

[Texas Federalist]

This land was established in the name of God, just as Israel was.

Is that why two of the first three presidents didn't believe in the Trinity? Jefferson wasn't even a Christian and Madison ostensibly practiced but is suspected to have shared Jefferson's views. This notion of America as some lower level Christian theocracy didn't begin until the late 19th century.

[count-your-change]

What is not mentioned in the article or comments (so far) is that Jefferson and others of his position were students of history, particularly European, and thus were well aware of how religion and politics shared the same bed throughout Europe. And both were further corrupted in the process.
Little wonder Jefferson might voice a distaste for what passed as “Christianity”.
In fact here is one, of many, of Jefferson's comments:

“They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.”
-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

[WackySam]

Jefferson’s rants against Christ have left a nasty impression on me.

I challenge you to provide a single instance of Jefferson "ranting against Christ".

[iowamark]

most of his[Jefferson's] colleagues professed Deism precisely because they agreed with him in regarding Christianity as a vulgar and bloody superstition.

The blogger clearly has a strong anti-Christian bias but does little to prove that the Founders share his prejudice.

[jackv]

One little book will answer this nitwits concerns.

Newt Gingrich's “Rediscovering God in America”. There can be no disputing our Founder's intentions.

[mjp]

Religious conservatives are fond of replying by pointing excitedly at the references to “Nature’s God”, “Divine Providence”, and the “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence.

The American Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were based on Christian law concepts, not Marxist or Humanist principles. These documents recognized human rights as based in the Creator. As men and nations move away from that base, the results will be morally and legally bankrupt societies.

[Pharmboy]

"...not only were most of the signers of the Declaration and framers of the Constitution Masons..."

Nonsense. Nine of the 56 signers of the DoI were Masons, not "most." Bad scholarship = bad article.

[Pharmboy]

See #20. He’s right about some things, but wrong on others; certainly the Christians at the time of the Founding were not like modern Born-Again Christians.

[DJ MacWoW]

If these men were deists, why did Jefferson propose "Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by a Cloud by Day, and a Pillar of Fire by night. . " as the US government seal? Franklin wanted the parting of the Red sea. Scroll down the page at the link.

Proposed Seal for the United States Library of Congress

Another problem liberals have is this article.

'A Wall of Separation' FBI Helps Restore Jefferson's Obliterated Draft-Library of Congress

In his New Year's note to Lincoln, Jefferson revealed that he hoped to accomplish two things by replying to the Danbury Baptists. One was to issue a "condemnation of the alliance between church and state." This he accomplished in the first, printed, part of the draft. Jefferson's strictures on church-state entanglement were little more than rewarmed phrases and ideas from his Statute Establishing Religious Freedom (1786) and from other, similar statements. To needle his political opponents, Jefferson paraphrased a passage, that "the legitimate powers of government extend to ... acts only" and not to opinions, from the Notes on the State of Virginia, which the Federalists had shamelessly distorted in the election of 1800 in an effort to stigmatize him as an atheist. So politicized had church-state issues become by 1802 that Jefferson told Lincoln that he considered the articulation of his views on the subject, in messages like the Danbury Baptist letter, as ways to fix his supporters' "political tenets

Airing the Republican position on church-state relations was not, however, Jefferson's principal reason for writing the Danbury Baptist letter. He was looking, he told Lincoln, for an opportunity for "saying why I do not proclaim fastings & thanksgivings, as my predecessors did" and latched onto the Danbury address as the best way to broadcast his views on the subject. Although using the Danbury address was "awkward" -- it did not mention fasts and thanksgivings -- Jefferson pressed it into service to counter what he saw as an emerging Federalist plan to exploit the thanksgiving day issue to smear him, once again, as an infidel.

[Uncle Ralph]

[Following up on what achilles2000 wrote above. --ed.]

SOME PERSPECTIVE ON "THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE" --- The first clause of the First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". So why that particular term, "respecting"? Because the Constitution directs Congress neither to UPHOLD nor to PROHIBIT any establishment of religion whatsoever. The Founders wanted to insist that the federal government remain "silent" on the matter; i.e. keep its nose out of the business altogether. Why?

At the time of ratification (1787-1790), a number of states did indeed maintain "an establishment of religion". In eighteenth-century Connecticut, for example, "all residents of each town were required to attend Sunday services [at] and to pay taxes to [the] support [of] the local Congregational Church, unless a certificate was signed by an officer of a dissenting church (such as a Baptist, Episcopal, or Quaker) stating that a certain resident regularly attended and supported that church".[1]

The so-called "Constitutional principle" of "a wall of separation between Church & State" is nowhere to be found in the actual text of the Constitution. It is an ad hoc rhetorical extrapolation made by President Jefferson (1801–1809) in his 1802 "Letter to the Danbury [Connecticut] Baptists". As such, it carried scant Constitutional "weight" until the 1947 Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education.

So while the original "Establishment Clause" preempted an establishment of religion by the federal government, it deliberately did not insist on disestablishment of any church or religion at the state level. Indeed, antidisestablishmentarianism was to prevail in Connecticut until 1818.

---

Also see:

• The Flushing Remonstrance of 1657
• David Gelernter: Americanism -- and Its Enemies

[DJ MacWoW]

Continued from link above.

The unedited draft of the Danbury Baptist letter makes it clear why Jefferson drafted it: He wanted his political partisans to know that he opposed proclaiming fasts and thanksgivings, not because he was irreligious, but because he refused to continue a British practice that was an offense to republicanism. To emphasize his resolve in this matter, Jefferson inserted two phrases with a clenched-teeth, defiant ring: "wall of eternal separation between church and state" and "the duties of my station, which are merely temporal." These last words -- "merely temporal" -- revealed Jefferson's preoccupation with British practice. Temporal, a strong word meaning secular, was a British appellation for the lay members of the House of Lords, the Lords Temporal, as opposed to the ecclesiastical members, the Lords Spiritual. "Eternal separation" and "merely temporal" -- here was language as plain as Jefferson could make it to assure the Republican faithful that their "religious rights shall never be infringed by any act of mine."

snip

Jefferson's public support for religion appears, however, to have been more than a cynical political gesture. Scholars have recently argued that in the 1790s Jefferson developed a more favorable view of Christianity that led him to endorse the position of his fellow Founders that religion was necessary for the welfare of a republican government, that it was, as Washington proclaimed in his Farewell Address, indispensable for the happiness and prosperity of the people. Jefferson had, in fact, said as much in his First Inaugural Address. His attendance at church services in the House was, then, his way of offering symbolic support for religious faith and for its beneficent role in republican government.

[stuartcr]

What else is there to prove what the founders thought, other than what they wrote...and that is left to interpretation, isn’t it?

[RightWhale]

Christian piety

Pietism or Deism. Which is it?

[jimt]

Jefferson’s rants against Christ have left a nasty impression on me.

Actually, Jefferson admired Christ and his teachings. It was what some Christian churches made of them that he despised.

[GraniteStateConservative]

The fact atheists attempt to claim this proves the founders were not Christians through the same spurious logic that causes liberal whackos to claim the government caused 9/11, and that too many people believe that tripe, is very troubling.

Thomas Jefferson was working on the first version of the "Jefferson Bible" project while he was serving as President, and thought of the idea of it before even that. There's nothing Christian at all (by any standard definition of Christianity) about the result of that project. It's a philosophy and ethics text and not really religious at all.

Many of the Founders were Deists because they thought that was as far down the belief spectrum it was possible to travel. They took it for granted that there was a Creator, even if he was the equivalent of a deadbeat Dad, in their minds. Atheism didn't really establish itself as something that could really be considered as true until the second half of the 19th century, with guys like Friedrich Nietzsche and Darwin's "On the Origin of Species."

[count-your-change]

In short: each would function without interference from the other.

[avenir]

To rant against the miracles—as he did quite plainly in his re-write of the New Testament, THE JEFFERSON BIBLE—IS to rant against Christ, though he didn’t consider himself to have done so. (Maybe I should have picked a different word than ‘rant’? I was thinking in terms of published rants...)

Jesus told some of his naysayers “Believe the miracles, that you may learn and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. . . Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves” (John 10:38, 14:11).

There is no friendship with Christ that denies his divine and miraculous nature, because then there is no faith in him.

[avenir]

“Actually, Jefferson admired Christ and his teachings. It was what some Christian churches made of them that he despised.”

Admiring Christ while re-writing the New Testament to cleanse if of the miraculous is a false admiration, considering Jesus pointed to his miracles as evidence that he could be believed in.

[Texas Federalist]

Deists find God through reason. Christians find it through faith. They both reach the same conclusion.

[avenir]

“Deists find God through reason. Christians find it through faith. They both reach the same conclusion.”

Deists do not find Christ, though, do they? So no, not the same conclusion.

[Texas Federalist]

If you think that a belief in Christ saves you, then I suppose not.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Let's start with the Jefferson quotes:

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty."

While the author suggests that these quotes show Jefferson was hostile to Christianity, on the contrary, these quotes show that Jefferson was a zealous Protestant. These remarks suggest Jefferson's antipathy towards the Catholic Church, not Christianity in general.

Thus “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”; in Deist thought these concepts blurred together. The phrase “endowed by their Creator” could be rendered accurately as “endowed by Nature”.

The Laws of Nature and Nature's God had a well understood meaning at the time.

Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being.... This will of his maker is called the law of nature. For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws....

This law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other-It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.

But in order to apply this to the particular exigencies of each individual, it is still necessary to have recourse to reason; whose office it is to discover, as was before observed, what the law of nature directs in every circumstance of life: by considering, what method will tend the most effectually to our own substantial happiness. And if our reason were always, as in our first ancestor before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task would be pleasant and easy; we should need no other guide but this. But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience; that his reason is corrupt, and his understanding full of ignorance and error.

This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence; which, in compassion to the frailty, the imperfection, and the blindness of human reason, hath been pleased, at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce it's laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity....

Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. - Blackstone, On the Nature of Laws in General

So the Laws of Nature and Nature's God include the Holy Scriptures, the Bible. That's why we swear on the Bible in court and the President is inaugurated with his hand on the Bible swearing, "So help me God."

“Divine Providence” is a Christian Protestant term of art, not really a Deist one.

That's right. Deists do not believe in divine intervention, and the Founders did.

But it could be read in a Deist way

Only by someone bending over backward to deny that the Founders prayed to God for His protection and feared His judgment.

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever." - Thomas Jefferson

"In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?" - Benjamin Franklin

Deists don't pray. The Founders did.

[Tailgunner Joe]

The Jefferson Bible is "not really religious at all?" Clearly you have never read it.

"The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and all them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." - CHAPTER 5

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world..." - CHAPTER 14

Sounds pretty religious to me.

[Grig]

Jefferson's rants were against church organizations, not against Christ himself. Read this letter of his:

To Timothy Pickering, on a Sermon by Doctor Channing

I THANK you for Mr. Channing's discourse, which you have been so kind as to forward me. It is not yet at hand, but is doubtless on its way. I had, received it through another channel, and read it with high satisfaction.

No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances toward rational Christianity. When we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus; when, in short, we shall have unlearned every-thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines, he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily, his disciples; and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian.

I know that the case you cite, of Dr. Drake, has been a common one. The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies, and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor. Had there never been a commentator, there never would have been an infidel. In the present advance of truth, which we both approve, I do not know that you and I may think alike on all points.

As the Creator has made no two faces alike, so no two minds, and probably no two creeds. We well know that among Unitarians themselves there are strong shades of difference, as between Doctors Price-and Priestley, for example. So there may be peculiarities in your creed and in mine. They are honestly formed without doubt. I do not wish to trouble the world with mine, nor to be troubled for them.

These accounts are to be settled only with him who made us; and to him we leave it, with charity for all others, of whom, also, he is the only rightful and competent judge. I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also.

In saying to you so much, and without reserve, on a subject on which I never permit myself to go before the public, I know that I am safe against, the infidelities which have so often betrayed my letters to the strictures of those for whom they were not written, and to whom I never meant to commit my peace.

To yourself I wish every happiness, and will conclude, as you have done, in the same simple style of antiquity, da operam ut valeas; hoc mihi gratius facere nihil potes.

MONTICELLO, 27 February, 1821 (about 5 years before his death)

http://tinyurl.com/2k3dhk

[Grig]

“This belief is found in perhaps its most extreme form in the Mormon doctrine that the Constitution of the United States is a divinely inspired document.”

There are plenty of non-Mormons who think they were inspired of God when they wrote it. Hardly an ‘extreme’ position.

[jwalsh07]

Well done Joe. It does get tiresome rebutting the Deist nation thing though after all these years.

[villagerjoel]

Citation?

[avenir]

Thanks for that letter, which I did read. Jefferson is a fascinating person, though not one I’d turn to concerning faith.