BroJoeK has made an observation which is that, while we believe our brand of classic liberalism to be deeply rooted in a Judeo-Christian world view, and our founders were for the most part deeply Christian men, it is notable that our republic didn’t sprout in Christian Europe, it sprouted here.
He credits freemasonry with at least fostering the kind of thinking that led to our founding.
For my part, I’ve been chewing on that issue a bit. A couple of things come to mind. One is that the brand of Christianity common here was different in kind. Its not just the protestant/catholic divide, because in Europe Protestantism didn’t lead to an end to the monarchical system. Certain strains of Protestantism seem to have been more inclined to wish for earthly liberty, probably mainly the ones that weren’t able to find official protection. But not all.
The filter is the Atlantic Ocean. The people who felt driven to make that crossing, even if they were of the same sect as the brothers they left behind, were themselves of a different kind. And that made a difference in matters of faith as well.
Its not that the theology itself was different as much as it was the men who believed it who were different and subsequently made more different by the environment they found themselves in once they were in America and far from central authority.
Its hard to imagine now, but at one time being of the wrong sect could get you beaten or killed and your property seized. We are familiar with the story of the Pilgrims, but in some of my digging I came across a migration of church members from what is now northern Ireland in the mid-1700s. They were protestants, but not of the king’s persuasion and were subject to official repression including being beaten publicly, fines levied, property seized. So away they went to the Carolinas.
Previously, the more independent sects would find themselves pushed into the more remote reaches of whatever kingdom they lived in but America provided the refuge that allowed them to stop running and flourish.
These are the kinds of men who a couple of decades later were signing on to fight against the Kings redcoats (as in fact they did).
Another thought comes to mind. There is a difference in freemasonry in countries where it was dangerous to “disbelieve”. In those countries freemasonry provided a ready-made conspiracy which could then be used for other purposes. Being a “freethinker” meant different things in different countries according to the political and religious climate.
I notice in Latin America that some of the technocrat “caudillos” were freemasons. For them “freethinker” had a different context than what was found in the English colonies.
Another thought. We’ve discussed in the past the difference between Locke, who inspired the founders, and Rousseau, who inspired the jacobins. An important distinction is that the jacobins believed freedom required freedom from the Church and freedom from God himself.
They made it a point to slaughter priests when they could get their hands on them.
Locke (and the founders) believed that freedom was a gift of God, and a requirement so that men could better serve God. Since so many people had come to English America for reasons of religious liberty, liberty was always understood in that context. (Granted, for some it was liberty for me, if not for thee, people being people.) Its been noted that revolution in America was preached from the pulpits and followed a religious revival in the years immediately before the fighting started.
BroJoeK has made the point that American freemasonry was different from its counterparts on the continent in part because so many of its members were Christians; the needs for a place for “freethinkers” were different here at least during that era. I do notice that many of the founders who we know to have been Christians were also freemasons. That would not have been true, for example, in catholic countries where freemasonry was a refuge for the anticlericalists and has its own nature and history.
I haven’t known many freemasons, the few I’ve known didn’t strike me as religious. I had the impression they were searching for the kind of brotherhood and opportunities for charity that you would theoretically find in a church, but without the hocus-pocus that they didn’t particularly believe in. I don’t want to go too far with that, though, because some of them subsequently became very religious in later life while remaining masons. So I suppose you can have an organization that on paper is one thing, but as its lived out by its members is another.
The same is true in matters of religion. You have the religion of the written doctrines, and the religion as it is lived out. So you’ll find people whose theology is sketchy but in whom God is alive, who know God and walk with him; and you’ll find people whose theology is right on the money but are deader than a hammer. And every variation in between.
Forgive me for my maunderings. Sometimes you just have to unplug my keyboard.
“Its hard to imagine now, but at one time being of the wrong sect could get you beaten or killed and your property seized.”
A similar conflict is what lead to Jefferson’s correspondence with the Danbury Baptists.
Thank you for a great post, much appreciated!
:-)
Thank you ever so much, dear marron, for your wonderful, deeply insightful "maunderings!"