Belief in a Certain Type of God as a Foundation For Natural Rights:

At the recent natural rights conference put on by The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy at Georgetown University, Michael Novak gave the keynote address entitled "Belief in a Certain Type of God as a Foundation of the Natural Right of Conscience." I was not at the conference and I sincerely hope it will be available on webmedia sometime soon. But based on what I know of Novak's work (and I think I know it fairly well) let me surmise what I think he argued: the "Deist" God does not provide a firm foundation for natural rights, rather the "Judeo-Christian" God -- the God of the Hebrew Scriptures -- does.

In response, I would argue drawing a distinction between the "Deist" God and the "Judeo-Christian" God may be a false dichotomy. I raised a similar point in a brief dialogue with Kevin Schmiesing of the Acton Institute. The bottom line is Jefferson's God perfectly suits the role of the God that guarantees natural rights. Indeed, this makes sense given Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence. And make no mistake, Jefferson's God was an active, intervening rights granting Providence. As Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia [1785]:

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 of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!

Yet, Jefferson also rejected:

The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, &c.

And I would argue the God of Jefferson was the God of J. Adams, Franklin, Madison, Wilson, G. Morris, Washington and Hamilton. There's room for some honest debate here. Those founders may not have rejected every single one of the above mentioned tenets Jefferson rejected (Adams for instance accepted the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, whom he believed a man, not an Incarnate God on the grounds that this was God doing for the most moral man what He one day will do for all good men, perhaps all men). I would argue even if there are no "smoking guns" proving beyond a reasonable doubt that for instance Washington, Wilson or Hamilton (until the very end of his life) believed in the tenets of American Founding political theology that I describe below, everything they said is compatible with it.

Here is how I summarized the God of the American Founding -- that common ground in which the above mentioned "key Founders" probably believed -- in a post that the Cato Institute reproduced:

Nature’s God was theologically unitarian, universalist (did not eternally damn anyone) syncretist (most or all world religions worshipped Him), partially inspired the Christian Scriptures, and man’s reason was ultimate device for understanding Him. He was not quite the strict Deist God that some secular scholars have made Him out to be. But neither was He the Biblical God. Rather, somewhere in between.

I would further argue that this God serves as a more authentic guarantor of natural rights than the orthodox biblical God. For one, the orthodox biblical God does not, by doctrine, guarantee natural rights as they are foreign to the Bible's text. As Robert Kraynak summed up America's Founding liberal democratic (or "republican" if you will) order & God:

Thus, we must face the disturbing dilemma that modern liberal democracy needs God, but God is not as liberal or as democratic as we would like Him to be.

[And for any potentially ignorant readers who erroneously think the concepts of "democracy" and "republicanism" are mutually exclusive, small l liberal, small d democracy refers to the Lockean principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence.]

Christianity, Sola Scriptura, State of Nature, & Evolution:

I turn our attention to my friend and Positive Liberty co-blogger, Jim Babka, who posted on the "Two Books Approach to Christianity." Babka is an orthodox evangelical Christian. He believes the Bible as God's revealed Word. Yet, he rejects Sola Scriptura and calls for a theology more "open" to the discoveries of nature, science and reason. When reading Babka's post I'm reminded of Benjamin Rush (a Trinitarian Universalist) who described his faith as "a compound of the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of most of our Christian churches."

As Babka writes:

There is a presumption amongst reformed and fundamentalist Christians, that revelation reigns Supreme and Alone — Sola Scriptura. The fundamentalist who then insists that man’s “helpmeet,” woman, was literally built from the rib of man, sometime on the sixth (24-hour) day of creation, serves as the cliche example of this principle taken to its logical conclusion.

Skeptics — atheists in particular — mount a counter-charge (often with pomposity), that they eschew revelation and embrace Reason.

Not all Christians embrace Sola Scriptura at the expense of Reason. All truth is God’s truth.

There are two problems here to be addressed when looking at the fundamentalist’s view. First, the Bible itself does not advocate Sola Scriptura. Second, this need not be a stricter either/or situation, but rather can be a fuzzier both/and. There is a middle ground, if you will.

Explicitly, Romans 1 says that all mankind should recognize God in the creation. No one is permitted the excuse of not recognizing God because the creation “testifies.” Atheist Bertrand Russell was asked how he would respond, if after dying he was brought face to face with God. His reply: “There wasn’t enough evidence.” Romans 1:18-20 suggests that we know today as “science” is, in part, actually the study of God’s world.

Implicitly, most conservative Christians will instantly recognize what I mean when I refer to Hebrews 11 as the “Faith Hall of Fame.” In it, appears Abraham, who precedes Moses on the historical timeline. Moses is (from the fundamentalist perspective) the author of the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament, including Genesis) which tells Abraham’s story. Thus, Abraham was a man without a book of revelation. Yet he followed God. Abraham is the greatest figure of “faith” because he acted, without a book of revelation.

Sola Scriptura is strictly a religious construction. It is a Reformation doctrine that arose in response to the corruption of the Catholic Church. That response is understandable and was, initially, liberating.

What's notable about Babka's approach is that he uses it to defend the compatibility of Darwin's theory of evolution and orthodox Christianity. I'm writing about this because I spend a great deal of time critically analyzing the "political theology" of the American Founding and I have concluded (after some more notable scholars) that, arguably, such political theology is not "Christianity," but not "Deism" either. Yet, American political theology often presented itself as "rational Christianity." And this kind of "Christianity" oft-turned out to be theologically unitarian, universalistic, and rejected the infallibility of the Bible. It also excessively relied on "nature" and "reason" as much as if not more so than the Bible. But, this "political theology" (that may or may not be properly termed "Christianity") was not exclusive; it didn't seek to exclude orthodox Trinitarian Christianity (or non-orthodox faiths). Yet, it wanted all faiths to be open to the discoveries of nature, science and reason.

So while American political theology is not necessarily hostile to orthodox Christianity, the orthodox Protestant Sola Scriptura crowd who 1) rejects natural law discoverable by reason that has its foundations in Aristotle and 2) embraces "Sola Scriptura" as a "closed system," are likely to be anathematized by said political theology. Francis Schaeffer comes to mind as a theologian whose "Christianity" does not accord with the political theology of the American Founding. In short, if "Christians" want their faith to best resonate with American political theology, they don't necessarily need to reject the Trinity or other orthodox doctrines, but they do need to embrace a more "open" theology -- "open" to the findings of science, nature, and reason.

Thus, Jim Babka's Christianity is closer to the political theology of the American Founding than is Francis Schaeffer's.

A "Christianity" that is open to the scientific discoveries of Darwin, for instance, is closer America's Founding political theology than is a closed, Sola Scriptura system that rejects Darwin (or whatever science discovers), because such "Truths" seem not to accord with what the Bible, on the surface, teaches. The Founders, of course, weren't Darwinists because Darwin's theory had not yet been discovered (in the same sense that they didn't believe in Einstein's theories either). Yet, they embraced Locke and Locke posited theories that were as foreign to the Bible as were Darwin's.

Leo Strauss quite properly termed Locke's state of nature theory as "wholly alien to the Bible." As Gregg Frazer put it:

The biblical account of Eden and the origin of human society bears little resemblance to [Locke's] world of free agents restrained only by natural law forming society on the basis of voluntary consent. (Ph.D. dissertation, p. 369.)

Now, because of the difference between what Locke teaches and what the Bible teaches, one might conclude that Locke's theories are "anti-biblical." As legendary political theorist Walter Berns put it: "[T]he idea of the state of nature is incompatible with Christian doctrine." Or, if one believes in a more "open" form of Christianity (that goes beyond "closed" Sola Scriptura) one might conclude Locke's idea of the "state of nature" (which concept was first posited by Hobbes and also articulated by Rousseau) is compatible with "Christian doctrine." But in that sense, it would be "a-biblical" not "anti-biblical."

I think we can say the same thing about Darwin's theory of evolution. Because of the differences between what Darwin teaches and what the Bible teaches, many orthodox Christians, most notably so called "young earth creationists" who believe in a literal six day creation, argue Darwin is incompatible with Christianity. In this case, Darwin's teachings are categorized as "anti-biblical" and it is no coincidence that Dr. Gregg Frazer is a literal, six day young earth creationist. Yet, to a more "open" form of Christianity, Darwin is compatible with the Bible and Christianity, properly understood. In this sense, Darwin's teachings are "a-biblical," not necessarily "anti-biblical."

We could analyze John Locke's "state of nature" teachings almost exactly as we do Darwin's. The concept of Locke's, Hobbes', OR Rousseau's "state of nature," central to American Founding thought, was either "a-biblical" or "anti-biblical" depending on whether one possesses a closed "Sola Scriptura" understanding of Christianity or a more open understanding. America's Founders, as Lockeans, obviously possessed the more "open" theology. Indeed it is what founds America's democratic-republican political order.

Natural Rights Conference At Georgetown:

Anyone in the DC area might want to strongly consider attending this conference at Georgetown tomorrow featuring among others Randy Barnett of Georgetown Law and the Volokh Conspiracy.

9:30am-11:00am Panel 1: The Origin and Nature of Natural Rights and the U.S. Constitution
Brian Tierney, Cornell University: Sources of the American Idea of Natural Rights: Some Competing Narratives
Robert Kraynak, Colgate University: Ordered Liberty at the American Founding: Natural Rights in Cultural Context
Respondent: Steven Brust, Georgetown University

11:00am- 11:15am Break

11:15am – 12:45pm Panel 2: Perspectives on the Constitution, Natural Rights, and Natural Law
Robert George, Princeton University: What is Natural Law?
Randy Barnett, Georgetown Law School: Was Lochner Right? Natural Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment
Moderator: Patrick Deneen, Georgetown University

12:45pm-2:00pm Lunch with Keynote Address
Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute (begins at 1:00pm):
Belief in a Certain Type of God as a Foundation of the Natural Right of Conscience
RSVP required for Lunch

2:00pm – 3:30pm Panel 3: Natural Rights, the Bill of Rights and Judges: Theory and Practice
Christopher Wolfe, McInerny Center for Thomistic Studies: Natural Rights, the Constitution, and Judicial Review
Charles Lugosi, Ave Maria Law School: Why Judges Should Understand the True Nature of the Rule of Law to Effectively Interpret the Constitution to Protect the Rights of All Persons.
Respondent: Phillip Muñoz, Tufts University

I've blogged about the work of many of the above mentioned figures. Many of presenters are going to make a Thomistic natural law case for natural rights; Randy Barnett is more than able to hold his own when he argues for a different perspective. Barnett's idea is if we have a natural right to political liberty (something I don't believe Thomas argued) such concept transcends the strict domain of natural law ethics. In short the natural law tells us what is right and what is wrong in every aspect of our lives. Natural rights deal with what government may, by right, do. Both use the same method: "natural," by definition, means discoverable by reason, as opposed to revealed in the Bible. The biggest difference between Barnett and George is that Barnett argues individuals have a natural right to do what might arguably violate the natural law; whereas George argues that we have a natural right to do what is compatible with the natural law only. Here's an example: Adults have, I would argue, a natural right to consume alcohol in private. Drinking in moderation doesn't violate the natural law; though a case could be made that drinking to excess does. Nonetheless government does not have the natural right to use its police powers to ensure my drinking in private accords with the natural law. Indeed, government doesn't need to enforce the natural law because the natural law is self enforcing. If I drink too much I get a hangover. Nature punishes me! Government need enforce natural rights only, not the natural law.

Robert P. Kraynak of Colgate is a really interesting fellow as well. He a conservative Catholic like George, Wolfe, Novak et al. (what some have termed "theocons"), but one who does not believe America's Founding concept of natural rights accords with Thomism (not unlike Robert Bork) or a traditional Christian worldview. He'll argue to his fellow conservative Catholics that American natural rights as the American Founders articulated them are dangerous to Christians who want to use the organs of government to enforce their traditionalist worldview (which he wants to do). He believes in reading the Constitution unmoored from the natural rights dogma of the Declaration of Independence. And in his first best world (where traditional Christians use government to enforce their worldview) the best instrument for doing so is NOT the US Constitutional system, but rather a more authoritarian top down constitutional monarchy.

His work has provided me with valuable insights on refuting the "Christian Nation" thesis.

Founding Era Republican Enlightenment Clergy & Theology, Part I:

As I try to get a clearer understanding of how Founding era Americans viewed the French Revolution, I've come across a rich source of "Christian" literature arguing on behalf of the French Revolution's principles. As I understand the history -- the French were quite popular in Founding era America; they were instrumental to securing American victory over the British, and American consensus initially strongly supported the French Revolution and thought (or perhaps hoped) it would be an extension of the American Revolution. As things started to go wrong, more Americans began to jump ship. And the end of Washington's Presidency coincided with the emergence of political parties (the Federalists v. the Democratic-Republicans) and the increasing awareness that the situation in France was getting worse. Support for the French Revolution became divided along party lines, with the Federalists becoming increasingly anti-French Revolution and sympathizing with the British and the Republicans maintaining support for the French.

Along the way, some orthodox Federalist Clergy labeled Jefferson an "infidel." They did so for a variety of reasons, in part for his excessive sympathy for the French, but also for things he wrote in "Notes on the State of Virginia." But, the Republicans had their clergy and theologians as well, many of whom defended Jefferson and the French Revolution on explicitly "Christian" grounds. Or, at least they presented their defense of such under the auspices of "Christianity." But what presented itself as "Christianity" was Enlightenment dogma mixed in with biblical language. I recently wrote about one of these figures -- Bishop James Madison. But there are more, one of whom I detail below and others in subsequent posts.

Note these defenders of Jefferson and the French Revolution were not Thomas Paine style deists. Though some of these enlightened clergymen may have appreciated the likes of Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau (to an extent) it was not open infidels rejecting the "Christian" label who had respectable platforms for reaching the public (the works of the hard infidels were widely read in certain circles, but also viewed as subversive; you can imagine them being mailed in brown paper envelopes). Rather, it was clergy and theologians teaching such things as the perfectibility of man was a "Christian principle." A recurring theme is that the French Revolution would triumphantly usher in a millennial republic of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." This should illustrate a danger for orthodox Christians who wish to read in "republicanism" to the biblical record that clearly *isn't there.*

Philip Hamburger writes about this dynamic in Chapter 6 of "Separation of Church and State," entitled Keeping Religion Out of Politics and Making Politics Religious. And the Liberty Fund reproduces many of these sermons edited by Ellis Sandoz.

First let us learn about the Tunis Wortman, a theologian. Sandoz notes:

Wortman’s background and activities before the 1790s are unknown. He appears first as a New York City lawyer and man of the Enlightenment, a French-style partisan of liberty, and an apostle of the millennial republic. He viewed the French Revolution as the continuation of the American Revolution and as the European phase of history’s progress toward universal peace.

This is from Wortman's, 1800 A SOLEMN ADDRESS TO CHRISTIANS AND PATRIOTS:

TO MY READERS

In the ensuing observations, I shall consider your duties as christians and as patriots. I shall make it my task to establish the following propositions.

1st. That it is your duty, as christians, to maintain the purity and independence of the church, to keep religion separate from politics, to prevent an union between the church and the state, and to preserve your clergy from temptation, corruption and reproach.

2d. That as christians and patriots, it is equally your duty to defend the liberty and constitution of your country.

3d. Although I am a sincere and decided opponent of infidelity, yet as it respects a president of the United States, an enmity to the constitution is the most dangerous evil; inasmuch as christianity is secure by the force of its own evidence, and coming from God, cannot be destroyed by human power; but, on the contrary, the constitution, is vulnerable to the attacks of an ambitious and unprincipled executive.

4th. That Mr. Jefferson is in reality a republican, sincerely attached to the constitution of his country, amiable and irreproachable in his conduct as a man, and that we have every reason to believe him, in sincerity, a christian.

5th. That the charge of deism, contained in such pamphlet, is false, scandalous and malicious—that there is not a single passage in the Notes on Virginia, or any of Mr. Jefferson’s writings, repugnant to christianity; but on the contrary, in every respect, favourable to it—and further, that there is every reason to believe the story of Mazzei a base and ridiculous falsehood.

Interestingly, Wortman defended Jefferson and called for separation of Church & State while attacking the harder "infidels."

If you are real christians, anxious for the honor and purity and interest of the christian church, you will feel a steady determination, to preserve it free from corruption. Unless you maintain the pure and primitive spirit of christianity, and prevent the cunning and intrigue of statesmen from mingling with its institutions; you will become exposed to a renewal of the same dreadful and enormous scenes which have not only disgraced the annals of the church, but destroyed the peace, and sacrificed the lives of millions. It is by such scenes and by such dreadful crimes, that christianity has suffered; by such fatal and destructive enormities which, since the days of Constantine, have been perpetrated without intermission, that the church has become debased and polluted; in language similar to that of Joshua, we have reason to exclaim there is an accursed thing within the tabernacle. The blood of many an innocent Abel has stained the ephod, the vestments and the altar. Religion has suffered more from the restless ambition and impiety of the church of Rome, than from all the writings of a Voltaire, a Tindal, a Volney, or even the wretched blasphemies of Paine.*

[...]

Experience suggests a more satisfactory but a more fatal reason; the crimes and abuses which have been committed in its name, cruelty and persecution, and intolerance have raised up an host of enemies, and accounts for the zeal, the bitterness and the vehemence of their opposition. It is the departure from the original purity of the system; the alliance with courts; the impurities and prophanity of spurious, amphibious, hermorphredite priests, the innumerable atrocities and persecutions, which have been perpetrated in the name of the most high, that has produced or encouraged the school of infidelity, and occasioned many an honest mind to believe that the establishment of christianity, is incompatible with civil freedom. Let me conjure you, then, to purify the altar, to keep things sacred from intermingling with things prophane, to maintain religion separate and apart from the powers of this world; and then, to use an expression similar to that of the infidel Rousseau, you will hasten the æra when all mankind shall bow at the feet of Jesus.

But what kind of "Christian" was Wortman? Four years earlier in 1796 in an "Oration on the Influence of Social Institutions," he noted that the spirit of the age (enlightenment) had "exalted the human character to a state of splendid greatness and perfectibility that no former age has ever yet realised or experienced." He cited Godwin for the proposition of the mind's "plastic nature" and railed against the "monkish and dishonorable doctrine which teaches the original depravity of mankind," which Wortman termed a "false and pernicious libel upon our species." Eventually human progress would perfect mankind. As Wortman wrote, mankind would "continue to make accelerated advances in wisdom and in virtue until he hath rendered himself the vanquisher of misery and vice, and until 'Mind hath become omnipotent over matter.'" (For more see the above link to Hamburger's "Separation of Church & State.")

In subsequent posts I'll detail more enlightened "Christians" who sympathized with Jefferson & the French Revolution. I don't think their views represented "mainstream" thought for the Founding era, but they were "the base" of the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans who represented half of America towards the end of the "Founding Era" (the 1790s).

The Original Meaning of "Religion":

I'm still thinking about writing a scholarly article on the original meaning of the term "religion" in the US Constitution. Endless articles have been done on the original meaning of the religion clauses by much better scholars. They explore such things as whether the free exercise clause meant to include exemptions from generally applicable laws and exactly what the establishment clause prohibited, the erection of a national sect only (like the Church of England) or something more. See among others the work of Phillip Munoz, Philip Hamburger, Marci Hamilton, Douglas Laycock, and Akhil Amar. My article would focus on what "religion" means in the specific sense of whether it's "Christianity only" "religion in general" or something else.

How does the difference matter? If it's "Christianity only" then according to the original meaning of the religion clauses, non-Christian religions wouldn't have a right to freely practice their religion.

Does it even matter? In a sense yes; in a sense no. It doesn't matter in the sense that the question has been settled by judges and policy makers; even the most conservative jurists on the Supreme Court of the United States believe non-Christian religions are protected under the religion clauses. However, that "religion" originally meant "Christianity" is one of the central tenets of the "Christian America" thesis. I don't argue Christian Nationalists want to deny non-Christians the right to freely exercise their religion; though the Christian Reconstructionists (who are extremist and marginal) who borrow from Barton's work do. But I do sense these Christian America types argue non-Christians religions are lucky we Christians give them religious rights, because the original meaning of the Constitution holds we don't have to.

If you don't believe me, see mega-church pastor and Christian America promoter (David Barton speaks at his church) Robert Jeffress claim that "[n]o serious student of history doubts the framers of the First Amendment were referring to Christian denominations." Well, no, many serious students of history, for instance, the majority of the PhDs in history at prestigious universities, do not believe "religion" in the First Amendment meant "Christian sects." Though I have seen a few ultra-leftist "critical legal" theorists claim something like this in order to show just how unacceptable "originalism" is. [As the theory goes "rights" were intended to protect white, propertied, Protestant males only.]

But to the meat of the argument, the Constitution uses the term "religion" only once in the First Amendment and "religious" as in "no religious test" once in the unamended Constitution. My research concludes "religion" meant "religion in general" not "Christianity only," for all three clauses. Much groundbreaking work has already been done on the "no religious test" clause. This work demonstrates it did NOT refer to sectarian Christian tests only as Christian Nationalists argue, but rather abolishes all religious tests for public offices and permits, if the people so decide, the election of a non-Christian to public office. As Kramnick and Moore point out in The Godless Constitution the side that objected to the US Constitution on the grounds that it permitted non-Christians to be elected to office lost once the Constitution was ratified. However, the authors downplay the fact that their pious fears were largely assuaged by the fact that the "religiously correct" knew electors ultimately had the right to vote for "Christians only" if they so chose.

Now, so far, I've spoken of "religion" in the First Amendment and not differentiated between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. And I've done so for good reason. And that's because, even though the FEC and the EC deal with two different concepts, the term "religion" is used only once. As the clause reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..." Note the term "religion" is used once in the EC and the term "thereof" is used in the FEC. The "thereof" in the FEC relates back to the term "religion" in the EC. It is logically impossible for something to qualify as a "religion" under the FEC, and not under the EC. This is a profound observation legal scholar Philip Hamburger makes at the 1 hour and ten minute mark in this video.



Hamburger notes some Wiccans have argued they are a "religion" for Free Exercise purposes, but not for Establishment Clause purposes. He correctly counters that such construction of the First Amendment is logically impossible because the term "religion" is used once for both of the clauses. It's like Siamese twins who are two distinct entities but share the same organ, like a heart. And in this case the term "religion" in the Establishment Clause is the "heart" that both the EC and FEC share.

I bring this up because I've seen some Christian Nationalists argue that non-Christian religions are protected under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, but the Establishment Clause meant "Christian sects only." That construction of the Constitution's text is logically unsound and hence not viable. Some of them (the Christian Reconstructionists) might argue "religion" for BOTH clauses meant "Christianity" only. And that would pass the logical construction test; but the historical record shows non-Christians had rights under the term "religion" in the First Amendment.

The first rule in constitutional interpretation is we begin with a sound, logical construction of the text. Often the text is broad and "indeterminate," can support multiple meanings. But just because a text can support multiple meanings doesn't mean it can support anything. For instance the text of the Second Amendment clearly refers to some kind of "guns," but is indeterminate regarding whether government is permitted to distinguish between handguns and howitzers. But if someone argued the Second Amendment guarantees a right to play tennis, it would flunk the text test. Likewise arguing the Free Exercise Clause covers non-Christian religions, but the EC covers only "Christianity" flunks the test of logical construction of the Constitution's text.

Christian Nationalists are fond of offering a quotation by Joseph Story (a theological unitarian who thought unitarianism was "Christianity") to prove their point where Story noted:

The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.

Now, Story's quotation may shed light on the underlying aim of the First Amendment (which may have had multiple underlying aims). However, it still cannot trump the TEXT of the Constitution, which uses the term "religion" not "Christianity" and where the term "religion" MUST by logical necessity cover the same faiths for both clauses.

So we come back to the blog where Christian Nationalist minister Robert Jeffress left a comment using Joseph Story's quotation to attempt to prove "religion" in the US Constitution originally meant "Christianity" only. The blog's host, Dr. Bruce Prescott, effectively countered with George Washington's 1790 letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

Now this is one piece of many evidences. But that it came from the Father of America makes it quite compelling. This proves "religion" in the First Amendment meant more than just "Christianity" where the meaning of "religion" in the Free Exercise Clause, by logical necessity, defines the meaning of "religion" in the Establishment Clause and vice versa.

Bishop James Madison, American Jacobin:

As Thomas Jefferson wrote of his friend Bishop James Madison, cousin to key Founder James Madison, one of the first bishops of the American Episcopalian Church, the first bishop of the Diocese of Virginia and eighth President of William & Mary, (1776–1812):

[F]or 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: & enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me, forging conversations for me with Mazzei, Bishop Madison, &c., which are absolute falsehoods without a circumstance of truth to rest on; falsehoods, too, of which I acquit Mazzei & Bishop Madison, for they are men of truth.

The context of Jefferson's letter to B. Rush was he slammed the orthodox Trinitarian clergy who termed him an "infidel." Jefferson felt comfortable discussing his heterodoxy with Bishop Madison. While I don't know of all of Jefferson's "conversations" with Madison, this letter where Jefferson talks highly of Adam "Wishaupt," founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, seems quite telling. Jefferson certainly wouldn't feel comfortable uttering sentiments like this to Timothy Dwight, Jedidiah Morse or the other orthodox clergy who typified the "religious correctness" of the Founding era. The following passage in Jefferson's letter to Bishop Madison is telling of the "Christianity" or "republican religion" that Jefferson, Bishop Madison, Richard Price and Joseph Priestley all shared:

Wishaupt seems to be an enthusiastic Philanthropist. He is among those (as you know the excellent Price and Priestley also are) who believe in the indefinite perfectibility of man.

Now, Jefferson, Price, and Priestley were all theological unitarians. Was Bishop Madison? I don't know. I have found no evidence (so far) where he denied the Trinity. And David L. Holmes (top historian at William & Mary, and currently faculty advisor to the Bishop James Madison Society at William & Mary) terms him as probably an orthodox Trinitarian Christian in his stellar book "The Faiths of the Founding Fathers." He was a Bishop in the Episcopal Church, whose official doctrines were orthodox, after all.

After reading up on Bishop Madison, I have my doubts. If he were an orthodox Christian, he was nonetheless one imbibed in radical enlightenment philosophy and turned, not to orthodox Christian principles to justify "republicanism" but rather theistic rationalist principles. Because of Madison's involvement with enlightenment radicalism, the orthodox at the time accused him of being an "infidel." Here is Bishop Meade, an Episcopal historian of the Founding era, on the matter:

It has been asserted that Bishop Madison became an unbeliever in the latter part of his life, and I have often been asked if it was not so. I am confident that the imputation is unjust. His political principles… may have subjected him to such suspicion. His secular studies, and occupations as President of the College and Professor of Natural Philosophy, may have led him to philosophize too much on the subject of religion, and of this I thought I saw some evidence in the course of my examination; but that he, either secretly, or to his most intimate friends, renounced the Christian faith, I do not believe, but am confident of the contrary.2

What kind of "Christian faith" Bishop Madison professed -- that of the orthodox or the unitarianism of Jefferson, Priestley, and Price -- remains unknown. Though, I think what I uncover here should cast serious doubt on his orthodoxy and clearly show him as the Enlightenment radical that he was. To which we might react: This guy was a BISHOP in the Episcopalian Church?!? This demonstrates how firmly entrenched Enlightenment principles, even those of the radical French philosophes, were in elite American Founding era circles.

Key evidence that Bishop James Madison adhered to radical Enlightenment philosophy is found in the article entitled "Bishop James Madison and the Republic of Virtue," by Charles Crowe, published in The Journal of Southern History, in 1964. (Hopefully, you'll be able to access the entire article as I can at my college of employment).

Like many of the pro-revolt "Whig-republican" preachers of the Founding era (both unitarian and trinitarian) Bishop Madison "revised" the biblical record and "read in" a republicanism that is not there. Where the Bible speaks of a KINGDOM of Heaven, Bishop Madison, we are told, spoke of a REPUBLIC of Heaven.

Madison's radicalism is evident in his 1795 Sermon MANIFESTATIONS OF THE BENEFICENCE OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE TOWARDS AMERICA, where he noted:

How was the human race to be restored to their inherent rights, rights, which the God of nature consecrated at the birth of every individual?...How were those sentiments of equality, benevolence and fraternity, which reason, and religion, and nature enjoin, to reassume their sovereignty over the human soul,...? How could the principles of a revolution so important, so essential for the happiness of the human species, be generated, but by raising up, as it were, a new race of men, in some remote, some blessed clime, where, from their infancy, unfettered by those errors, which time appears to sanctify, they should be trained not only to a knowledge, but to a just sense of the duty of asserting and maintaining their rights; and above all, where the love of equality, the basis of all rights and all social happiness, should be congenial to man? This favoured region, favoured indeed of heaven, is America. It is here, a knowledge of those political truths, which the immortal Sydneys and the Lockes of former years investigated with philosophic eye, bursts spontaneous forth. It is here, that men, led by the hand of nature, their minds unawed and unobscured by opinions and customs as barbarous and unfriendly to social rights as the dark chaotic ages, which gave them birth, see and acknowledge as axioms, what philosophers have toiled to establish by deductions, long and intricate. It is in America, that the germs of the universal redemption of the human race from domination and oppression have already begun to be developed; it is in America, that we see a redintegration of divine love for man, and that the voice of heaven itself seems to call to her sons, go ye forth and disciple all nations, and spread among them the gospel of equality and fraternity.

This is important to note: Madison's sermon was dressed up in explicitly Christian language, and indeed arguably has rights to the "Christian" label (I don't want to cast doubt on Madison's religious sincerity). The instructive lesson is that sometimes Enlightenment radicalism presents itself as "Christian." Think of Bishop Madison as one of the earliest "liberation theologists."

On page 61 of Crowe's JSTOR article, we are told that, in 1797, Bishop Madison supported the French Revolution and thought of the American executive power as an "organ of the general will." I've uploaded page 63 of Crowe's article which quotes Madison speaking in more detail about his endorsement of the "general will," (for those unaware, "general will" is a term/concept posited by Rousseau and is central to his political philosophy):



Bishop Madison's sentiments also illustrate that the American Revolution was key in inspiring the French Revolution and consequently, Jacobinism, or the idea of spreading "liberal democracy" or "republican revolutions" to the entire world. The model of the American Revolution, Madison noted, "will redeem the captive nations of the earth." Madison believed that the liberal democratic or republic revolution that America perfected

will not be arrested in its progress, until the complete restoration of the human race to their inherent rights be accomplished, throughout the globe. Let the tyrants of the earth set themselves in array against this principle; “they shall be chased as the chaff of the mountain before the wind, and like the down of the thistle before the whirlwind.”

Bishop Madison sounds not unlike the neo-conservative Straussian Francis Fukuyama (before he was spooked by the second Iraq War) when he noted to CSPAN's Brian Lamb:

Now, by the French Revolution, we don’t mean just the limited historical event; what we mean is the emergence of what we understand as modern liberal democracy because in the French Revolution, ultimately what it was about was a revolution in favor of the principles of liberty and equality. Now you could substitute the American Revolution for that because, I think in that kind of ideological sense, those two revolutions were equivalent. I mean, they were both revolutions to create what I earlier defined as a liberal democracy as a political system based on popular sovereignty with guarantees of individual rights.

[The thesis of Fukuyama's book, "The End of History and the Last Man," was that Bishop Madison's/the French Revolution's idea of global liberal democracy would soon bear fruition. Though as post-modern philosophers, the East Coast Straussians (of which Fukuyama is one), don't believe in any kind of viable, God-given, "natural rights" justification for liberal democracy (i.e., what was argued during the Founding era by Bishop Madison and America's Founders), but rather thought that a Hegelian sense of "History" would vindicate the concept.]

George Washington's Theistic Rationalism:

At American Creation, Tom Van Dyke comments:

I hear Hamilton and were Washington were "theistic rationalists" all the time, a speculation that is at worst false and at best is unprovable.

I'll save Hamilton for a later day and focus on Washington. I respectfully disagree. I could just as easily turn this around and state:

I hear Washington was an orthodox Christian all the time, a speculation that is at worst false and at best is unprovable.

Elsewhere Tom noted Washington's Farewell Address where he stated:

"The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles." [Emphasis added.]

In his PhD thesis, Dr. Gregg Frazer quotes this as evidence of Washington's theistic rationalism, not his orthodox Christianity. And that's because the people of the United States were not all orthodox Christians. So whatever this "same religion" was, it was NOT orthodox Christianity. Washington knew there were theological unitarians among them. Indeed, the 2nd & 3rd Presidents who followed him were theological unitarians. And one bit of eyewitness testimony from George Ticknor, founder of the Boston Public Library, claims Madison identified as a "unitarian." Washington himself may have been a theological unitarian (he certainly didn't talk in Trinitarian terms). Washington gave his imprimatur to an address by Richard Price that slammed the Trinity.

Washington also didn't seem to have a problem with the Trinitarian Universalists who denied eternal damnation. As he wrote to them:

I thank you cordially for the congratulations, which you offer on my appointment to the office I have the honor to hold in the government of the United States.

It gives me the most sensible pleasure to find, that, in our nation, however different are the sentiments of citizens on religious doctrines, they generally concur in one thing; for their political professions and practices are almost universally friendly to the order and happiness of our civil institutions. I am also happy in finding this disposition particularly evinced by your society.

Further, Washington defended the Universalist John Murray as a Chaplain.

Washington also didn't seem to have a problem with the Swedenborgians, who taught an extremely novel view of the Godhead that was neither Unitarian nor Trinitarian. As he wrote to them:

But to the manifest interpretation of an over-ruling Providence, and to the patriotic exertions of United America, are to be ascribed those events which have given us a respectable rank among the nations of the earth. --

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age & in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets, will not forfeit his protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining & holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.

Your Prayers for my present and future felicity were received with gratitude; and I sincerely wish, Gentlemen, that you may in your social and individual capacities, taste those blessings which a gracious God bestows upon the Righteous.

Washington also knew of Jews and recognized their civil and religious rights under US law, which destroys the claim that some Christian Nationalists posit that "religion" in the US Constitution originally meant "Christianity" only. As he wrote to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

Washington also knew of Roman Catholics in America and didn't seem to have a problem them. As he wrote:

And may the members of your society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity.

Finally, on the American Indians. I've noted before, when speaking to unconverted Natives, twice Washington termed God "The Great Spirit" (actually prayed to that name) intimating that UN-converted Natives worshipped the same God that Christians do. I've also read every single time Washington approved of converting the Natives to Christianity and it was never for orthodox reasons. The orthodox reason is Indians are in a state of spiritual darkness, they worship a false god and need to be saved. Washington's reasons were either the Indians wanted to convert and/or converting the Indians to Christianity helped to better civilize and assimilate them.

So now go back and rethink the passage in Washington's Farewell Address where he noted, "With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion,..." Unitarian or Trinitarian (or like the Swedenborgs, neither), eternal damnation or universal salvation, Roman Catholic or Protestant, indeed perhaps Jewish, Christian, or Native American spirituality, it's all the "same religion," the differences among them being only "slight shades." This is not orthodox Christian political theology, but rather what Dr. Gregg Frazer has termed "theistic rationalism."

Neil Diamond:

In one of my favorite movies, "What About Bob?" Bill Murray explained that he divorced his first wife because there are only two kinds of people: Those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't. I can't remember which one Bob Wiley was.

But anyway, I used to consider myself the latter kind. I knew Diamond was a talented songwriter, but considered him more "bubble gum," good at coming up with catchy, commercial friendly melodies, but in songs that were otherwise superficial (he did, after all, write the Monkees' hit, "I'm A Believer"). I'm starting to change my mind.

And that's mainly because of this performance he did with "The Band" on "The Last Waltz." I know Diamond co-wrote this song "Dry Your Eyes" with Robbie Robertson, and Robertson produced Diamond's "Beautiful Noise," the album this song is on.

"Dry Your Eyes" is majestic. It also, for some reason, reminds me of all this Obama-mania.

Dave Welch Misses on Inaugural Prayers:

Sometimes I think we criticize David Barton too much. However, if you want a good example of why we keep hammering him, see Dave Welch's latest article from WorldNetDaily. In it he repeats one of Barton's phony, "unconfirmed" quotations. This one attributed to Patrick Henry:

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here."

One reason why these quotations refuse to die, I think, is because they are so on point to the "Christian Nation" argument. Take them away and the Christian Nation claim practically collapses.

The overall context of Welch's post is that he disagreed with having an openly gay Christian Bishop, Gene Robinson, give a prayer at the Inaugural. He also balked at Robinson's objection to making the prayer too exclusively "Christian," and the intimation that public prayers should be inclusive. The following briefly captures Welch's argument:

Given the fact that Christianity has historically been recognized as the majority religion in the United States since our founding, it should not shock the good bishop that the inaugural prayers reflect that reality. Even given the increase of religious plurality and other religions in recent years, Christianity still receives the adherence of over 75 percent of Americans, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Since George Washington spontaneously added, "So help me, God," to the oath of the president in his first inauguration, recognition of our allegiance to, dependence upon and desire for blessings by God have been integral to the ceremony. Since the modern recording of inaugural prayers in 1937, all clergy have been Protestant or Catholic Christians, with eight rabbis participating through those years to recognize the deep, historic connection of those faiths.

I'll ignore the assertion of the historically unsubstantiated fact that "Washington spontaneously added, 'So help me, God,' to the oath of the president in his first inauguration," as that is the territory of my co-blogger at American Creation, Ray Soller. But yes, around 80% of Americans identify as "Christians" today as did 98% during the Founding era. Today that includes men like Gene Robinson and Obama himself. And during the Founding era it included men like Thomas Jefferson and the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, a figure Welch appealed to in an earlier article, a theological unitarian, which according to Welch's strict standards for "Christianity," arguably disqualifies Mayhew from the "Christian" label.

Further if you examine the public God talk of America's first 4 Presidents, you see a systematic effort at generic, philosophical inclusive titles for God. They may have been compatible with orthodox Christianity, but were also compatible with all sorts of non-Christian theological systems. Even Justice Scalia in his dissent in the most recent Supreme Ten Commandments case caught this nuance when he wrote:

All of the actions of Washington and the First Congress upon which I have relied, virtually all Thanksgiving Proclamations throughout our history, and all the other examples of our Government’s favoring religion that I have cited, have invoked God, but not Jesus Christ.

Scalia therefore concludes: “This is not necessarily the Christian God (though if it were, one would expect Christ regularly to be invoked, which He is not)”....

This is what American Civil Religion is all about: Invoking a Providence, but doing our best to make such a concept as inclusive as possible in a religiously pluralistic society. The pluralism of the Founding era was not quite the pluralism of today (the Unitarians and liberal Christian Churches weren't marrying same sex couples). However, make no mistake, America was founded to be a religiously pluralistic nation, with all of those different "factions" -- some Christian, some not, and some debatable as to whether the term "Christian" is properly applied to them at all -- being united in an overriding undefined "Providence." That, not the phony quotation of Patrick Henry that Welch recites as capstone to his argument, is what America's religious Foundations are all about.

And if one's understanding of "Christianity" is theologically orthodox, holds Christ the only way to God, and other non-Christian (or even non-Trinitarian) religions to be "false," then the American Founding's concept of "publick religion" will not speak to you, and you should take such with a grain of salt and not rely on it in positing your worldview of "spiritual discernment."

Democracy V. Republic:

We often hear certain figures (mostly from the extreme political right) claim America was founded to be a republic not a democracy. That statement is a half truth. Some of the folks who utter it understand what they are talking about; many don't. And unfortunately, I see David Barton as one of the chief perpetrators of the "ignorant" understanding of the phrase.

The United States was founded to be a small l liberal small d democracy. All small d democracy means is voting (i.e., consent of the governed). And small l liberal means certain rights are antecedent to majority rule. The Declaration of Independence is the quintessential "liberal democratic" document. The US Constitution established the United States as a constitutional republic. And a constitutional republic is simply a form of "liberal democracy."

You do see quotations from the Founding Fathers criticizing the concept of "democracy" in favor of "republicanism"; but what they are really criticizing is direct democracy or mob rule. There are certain "republican" checks that must be built in to the democratic rule of the people. Chiefly, it's representatives not "the people" who make the laws. Another republican check is that certain individual rights are prior to majority rule. Ultimately, all of the following terms correctly describe the American system of government: "liberal democracy," "representative democracy," "representative republic" or "democratic republic." The following term does NOT: "direct democracy." And that's what the Founders criticized when they noted our form of government was a "republic" not a "democracy."

Now, on to David Barton's distortions of this dynamic. This should help explain why so many Christian Nationalists repeat "we are a republic, not a democracy" as a mindless mantra:

If you study the history of "republicanism", you see it was invented by Western Culture's noble pagan Greco-Roman heritage. The Greeks tried direct democracy, saw that it didn't work. And the Romans pioneered "republicanism." Indeed, the Founding Fathers looked back at noble pagan republican Rome with a great affinity. Indeed, when they wrote with surnames they picked ones from republican Rome, not the Bible. The Founders thought of themselves as new versions of Cato, Cincinnatus, Brutus, Novanglus, and of course Publius. Yet, what they were arguing for wasn't exactly what ancient Rome had, but rather something more modern. 18th Century republicanism was more of an Enlightenment construct.

The Bible spoke little to ideals of 18th Century republicanism. The authors of the Federalist Papers never quoted the Bible in support of the provisions in the US Constitution. But outside of the Federalist Papers, some Enlightenment thinkers and ministers did "read in" republicanism to the Biblical record. As rationalists, America's Founders and the ministers who worked with them picked and chose from all sources of world history, including the biblical record, what they thought "rational" and ignored or discarded the rest. And along the way they did a lot of "reading in" to those sources what they wanted to see to fit their "Whig" ideology.

When framing the Constitution, Noah Webster perfectly captured this Enlightenment zeitgeist that undergirded the US Constitution:

Of all the memorable eras that have marked the progress of men from the savage state to the refinements of luxury, that which has combined them into society, under a wise system of government, and given form to a nation, has ever been recorded and celebrated as the most important. Legislators have ever been deemed the greatest benefactors of mankind—respected when living, and often deified after their death. Hence the fame of Fohi and Confucius—of Moses, Solon and Lycurgus—of Romulus and Numa—of Alfred, Peter the Great, and Mango Capac; whose names will be celebrated through all ages, for framing and improving constitutions of government, which introduced order into society and secured the benefits of law to millions of the human race.

This western world now beholds an era important beyond conception, and which posterity will number with the age of Czar of Muscovy, and with the promulgation of the Jewish laws at Mount Sinai. The names of those men who have digested a system of constitutions for the American empire, will be enrolled with those of Zamolxis and Odin, and celebrated by posterity with the honors which less enlightened nations have paid to the fabled demi-gods of antiquity.

But the origin of the AMERICAN REPUBLIC is distinguished by peculiar circumstances. Other nations have been driven together by fear and necessity—the governments have generally been the result of a single man’s observations; or the offspring of particular interests. IN the formation of our constitution, the wisdom of all ages is collected—the legislators of antiquity are consulted—as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. In short, in it an empire of reason.

Now, Webster wrote these words in 1787; later when the French revolted and tried to construct their "empire" on "reason," it didn't work so well and Webster, apparently, rethought his confidence in "reason" as the rock that undergirds the American republic. In the 19th Century Webster began talking like a Christian Nationalist, and consequently, offers Barton et al. many quotations. Here is the offending article from Wallbuilders.

The quotations criticizing democracy from the other Founders are apt; but, as we have seen, what they criticize is direct democracy. But what Barton quotes from Webster for how a republic defines is an extremely self-serving and distortionist definition. Here is what he reproduces from Webster:

[O]ur citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.13

The other quotations are from Founders explaining how they believed "law" ultimately traced to the divine. The Founders did believe in an immutable God given "natural law" discovered by reason. But they disagreed on the proper relationship between reason and revelation. The most notable "republicans" like Jefferson, J. Adams, Franklin and Madison were rationalists who believed man's reason penultimate for discovering that "higher law," in both private and public life. But I'm sure many other FFs disagreed. Because they disagreed on the Bible's proper role in politics (how to properly understand the Bible led to sectarian arguments which they were trying to avoid), they formed a consensus that, in politics, we would look to "reason" to determine God given natural law.

Now, that there is an immutable "higher law" that trumps majority rule (indeed it's the source of "unalienable rights") was one republican check on democratic rule. However, it's arguably not the sine qua non of "republicanism." If anything the central feature of republicanism v. direct democracy is representatives make the law, not "the people."

But to David Barton and those who follow him, the difference between "republicanism" and "democracy" is democracy is majority rule, republicanism is "God's law." And of course "God's law" simply reduces to the Bible to be used as a "proof-texting" trump as today's evangelicals currently do. So when Ben Franklin said America was given “A Republic, if you can keep it,” he apparently meant, according to Barton, that we must act like evangelical proof texters believing the Bible the infallible Word of God. And, by the way, Ben Franklin believed "that the[re are] several Things in the old Testament impossible to be given by divine Inspiration,..."

Barton's theory ignores the fact that the Founders turned chiefly to "reason" and avoided proof texting the Bible to determine the content of the God given natural law. As John Adams put it:

To him who believes in the Existence and Attributes physical and moral of a God, there can be no obscurity or perplexity in defining the Law of Nature to be his wise benign and all powerful Will, discovered by Reason.

– John Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, March 19, 1794. Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 377, Library of Congress. Seen in James H. Hutson’s, “The Founders on Religion,” p. 132.

Bush Derangement Syndrome, Iraq & Liberal Democracy:

I wasn't entirely convinced Bush Derangement Syndrome existed until I made my farewell post at Dispatches From the Culture War and am getting nailed in the comments to it. And, I mean this as no insult to Ed; he has a great blog and I'm grateful that he invited me to guest blog. Let me further say I didn't vote for Bush either times (I voted Libertarian). And I do not support the Iraq War -- I think it was a mistake -- and never promoted it.

First of all on why Bush took us to war:

My post originally gave a "shout out" to my blogfather Timothy Sandefur who was a supporter of Bush's War in Iraq. He argued after Christopher Hitchens, that the War was for secular values against theocratic totalitarianism.

I do believe that the war was fought chiefly for liberal democratic values (small l, small d). And that Bush believes liberal democratic ideas are God-given human rights as he has told us, as the Declaration of Independence says. Whether liberal democratic values are "secular" is debatable, but I think you can make that case. For instance, Bush's Straussian advisors who pushed him into this war (who tend to be atheists) understand that the Declaration of Independence's ideas of "unalienable rights" to liberty and equality are NOT authentically Christian, but essentially modern ideas. So it's not too much of a stretch to say a war against Islamic fanaticism fought on behalf of universal human rights of liberty and equality is an essentially secular project. Or it's at the very least a "modern" project.

The problem is it didn't work; we could force those values on Germany and Japan (as we did), but could not on the Islamic world.

I also believe that Bush & his Straussians advisors were involved in a concerted effort to "reform" Islam to be a more moderate and enlightened religion (i.e., the idea that Islam is a "religion of peace" and that Muslims worship the same God Jews and Christians do). But whether that can work as well is not for certain; I see that as a work in progress and a noble one at that.

Some of Bush's critics -- mostly the paleoconservatives at the Lew Rockwell Crowd -- who have termed neoconservatives "neo-Jacobins" have a kernel of truth in their argument. While I can't speak for Cheney or other parts of Bush's administration, everything I've seen, read and heard from Bush supports my contention that he fought the war in Iraq chiefly to put an American footprint in the Middle East of liberty, equality, and modern democracy. The ends were noble (that is liberal democracy is the best form of government and we should wish to see all nations adopt it); the means were not. You can't "nation build" and establish liberal democracy by force in most of the illiberal un-democratic lands. According to internal theory of liberal democracy, the "people" in those lands have to "consent" to the liberal democratic (or "constitutionally republican") form of government.

And by the way, though I don't agree with the Straussians on many issues, I've learned much about political philosophy and the American Founding from them. While I'm not certain if the term "neo-Jacobin" is proper, the idea of fighting wars for liberal democratic values can be gleaned from the American Founding record. Though I wouldn't call them "Jacobins," America's Founders certainly were Francophiles. One of the many revisionist myths of the "Christian Nation" proponents is that the American Founders did not support the French Revolution. The opposite is true. The French were vital allies in defeating the British and a consensus among both the Founders and the population at large was the French Revolution was a continuation of the American Revolution, that eventually such a revolutionary republican spirit would sweep the globe and make this the *final* form of government.

And it wasn't just the deists, unitarians and rationalists who supported the French Revolution, but orthodox Trinitarian Christians, like Ezra Stiles, as well. Indeed ministers, whether heterodox unitarians like Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, or orthodox Trinitarians like Ezra Stiles synthesized such revolutionary republican ideas with the Bible and thought the French Revolution would triumphantly usher in a "millennial republic" of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Men like John Adams and Edmund Burke -- Whigs who supported the American cause, but opposed the French Revolution from the start -- were in the minority at the very beginning. And then, as with Iraq II and Vietnam, what began as a popular movement eventually began to lose support as things started to go wrong. And when it was all over, of course, we realized just how different the American and French Revolutions were, why the former succeeded and the later failed. And men like Burke and Adams got to say "I told you so" just like LewRockwell.com and Counterpunch are now saying "I told you so."

And again, I write all of this just to try and get some perspective on the last 8 years of Bush's Presidency. I don't support him or his failed war. And I think the Founding Fathers, though they CERTAINLY believed (as Bush does) that liberal democracy (i.e., what's written in the Declaration of Independence) was *the* form of government that all nations *ought* to adopt, and consequently would "cheer on" and support nations that revolted on behalf of "the rights of man," they were also wisely prudent about engaging in "foreign entanglements" on behalf of causes that we might like.

Guest Blogging:

FYI: This week I'll be guest blogging at Ed Brayton's Dispatches From The Culture Wars, while he is on vacation. I'm honored to be part of the very interesting and distinguished line up that Ed assembled for his guest bloggers: Radley Balko, Chris Rodda, James Hanley, Kevin Vicklund and DarkSyd (of Daily Kos fame).

As I noted in my intro post, because my posts can get meticulously detailed, I'll be writing shorter, highlight, posts there and linking to the longer work when necessary. Hopefully this will have an interactive synergistic effect among Dispatches, Positive Liberty and American Creation.

Different Ways of Defining Christianity:

One interesting nuance I've discovered when researching the FFs & religion issue is how many of the supposed "Deists" -- like Jefferson and Franklin -- arguably thought of themselves as "Christians" in an identificatory sense. The non-Christian deists like Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen and Elihu Palmer wanted nothing to do with the Christian label, any part of the Bible or Jesus.

This dynamic confuses both sides of the culture war debate -- the secular left & religious right who want to argue for a "secular" or a "Christian" founding, respectively. If we set the bar low enough, arguably Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, Wilson,...all the FFs except for the handful of non-Christian Deists would qualify as "Christian." You would need a repudiation of the "Christian" label not to be a Christian, according to this standard.

However, if you set the bar high enough, very few Founders -- even those who believed in orthodox Trinitarian doctrine -- would qualify as "Christian." For instance Roman Catholics believe in orthodox Trinitarian doctrine; but to many evangelicals, they are not "real Christians." The biggest problem I have with David Barton is that his main audience seems to be "born again" or evangelical Christians who set that high bar.

WorldNetDaily has an article by Michael Youssef that perfectly illustrates this theological dynamic. Youssef reacts to recent polls where 37 percent of self proclaimed evangelicals noted they didn't "believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation."

He notes:

This would be like announcing that 37 percent of all Americans do not believe that there are 50 states. Or half of the British people denying that the English language is their language. You get the point of the ludicrousness of the use of the term "evangelical."

[...]

Perhaps it is easier to understand who is not an evangelical.

Anyone who places tradition, experience, or rationalism above the authority of the Scripture ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who places human needs, or reason, above the authority of the Scripture ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who claims credit for his or her salvation, or works to earn it ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who places "moralism," which is the de-emphasizing of the sinfulness of sin, above justification by faith alone ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who perceives the Cross as a mere example of love and not as the only cure for sin and means of salvation ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who minimizes the fact that God poured His wrath on His Son on the Cross so that only whosoever believes in Him shall be saved ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who views that act of God's pouring His wrath upon His Son on the Cross as "cosmic child abuse" ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who sees no need for personal conversion by repentance and faith for receiving eternal life ... is no evangelical.

Anyone who does not believe that once they are saved they will always be saved through the sustaining power, discipline and chastening by the Holy Spirit ... is no evangelical.

If you have concluded that all of these evangelical qualifications are defining a true Christian – you would be correct. For a true evangelical is a true Christian. The opposite, therefore, is true. If you do not believe these foundational truths, no matter what you call yourself, you are no true Christian.

If that's what he believes, fine. However, when folks like this think about America's "Christian" foundations, they should understand most Founding Fathers (I'm arguing beyond the "key Founding Fathers") were in that very position of thinking and calling themselves Christians but not being "true Christians." The Trinitarian Benjamin Rush who believed in universal salvation certainly flunked this standard. Indeed, many of the orthodox Trinitarian Christians of the Anglican/Episcopalian bent (I believe the largest Church of the Founders) probably flunked this standard. And even Alexander Hamilton who towards the end of his life appeared to convert to a form of orthodox Trinitarian Christianity that saw the Lord's Supper (as opposed to Christ alone) a central sacrament probably never met this standard.

In my last post I showed how Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Wilson, and Hamilton often qualified their invocation of religion, Christianity and scripture with such adjectives as rational, reasonable, benign, benevolent, mild, tolerating, liberal, and unitarian. No evangelical would use those terms to describe their religion. Thus they flunk the Christian standard.

However, for historic purposes, this standard is too high. But for evangelicals who would like to believe in the "Christian Nation" idea, it's important to remind them of this dynamic: The Founders, even the many of whom were Trinitarians, were nonetheless not "real Christians" as you understand that term.

I think a more reasonable, defensible standard is orthodox Trinitarian doctrine, or the Nicene Creed. Every single established Church except the Quakers adhered to an orthodox Trinitarian creed. That would include not just evangelicals/reformed Protestants, but also Roman Catholics, and non-evangelical Trinitarians like the Anglicans-Episcopalians as "Christians." But even that standard is outright flunked by Jefferson, J. Adams, and Franklin and is not clearly passed by Washington, Madison, Wilson, G. Morris, and Hamilton until the very end of his life. There still is a bit of mystery with that last bunch, I would admit. Though their systematic silence on orthodox doctrines during an era when one's reputation could damaged for openly criticizing the Trinity points strongly towards closeted unitarianism.

We could lower the bar even further and permit anyone who calls himself a Christian to be a Christian even if he rejects every single tenet of orthodoxy, as Jefferson did in his letter to William Short, October 31, 1819, where he listed and rejected the following:

The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, &c.

If you can disbelieve in those things and still be a "Christian" because you call yourself one, then I agree that almost all of the Founders were "Christians" and America had a "Christian" Founding.

The problem is evangelicals who largely comprise the "Christian America" crowd utterly reject that definition of "Christianity" as sufficient. If like Mr. Youssef they care so much about preserving the cause of what they see as *real,* *saving* Christianity, they should reject the idea of a "Christian" Founding.

Enlightenment Adjectives the Founders used to Qualify Christianity And the Bible:

I am referring to terms like "rational," "reasonable," "benign," "benevolent," "mild," "tolerating," "liberal," and "unitarian." If you examine the systematic language that Founding Fathers like Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Wilson, Hamilton and many others used when they spoke of "religion," "Christianity," and even the Bible, they often qualified such with Enlightenment adjectives or descriptors. I have argued (after more prominent scholars) that these Founders were not simply “taking” the Christian religion as they found it; they were actively involved in a project to make such kinder, gentler, more sober and rational, less dangerous, divisive and sectarian. For many conservative Christians the danger is this transforms Christianity into a different animal -- one that is no longer authentically Christian. To the orthodox, this ruins Christianity of its saving and redeeming (consequently its most important) attribute. I understand why the uber-orthodox evangelical scholar Gregg Frazer has concluded the key Founders' religion was a "generic moralizing" creed that the orthodox biblical God hates.

For instance, "rational" Christianity often ended up theologically unitarian and universalistic. A rational, benevolent God was unitarian not trinitarian and wouldn't consign anyone to Hell for eternity. These key FFs would say theirs was the "Christian God," properly understood; but whether such was the same God the orthodox worshipped is seriously debated.

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. Many orthodox Trinitarian Christians of the founding era and of today are not Calvinists and are troubled by the idea of eternal damnation. Indeed Benjamin Rush's creed -- which he described as a mixture of orthodoxy and heterodoxy -- that denied eternal damnation but embraced orthodox Trinitarian doctrine might have been more mainstream than we realize and certainly seems mainstream among today's self professed Christians.

To counter this broad, tolerant reading of Christianity, the orthodox (especially Calvinists) might note Jesus said such DIVISIVE things as "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword"; but such statements in the Bible were anathema to the "Christianity" as endorsed by every single above mentioned key Founder. They disbelieved in the Biblical God's intolerant, jealous and vengeful nature. The only thing that likely aroused their God's wrath was violating the unalienable human rights of His children. And, as the key FF's understood God, ALL human beings were His children; many orthodox (especially Calvinists) believe if you aren't saved/regenerate, you are a "child of the devil."

The following passages quote every single above mentioned key Founder to prove the thesis. First James Wilson on Locke rejecting the intolerant, jealous, wrathful attributes of the biblical God.

The high reputation which [Locke] deservedly acquired for his enlightened attachment to the mild and tolerating doctrines of Christianity secured to him the esteem and confidence of those who were its friends. [Bold mine.]

Note Wilson qualifies Christianity with "enlightened," "mild" and "tolerating." If one argues the Bible says what it says whether we like it or not (i.e., the position of the orthodox who argue the Bible is infallible and inerrant) one wouldn't use those terms to qualify it. Consigning most human beings to Hell certainly isn't "mild" or "tolerating." Indeed the very First Commandment is neither mild nor tolerating. Quotations like this from Wilson lead me to conclude he did not believe the Bible infallible, the Trinity or eternal damnation.

Next, Alexander Hamilton defending "Christianity" against the harsh attacks of the extreme deism and atheism of the late stages of the French Revolution. Note: Hamilton probably became an orthodox Trinitarian Christian shortly before his death, after his son died in a duel. However, his defense of Christianity in the years prior was not an orthodox defense of Christianity, but rather seems a heterodox Enlightenment defense. In short, it was a "unitarian" or "theistic rationalist" defense. From Hamilton's 1794 document on the French Revolution:

It is not among the least perplexing phenomena of the present times, that a people like that of the United States—exemplary for humanity and moderation surpassed by no other in the love of order and a knowledge of the true principles of liberty, distinguished for purity of morals and a just reverence for Religion should so long persevere in partiality for a state of things the most cruel sanguinary and violent that ever stained the annals of mankind, a state of things which annihilates the foundations of social order and true liberty, confounds all moral distinctions and substitutes to the mild & beneficent religion of the Gospel a gloomy, persecuting and desolating atheism. [Bold mine.]

Again notice the qualifiers: The "religion of the Gospel" is qualified by the terms "mild" and "beneficent." Also note atheism was bad because it was "gloomy" and "persecuting." Hence Hamilton defended a religious creed judged by its benevolent and rational effects, not harsh "truth or be damned," "like it or not" standards.

Next Thomas Jefferson, from his First Inaugural Address:

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter — with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? [Bold mine.]

Notice the qualifiers "enlightened" and "benign." As I have also documented, in his private letters, Jefferson made clear that such an enlightened version of Christianity was, in the ideal, unitarian (in fact rejected every single tenet of orthodoxy) and anti-Calvinistic. And especially notice the compatibility between the words of the supposed outlier Jefferson (which he was not) and the words of every other Founder listed here.

Next: George Washington's 1783 Circular to the States. Note, this document was not written in GW's hand, but in that of an aid. GW signed it though. This address is only one of two places in either his public OR private writings where Washington mentions Jesus by name OR person. Some scholars therefore conclude the following as not characteristically Washingtonian. I disagree and conclude this was characteristic of the age.

The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all, the pure and benign light of Revelation, have had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society. [Bold mine.]

Again note how "revelation" is qualified with enlightenment terms, "pure and benign light." Some argue this address evinces that Washington believed the Bible -- harsh results and all -- trumped enlightened reason. But that is wrong. Were that so those enlightenment qualifiers would not have been used.

I understand why skeptical scholars deem Washington's Circular to the States -- written for public consumption -- to be an outlier: An aid wrote it and Washington almost never discussed either Jesus (by name OR person) OR his thoughts on revelation/the Bible. But this document endorses a decidedly enlightenment understanding of both. Though Jesus is spoken of as "divine," such categorization is consistent with not only Trinitarianism, but also Arianism (which views Jesus as a divine but created and subordinate being to God the Father) and perhaps Socinianism (which views Jesus as 100% man, not divine at all in his personal attributes, but on a divine mission). Indeed the enlightenment Arian thinker Richard Price enthusiastically endorsed this document when he wrote that he was "animated more than he can well express by General Washington's excellent circular letter to the united states."

Next, John Adams:

I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation. For as I believe the most enlightened men of it have participated in the amelioration of the philosophy of the age, once restored to an independent government & no longer persecuted they would soon wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities of their character [and] possibly in time become liberal unitarian Christians for your Jehovah is our Jehovah & your God of Abraham Isaac & Jacob is our God.

-- John Adams to Mordecai Noah, March 15, 1819.

Note how Adams qualifies Christianity with "liberal" and "unitarian" as he champions "enlightened men."

Next, Ben Franklin:

That bodies should be lent us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God - when they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure-instead of an aid, become an incumbrance and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way. We ourselves prudently choose a partial death. In some cases a mangled painful limb, which cannot be restored, we willingly cut off. He who plucks out a tooth, parts with it freely since the pain goes with it, and he that quits the whole body, parts at once with all pains and possibilities of pains and diseases it was liable to, or capable of making him suffer. [Bold mine.]

-- To Elizabeth Hubbart, 1756.

Kind of a neat view of God. Though Franklin identifies life's purpose as "acquiring knowledge," "doing good to our fellow creatures" and enjoying God's kindness and benevolence, as opposed to embracing orthodox doctrines (the infinite sacrifice of Christ's atonement).

For James Madison, I am going to quote his address to the Cherokee Indians, "To My Red Children," August 1812:

"The Great Spirit has given you, like your white brethren, good heads to contrive, and strong arms, and active bodies. Use them like your white brethren of the eighteen fires, and like them, your little sparks will grow into great fires. You will be well fed, dwell in good houses, and enjoy the happiness for which you, like them, were created. These are the words of your father to his red children. The Great Spirit who is the father of us all, approves them. Let them pass through the ear in to the heart. Carry them home to your people; and as long as you remember this visit to your father of the eighteen fires, remember these are his last and best words to you!” [Bold mine.]

Note other above mentioned key Founders referred to God as "The Great Spirit" when addressing unconverted Native Americans. This is important because most orthodox regard the Natives' "Great Spirit" as a false pagan God. Madison's address also seemingly contradicts Trinitarian theology: Madison (reputed to be a theological unitarian) equated the "Great Spirit" with the Father. Some have argued the "Great Spirit" might be the Holy Spirit (3rd person in the Trinity). However, in referring to the Great Spirit as the Father, Madison would be confusing the distinct personalities of the Trinity.

Also, as noted above, many orthodox believe that only saved-regenerate Christians are "children of God" and Madison refers to unconverted Natives as his "Red Children" and the "Great Spirit" as "the father of us all" intimating that they as Indians qua Indians are God's children.

John Adams, Christianity, & Civil Religion:

Kristo Miettinen has a post at American Creation on John Adams' personal heterodox religion and his promotion of Christianity in the Massachusetts state constitution of 1780 he helped to pen. The relevant language in the state constitution is:

Article III

As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality: Therefore, to promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.

And the people of this commonwealth have also a right to, and do, invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subjects an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers aforesaid, at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously and conveniently attend.

Provided, notwithstanding, that the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, shall, at all times, have the exclusive right of electing their public teachers, and of contracting with them for their support and maintenance.

And all moneys paid by the subject to the support of public worship, and of the public teachers aforesaid, shall, if he require it, be uniformly applied to the support of the public teacher or teachers of his own religious sect or denomination, provided there be any on whose instructions he attends; otherwise it may be paid towards the support of the teacher or teachers of the parish or precinct in which the said moneys are raised.

Any 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 one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.

The conundrum is how could someone with with views as heterodox as Adams support such a thing? Miettinen writes:

Adams knew that virtue sufficient for civil society was found in men of many faiths, and he arguably even would have called all such men "Christian" regardless of faith, e.g. a pious Muslim who was a model of civic virtue might be pleasing to God, and saved, and therefore living the life Christ intended (thereby qualifying as Christian), despite never hearing of, or believing in, Christ.

This is not nearly the same thing as believing that a society that inculcates Islam in its citizens has the same prospects of success and virtue as a neighboring society that inculcates Christianity. One religion is better than the rest, at least on Adams' view, and that was the religion intended by Adams for America. It was a broad vision of Christianity that embraced Unitarianism (then based at Harvard and surging in Massachusetts) but probably not Universalism (or Catholicism).

I agree that Roman Catholicism was not Adams' cup of tea; Adams was arguably an anti-Catholic bigot. From a letter to Jefferson, May 1816:

"I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits.... Shall we not have regular swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king of the gipsies can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, writers and schoolmasters? If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in Hell, it is this society of Loyola's. Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum."

Adams also remarked to Jefferson in 1821: "Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?"

However, Adams himself was a theological universalist in the sense of denying eternal damnation:

"I believe too in a future state of rewards and punishments too; but not eternal."

-- To Francis van der Kemp, July 13, 1815.

More importantly George Washington gave such theological universalism his imprimatur, which I think settles the matter that such was part of the civil religion. As he wrote to the Universalist Church in Philadelphia:

GENTLEMEN,

I thank you cordially for the congratulations, which you offer on my appointment to the office I have the honor to hold in the government of the United States.

It gives me the most sensible pleasure to find, that, in our nation, however different are the sentiments of citizens on religious doctrines, they generally concur in one thing; for their political professions and practices are almost universally friendly to the order and happiness of our civil institutions. I am also happy in finding this disposition particularly evinced by your society. It is, moreover, my earnest desire, that all the members of every association or community, throughout the United States, may make such use of the auspicious years of peace, liberty, and free inquiry, with which they are now favored, as they shall hereafter find occasion to rejoice for having done.

With great satisfaction I embrace this opportunity to express my acknowledgments for the interest my affectionate fellow-citizens have taken in my recovery from a late dangerous indisposition; and I assure you, Gentlemen, that, in mentioning my obligations for the effusions of your benevolent wishes in my behalf, I feel animated with new zeal, that my conduct may ever be worthy of your favorable opinion, as well as such as shall, in every respect, best comport with the character of an intelligent and accountable being.

When John Adams in his personal letters made odd comments equating Christianity with Zeus worship or Hinduism, I think he was out of the mainstream. However, the idea that the "end" of religion was to make men moral, and as such, if the "end" was met, the means didn't matter -- hence all good people were "Christian" -- was quite mainstream among the key Founders.

First Franklin:

"But that from such Faith alone Salvation may be expected, appears to me to be neither a Christian Doctrine nor a reasonable one….Morality or Virtue is the End, Faith only a Means to obtain that End: And if the End be obtained, it is no matter by what Means.”

– “Dialogue between Two Presbyterians,” April 10, 1735.

J. Adams:

“I believe with Justin Martyr, that all good men are Christians, and I believe there have been, and are, good men in all nations, sincere and conscientious.”

– To Samuel Miller, July 8, 1820.

Jefferson:

"My fundamental principle would be the reverse of Calvin's, that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power."

-- To Thomas B. Parker, May 15, 1819.

Washington:

"[F]or no man, who is profligate in his morals, or a bad member of the civil community, can possibly be a true Christian, or a credit to his own religious society.

"I desire you to accept my acknowledgments for your laudable endeavours to render men sober, honest, and good Citizens, and the obedient subjects of a lawful government."

-- George Washington, Letter to General Assembly of Presbyterian Churches, May 1789.

So subtract from civil Christianity justification through faith.

And for the sake of space I won't detail the key Founders' view on the Bible. I'll just assert it cannot be gleaned that they believed the Bible infallible. I have quotations from Jefferson, J. Adams, and Franklin rejecting such. And Washington and Madison never publicly held up the Bible an inerrant, infallible book. At best, a consensus dictates they believed the Bible at least partially inspired, many believing it more, some believing it less.

So we end up with a civil Christianity that lacks belief in 1) the Trinity and related orthodox doctrines, 2) eternal damnation, 3) justification through faith, and 4) the infallibility of the Bible.

And because virtue is central to this public creed, if it can be found in other religions, they too have a place at the table of "publick religion."

Is there a problem here? I would say yes. The same political theological problem exists today as it did during the Founding era. Lot's of things have changed since then, but this, I assert, is not one of them: The "orthodox" do not consider what's outlined in those four points to be "real Christianity." Rather, they are poison pills.

The way the Founders initially threaded this needle was leaving religion to the states. One irony of ironies is that Jefferson and Madison who handled state religion policy for Virginia that had the strongest degree of separation of Church & State and J. Adams who spearheaded Massachusetts' model that had the strongest degree of integration between Church & State possessed a personal religious creed that was agreed on the basics (i.e., a "rational Christianity" that denied the Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, eternal damnation, and infallibility of the Bible).

And it's important to note that John Adams and many other New England Congregationalists thought this "rational Christianity" to be every bit of deserving public funds. But the orthodox did not. And that's because to them this "rational Christianity" was NOT Christianity, but, to use a present analogy, like Mormonism, a creed that calls itself Christianity but is not. When the orthodox scholar Gregg Frazer terms this creed "theistic rationalism" he is being true to this historic dynamic as well as the personal religious convictions of most orthodox Trinitarian Christians through out history.

The history of disestablishment in New England supports my analysis. In the mid to late 18th Century theological unitarians abounded as both ministers and laymen in the Congregational Church. Those very same churches also had orthodox Calvinists and the unitarians threaded the needle by just ignoring the divisive Trinitarian doctrines about which they differed. But slowly unitarianism came out of the closet. And when it did the orthodox Calvinists who did NOT think Unitarianism to be "Christianity" actively disfellowed themselves from the Unitarians and sought control over church property and establishment aid. They lost a series of decisions at the state level in Mass. (this was not a federal issue as of yet). Most notably was the Dedham decision which left much Church property and establishment aid in the hands of Unitarians.

As I noted above, this was, to the orthodox, a poison pill. That what they regarded as fake Christian heretics were getting government money under the auspices of being a "Protestant Christian" sect was too much for them. This was the impetus that led Massachusetts to finally disestablish in 1833.

Madison, of course, was well aware of these potential spats and that's what drove his Memorial and Remonstrance. Under the Virginia model, Christianity would get no public aid. As Jefferson's Statute (which Madison helped to see pass) famously notes:

that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern,...

II. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance argues for a "no cognizance" by government of religion standard. Madison, in his notes on the Mem. & Remon. informs in more detail why government has no right to take cognizance of religion. It has to do with this very issue that we are currently debating: What is Christianity?

In Roman numeral V of his notes, Madison ponders the question “What is Xnty?” This is relevant because in Patrick Henry's bill against which Madison remonstrated only “Christianity” and not other religions were eligible for aid. In V6 he discusses that some view the entire Bible as divinely inspired, some view only “essential parts” as divinely inspired; in V7 he notes some believe if a creed rejects certain key doctrines it is not Christian even if it calls itself Christian; in V8 he notes Trinitarianism, Arianism, Socinianism, (the latter two are forms of theological unitarianism) asking which of them would qualify as “Christian” under the bill; and in II6 he notes the case of “primitive Christianity,” “Reformation” and “Dissenters formerly.” He concludes that unless Christianity is specifically defined in the bill, judges might have to answer what is heterodoxy v. what is orthodoxy. And that in turn will “dishonor Christianity.”

So Madison believed that government itself had no natural right to decide what is Christianity? This is essential: If government is going to support Christianity and not other religions, it has to define Christianity, something by right, it could not do. And indeed, this is EXACTLY what ended up happening in Massachusetts. That state Supreme Court which had a number of Unitarians on the bench had to decide whether theological unitarianism qualified as "Christianity," and they held yes it did. To many orthodox this was akin to government declaring declaring a dog's tail is a fifth leg.

Of course, this problem is mostly obviated by government granting rights to "religion" in general as opposed to Christianity in particular. And this is exactly what was done in the US Constitution.

Van Dyke on Adams' Theological Ditherings & the Founders' Affinity For Pagan Greco-Romanism:

When I first encountered John Adams' heterodox unitarian sentiments I was quite surprised and amused. Many folks misconstrue Adams as a devout orthodox Christian. And I like to show these quotations to dispel that myth and I usually get various reactions. Most folks sympathetic to the idea that Adams was a "good Christian" as they understand the term try to defend his sentiments or otherwise explain them away. Tom Van Dyke, wisely enough, makes a clean break:

As for John Adams' post-presidential theological musings, they're not mainstream, they're sophomoric and asinine. I haven't even bothered to refute his clippings of a quote here and a paragraph there because of their lack of intellectual rigor.

When he writes [to Thomas Jefferson, October 4, 1813],

"θεμις was the goddess of honesty, justice, decency, and right; the wife of Jove, another name for Juno. She presided over all oracles, deliberations, and councils. 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?"

I think, no, it's not the "essence," rigidly biased ideological reductionism. For one, the Greco-Roman vision of the afterlife as the dull gray Hades has nothing to do with the Christian heaven or the beatific vision. I could go on, but Adams is irrelevant anyway, and often laughable. His theory about the religious wisdom of the ancients being destroyed by some churchly cabal is the stuff of cranks, not mainstream Founding religious thought.

I might agree that Adams' idiosyncratic theological musings were his own (especially the conspiracy theory stuff that sounds right out of The DaVinci Code as is Adams' denial of Jesus' divinity). However, the affinity for pagan-Greco-Romanism was quite mainstream among the Founding Fathers. The Ancients were, after all, the progenitors of democratic-republican government, and notable Stoic figures from republican Rome were their heroes.

Indeed, in 1787, in a publicly published book, Adams speaks of a set of laws [Zaleucus'] supposedly revealed by Athena 600 years before Christ as containing sound "religion" that was “rational, intelligible, and eternal, for the real happiness of man in society, and throughout his duration.” Later in his private letters Adams termed Zaleucus' laws to be "Christian."

Van Dyke mentions something about the Greco-Roman afterlife as a dull gray Hades. Well, as historian Peter Henriques shows, George Washington, who out of all the key Founders was most imbibed in this noble pagan Greco-Romanism, often spoke as though he were going to that very gray Hades as opposed to the Christian Heaven. As Henriques writes:

While life goes on - in some fashion - the picture Washington paints of it is generally a gloomy one. “The world of spirits” may or may not be a happy place. When Washington speaks of Patsy going to a happier place, he specifically contrasts it with “the afflicted Path she hitherto has trod.” A relative had written Washington that his Mother was in fact in a happier place. Washington significantly adds his hope that this is true rather than simply agreeing with the statement. The passing reference to Elysium may well have been made tongue in cheek. While there are clear references to an afterlife and some of them are quite positive, Washington’s references to death and what follows afterwards are more often rather gloomy and pessimistic.

Death was “the grim King” whom Washington, not yet thirty and very near his “last gasp”, feared would master his “utmost efforts” and cause him to “sink in spite of a noble struggle.” Much later, to demonstrate how much he did not want to take on yet another new responsibility, Washington told Alexander Hamilton that he would leave his peaceful abode [Mount Vernon] with as much reluctance as he would go to the tomb of his ancestors. When people die, he speaks of them as “poor Greene” or “poor Laurens” or “poor Mr. Custis.” Referring to death, Washington wrote about his “approaching decay”, “hour of my dissolution”, of going “to the shades of darkness”, “to sleep with my fathers”, to “the shades below”, “to the tomb of my ancestors”, “to the dreary mansions of my fathers.” Death was “the country from whence no Traveller returns.” The overall image is not a bright one, certainly not a Christian one.

Washington did sometimes speak of the afterlife in cheerier terms. But, again, his notions are decidedly Greco-Roman more than they are Christian:

Washington at least twice makes reference to going “to the world of spirits.” He writes Lafayette about searching for “Elysium.” [Elysium or the Elysian fields refers to the happy otherworld for heroes favored by the gods.] When Patsy dies of epilepsy, he writes she has gone “to a happier place.” Following his Mother’s death, he reflects the hope that she is in a “happier place.” Washington can hope that God blesses a group of ministers “here and hereafter.” He makes reference to nurturing the plant of friendship “before they are transplanted to a happier clime.” In a draft written by Timothy Pickering to two Philadelphia churches, Washington looks forward to retirement “which can only be exceeded by the hope of future happiness.” While he is dying, he declares several times, “I am going… I die hard but am not afraid to go.” According to Lear’s letter to his mother on Dec. 16th ,Washington told Lear, “I am just going to change my scene.” The image of “going” implies some kind of continuation of existing. It is apparent that Washington had difficulty accepting or conceiving of the idea of nothingness. He does not believe that a person will simply cease to exist upon his or her death.

Washington also appeals to pagan-Greco-Roman authority for the afterlife in his letter to ANNIS BOUDINOT STOCKTON, August 31, 1788 where he wrote:

But, with Cicero in speaking respecting his belief of the immortality of the Soul, I will say, if I am in a grateful delusion, it is an innocent one, and I am willing to remain under its influence....

The felicitations you offer on the present prospect of our public affairs are highly acceptable to me, and I entreat you to receive a reciprocation from my part. I can never trace the concatenation of causes, which led to these events, without acknowledging the mystery and admiring the goodness of Providence.

To be fair, Washington's noble paganism was more influenced by figures like the Stoic philosopher Seneca than Zeus worship. I am no expert in "Seneca," but from what I have read, his view on death (about which he wrote quite a bit) almost perfectly parallels George Washington's. The question of how compatible this noble-paganism is with Christianity is highly debatable. Wiki -- I know not the most reliable source, but a good place to go for "surface" knowledge, later to be confirmed by real sources -- notes the following which seems telling of this entire inquiry about America's key Founders and just how authentically "Christian" they were:

The early Christian Church was very favorably disposed towards Seneca and his writings, and the church leader Tertullian called him "our Seneca".[12]

Medieval writers and works (such as the Golden Legend, which erroneously has Nero as a witness to his suicide) believed that Seneca had been converted to the Christian faith by Saint Paul, and early humanists regarded his fatal bath as a kind of disguised baptism. However, this seems unlikely as Seneca always professed to be Stoic.

Dante placed Seneca in the First Circle of Hell, or Limbo, a place of perfect natural happiness where good non-Christians like the ancient philosophers had to stay for eternity, due to their lack of the justifying grace (given only by Christ) required to go to heaven.

Frazer Replies to Atkinson:

Dan Atkinson, a graduate student in history and a self proclaimed "Christian Nationalist," is the fellow who called me, Dr. Frazer, and American Creation co-blogger Brad Hart "Secular Nationalists." He also tried to argue -- the title of his note -- The Bible Supports Righteous Rebellion. He wrote:

Proverbs 14:34 states that "Righteousness exalts a nation." Well, righteousness comes from national politics that are enacted. And as Proverbs 29:2 states, "When the righteous rule, the people rejoice...when the wicked rule, the people groan."

For those who have a proper perspective of the Bible, you will easily take note of how David, Joshua, Moses and many others rebelled against their leaders in an effort to secure liberty for their people. Yet, those like Rowe, Hart and Frazer still rely on one single chapter in the Bible to prove their theory. Do the math people. Is one chapter or SEVERAL books provide the conclusive evidence?

If you will note, Paul talks in the earlier chapter (Romans 12) that the followers of Christ were to purify themselves from all evil. Paul exhorts them to become "living sacrifices." Romans 13 is simply an extension of this. Paul is not saying that we should NEVER rebel against a wicked ruler, but to submit ourselves as "living sacrifices." In other words, submitting to the Lord's will. There is a time and a place for rebellion. For Paul and the other followers of Christ, this was not one of those times.

And we should also not forget that Paul could see the impending danger of the time. Christianity was but a small (but fast growing) group. To rebel at that moment would have spelled suicide. There would be other fights to wage.

Jesus himself demonstrated a rebellion to wicked leaders. His ability to put the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin in their place demonstrates that even Jesus refused to heed to a wicked government. As he stated, "My kingdom is not of this earth."

I strongly urge the readers of this blog to do your own homework and not simply heed to those of little to no Bible knowledge.

And Dr. Frazer responds:

First, Moses did not rebel against anyone. Read Exodus 12:31-32. Moses obeyed the command of Pharaoh.

Second, David did not rebel against anyone. God removed His blessing from Saul, Saul was jealous of David, and Saul set out to kill David. David evade Saul until he was dead -- then he assumed the throne for which he was anointed. David had two opportunities to kill Saul and take the throne and refused. Read I Samuel 24:11 (in which David specifically denied being part of a rebellion). And I Samuel 26:9-11.

Joshua did not rebel against anyone. He led national forces in warfare, not rebellion.

Regular readers will also note that I have not appealed simply to Romans 13. I have noted that the Bible mentions some form of the words "rebel" or "revolt" more than 100 times -- all in the negative. The focus was on Romans 13 during the recent discussion because that was determined to be the focus at the beginning of the discussion.

Finally, the Proverbs passages have nothing to do with rebellion. To suggest that one could establish righteousness via means condemned by God is more than a bit strange.

I do not appreciate Mr. Atkinson's dismissive implication that I have little or no Bible knowledge. He knows absolutely nothing about my "credentials" and ad hominem attacks are not intellectually honest.

For the record, I have a degree in Bible, I teach college courses in the application of Scripture to politics and political theory, I have led numerous Bible Studies, and I am a deacon in my church.

American Was Founded to be A Religious Not a Christian or a Secular Nation:

I often criticize the "Christian Nationalists" for what I see as misrepresenting history. I've been, in turn, called a "Secular Nationalist." I admit from a policy standpoint I'm somewhat sympathetic to secularism (a soft secularism) and when beginning researching this issue I expected to find more evidence of a secular deistic Founding. However, what I found was the Founders (at least the key Founders -- all of the early Presidents) intended America to be a religious, not necessarily a Christian Nation. And from the perspective of orthodox Christianity, those key Founders themselves were "religious" but not "Christians." So the charge against me that I am a "secular nationalist" is patently false.

This thesis is controversial to both sides. The hard core secularists like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris attack "religion" in general; they don't signal out Christianity and don't want America's Founders to have appreciated the variety of religions they criticize. They want them to be atheists or strict Deists along the lines of Thomas Paine who thought all of these religious systems to be "no good."

Traditional Christians on the other hand want orthodox Christianity to "own" the Founding to the exclusion of other religions.

I think of one Christian Nationalist blogger (no dummy, and his two favorite figures are David Barton and D. James Kennedy) who has said things along the lines of the FFs thought government should publicly support "Christianity" not other religions. And then he defined "Christianity" with orthodoxy and noted it would be therefore inappropriate for America to support Mormonism, because it is not "Christianity" but another religion.

If you pin down most other Christian Nationalists, I'm sure you'd be able to get them to make assertions/conclusions like this.

And traditional Christians otherwise have a problem with the notion of "religion in general." Take for instance Thomas West, a conservative scholar for whom I have a great deal of respect. He writes:

There is no such thing as "religion in general." All meaningful government support of religion is always support of a particular religious view, as 19th-century Catholics bitterly experienced. Today, support of "religion in general" would include taxpayer funding of Wiccans, Satanists, Muslims (including those who teach hatred of America), and worshippers of that favorite goddess of some feminists, "Our Sweet Sophia."

On sound theological grounds, West may be right to debunk "religion in general." His problem is 1) the key Founders believed in this illusion, and that 2) that's what they protected in the US Constitution -- "religion" not "Christianity." Now, the entire notion of "natural law/rights" has been, some prominent scholars argue, debunked in a metaphysical sense (Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law says it's like believing "ghosts"). West's prime mission as a scholar is to "vindicate" the Founding against such debunking. So he might want to exercise more caution when he tries to debunk religion in general, because it only serves to debunk what he's trying to vindicate.

Now, I won't try to defend the idea that the Founders included Satanists in their vision for "religion in general." But the following is a list of "religions" which they believed were "sound" and valid ways to God: Orthodox or unorthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, certain forms of Deism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Native American spirituality and pagan Greco-Romanism. Putting them together, you certainly get "religion in general" not "Christianity in particular."

Some quotations:

“It has pleased the Providence of the first Cause, the Universal Cause, that Abraham should give religion not only to Hebrews but to Christians and Mahomitans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world.”

–- John Adams to M.M. Noah, July 31, 1818.

"θεμις was the goddess of honesty, justice, decency, and right; the wife of Jove, another name for Juno. She presided over all oracles, deliberations, and councils. 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 acknowledgment of the existence of a Supreme Being, of his universal Providence, of a righteous administration of the government of the universe? And what can Jews, Christians, or Mahometans do more?"

-- John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, October 4, 1813.

"Where is to be found Theology more orthodox or Phylosophy more profound than in the Introduction to the Shast[r]a [a Hindu Treatise]? 'God is one, creator of all, Universal Sphere, without beginning, without End. God Governs all the Creation by a General Providence, resulting from his eternal designs. — Search not the Essence and the nature of the Eternal, who is one; Your research will be vain and presumptuous. It is enough that, day by day, and night by night, You adore his Power, his Wisdom and his Goodness, in his Works.'"

– John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 25, 1813.

"Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service."

-- Ben Franklin, Autobiography.

“Every religion consists of moral precepts, and of dogmas. In the first they all agree. All forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, bear false witness &ca. and these are the articles necessary for the preservation of order, justice, and happiness in society. In their particular dogmas all differ; no two professing the same. These respect vestments, ceremonies, physical opinions, and metaphysical speculations, totally unconnected with morality, and unimportant to the legitimate objects of society. Yet these are the questions on which have hung the bitter schisms of Nazarenes, Socinians, Arians, Athanasians in former times, and now of Trinitarians, Unitarians, Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists, Quakers &c. Among the Mahometans we are told that thousands fell victims to the dispute whether the first or second toe of Mahomet was longest; and what blood, how many human lives have the words ‘this do in remembrance of me’ cost the Christian world!…We see good men in all religions, and as many in one as another. It is then a matter of principle with me to avoid disturbing the tranquility of others by the expression of any opinion on the [unimportant points] innocent questions on which we schismatize, and think it enough to hold fast to those moral precepts which are of the essence of Christianity, and of all other religions.”

– Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback, Sept. 27, 1809

“Faith is recommended as a Means of producing Morality: Our Saviour was a Teacher of Morality or Virtue, and they that were deficient and desired to be taught, ought first to believe in him as an able and faithful Teacher. Thus Faith would be a Means of producing Morality, and Morality of Salvation. But that from such Faith alone Salvation may be expected, appears to me to be neither a Christian Doctrine nor a reasonable one….Morality or Virtue is the End, Faith only a Means to obtain that End: And if the End be obtained, it is no matter by what Means.” [Bold mine.]

– Benjamin Franklin, “Dialogue between Two Presbyterians,” April 10, 1735.

The following quotations concern "The Great Spirit" which was the unconverted Natives' specific God term. This is important because the Natives were (as far as I know) the largest population of non-identifactory Christians during Founding era America and as Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison all used that term by name suggesting it was the same "Providence" Christians, Jews and Muslims worshipped and thus a valid way to God.

"I now send my best wishes to the Cherokees, and pray the Great spirit to preserve them."

-- George Washington, TALK TO THE CHEROKEE NATION, August 29, 1796.

"I now sincerely wish you a good Journey and hope you may find your [families and] Brothers well on your Return, and that [the Great Spirit above] may long preserve your Nations in peace with each other and with the United States."

-- George Washington, To THE CHIEFS AND WARRIORS, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE WYANDOTS, DELAWARES, SHAWANOES, OTTAWAS, CHIPPEWAS, POTAWATIMES, MIAMIS, EEL RIVER, WEEAS, KICKAPOOS, PIANKASHAWS, AND KASKASKIAS, November 29, 1796.

Note, one of Washington's aides wrote this speech and Washington HIMSELF crossed out the word "God" and wrote in "the Great Spirit above."

"But we thank the Great Spirit who took care of you on the ocean, and brought you safe and in good health to the seat of our great Council; and we hope His care will accompany and protect you, on your journey and return home; and that He will preserve and prosper your nation in all its just pursuits."

-- Thomas Jefferson, to the Choctaw Indians, 1803.

"My children, I thank you for your visit and pray to the Great Spirit who made us all and planted us all in this land to live together like brothers that He will conduct you safely to your homes, and grant you to find your families and your friends in good health."

-- Thomas Jefferson, to the Cherokee Nation, 1806.

"I have a further advice of my Red children. You see how the country of the eighteen fires is filled with people. They increase like the corn they put into the ground. They all have good houses to shelter them from all weathers, good clothes suitable to all seasons; and as for food, of all sorts, you see they have enough and to spare. No man, woman, or child, of the eighteen fires, ever perished of hunger. Compare all this with the condition of the Red people. They are scattered here and there in handfulls. Their lodges are cold, leak, and smoky. They have hard fare, and often not enough of it.

"Why this mighty difference? The reason, my Red children, is plain. The white people breed cattle and sheep. They spin and weave. Their heads and their hands make all the elements and productions of nature useful to them.

"It is in your power to be like them. The ground that feeds one lodge by hunting, would feed a great band by the plough & the hoe. The Great Spirit has given you, like your white brethren, good heads to contrive, and strong arms, and active bodies. Use them like your white brethren of the eighteen fires, and like them, your little sparks will grow into great fires. You will be well fed, dwell in good houses, and enjoy the happiness for which you, like them, were created. These are the words of your father to his red children. The Great Spirit who is the father of us all, approves them. Let them pass through the ear in to the heart. Carry them home to your people; and as long as you remember this visit to your father of the eighteen fires, remember these are his last and best words to you!"

-- James Madison, to the Cherokee Indians in 1812.

Finally, here is a quotation by Benjamin Rush. Rush was a Trinitarian Universalist. The following illustrates that he believed the people were free to choose Christianity as religion which they wanted to see inculcated in America. I suppose it's a soft version of the Christian Nation idea. However, he also notes the concept of religion in general about which I speak, thus simultaneously argues for a soft version of that standard. The content of "sound religion" is not anything particularly Christian (i.e., Christ's atonement) but rather the teaching of the existence of an overriding Providence and future state of rewards and punishments. Note how what I put in bold can connect Christianity with all sorts of exotic world religions (see the quotations from Adams above connecting it to Hinduism and pagan Greco-Romanism).

Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth, than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place, is that of the New Testament.

-- Benjamin Rush, Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic.

Note the negotiability of "Christianity" as the religion which government should support or teach. It is something Rush merely "recommends," not some kind of essentially true religion to the exclusion of false religions that forms the foundation of America's public, organic, principles.

All of this is why I believe the religion spoken of in the Declaration of Independence is a far more generic inclusive natural religion, than anything particularly or exclusively Christian.

Black Sabbath, Who Are You:

The song "Who Are You" from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath illustrates Black Sabbath's greatness.



I like listening to musicians who have great technical talents; but ultimately I realize that's all icing on the cake. Melody, soul, mood and feel are far more important. And those things can be expressed, as a matter of musical technique, in very crude or very refined ways, all over and in between. Most of my favorite music comes from players who aren't virtuosos (so they don't have that to hide behind) but aren't technical slouches either. When Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath, they replaced him with someone who was technically a much better singer -- Ronnie James Dio. And he in turn got musicians in his solo band who were technically better players (notably Randy Rhodes on guitar). And they both (Ozzy and Black Sabbath) continued to make great music without one another. But that's mainly because they kept the essence of what made Black Sabbath great -- the melody, good songwriting, and the right mood. The better technique of Randy Rhodes or Ronnie James Dio was just icing on the cake.

And speaking of great technicians, the keyboardist on "Who Are You" is none other than virtuoso Rick Wakeman of Yes fame. But notice he's not playing a million notes a minute on this tune because that's not what the song calls for. The Moog synthesizer he used -- back then they were analog and monophonic -- if you knew the basics of how to program them were practically not capable of playing a bad sound.

John Adams and Joseph Priestley:

There is a new book out on Joseph Priestley -- The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. See the New York Times review of it here, the LA Times' here, and the New York Post's here.

Some of the reviews have noted Priestley's close association with Jefferson and Franklin. However, Adams regarded him as something of a mentor as well (though they had a falling out because of Priestley's support of Jefferson over Adams and for the French Revolution which Adams opposed). What's also interesting is though he holds Priestley in the highest regard, Adams isn't afraid to criticize him. He's clearly obsessed with Priestley's theories and agrees with him on the central principles of unitarianism. But Adams often thinks he can "out do" Priestley as a theologian.

Such confidence (some might say arrogance) in theological matters itself attests to Priestley's influence. One of Priestley's central tenets was that the Bible is only partially inspired, that man's reason can determine which parts of the Bible are valid. And, intuitively, Jefferson, Adams, Priestley and company all disagreed over which parts of the Bible were valid, which weren't.

And in doing some research for this post I just found that Liberty Fund has reproduced much (but not all) of John Adams' correspondence. Stuff I had to type from my books I can now copy paste and link. Some highlights follow. Before we get to the Liberty Fund letters, there is one they didn't reproduce (as of this moment) that is on googlebooks, to Thomas Jefferson, Dec. 3, 1813, that I am going to highlight:

Oh! that Priestley could live again, and have leisure and means! An inquirer after truth, who had neither time nor means, might request him to search and re-search for answers to a few questions.

1. Have we more than two witnesses of the life of Jesus— Matthew and John?

2. Have we one witness to the existence of Matthew's gospel in the first century?

3. Have we one witness of the existence of John's gospel in the first century?

4. Have we one witness of the existence of Mark's gospel in the first century?

5. Have we one witness of the existence of Luke's gospel in the first century?

6. Have we any witness of the existence of St. Thomas' gospel, that is the gospel of the infancy in the first century?

7. Have we any evidence of the existence of the Acts of the Apostles in the first century?

8. Have we any evidence of the existence of the supplement to the Acts of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, or Paul and Tecle, in the first century?

Here I was interrupted by a new book, Chateaubriand's Travels in Greece, Palestine and Egypt, and by a lung fever with which the amiable companion of my life has been violently and dangerously attacked.

December 13th. I have fifty more questions to put to Priestley, but must adjourn them to a future opportunity.

Now to the Liberty Fund material. To Thomas Jefferson, 4 October, 1813:

θεμις was the goddess of honesty, justice, decency, and right; the wife of Jove, another name for Juno. She presided over all oracles, deliberations, and councils. 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 acknowledgment of the existence of a Supreme Being, of his universal Providence, of a righteous administration of the government of the universe? And what can Jews, Christians, or Mahometans do more? Priestley, the heroic Priestley, would not have dared to answer or to ask these questions, though he might have answered them consistently enough with the spirit of his system. I regret, that Grotius has not translated this hymn, and cannot account for his omission of it. Duport translates the above line only by,—

[...]

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 Supreme Being, the resemblance, the image, the shadow of God in the intelligence and moral qualities of man, and the lawfulness and duty of prayer, as clearly 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?

Alexander appears to have behaved to the Jews as Napoleon did to the Mahometans in the pyramid of Grand Cairo. Ptolemy, the greatest of his generals, and a greater man than himself, was so impressed with what he learned in Judea, that he employed seventy learned men to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, nearly three hundred years before Christ. He sent learned men to collect books from all nations, and deposited them in the Alexandrian library. Will any man make me believe that Cæsar, that Pompey, that Cicero, that Seneca, that Tacitus, that Dionysius Halicarnassensis, that Plutarch, had never seen or heard of the Septuagint? Why might not Cleanthes have seen the Septuagint? The curiosity of Pompey to see the interior of the temple shows that the system of the Jews was become an object of speculation. It is impossible to believe that the Septuagint was unknown and unheard of by Greeks or Romans at that time, at least by the great generals, orators, historians, philosophers, and statesmen, who looked through the then known world for information of every thing. On the other hand, how do we know how much Moses, Samuel, Joshua, David, Solomon, and Esdras, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah learned in Babylon, Egypt, and Persia? The destruction of the library at Alexandria is all the answer we can obtain to these questions. I believe that Jews, Grecians, Romans, and Christians all conspired or connived at that savage catastrophe. I believe Cleanthes to be as good a Christian as Priestley.

To Thomas Jefferson 17 July, 1813:

Now, I see not but you are as good a Christian as Priestley and Lindsey. Piety and morality were the end and object of the Christian system, according to them and according to you. They believed in the resurrection of Jesus, in his miracles and inspirations. But what inspirations? Not all that is recorded in the New Testament or the Old. They have not yet told us how much they believe or disbelieve. They have not told us how much allegory, how much parable they find, nor how they explained them all in the New Testament or Old.

To Thomas Jefferson, 18 July, 1813:

What does Priestley mean by an unbeliever, when he applies it to you? How much did he unbelieve himself? Gibbon had him right when he denominated his creed “scanty.” We are to understand, no doubt, that he believed the resurrection of Jesus, some of his miracles, his inspiration; but in what degree? He did not believe in the inspiration of the writings that contain his history. Yet he believed in the Apocalyptic beast, and he believed as much as he pleased in the writings of Daniel and John. This great and extraordinary man, whom I sincerely loved, esteemed, and respected, was really a phenomenon; a comet in the system, like Voltaire, Bolingbroke, and Hume. Had Bolingbroke or Voltaire taken him in hand, what would they have made of him and his creed?

To Thomas Jefferson 25 December, 1813:

I return to Priestley, though I have great complaints against him for personal injuries and persecution, at the same time that I forgive it all, and hope and pray that he may be pardoned for it all above. Dr. Brocklesby, an intimate friend and convivial companion of Johnson, told me, that Johnson died in agonies of horror of annihilation; and all the accounts we have of his death corroborate this account of Brocklesby. Dread of annihilation! Dread of nothing! A dread of nothing, I should think, would be no dread at all. Can there be any real, substantial, rational fear of nothing? Were you on your deathbed, and in your last moments informed by demonstration or revelation that you would cease to think and to feel at your dissolution, should you be terrified? You might be ashamed of yourself for having lived so long, to bear the proud man’s contumely; you might be ashamed of your Maker, and compare Him to a little girl amusing herself, her brothers, and sisters by blowing bubbles in soapsuds; you might compare Him to boys, sporting with crackers and rockets, or to men employed in making more artificial fireworks, or to men and women at fairs and operas, or Sadler’s Wells exploits; or to politicians, in their intrigues; or to heroes, in their butcheries; or to Popes, in their devilisms. But what should you fear? Nothing. Emori nolo; sed me mortuum esse nihil æstimo.

To return to Priestley—you could make a more luminous book than his upon the “Doctrines of Heathen Philosophers, compared with those of Revelation.” Why has he not given us a more satisfactory account of the Pythagorean philosophy and theology? He barely names Ocellus, who lived long before Plato. His treatise of kings and monarchy has been destroyed, I conjecture, by Platonic philosophers, Platonic Jews or Christians, or by fraudulent republicans or despots. His treatise of the universe has been preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of the world. The Marquis D’Argens translated it in all its noble simplicity. The Abbé Batteux has given another translation. D’Argens not only explains the text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His remarks are so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient opinions. The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics, and of the morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their different doctrines compared with one another, and with the modern discoveries. I wish I owned this book, and one hundred thousand more that I want every day, now when I am almost incapable of making any use of them. No doubt, he informs us that Pythagoras was a great traveller.

Priestley barely mentions Timæus; but it does not appear that he had read him. Why has he not given us an account of him and his book? He was before Plato, and gave him the idea of his Timæus, and much more of his philosophy. After his master, he maintained the existence of matter; that matter was capable of receiving all sorts of forms; that a moving power agitates all the parts of it, and that an intelligence directed the moving power; that this intelligence produced a regular and harmonious world. The intelligence had seen a plan, an idea (logos), in conformity to which it wrought, and without which it would not have known what it was about, nor what it wanted to do. This plan was the idea, image, or model, which had represented to the Supreme Intelligence the world before it existed, which had directed it in its action upon the moving power, and which it contemplated in forming the elements, the bodies, and the world. This model was distinguished from the intelligence which produced the world, as the architect is from his plans. He divided the productive cause of the world into a spirit, which directed the moving force, and into an image, which determined it in the choice of the directions which it gave to the moving force, and the forms which it gave to matter.

I wonder that Priestley has overlooked this, because it is the same philosophy with Plato’s, and would have shown that the Pythagorean, as well as the Platonic philosophers, probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity. Priestley mentions the name of Archytas, but does not appear to have read him, though he was a successor of Pythagoras, and a great mathematician, a great statesman, and a great general. John Gram, a learned and honorable Dane, has given a handsome edition of his works, with a Latin translation, and an ample account of his life and writings. Zaleucus, the legislator of Locris, and Charondas of Sybaris, were disciples of Pythagoras, and both celebrated to immortality for the wisdom of their laws, five hundred years before Christ. Why are those laws lost? I say, the spirit of party has destroyed them; civil, political, and ecclesiastical bigotry. Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical fury, have all been employed in this work of destruction of every thing that could give us true light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of these parties, when possessed of power, or when they have been undermost, and struggling to get uppermost, has been equally prone to every species of fraud and violence and usurpation. Why has not Priestley mentioned these legislators? The preamble to the laws of Zaleucus, which is all that remains, is as orthodox Christian theology as Priestley’s, and Christian benevolence and forgiveness of injuries almost as clearly expressed.

To Thomas Jefferson, 4 March, 1814:

You will perceive, by these figures, that I have been looking into Oriental history and Hindoo religion. I have read voyages and travels, and every thing I could collect. Not the least is Priestley’s “Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindoos and other Ancient Nations,” a work of great labor, and not less haste. I thank him for the labor, and forgive, though I lament, the hurry. You would be fatigued to read, and I, just recruiting a little from a longer confinement and indisposition than I have had for thirty years, have not strength to write many observations. But I have been disappointed in the principal points of my curiosity.

I am disappointed,—

1. By finding that no just comparison can be made, because the original Shasta and the original Vedas are not obtained, or, if obtained, not yet.

2. In not finding such morsels of the sacred books as have been translated and published, which are more honorable to the original Hindoo religion than any thing he has quoted.

3. In the history of the rebellion of innumerable hosts of angels in heaven against the Supreme Being, who, after some thousands of years of war, conquered them, and hurled them down to the region of total darkness, where they suffered a part of the punishment of their crime, and then were mercifully released from prison, permitted to ascend to earth, and migrate into all sorts of animals, reptiles, birds, beasts, and men, according to their rank and character, and even into vegetables and minerals, there to serve on probation. If they passed without reproach their several gradations, they were permitted to become cows and men. If, as men, they behaved well, that is, to the satisfaction of the priests, they were restored to their original rank and bliss in heaven.

4. In not finding the Trinity of Pythagoras and Plato; their contempt of matter, flesh, and blood; their almost adoration of fire and water; their metempsychosis, and even the prohibition of beans, so evidently derived from India.

5. In not finding the prophecy of Enoch deduced from India, in which the fallen angels make such a figure.

But you are weary. Priestley has proved the superiority of the Hebrews to the Hindoos, as they appear in the Gentoo laws and institutions of Menu, but the comparison remains to be made with the Shasta.

In his remarks on M. Dupuis, p. 342, Priestley says: “the history of the fallen angels is another circumstance on which M. Dupuis lays much stress.” According to the Christians, he says, vol. i. p. 336, “there was, from the beginning, a division among the angels; some remaining faithful to the light, and others taking the part of darkness,” &c. “But this supposed history is not found in the Scriptures. It has only been inferred from a wrong interpretation of one passage in the second epistle of Peter, and a corresponding one in that of Jude, as has been shown by judicious writers. That there is such a person as the devil, is no part of my faith, nor that of many other Christians; nor am I sure that it was the belief of any of the Christian writers. Neither do I believe the doctrine of demoniacal possessions, whether it was believed by the sacred writers or not; and, yet my belief in these articles does not affect my faith in the great facts of which the Evangelists were eye and ear witnesses. They might not be competent judges in the one case, though perfectly so with respect to the other.”

I will ask Priestley, when I see him, do you believe those passages in Peter and Jude to be interpolations? If so, by whom made, and when, and where, and for what end? Was it to support or found the doctrine of the fall of man, original sin, the universal corruption, depravation, and guilt of human nature and mankind, and the subsequent incarnation of God to make atonement and redemption? Or, do you think that Peter and Jude believed the book of Enoch to have been written by the seventh from Adam, and one of the sacred canonical books of the Hebrew prophets? Peter, 2d epistle, chapter 2, verse 4, says: “for if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.” Jude, verse 6th, says: “and the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.” Verse 14th, “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all,” &c. Priestley says, “a wrong interpretation has been given to the texts.” I wish he had favored us with his right interpretation of them.

In another place, p. 326, Priestley says, “there is no circumstance of which M. Dupuis avails himself so much, or repeats so often, both with respect to the Jewish and Christian religions, as the history of the fall of man, in the beginning of the book of Genesis. I believe with him, and have maintained in my writings, that this history is either an allegory, or founded on uncertain tradition; that it is a hypothesis to account for the origin of evil, adopted by Moses, which, by no means, accounts for the facts.”

Ben Franklin's Religious Humanism:

Tom Van Dyke has a good post at American Creation demonstrating why Ben Franklin was not a "deist" as many believe. The problem is he wasn't an orthodox Christian either. So we need a new term. Van Dyke doesn't think "theistic rationalist" is sufficient. I think "theistic humanist" also aptly describes this creed. Barry Shain has termed it "Christian humanism." I stress the word "humanist" in this post because as we will see, it's a much more "man centered" creed than traditional orthodox Christianity. This is a quotation Van Dyke offers from Franklin's biography:

And this persuasion [that the Bible is good for you---TVD], with the kind hand of Providence, or some guardian angel, or accidental favourable circumstances and situations, or all together, preserved me through this dangerous time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, free from any wilful immorality or injustice, that might have been expected from my want of religion. I say wilful, because the instances I have mentioned had something of necessity in them, from my youth, inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and determined to preserve it.

And Van Dyke's analysis:

Now, Franklin doesn't say for certain that the Bible came from God, or that Divine Providence or a guardian angel sent it to him. Perhaps the Good Book is just a good book, and chance and circumstance sent it his way.

But mebbe it wasn't just chance. Or mebbe God did give the Bible to man. Franklin doesn't know, but doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth either.

There are some stray points: Franklin writes elsewhere that the question of whether Jesus was God is something he gave no careful study or thought to, and that he'll find out soon enough after he's dead.

He's against the theological idea of "original sin," and is also troubled by certain passages in the Old Testament like Judges 4: Jael welcomes the evil Sisera into her tent, where she gives him some nice warm milk and he falls asleep. Then she hammers a tent peg through his head, all for the victory and glory of Israel and its God. Struck Franklin as more devilish than divine, and it certainly seems so at a face reading.

One quibble: Franklin is more than merely "troubled" by that passage in the Old Testament. He signals it out as evidence that the Bible is a partially inspired book, using terms that are quite harsh, AND further did so in the context of arguing why religious tests that demanded belief in the infallibility of the Bible had to go. Pennsylvania had one. And Franklin as acting governor helped see it removed. From the original, to John Calder, Augt. 21. 1784:

I agreed with you in Sentiments concerning the Old Testament, and thought the Clause in our Constitution, which required the Members of Assembly to declare their belief that the whole of it was given by divine Inspiration, had better have been omitted. That I had opposed the Clause but being overpower’d by Numbers, and fearing might in future times be grafted on [it, I Pre]vailed to have the additional Clause that no [further or more ex]tended Profession of Faith should ever [be exacted. I ob]serv’d to you, too, that the Evil of it was [the less, as no In]habitant, nor any Officer of Government except the Members of Assembly, were oblig’d to make that Declaration. So much for that Letter. To which I may now add, that the[re are] several Things in the old Testament impossible to be given by divine Inspiration, such as the Approbation ascrib’d to the Angel of the Lord, of that abominably wicked and detestable Action of Jael the Wife of Heber the Kenite. If the rest of the Book were like that, I should rather suppose it given by Inspiration from another Quarter, and renounce the whole.

Franklin's view of "Christianity" or "religion" (and he believed non-Christian religions could do the trick, though not as well as Christianity) was that it improves man's morals or virtue. He believed in an explicitly works based salvation scheme:

“Faith is recommended as a Means of producing Morality: Our Saviour was a Teacher of Morality or Virtue, and they that were deficient and desired to be taught, ought first to believe in him as an able and faithful Teacher. Thus Faith would be a Means of producing Morality, and Morality of Salvation. But that from such Faith alone Salvation may be expected, appears to me to be neither a Christian Doctrine nor a reasonable one….Morality or Virtue is the End, Faith only a Means to obtain that End: And if the End be obtained, it is no matter by what Means.”

– “Dialogue between Two Presbyterians,” April 10, 1735.

That quotation was done in the context of the prosecution of a minister named Samuel Hemphill for preaching "heterodoxy." The very heterodoxy with which the orthodox had charged Hemphill Franklin defended and would later be embraced by America's key Founders, the "theistic rationalists," "Christian-Humanists," "Christian-Deists," "unitarians" or whatever term you prefer.

From the above linked article by Bryan LeBeau:

According to Franklin...Hemphill was labeled a "New Light Man, a Deist, one who preached nothing but morality, [and] a missionary sent from Ireland to corrupt the faith once delivered by the saints," but, in fact, as already noted, the Synod of Philadelphia did not reject him.

[...]

In this his first defense of Samuel Hemphill, Franklin chose not to refute the specific charges brought against Hemphill by the synod. Instead, Franklin represented him as "a lover of virtue who considered particular orthodoxies and religious enthusiasm irrelevant and potentially inimical to sound religion and human happiness."

Personally I have no problem with the generic moralizing religion of Hemphill and Franklin. However, I understand why orthodox Calvinists who were committed to the Westminster Confession would try to root him out. The two theological systems were incompatible.

This also sheds light on another dynamic well detailed by Dr. Gregg Frazer: Ministers in orthodox Churches themselves who were supposed to be committed to particular creeds and confessions disbelieved in those very creeds and instead adhered to heterodox unitarian doctrines.

In his defense of Hemphill, Franklin notes they both believed:

That Christianity, [as to it’s most essential and necessary Parts,] is plainly Nothing else, but a second Revelation of God’s Will founded upon the first Revelation, which God made to us by the Light of Nature.

That is parts of the Bible complement the discoveries of man's reason that "God made to us by the Light of Nature." James Wilson in his Works argues something strikingly similar. That reason and revelation complement one another, were meant to work together and should not be separated. But that the "light of nature" discoverable by reason was the first revelation God gave to man, revelation came second. And the role of revelation was to assist, support and improve the findings of reason, not the other way around:

Reason and conscience can do much; but still they stand in need of support and assistance.

[...]

These considerations show, that the scriptures support, confirm, and corroborate, but do not supercede the operations of reason and the moral sense. The information with regard to our duties and obligations, drawn from these different sources, ought not to run in unconnected and diminished channels: it should flow in one united stream, which, by its combined force and just direction, will impel us uniformly and effectually towards our greatest good.

Wilson made these remarks publicly towards the end of the 18th Century. Franklin's Hemphill controversy was in 1735. What got a minister put on trial for heresy by orthodox Calvinists in 1735 was publicly respectable during the end of the 18th Century.

John Locke, Progenitor of Deism & Theistic Rationalism:

Scholarly consensus holds that John Locke was the most important philosophical influence on the American Founding. Locke wasn't a deist (or as some Straussians argue a secret atheist). He called himself a Christian, defended the Christian religion as "reasonable," thought Jesus was the Messiah and may have believed much of the Bible was true. He was also almost certainly a secret theological unitarian (his Trinitarian critics smelled him out) and otherwise disbelieved in various orthodox doctrines and posited novel concepts not at all in accord with traditional Christianity. For instance his notion of Tabla Rasa denies man has a fallen, sin nature. Indeed, this led deists and "rational Christians" who embraced his teachings like Thomas Jefferson to posit the notion of the perfectibility of man.

Locke argued contra Thomas Hobbes. But what's striking about Locke's case is he didn't try to refute Hobbes by using the Bible or the classical or traditional understanding of politics. Rather, he seemed to argue against Hobbes on Hobbes' own terms: "The state of nature," an explicitly Hobbesean concept. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who later hit the scene, did the same thing. He argued against BOTH Hobbes AND Locke, but on the grounds of the "state of nature." And as Leo Strauss correctly pointed out, the state of nature itself (be it Locke's, Hobbes' OR Rousseau's understanding of the concept) is "wholly alien to the Bible."

Though not a deist himself, Locke's teachings, in particular his idea that all truth including revelation must meet the test of reason, spawned a generation of Deists and "rational Christians" who used his method to deny the validity of parts of or the entire Bible. Voltaire, for instance, embraced Locke. One of the earliest and most noble "deist disciples" of Locke's was Lord Shaftesbury, who was literally Locke's student. (Locke actually taught/mentored him.)

In this comment discussion at American Creation, Dr. Gregg Frazer explains how Locke taught all truth must meet the test of reason and how this influenced Jefferson's and John Adams' biblical criticisms [Frazer begins his comment by responding to a nuisance who endorses the Christian Nationalist idea, one who is a terrible witness for that theory]:

When you quote someone (in this case, Locke), it is intellectually dishonest to put together two sentences which are 40 PAGES APART in the original without an ellipsis!!! This is what OFT did in the Locke quote partially addressed to me. By doing so, he wrenched Locke's words completely out of context and completely changed their meaning.

I do not have time to explain here Locke's WHOLE argument IN CONTEXT to those who are unlikely to be open to what he really said. I simply encourage interested and open readers to investigate the broader context of the quotes taken out of context from Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," Vol. II, chapters XVI-IX.

Locke summarizes his own argument thusly in italics for emphasis: "REASON MUST BE OUR LAST JUDGE AND GUIDE IN EVERYTHING." He then addresses revelation. Speaking of reason, he says: "consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a revelation from God or no; and if reason finds it to be revealed from God, reason then declares for it as much as for any other truth, and makes it one of her dictates."

For Locke, the ultimate standard is always reason -- even for revelation.

And for ... the theistic rationalists, the same was true. They believed that there was some revelation legitimately from God (part of what separated them from the deists) -- but that was to be determined by reason.

To a[] ... participant in the discussion: you say "if you can find a single Founder or Founding influence who says publicly that the Bible is wrong about x because reason says so, please provide it." This is a very clever tactic on your part -- knowing that public men living in a nominally Christian environment and dependent upon public approval for their positions of power could not "publicly" say that the Bible is wrong. No politician will even do that TODAY, much less in the 18th century.

If you'll admit private correspondence (where one can see what people REALLY believed -- not what they said for public approval), you'll discover John Adams saying of the Fall of man in Genesis that it "is either an allegory, or founded on uncertain tradition, that it is an hypothesis to account for the origin of evil, adopted by Moses, which by no means accounts for the facts."

Adams likewise questioned the reliability of the Ten Commandments -- saying that "authentic copies" of the original were lost. Speaking of the coming millennial kingdom of Christ, which he identified as being founded on revelation, he said to Jefferson: "You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society .... Our faith may be supposed by more rational arguments than any of the former ...."

Adams further said: "Philosophy, which is the result of reason, is the first, the original revelation of the Creator to his creature" and that "no subsequent revelation, supported by prophecies or miracles, can supersede it." [i.e. the Bible]

Also remember that Adams said that he would not believe revelation delivered DIRECTLY to him BY GOD on Mt. Sinai if it contradicted what his reason told him about the Trinity.

Jefferson said of the Old Testament: "the whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful, that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into it." His favorite word for the New Testament aside from the words of Jesus was "dunghill." Even with the words of Jesus, he used his reason to separate what "genuine, and his own" from what was "attributed" to him.

If taking a pair of scissors to the Gospels and cutting out whatever one considers irrational is not saying that "the Bible is wrong about x because reason says so," then it would seem to be impossible to provide such proof.

Just in case, I'll add that Jefferson said of the rest of the New Testament that it was full of "superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications" along with "so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth" and "trivialities and imbecilities."

Like Locke, Jefferson said: "Whether the particular revelation which you suppose to have been made to yourself were real or imaginary, your reason alone is the competent judge. For dispute as long as we will on religious tenets, our reason at last must ultimately decide, as it is the only oracle which God has given us to determine between what really comes from him and the phantasms of a disordered or deluded imagination."

And he told his beloved nephew to "keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading" and to judge the "pretensions" of biblical writers "by your own reason."

And on and on and ....

Their standard tactic was to deny the legitimacy of the parts of the Bible (most of it) that they considered to be irrational -- that is, to deny that it was legitimate revelation from God.

The Last Waltz:

I bought The Last Waltz on DVD (which I previously had on tape) and watched the whole thing again plus the additional features interviewing Robbie Robertson and Martin Scorsese about making the documentary.

Apparently, they played for a long time (like 7 hours) and ran out of film for certain parts of the show that limited Scorsese's ability to choose which songs to feature (obviously he'd include their big ones like "The Weight," "Up on Cripple Creek"; he almost missed getting Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy").

My biggest criticism after reviewing it was it didn't feature enough Richard Manuel on lead vocals. Manuel, Rick Danko and Levon Helm pretty much equally split lead vocals and wonderfully harmonized together. But, I agree with Eric Clapton (also featured in the documentary), that:

For me he was the true light of the Band. The other guys were fantastic talents, of course, but there was something of the holy madman about Richard. He was raw. When he sang in that high falsetto the hair on my neck would stand on end. Not many people can do that.

Rick and Levon got much more time on lead vocals on The Last Waltz.

Something else that struck me: Hair and fashion trends, as we all know, change with the times. But it's hard to keep reinventing the wheel. Trends go in and out. But when they come back, they come back tweaked, not quite the same as they looked before. Most people disagree with me, but I am SURE that the mullet will come back. Around 1990 people thought I was NUTS when I insisted sideburns would come back. And then next year, Beverly Hills 90210 hit the scene and male sideburns have never left.

Well it seems like the 1978 hairstyles that Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson wear have come back. It's neither short nor long hair, but at the "midpoint." It's kind of a mop or bowl look, grown out over the ears till the ends split a little.

Here is Rick Danko doing "It Makes No Difference."