Rodda: "In the Interest of Historical Accuracy and Honesty, I Must Correct Myself"

Chris Rodda writing at the Huffington Post. A taste:

What is relevant about the members of that 1781 Congress who attended that church service, however, is that many of them were the very same men who, in 1778, wrote the oath signed by the officers of the Revolutionary Army -- an oath that not only didn't include the words "So help me God," but also left a blank space for each officer to fill in for themselves whether they were choosing to "swear" or "affirm."

West Coast Straussians, Harry Jaffa, Bad Originalism, and Teleocratic Fantasies

By Peter Haworth. Here is part 1; here is part 2.

From part 2:

If the sphere of religion was NOT viewed by the Framers to be within the legal jurisdiction of the Constitution’s Federal Government and if the Framers clearly understood religion to be the proper institution for inculcating virtues, then it follows that the Framers probably would not identify Jaffa’s identified virtues to be part of an explicit purpose of the Constitution’s positive law.

This conclusion is even further corroborated by the lack of evidence from the Philadelphia Convention that advancing virtue was implied by the “Blessings of Liberty” in the Preamble (or that it was otherwise a purpose in the Constitution). Again, the delegated-powers structure of the Constitution helps explain why this was the case. As mentioned previously, advocates of the Constitution (like Hamilton in Federalist 84) understood (at least in their public statements) the limited nature of the Federal Government’s powers. This entailed recognition that the States would retain the police powers involved in regulating morals. Since, then, advancing virtue was not seen as a Federal-level concern, the Framers naturally did not focus on this in their deliberations about the character and content of the Federal Government that they were creating in the Convention. Thus, even if the Framers did see some role for government in advancing virtue (e.g., even if they did not believe that religion alone was sufficient for inculcating the virtues), they would have viewed this as a function that properly belongs to the States, not the Federal Government.

Shain on Jaffa

Originally published in 2007, it was just recently re-published here.

According to Jaffa, then, the poorly defined natural-law doctrines embodied in the Declaration are fully incorporated in the positive law of the United States Constitution. It is, therefore, to the Declaration, and its condensed natural-law holdings, that Supreme Court Justices should turn for guidance in properly interpreting the constitutionality of positive law.29

Missing from this part of Jaffa’s account, though, are two things: facts and common sense. Simply put, Jaffa’s claimed connection between these documents is offered wholly without evidence. As Lino Graglia reminds us “the Constitution makes no mention of the Declaration of Independence, and Jaffa has not produced a single statement by anyone at the constitutional convention or during the rati-fication debates indicating that it was intended to incorporate the Declaration.”30 Of great interest here is the ex-change between Justice Scalia and Jaffa. Jaffa writes that “in response to a question of the relationship of the Constitution to the Declaration of Independence— and to ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God’—Scalia responded as follows: ‘Well unfortunately, or to my mind fortunately, the Supreme Court of the United States, no federal court to my knowledge, in 220 years has ever decided a case on the basis of the Declaration of Independence. It is not part of our law.’ … [As Jaffa then explained] Scalia is simply mistaken when he says that the Declaration of Independence is ‘not part of our law.’”31 ...

Fea: Mark Noll Wins Lilly Fellows Book Award

John Fea tells us about it here.

Thomas Kidd: Evangelical Christians, Deists and America’s founding

Read about it here. A taste:

As I show in my book God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, the relationship between John Leland and Thomas Jefferson offers a more accurate picture than does the polarized choice of either a wholly devout or wholly secular American Founding. There was real spiritual diversity among Americans in 1776; not as much as one sees today, to be sure, but there was a significant range of beliefs. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find more sharply different faiths than those of Leland and Jefferson. Leland was an evangelical preacher of incredible endurance and commitment, who traveled America’s byways telling thousands of listeners to put their faith in Jesus, the Son of God. Jefferson, by contrast, tried to keep his skepticism private, but in his retirement it became abundantly clear that Jefferson saw Jesus not as the Messiah, but only as a great moral teacher. For Jefferson, Jesus was not divine, and he did not rise from the dead. Jefferson even produced an edition of the Christian Gospels to this effect, with the miracles and resurrection of Christ literally snipped out with scissors.

THROCKMORTON: David Barton: There Are About A Dozen Colleges That Are Right

Check it out here. A taste:

What I get out Barton’s statement is that if you question Barton’s claims, then you are not right biblically, not pro-America, pro-Constitution, or right on American history. Reminds me of his claim that those who question him are just repeating our pagan training.

CHARLES C. HAYNES: Dispelling the myth of a ‘Christian nation’

I'm not sure we at American Creation caught this back in August. A taste:

But in spite of this anxiety, drafters of the Constitution took the radical step of founding the first nation in history with no established religion.

Hart Reviews Fea

Darryl Hart reviewed John Fea's book "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction." John Fea informed us here. A taste from Hart's review:

The last part of Fea’s book addresses the beliefs of the founders themselves. He features George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, but includes a chapter on three “orthodox founders,” John Witherspoon, John Jay, and Samuel Adams. This is a subject where Christian nationalism has often turned the founders into devout and orthodox believers, partly at least to justify a reading of America as a Christian nation. Fea is not so sentimental, however. On Washington, he concludes that Christians may laudably celebrate his leadership, courage, civility, and morality, but not his Christianity. Washington’s “religious life was just too ambiguous” (190). Adams “should be commended ... for his attempts to live a life in accordance with the moral teachings of the Bible,” but was finally a Unitarian who denied the deity of Christ (210). Jefferson, likewise, was a great statesman who strived to live a moral life but “failed virtually every test of Christian orthodoxy” (215). Although a successful businessman and patriot, Franklin “rejected most Christian doctrines in favor of a religion of virtue” (227). Meanwhile, in the case of the orthodox Christian founders, Fea concludes that “Christianity was present at the time of the founding” but “merged with other ideas that were compatible with, but not necessarily influenced by, Christianity” (242). The best that can be said of Christianity’s influence on the American founding was that “all the founders believed ... that religion was necessary in order to sustain an ordered and virtuous republic” (246).

Throckmorton Moves to Patheos

The 411 is here.

Our Founding Fathers included Islam

That's the title to this article in Salon by DENISE SPELLBERG that is an excerpt from her book. A taste:

Amid the interdenominational Christian violence in Europe, some Christians, beginning in the sixteenth century, chose Muslims as the test case for the demarcation of the theoretical boundaries of their toleration for all believers. Because of these European precedents, Muslims also became a part of American debates about religion and the limits of citizenship. As they set about creating a new government in the United States, the American Founders, Protestants all, frequently referred to the adherents of Islam as they contemplated the proper scope of religious freedom and individual rights among the nation’s present and potential inhabitants. The founding generation debated whether the United States should be exclusively Protestant or a religiously plural polity. And if the latter, whether political equality—the full rights of citizenship, including access to the highest office—should extend to non-Protestants. The mention, then, of Muslims as potential citizens of the United States forced the Protestant majority to imagine the parameters of their new society beyond toleration. It obliged them to interrogate the nature of religious freedom: the issue of a “religious test” in the Constitution, like the ones that would exist at the state level into the nineteenth century; the question of “an establishment of religion,” potentially of Protestant Christianity; and the meaning and extent of a separation of religion from government.

Before David Barton, There Was Parson Weems

As Warren Throckmorton reports here. And here is the site to which Dr. Throckmorton refers.