Tensions Within the Synthesis of Originalism

At The New Reform Club, the estimable Seth Barrett Tillman makes an observation about double speak coming from the mouths of left leaning law professoriate on "originalism." 

Perhaps Chemerinsky believes the Framers’ intent is discoverable in regard to Senate advice and consent, although not in regard to the First Amendment. That’s a possibility—a way to reconcile his two positions. 

There is a second possibility. The alternative view is that Chemerinsky signed the letter because he agrees with the result argued for, and because he understands that non-originalist discourse is not favored by the American public he is hoping to convince. In other words, Chemerinsky and his colleagues are unwilling to make the effort to explain to the public that a better mode of constitutional discourse is possible; indeed, the 350+ signatories hope to convince the American public via a mode of discourse that they themselves reject, without even putting the public on notice that they reject that discourse. No one is stunned by this situation precisely because it is the norm.  

.... If Chemerinsky, a dean at a publicly funded law school, and 349 other academics take this second approach, reserving one mode of discourse for the elect, and another for the public, then the public, particularly tax-paying public, will take the hint.

Is it any wonder that millions vote for Trump?

I don't defend the ethics of such practice. But I can't find myself outraged by it either. I neither like nor trust leaders and that includes Donald Trump. Likewise, I've read too much Leo Strauss to be surprised that philosophers and politicians would engage in communication that offers one message to one set of people, and a different one to another set.

And certainly figures who support left leaning politics don't hold a monopoly on this practice either.

If I may, I will offer a slightly different explanation for why law professors who have an interest in politics in particular behave this way. Law is arguably a subspecies of philosophy, but with its own special set of rules. That is, arguments that are fallacious in philosophy "work" in law. Appeal to authority is the classic argument that is valid in law, but fallacious in philosophy.

In democratic politics, one needs a voting majority to validate certain outcomes. That commits another fallacy in philosophy, the argumentum ad populum.

Likewise, an argument that seems to "work" in the politics of law (alluded to by Prof. Tillman) is "originalism," that is, arguments that appeal to the original American Founding.

Still Professor Tillman lists 10 challenges made of originalism (see the original post to save space here) that I think are serious. Some harder to answer than others. Furthermore, there is a difference between the "letter" of the original Constitution as amended (what is "justiciable" by Article III Courts), and the "spirit" of the American Founding (something the argument from originalism wants us to remain faithful to, even if the political order, sans a constitutional amendment, is permitted to deviate from, however unwise).

I am more interested in exploring the issue of the "ideology" of the American Founding (that would be "spirit" more than "letter" issues) and tensions found there. Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn notes 5 key ideological sources of the American Founding: 1. "Biblical" (we could call this everything from "Judeo-Christian," to "Christian," to "Protestant Christian"); 2. Greco-Roman; 3. British common law; 4. Whig opposition; and 5. Enlightenment philosophy.

I used to say that #5 -- Enlightenment -- was the most important and lens through which all others were viewed. But that's not what Bailyn argues. Rather, he points to #4, Whiggery as the lens. Or at least the result of the stewing the pot.

Now this is just a construct of five. One could further divide or consolidate the categories to go above or below the numerical five. Moreover, certain key figures like for instance John Locke could be claimed by more than one of the categories. And the different categories often times contradicted one another.

It's true that most of the "cutting edge" thinkers in today's academy are not interested in exploring the history of the American Founding for any reason other than to deconstruct it in favor of some post-modern theory. But I think that an honest exploration of the American Founding offers something to those whose politics are left of center, even as other sources in the synthesis hold contradictory positions.

Harvard's Eric Nelson offers cutting edge research that encompasses at the very least categories #1 and #4. The Amazon page for Dr. Nelson's book asserts his thesis demonstrates:

It was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic. This thinking resulted in a sweeping reorientation of political commitments. In the book’s central chapters, Nelson identifies three transformative claims introduced into European political theory by the Hebrew revival: the argument that republics are the only legitimate regimes; the idea that the state should coercively maintain an egalitarian distribution of property; and the belief that a godly republic would tolerate religious diversity. One major consequence of Nelson’s work is that the revolutionary politics of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes appear in a brand-new light.

Nelson demonstrates that central features of modern political thought emerged from an attempt to emulate a constitution designed by God. This paradox, a reminder that while we may live in a secular age, we owe our politics to an age of religious fervor, in turn illuminates fault lines in contemporary political discourse.

The figures Dr. Nelson invokes were not American; rather they were British. But they come from a particular period in Great Britain that greatly influenced America's Founding: Ideological source #4.

In addition, there was a marked difference between "liberal" sources (perhaps more properly belonging to #5) on the one hand, and "republican" sources on the other. The liberal sources were more "free market" oriented in their positions. The "republican" sources were more collectivistic and egalitarian on economic matters. 

Nelson's is saying the "republicans" were proto-John Rawlsians,* as opposed to proto-Milton Friedmanites.

(*In my first best world, I'm more sympathetic to Milton Friedman than to John Rawls. When it comes to government imposed limits on wealth and inequality, one serious question we Friedmanites offer is "who decides what's fair and where the line draws?" Well, John Rawls provided an answer. It may not be satisfactory, but he gave one. Likewise Eric Nelson's "republicans" gave those answers, indeed anticipated them, on similar grounds as well.)

Kidd: "The New United States: A 'Christian Nation'?"

Check it out here. A taste:

Politicians and pop history writers squabble endlessly about whether America was founded as a “Christian nation.” Skeptics routinely point to the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, in which American officials declared that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and “has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of [Muslims].”

[...]

To an outside Muslim observer, it was common sense: America was a “Christian nation.” There were few Muslims living in America (most of them were Muslim-background African slaves). Virtually all public officials and voters were at least nominally Christian. ...

Warren Throckmorton isn't voting for Cruz either

Here, and a taste:

Cruz surrounds himself with people who have a problem with truth

David Barton and Glenn Beck immediately leap to mind. Barton was one of those who anointed Cruz in 2013 and Glenn Beck has been Cruz’s surrogate in the media and on the campaign trail since Beck endorsed Cruz during the Iowa primaries. Space doesn’t permit an examination of Barton’s historical and current misadventures but you can read about them here.

At Cruz’s rallies in Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, Beck floated several fraudulent stories about George Washington (see here, here, and here). Beck issued a statement admitting the deception to Huffington Post, but he blamed HuffPo for his mistakes on his own website and never apologized or admitted the truth to Cruz’s supporters.

Barton and Beck aren’t peripheral figures in the Cruz universe. Barton heads one of Cruz’s Super PACs and Beck has become a spokesman for Cruz. Along with foreign policy advisor and conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, Beck and Barton as close advisors call into question Cruz’s judgment. An administration full of these appointments is unthinkable.

Despite Cruz’s religious tones, I don’t trust him – In part because of his advisors, I don’t trust Cruz. Their claim that Cruz is God’s candidate is icing on the distrust cake. His father, his wife, David Barton and Glenn Beck have all expressed in one way or another that Cruz is divinely anointed to be president. In Israel’s history, God intervened and chose kings. However, America is not Israel and those who claim to know God’s will on this matter immediately arouse my suspicion.

I became more keenly aware of how little I trust Cruz when he recently said in a town hall meeting that one should be skeptical of a candidate who claims God’s favor. He was essentially holding himself up for scrutiny since he is the only candidate with that platform in this campaign.

Cruz has not spoken much about how his belief in special knowledge would inform his policy decisions. There is no religious test to become president but since Cruz has previously gotten direction through interpreting “words” given to his wife, I want to know if he will continue getting directions on big decisions in this manner as president.

To me, how he makes decisions is important because Cruz’s willingness to compromise (something he hasn’t shown much willingness to do) might be hindered by a believe that his position is God’s position. One of his advisors, David Barton, believes man’s law cannot contradict God’s law. He also believes the Bible speaks authoritatively on public policy. It is a fair question to ask: Will Cruz run the country as a pastor or politician? Given his rhetoric and advisors, I can’t support a candidate who thinks his positions are gospel rather than the offerings of a fallible man who is open to give and take.

Jonathan Mayhew & Song of Solomon

The Song of Solomon is a bit of a controversial book among religious believers. A friend noted to me -- because of my interest in canon studies -- that the Mormons apparently don't believe it was divinely inspired. It's the one book in the KJV that Mormons don't believe. The erotic nature of the book makes it controversial.

David Kupelian, who is not an orthodox Trinitarian Christian, doesn't think much of the book; but didn't say he thought it should be removed. Rather, contra Mark Driscoll's claim, it's one of the least important as opposed to most important books in the canon.

The Protestant-Enlightenment preacher Jonathan Mayhew was accused of a number of things. He wasn't "orthodox" enough for the forces of religious correctness, so he was labeled a "deist" by them. The Song of Solomon features in one of Mayhew's battles with the orthodox. They accused him of wanting to axe it from the canon (and thus demonstrating disrespect for the canon).

I'll quote him below. But if I understand him right, he's say the book "Wisdom" has as much right to belong in the canon as Song of Solomon. And it's not that Song should be out, but rather perhaps Wisdom should be in (both together).

He notes:

But he goes still further; intimating his suspicions that I am a deist, p. 79.—" The Dr.'s reflection upon the Song of Solomon is sufficient to show how easy it is for him to discard the sacred canon of scripture itself: Or perhaps," &c. But he dared not to cite that refleclion, as he calls it. The most that can be fairly and logically inferred from it, is, that I supposed there was near as much reason for admitting the Wisdom as the Song of Solomon into the canon ;—a very harmless supposition, even tho' it should be a mistake; and which does not imply the latter to be admitted without reason.—

 Roman Catholics (and the Eastern Orthodox) of course, hold "Wisdom" to be in their canon. They call them deuterocanonical.  Protestants call them Apocrypha.

Kramnick on Locke & the Godless Constitution

Isaac Kramnick is one half of the notorious duo from Cornell who wrote "The Godless Constitution." There is a section in there on the English liberal (aka Lockean) case for the concept.

This article from Dr. Kramnick summarizes such understanding.

A taste:

Meanwhile, the leading colonial critic of the drift to rebellion, the Anglican clergyman Jonathan Boucher, preached to his congregants in Virginia and Maryland that they had an obligation as Christians to accept, indeed to “reverence authority,” since “there is no power, but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.” There was never, he added, a time when “the whole human race is born equal” when “no man is naturally inferior, or, in any respect, subjected to another.” Governments were not the product of voluntary consent, he insisted, but were given by God to men who were then forever subordinate to those superiors God had set to govern them. He ridiculed notions of a “social compact” and of “a right to resistance.” In a 1774 sermon defending the divine right of kings to govern against colonial claims of self-government Boucher singled out the evil source of the misguided views of the rebellious colonists: “Mr. Locke” was the author “of the system now under consideration.” Americans, he hoped, would choose obedience to monarchs as announced in the New Testament’s “Romans 13” over the “right to resistance, for which Mr. Locke contends.”

Boucher was the leading spokesman in the Revolutionary era for the ideals and values of the Christian commonwealth, the long-dominant paradigm of politics in the West, with its roots in the writings of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and the American Puritans like John Winthrop. ...

Marcion: The first "Christian-Deist"?

The Enlightenment theology that drove the American Founding had a number of distinctive attributes: 1. religious liberty, a God who granted an unalienable right of religious conscience; 2. hatred of tyranny, a God who gave people a right to if not revolt or rebel, implacably resist tyrannical rulers; 3. naturalistic rationalism, a God who endowed men with reason to understand "the nature of things" such that these discoveries were "truth" on par with direct revelation; 4. a hatred of creeds, and strong distrust of ecclesiastical authority, leading to embrace of Arianism, Socinianism, unorthodox understandings of the Trinity, and otherwise downplaying the importance of that doctrine; and 5. a focus on God's benevolent nature as a lens through which to understand Him.

One criticism I get when noting these points is that each of the 5 is nothing "new" in that they all predated the Enlightenment in Christendom. I concede such. I think what was novel was the convergence of these 5 during the period historians describe as "the Enlightenment," i.e., when America was founded in the late 18th Century. I don't think you get a religious figure or movement who had all 5 before that.

For instance, for attribute #1. you get Roger Williams and the Quakers, though they didn't speak in the language of "unalienable rights"; for that, turn to John Locke; for # 2. you get the Calvinist resisters (though not John Calvin himself); ditto with the prior point on Locke; #3. you get the Thomists, though America didn't cite Thomas Aquinas, rather they would cite Locke who in turn cited Richard Hooker; but America did cite Aristotle whom Aquinas incorporated into Christendom; #4. you get Arius of Alexandria (256-336 A.D.), the guy against whom the Nicene Creed was written; and #5. it's argued that "benevolence" hardly accurately describes Calvin's God; but many traditional orthodox Christians note not only is their God benevolent, but also point to pre-Enlightenment figures and movements to prove such (I'll leave such examples open to the floor).

But who had all 5 before the Enlightenment? Take, for instance, #2. It's argued the notion of a right to revolt against tyrants (what the Declaration of Independence posits) is from "the Enlightenment." The counter argument is to look to the Calvinist resisters, i.e., Rutherford et al., as the originators. They may have been good on #2, but, as they supported Calvin executing Michael Servetus, they were woefully deficient on #1.

With that, let me focus on #4. Arianism was the form of unitarianism that predominated in both England and New England during the Enlightenment era when America was founded. Jonathan Mayhew and Samuel Clarke were some kind of Arians. Richard Price and James Burgh were distinctly Arians. I can't tell whether John Adams or Ben Franklin were Arians or Socinians. Thomas Jefferson was not an Arian; he rejected that Jesus had any kind of divine nature, though, with Joseph Priestley Jefferson believed in Jesus' divine mission making them both "Socinian."

Socinianism was considered a more radical form of theological unitarianism. The Arians believed in Jesus' divine nature. He was, to them, someone, though not God (but rather created by and subordinate to Him), who preexisted all other creation. Arian Jesus as the Son of God, but not God the Son, first born of all creation and higher in power, nature and authority than the highest of angels, was second only to God.

The Socinians, on the other hand, held Jesus was not at all divine in his nature. His nature was 100% human, 0% divine. But rather a uniquely special Messiah on a divine mission. 

Jefferson has been described as a "deist," even though he didn't call himself one. Jefferson's personal definition of "deism" was simply belief in "One God." Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Trinitarians, among others, were all "deists" according to this broadest understanding of the term. (Though Jefferson, sometimes frustrated while arguing against the doctrine of the Trinity, accused Trinitarians like Calvin of worshipping three gods.)

Jefferson, like the Socininan Unitarian Joseph Priestley and the Deist, Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke seemed more radical than what prevailed among the unitarians of the Enlightenment era. Bolingbroke, as a "Deist" was not, from what I can tell, a "strict deist" who believed in an absentee landlord God to whom prayers were ineffective and Jesus was a nobody.

Bolingbroke rather seemed some kind of "Christian-Deist." Admittedly, I have much to learn on him. From what I've seen, his and Jefferson's theology reminds me of that from one of the earliest and most important early Church Fathers: Marcion. (85-160 A.D.).

Marcion was important largely because of his efforts in compiling the New Testament canon. But he was one of the first and most notable heretics. He fit Jefferson's broad understanding of "a deist" because he believed in the "One True God." But he also rejected that the attributes the prophets of the Old Testament ascribed to their deity accurately reflected the benevolent nature of Jesus' heavenly Father. Marcion thought the jealous tribal god of the Jews was a different being than Jesus' Father, the One True God. Though the Jews' lower, imperfect deity, somehow found himself in a position of authority to create and have power over at least parts of the material world. (That is what's known as the concept of the Demiurge.)

Jefferson, Bolingbroke and perhaps Ben Franklin held analogous religious views. Though I can't tell whether Bolingbroke, Jefferson and Franklin would endorse Marcion's precise notion of the Demiurge.

(Franklin at one point in his life endorsed the concept of the Demiurge, but believed the subordinate created deity who governed our solar system was worthy of worship because he was more personal and therefore accessible than the Infinite.)

Jefferson viewed the Jews as "deists" because they believed in "One God." He thought Jesus' role was to reform and correct the errors in their deism. Jefferson held the Jews "had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust." 

Likewise with Franklin, it's hard to pin him down on the OT. He once said "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."

Jefferson, Franklin and Bolingbroke (if I understand Bolingbroke right) all believed Jesus, regardless of His exact nature was "from God" in some kind of inspired sense. Likewise, I don't know where Marcion stood on the Trinity (I think he predated the formulation of that doctrine). Or, on the question of Jesus' full divinity.

I am not aware of Jefferson or Franklin citing Marcion. Likewise with the English Deists, I'm not aware they cited him; but there is much I don't know there, that for instance Dr. Joseph Waligore could help me with. 

But, as I read what he stood for, Marcion could aptly be described as the first "Christian-Deist." The Christian-Deism of the American Founding that was even more radical than the Arian Unitarianism of that era is traceable to an even older source. To a figure who lived in the first and second centuries and played an instrumental role in formulating the canon of the New Testament.

Marcion and Arius thus were indispensable figures as heretics of the early church. They were the first and most notable of them and laid the path for much to come. The Enlightenment understanding of the dissident theological thought that inspired among others America's key Founders can be traced to them. (Even if Marcion's influence was more "accidental" than named.)

Very old sources indeed.

Kidd on Deism, Franklin, Jefferson and the American Founding

I saw this on my social media newsfeed. Forgive me as I can't remember whether I featured it last year. It's a year old, but is still relevant.

It relates to broad and narrow definitions of Christianity and Deism that were invoked in our last post by Dr. Carl J. Richard.

From Dr. Kidd's piece:

Part of the problem with calling any of the Founders deists is the difficulty of defining deism. What did that term mean in the eighteenth century? Could you be a deist and somehow believe in prayer, as Franklin apparently did, at least as of the Constitutional Convention? (Franklin made a failed motion for the convention to open its sessions in prayer.) Could you be a deist and say with Jefferson, “I am a real Christian”?

Arguments about whether any or all the Founders were deists usually are hamstrung by overly precise definitions of deism. Deists believed in God as the cosmic watchmaker, critics protest, so any sign that a person believed in prayer or Providence automatically disqualifies them. But deism in eighteenth-century Europe and America could mean many different things. Its adherents could range from people who had qualms about Calvinism, to those who criticized the corruptions of the church as “priestcraft,” to more radical deists who espoused beliefs that seem close to atheism.

We should also remember that “deism” and “deists” were terms probably more often used by critics against their opponents, rather than by deists themselves.

[...]

Both Franklin and Jefferson wanted to dispense with Christian dogma and recover the true faith, which was a quality of living rather than a set of arcane propositions which (as they saw it) the guardians of orthodoxy defended in order to protect their own power. This is why Franklin gave so much attention to tests of personal virtue, and experimented constantly with charitable projects. Likewise, Jefferson was almost obsessed with the person and teachings of Jesus, but believed that in his teaching and behavior Jesus served as the preeminent example of “human excellence,” and that his followers imposed claims about his divinity and resurrection after the teacher’s death. But neither Jefferson nor Franklin imagined that we could do without this recovered rationalist Christianity – it was the best guide we had to real virtue.

The deists’ closest descendants today are not the “new atheists” who have stirred up so much media chatter in recent years. Their closest descendants are probably liberal mainline Christians who see Jesus as their model but who eschew (or even deny) the particular, exclusive doctrines that have been associated with Christian orthodoxy for millennia. ...

The Founders and the Bible, by Carl J. Richard

[Editor's Note: Below is a guest post by Dr. Carl J. Richard on the thesis of his new book.]

In sharp contrast to numerous books that focus obsessively on a few founders, implying falsely that their beliefs were typical of their class and generation, my forthcoming book, The Founders and the Bible (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2016), examines the religious beliefs of approximately thirty founders of the United States. What I demonstrate is that while four founders (Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams) possessed biblically unorthodox beliefs concerning the divine origins and authority of Scripture, the divinity of Jesus, and the means of salvation, three (George Washington, James Madison, and James Monroe) wrote so little about these matters that no honest historian can make confident assertions about them, and the other twenty-three were all biblically orthodox. In other words, the ratio of orthodox to unorthodox founders among the thirty leaders examined was nearly six to one.

Furthermore, one of the most important findings of the book is that none of the founders was a deist, at least not if one defines deism in the conventional manner, to refer to the belief in a God who created the universe but does not intervene in it. Even the least orthodox founders believed in an omniscient, omnipotent God much like the deity of the Bible, who not only invested each individual with inalienable rights but also intervened in the affairs of individuals, societies, and nations to enforce those rights, as well as to advance other goods necessary to human happiness. The only difference between the orthodox and unorthodox founders concerning divine intervention was that the latter rejected the idea that God intervened through miracles, asserting instead that He intervened solely through natural causes.

The image of even the least orthodox founders as modern secularists is a false conception that wrenches them from the historical and cultural context in which they lived. The founders were steeped in a culture that revered the Bible as the Word of God. Many were raised by devout parents who named them after biblical figures, and many were closely related to ministers. At least two founders, James Madison and John Adams (who married a preacher’s daughter), seriously considered a career in the ministry before deciding on law, and a third, John Witherspoon, was one of the most prominent clergymen in America. 

Like most children of their day, the founders probably learned to read by means of the Bible, the latter testament of which they then studied in its original Greek language at their grammar schools and colleges. Most attended church services regularly, where they listened to sermons that lasted for hours, addresses that mingled numerous scriptures with classical learning. Many married devout wives. They lived in a society filled with biblical place names and expressions, a society rocked by the Great Awakening, which constituted one of the primary causes of the American Revolution, uniting Americans of different denominations and regions around the same biblical themes, the danger of corruption and the existence of a divine mission, that had motivated the Puritans over a century earlier.

Although a few of the founders rejected important biblical doctrines, they were almost unanimous in asserting the Bible’s central role in promoting the social morality they deemed essential to the survival and success of the new republic. Thus, most not only urged their own children to read Scripture and to attend church services in which it was recited but also worked to disseminate biblical knowledge more broadly. Elias Boudinot, who served as president of the Continental Congress, later established the American Bible Society, which distributed Bibles to the poor. While John Jay, the nation’s first Supreme Court chief justice, served as the organization’s president, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a signer of the Constitution and a two-time presidential nominee of the Federalist Party, served as one of its vice-presidents, in which capacity he boldly defied slaveholders’ attacks on the organization for dispensing Bibles to African Americans, a policy for which the slaveholders blamed the Denmark Vesey slave revolt. 

Both Benjamin Rush and Samuel Adams urged the continued reading of the Bible in public schools. Rush started a Sunday school movement and founded the Philadelphia Bible Society. George Washington consistently supported the preaching of the gospel to Native Americans, not merely for reasons of national interest, but also for what he sincerely regarded as their own good. Even Thomas Jefferson endorsed adult Bible reading for moral reasons and contributed a large sum to the American Bible Society.

Even the least orthodox founders (with the sole exception of Thomas Paine in his later years) considered the Bible a source of wisdom and valued the lessons they derived from it. They employed biblical references and analogies in private letters as frequently as in public documents because Scripture formed an important part of their stock of knowledge, their way of making sense of the world. Its influence in their society was too pervasive to permit them to ignore or dismiss it, even had they wished to do so. Instead, they grappled with the Bible unceasingly, and while the end result of that lifelong engagement by the unorthodox founders included the discarding of some important doctrines, it also produced a deepening of Scripture’s rhetorical, moral, and spiritual imprint on their minds.

That imprint not only influenced the founders’ self-perceptions but proved crucial to the outcome of national debates. In the colonial period Benjamin Franklin viewed himself as an American Solomon, dispensing practical advice in the form of proverbs as Poor Richard. In 1776, as the leading orator for independence in Congress, John Adams considered himself a latter-day Moses, leading his people from Egyptian-style bondage at the hands of Britain to freedom and independence, although most Americans bestowed that appellation on George Washington. In the same year Thomas Paine succeeded in persuading Americans to declare their independence largely by convincing them that God condemned monarchy in 1 Samuel 8.

As a result of the founders’ unanimous belief in an interventionist God, all except Thomas Paine believed in the efficacy of prayer and therefore frequently called for public and private prayer both in times of crisis and in periods of peace and prosperity. The most famous such appeal was Benjamin Franklin’s emotional speech urging daily prayer at the Constitutional Convention, a plea he based on his personal experience that “God governs in the affairs of men.” In the original manuscript for the speech Franklin underscored the whole sentence once, “God” twice.

The founders considered the United States a new Israel, a nation chosen by God to accomplish a sacred purpose. They believed that the United States was destined by the Almighty to advance the cause of freedom by erecting a model republic that would provide a haven for the world’s oppressed. This belief in a divine mission gave them a sense of identity and purpose and the courage to face the enormous trials of their day. They believed that God led them to victory, against staggering odds, over Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. 

Many of them considered the U.S. Constitution another divine gift, the usually reticent James Madison even going so far as to call it “a miracle” in a private letter to Jefferson. Yet many of the founders also worried that the same intervening God might punish the nation for its greatest violation of the covenant of liberty, its institution of slavery.

The founders considered Christian morality superior to all other ethical systems, past and present, due to its promotion of humility, benevolence, and forgiveness, and considered religion and morality, defined largely in Judeo-Christian terms, vital to the survival and success of any republic. Despite his rejection of portions of the Bible, Thomas Jefferson was particularly emphatic regarding the superiority of Christian ethics, which was why he invested so much time in distilling its essence in his own abbreviated Bible. 

Even Thomas Paine, the sole founder who denied the superiority of Christian morality, defined virtue precisely as Jesus had, as the fulfillment of duty to God and to one’s neighbor, while almost comically refusing to acknowledge the obvious source of this principle. Except for Jefferson and Paine, the founders were adamant that the widespread belief in an omniscient God who rewarded virtue and punished vice was essential to republican government, and even Jefferson conceded that while such a belief might not be essential, it provided a powerful inducement to virtue. Despite their own private doubts regarding certain biblical doctrines, both Benjamin Franklin and John Adams reacted with great fury when anyone assaulted the Bible publicly because they viewed popular belief in it as one of the chief pillars of the republic and dreaded its collapse.

The founders also shared crucial beliefs in the biblical concepts of human equality before God, free will, and the existence of an afterlife that included rewards and punishments. The founders’ belief in spiritual equality derived from the biblical concept of a single creation, a concept that contrasted sharply with contemporary, racist, European theories of separate creations of different human species on various continents. It led the founders to abolish slavery throughout the North and to end the foreign slave trade, though they were unable to end the institution in the South, where it was more deeply entrenched socially and economically. John Witherspoon and William Livingston were instrumental in abolishing slavery in New Jersey, as were Benjamin Rush, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania, and John Jay and Alexander Hamilton in New York. Despite being a slaveholder himself, Jefferson succeeded in persuading Congress to prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territory (the land north of the Ohio River) as a first step towards his goal of ending it nationally. George Washington freed and provided for his own slaves in his will. Many of the founders used scriptural arguments to condemn slavery and denounced all efforts to employ biblical passages in its favor. 

Despite living in a Calvinist nation, they also cited biblical references against predestination and in support of free will, a belief that imbued them with a strong sense of responsibility for the outcome of events. All of the founders, even the least orthodox, expressed a belief in an afterlife characterized by divine rewards and punishments that was clearly based on biblical teaching. This belief provided the founders with priceless consolation for the deaths of their loved ones and motivated them to hazard all for their fellow citizens. Alexander Hamilton’s confidence in the existence of such an afterlife led him to sacrifice his life rather than return Aaron Burr’s gunfire in their famous duel.

The founders’ conception of what they termed divine “Providence” extended to their own personal lives. It comforted them amid misfortunes and motivated them to sacrifice everything for the cause of liberty in a revolution against the greatest power on earth and in the establishment of a sound and durable republic. As the Declaration of Independence noted, “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” was the chief source of their willingness to sacrifice their lives and fortunes. Even after Paine wrote a tome attacking the Bible, he continued to assert a strong belief in its most important concept: the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent God who intervened on behalf of individuals and nations. 

Indeed, Paine credited his own survival of the French Revolution to divine protection, a claim that flatly contradicted a central tenet of deism. The founders overcame the greatest misfortunes, such as the death of a fiancée (Charles Carroll) or a small child (John Marshall and John Jay), by interpreting them as God’s way of teaching wisdom, fortitude, compassion, humility, and the futility of a life focused on fleeting earthly pleasures rather than on eternity.

The orthodox majority, joined by the unorthodox John Adams and the generally reticent Washington and Madison, strongly espoused a view of human nature that was fundamentally biblical. This pessimistic conception of human nature encouraged them to oppose British claims to unchecked power during the Revolutionary era and led them to establish elaborate systems of checks and balances in both state and federal constitutions thereafter.

Even the founders’ shared advocacy of religious freedom, variously defined but always including the right to worship freely in the manner of an individual’s own choosing, was based on the Bible’s emphasis on the importance of the individual’s relationship with an omniscient God who cared deeply about His creatures’ inner beliefs. No government had the authority to interpose itself between the individual and his creator, the founders frequently declared. Furthermore, they often noted that both Jesus Himself and His disciples in the early Church never compelled anyone to express any belief but relied solely on the power of the Holy Spirit to attract people to the faith according to their own free will.

In The Founders and the Bible I discuss the educational system, familial influences, church experience, and social conditions that immersed the founders in the Bible, their lifelong engagement with Scripture, their biblically-infused political rhetoric, their powerful belief in a divine Providence that protected them and guided the nation, their belief in the superiority of Christian ethics and in the necessity of religion to republican government, their belief in spiritual equality, free will, and an afterlife, their religious differences, the influence of their biblical conception of human nature on their formulation of state and federal constitutions, and their use of biblical precedent to advance religious freedom. I conclude by summarizing the manner in which the subsequent generation of Americans carried these themes to new heights, in the process transforming American society.

Brayton, Rodda, and Boston

See here. A taste:

I [Ed Brayton] was thrilled to see ... Rob Boston did an interview with ... Chris Rodda ... available online.

[...]

[Boston:] Do you believe we’re making any headway ... ? If people are going to believe whatever they want regardless of the facts, why should we even continue?

Rodda: It does get very frustrating, and there have been many times when I’ve asked myself why I even bother ... What stops me from giving up are things like the occasional emails I get from Christian homeschooling parents who happen to stumble upon one of my articles or videos and write to me ... asking me to recommend a reputable history curriculum. So, there are those glimmers of hope. Plus, once you know that something like this is going on, you can’t just ignore it and do nothing, no matter how impossible it might seem to fight it.

 [Brayton:] I agree with this completely. It can be frustrating, just as it’s frustrating to continually see atheists sharing fake quotes and bad history. But I keep at it because it at least serves as a resource for others.

Papers from Jefferson-Adams Symposium

After Tom Van Dyke's post on Jefferson's VA Statute for Religious Liberty, I went looking for additional material on it that might interest readers. I found this article by John Ragosta.

But that in turn led to a finding of a series of papers on Jefferson and J. Adams by very notable scholars. This might make for interesting weekend reading.

Anglicanism & the American Founding

Here is an article from WorldNetDaily (not a bad one by their standards) that discusses, among other things, Anglicanism and the American Founding. It also talks about the Presbyterians. That was the interesting thing about the American Founding; it had a bunch of different sects, some of which predominated and were established at the state level, but none at the national level. As I understand the historical record, the zeitgeist of the national founding as it related to religion was to sympathize with the dissenters. But a sect established in one state, could be a dissenter in another.

The article makes what I see as one glaring error. I won't mention it in this original piece, but you can view the comment I made at the author's blog where I pointed it out.

But here is what the author wrote on Anglicanism:

Our nation’s founding was born of men and women seeking religious freedom from England and its one-size-fits-all Anglican state church. They sought the right to worship with whatever church they wished.

As we know, England and particularly the crown would have none of that. How dare an English colony put anything before the king or be a member of any religion other than Anglican, the British state religion.

Most if not all of the different sects (groups like the Quakers non-withstanding), at least in their official doctrines had a "one-size-fits-all" mentality regarding the proper understanding of the faith. And once they got into power, they, if not imposed it, privileged it. That was the problem. No need to single out and pick on Anglicans as anything special in this regard, other than it was the creed of the mother country from which America rebelled.

(Roman Catholics actually were viewed as the "worst" of the offenders. And the non-Presbyterians tended to think of the Presbyterians -- at least in those places where they were the dominant, established sect -- as almost as bad.)

Interestingly, as I noted to the author, a great deal of "our nation's founders" were themselves Anglicans. If we want statistical data regarding sect affiliation, see here and here. If the numbers crunched in the 2nd link are accurate, 54.7% of America's Founders were Anglicans.

That leads to a fascinating observation: they rebelled against the official political theology of the very church with which they were affiliated.

Patrick Henry, John Jay, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Marshall. (There are plenty of other names I could have added; but this group seems representative enough.)

There are only two things these men have in common. No it's not they were all Virginians (John Jay wasn't; the rest were). Or that they were all "Federalists" who supported the Constitution (Patrick Henry was an Anti-Federalists, opposed to the US Constitution. Jefferson was in France. I don't think he was an Anti-Federalist, but he seemed more sympathetic to their concerns than did the partisan Federalists who got the Constitution to pass.)

Rather it was 1. they were all Whigs who rebelled against Great Britain; and 2. they were all Anglicans whose official political theology preached Toryism, the very thing they rebelled against.

So with this group we end up with Jefferson who bitterly rejected every single doctrine of orthodoxy; Marshall who was an adult unitarian until he apparently converted to something more orthodox on his deathbed; Henry and Jay who apparently settled into something more traditionally orthodox; and Washington and Madison whose words indicate they believed in a generally theistic ecumenicism, but didn't take an official position on any of the orthodox doctrines that Jefferson so bitterly rejected.

So even with the more apparently orthodox Founders (Jay and Henry), that they were members of a church whose official doctrines they stood against caused issues for their Christianity. As I noted in my past post, "[d]uring the Founding era the 'religiously correct' orthodox forces would write off those who didn't make the cut as 'deists.'" And indeed, Patrick Henry was so accused. (A charge he vehemently denied while affirming both his Whig and Christian identity.)

Likewise with John Jay. I think he was an orthodox Trinitarian Christian. But he wasn't a "by the book" Anglican on this matter either. If he were, he would have simply lauded how St. Athanasius (one of the heroes of "by the book" Anglicanism) handled the matter of the Trinity and that would have been that. But he didn't.

Final thought on this notion of a "one-size-fits-all" mentality of the faith. Back in mother England, before and around the time of America's Founding, many "dissenters" in the Anglican (and other churches) engaged in the same kind of "freethinking" on doctrinal matters (including but not limited to disregard of the Trinity) as noted above.

George Marsden on the Modern State of "Christian America"

Throckmorton has the details here. Bottom line -- and it's point I've made for years -- fundamentalists and evangelicals who are sympathetic to the "Christian America" view of history have strict standards for what it means to be a "real Christian." Certainly not self professing "Christians" like President Obama qualify. (They argue over whether traditional Roman Catholics qualify.)

Well most of the notable Founding Fathers probably wouldn't qualify as "real Christians" either, accordingly no matter how much these forces want to claim them.

If they aren't "real Christians" then what were they? During the Founding era the "religiously correct" orthodox forces would write off those who didn't make the cut as "deists." That's one way that "the founders were deists" meme started.

Throckmorton on Barton's use of Primary Sources

See here. A taste:

However, that is not what Monticello library documents. Monticello researched the following quote attributed to Jefferson:

Quotation: “Sir, no nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man, and I as chief magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example.”

Monticello consulted the existing body of Jefferson’s writings and other papers where his statements are recorded. The first recorded instance of this quote is in 1857 in the papers of Allen. Monticello’s assessed the quote as “questionable.”

Comments:  This quotation appeared in a handwritten manuscript by the Reverend Ethan Allen (1796-1879). The story was related to Allen by a Mr. Ingle, who claimed to have been told a story that Jefferson was walking to church services one Sunday, “…with his large red prayer book under his arm when a friend querying him after their mutual good morning said which way are you walking Mr. Jefferson.  To which he replied to Church Sir.  You going to church Mr. J. You do not believe a word in it.  Sir said Mr. J.  No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion.  Nor can be.  The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir.”2

The story comes to us third-hand, and has not been confirmed by any references in Jefferson’s papers or any other known sources.  Its authenticity is questionable.

So after claiming the scholarly high ground as someone who uses primary sources, Barton used a questionable quote which comes to us third-hand.

Anthony J. Minna: "Why God is in the Declaration but not the Constitution"

From the Journal of the American Revolution here. A taste:

The Declaration contains several other references to a higher power. The introduction states that the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitle the American people to a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the conclusion, Congress appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world” for the rectitude of its intentions and professes its “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” In each case, reference to a deity serves to validate the assertion of independence.

The genius of the Declaration is the inclusive way the divine is given expression. The appellations of God are generic. Adherents of traditional theistic sects can read the words “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Supreme Judge,” and understand them to mean the god they worship. The claims made on numerous Christian websites attest to this. Yet opponents of dogma read those same words and see an embracive, non-sectarian concept of divinity. This is no small testimony to the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers. All Americans could support the Revolution and independence. All can regard their rights as unalienable, their liberty as inviolable.

Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution contains no reference to God. ...

Foreign Policy: "America Was Founded on Secrets and Lies"

This is an interesting article. Some of it true. Most of it taken out of context. And some of which I've never heard before.

For instance:

James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, had served as Jefferson’s Secretary of State and was well aware of his boss’s appreciation for the unseemly necessities of foreign relations, although he seemed to have somewhat less enthusiasm for scheming than Jefferson. In 1805, Secretary of State Madison procured a prostitute using money from the secret service fund in order to enhance the visit of a foreign envoy from Tunisia — the fund being designed in part to facilitate “foreign intercourse.” ...

A School I Do Not Recommend

The David Barton School of Political Science that will open in Fall 2016. John Fea has the details here. Though there is something the school could do that might make me change my mind. They need to endow a Chris Rodda chair of criticism in the school. That would be a step in the right direction. Perhaps Glenn Beck can fund such a chair.

Daniel Dreishbach on GW's approach to Religion

This is a little late for Presidents' Day. Daniel Dreisbach wrote this last year (2015).

I want to focus on a dynamic that often gets missed in this "Christian" v. "Secular" America argument. What was unique to the American Founding. And particularly to George Washington as the chief Founder of the new nation.

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but in forming a new nation that would have no established church at the national level, Washington and America started an entirely new precedent in "liberal democracy" of the head of state no longer being any kind of official "protector of the faith."

The other nations in Christendom all had state established churches where their political leaders as heads of state had to at the very least play a figurehead role defending the "true" expression of the faith. Now, the leader may not have done that job well, but it was still part of the job. So Henry the VIII had, at one time, the job as protecting the Roman Catholic faith. He was so bad at the job that it led to a creation of a new Church which he might be more qualified to serve as figurehead protector of.

George Washington was first in NOT playing that role. Therefore he had to be ecumenical and pluralistic. If one in his personal convictions is indifferent towards doctrine, it helps to play that (new) role.

We see this prominently on display in the addresses Dr. Dreisbach reproduces.

Thomas Jefferson Really Did Cut From the Bible That Which He didn't Believe

Warren Throckmorton, once again, gives us the details. Thomas Jefferson, like Jesse Lee Peterson (the interviewer) didn't believe in the Trinity. Jefferson unlike Peterson, cut that from which the Bible he didn't believe.

When so asked David Barton could have answered honestly. But, alas, he didn't. Jefferson thought St. Paul was a big phony. I wonder how you get an uncut Bible, while believing this.

When presented with the question, Barton went on the classic "red herring" expedition with something about Native Americans and Christianity.

But let me note, Jefferson like George Washington, thought it might be better for Native Americans to convert to "Christianity" for entirely utilitarian (the parlance of America's Founding might use terms like "useful" or "civilization") reasons.

This theory holds Jesus was the greatest moral teacher the world has ever known (something Jefferson believed; though it's not clear Washington believed even this). It would be better, then, if Native Americans converted to Christianity for this reason, not because Christianity is true, their religion is false.

In fact, both Jefferson and Washington referred to the Native Americans' God as "The Great Spirit." This is similar to today's controversy among Christians whether Muslims worship the same God as Christians do.

Jefferson and Washington both held, yes, Jews, Christians, Muslims and unconverted Native Americans all worship the same God. Likewise there is nothing in the recorded words of either of them that suggest Christianity is true, the other religions false (otherwise, therefore, Native Americans need to convert away from their "false" religion). Rather, only that Jesus' moral teachings were superior. Or that Christianity would better help the Natives assimilate into American civilization.

Justice Scalia, RIP

I will greatly miss reading his brilliant dissents, even if I often disagreed with them. Let me challenge Tom Van Dyke's post here on what I see as a bit of a conundrum with Scalia. Quoting Scalia:

 "If there was any thought absolutely foreign to the founders of our country, surely it was the notion that we Americans should be governed the way that Europeans are - and nothing has changed."

Yet, as Scalia concedes the Founders were more than willing to cite one form of foreign law, and that was the British Common Law which was predicated on notions of 1. the brooding omnipresence in the sky and 2. the doctrine of Stare Decisis, both of which Scalia, for the most part, rejects.

When I say "for the most part" I mean as it relates to Stare Decisis. As far as I can tell, Justice Scalia rejects Stare Decisis when none of the other (even very conservative Justices) do. Thus, when Scalia writes a majority or a dissent that has any other of the Justices joining him, he can't say "let's dump Stare Decisis." He can only do such when he writes a sole dissent.

But as far as I can tell from his books and articles (where he speaks on behalf of he himself only), that's what he would do in his first best world. The most Scalia can do when he writes an opinion with others joining him is downplay as oppose to categorically reject Stare Decisis.

But if Justice Scalia's first best judicial world were adopted then America would look, juridically speaking, from a procedural perspective, a lot more like those "other" European nations who are not "common law nations." (Having a "common law" legal heritage means you either are 1. Great Britain, or 2. a former British colony. Given how big the British Empire once was, this encompasses many nations.)

The other European "civil law" systems (and their former colonies) do not use Stare Decisis, but rely more on laws or codes passed by democratic majorities, not judicial precedent.

Justice Scalia wanted America's judicial system to look more "European" in that sense.

George Washington's Defense of the Godless Constitution

One thing to keep in mind on the debate over the US Constitution's Godlessness, is that, however we understand the controversy, it wasn't "made up" by two Cornell professors.

In fact, I was reminded of George Washington's response to a group of Presbyterians who were concerned about the omission of a reference to the Christian religion in the US Constitution. Washington attempted to alleviate their concern writing:

The tribute of thanksgiving, which you offer to the gracious FATHER OF LIGHTS, for his inspiration of our publick councils with wisdom and firmness to complete the National Constitution, is worthy of men, who, devoted to the pious purposes of religion, desire their accomplishment by such means as advance the temporal happiness of their fellow men. And, here, I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain, as to require but little POLITICAL direction.

To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation respecting religion from the Magna Charta of our country. To the guidance of the Ministers of the Gospel, this important object is, perhaps, more properly committed. It will be your care to instruct the ignorant, and to reclaim the devious: And in the progress of morality and science, to which our Government will give every furtherance, we may confidently expect the advancement of true religion, and the completion of our happiness.

I pray the munificent Rewarder of virtue, that your agency in this work, may receive its compensation here and hereafter.

This same group of people -- the religiously correct "orthodox" -- also bothered William Livingston about the explicit lack of Christianity as the foundation for American law in the Articles of Confederation (which unlike the Constitution, isn't a Godless document, but rather, like the Declaration of Independence, appeals to God in a more generic sense).

As Livingston wrote:

[A]nd to have made the 'law of the eternal God, as contained in the sacred Scriptures, of the Old and New Testament, the supreme law of the United States,' would, I conceive, have laid the foundation of endless altercation and dispute....

To the effect ... that of promoting purity of manners, all legislators and magistrates are bound by a superior obligation to that of any vote or compact of their own; and the inseparable connexion between the morals of the people and the good of society will compel them to pay due attention to external regularity and decorum; but true piety again has never been agreed upon by mankind, and I should not be willing that any human tribunal should settle its definition for me.

The tone of the two statesmen are different. But the effect is the same. Government (at least the Federal one) is going to be hands off on religion; the religious ball rather is in the court of voluntary, private entities.

Boudinot to Samuel Bayard, a Second Time Today

I am going to copy and paste some of the 1796 letter from Elias Boudinot to Samuel Bayard that Bill Fortenberry tipped me off to. As Boudinot wrote:

It is a most remarkable event and one that soon cannot be forgotten, that in the year 1796, on the first disputed election for a President of the United States, the State of Pennsylvania who values herself on her attachment to the christian character should give 13 votes out of 15 for a President & Vice President who are open & professed Deists at the same time, it will also be remembered that in the house of Representatives in the Congress of the United States Dr Priestly had 27 votes for their Chaplain. These facts are too remarkable to escape the Pen of our future Historians & I confess they give such substantial evidence of our degenerating from the zeal of our forefathers, who first settled this wilderness, that those who retain any of their spirit have their fears greatly alarmed for the consequences.

The bold face is mine. What I put in bold reminds me of what the two Cornell scholars stressed in "The Godless Constitution."  Now, neither Thomas Jefferson nor Joseph Priestley were "Godless." (The same can be said of Thomas Paine.) But the authors of that book noted how the orthodox forces of "religious correctness" lamenting both God's absence in the US Constitution as well as the rise of heterodox men like Jefferson offended Providence and insulted the real "Christian" heritage of the planting period.

Christian Nationalists like David Barton on the other hand claim virtually all of America's Founders were "Christians" with a bare number of "Deists" here and there and that there was no "disconnect" between the political theology of America's colonial Planting and its Founding from 1776-1800 or so.

As the theory Barton rejects as "revisionist" goes, the colonial Planting involved orthodox covenants, done under the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings and British colonial law. The Founding broke with such, not only with Divine Right of Kings and British colonial law, but the notion that governments should covenant with orthodox Trinitarian theology. Instead, we got a Godless Constitution and Article VI's "No Religious Test" Clause.

Rather, Barton claims it was liberal "revisionist" historians of the modern era who made up this understanding.

Boudinot in the above quotation seems to not only observe the disconnect, but also predicts how those future historians (Barton's "liberal revisionists") will have "substantial evidence" on their side regarding the difference between the Planting and the Founding.

Boudinot: Joseph Priestley got 27 House Votes to be a Chaplain

Learn something new every day. On social media Bill Fortenberry challenged John Fea about a quotation in his article that had Elias Boudinot lamenting that during the 1796 election, Pennsylvania saw 13 out of 15 votes cast for "open & professed Deists" Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.

[Update as it turns out, I misread the conversation. Bill Fortenberry wanted John Fea to cite his sources. Fortenberry uncovered the letter with the "professed Deists" quotation.]

An additional piece of information I had not known about was the House of Representatives in Congress at the time gave 27 votes to Joseph Priestley to be their Chaplain. I wonder how many votes in total there were then? You can read the letter here.

We know there were a handful of "key Founders" who offer smoking gun quotations or other evidence that suggests they weren't "orthodox Trinitarian Christians." And there are another handful who like Boudinot have quotations and so on suggesting they were orthodox (ironically, the candidate the "orthodox" forces of religious correctness supported in 1796 turned out to be a flaming unitarian himself).

It's a non-sequitur to conclude, as some have, that except for a small handful of "Deists" (or people like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, whatever we call them), virtually all the rest were devout orthodox Trinitarian Christians.

No, rather, just about all of them, including Jefferson and Franklin, were in some way connected to churches that had an orthodox Trinitarian creed. But you could be a member of or in some way connected to such a church without believing in its official doctrines. Indeed, reformations happen and churches change. Some of the heterodox members might have distanced themselves from their orthodox Church because they didn't appreciate the orthodoxy. Others, on the other hand, may have stayed close to their church and tried to change it in the unitarian and/or universalist direction.

Hutson on Stewart

James H. Hutson on Matthew Stewart's book at Claremont Review of Books here. A taste:

How does Stewart go about proving this remarkable thesis? To show that Locke was an atheist, coached in the dark side by Spinoza, Stewart relies on an unpublished manuscript, “Apple and Worm,” sent to Stewart by an admirer in the Netherlands. There is a leaven of Gnosticism here as Stewart relies on secret wisdom conveyed by a secret text—a kind of Gospel of Thomas or a Second Treatise to the Great Seth. For scholars, such a secret document cannot, of course, have any credibility; they must rely on such evidence as Stewart publicly offers to prove a connection between Locke and Spinoza. Some of it is of the following variety: Locke lived in Amsterdam a few years after Spinoza’s death; or sentiments from Spinoza’s writings appear to agree with sentiments found at various places in Locke’s works, e.g., that the ancient Hebrews ascribed ordinary events to the intervention of God, that rebellion against tyrants was a natural right, and that the rule of law was necessary for the public good. Stewart then assumes that this limited commonality of ideas proves that Locke subscribed to all of Spinoza’s sentiments, including his religious ones.


[...]

There is a rich literature offering a variety of interpretations of Locke and different assessments of his relation to the American Founding. Stewart’s book has not benefited from it. He appears to believe that every mainstream scholar is a fraud. His favorite expression is “the common view gets the actual history of ideas almost exactly backwards” or “the common view” about the Enlightenment “amounts to a falsification of the history of ideas.” Page after page contains explanations of the folly of the “common view” or the “common conception.” Here, again, we encounter a whiff of Gnosticism which, according to Tobias Churton, holds that the received view conceals the truth and that a text has an “outer sense” for “ordinary” people and an “inner sense whose dimensions of meaning may be endless.” This attitude seems to have contributed to Stewart’s creation of a parallel universe in which atheists hijacked the American Revolution and “the contradictory impulses” of American religion today “belatedly converged along the path that begins with Spinoza and Jefferson.”

Fea: "Still Misleading America About Thomas Jefferson"

John Fea takes down David Barton here. A taste:

But no one drew the ire of the founders of the ABS more than Thomas Jefferson. When the primary author of the Declaration of Independence defeated John Adams in the presidential election of 1800 his followers described the victory as a natural extension of the American Revolution. The tyranny of the Federalist Party (of whom Boudinot, Jay, and most of the ABS founders were members) was over. The Federalist attempt at using Christianity as a means of keeping moral order in the country would now give way to a new age of liberty and religious skepticism.

Jefferson embodied everything that the ABS opposed. He rejected traditional Christian beliefs such as the deity of Christ and his resurrection from the dead. He did not believe that the Bible was inspired by God. He despised Calvinists of both the Congregational and Presbyterian variety. He supported the French Revolution, an uprising associated in the Federalist mind with atheism and the destruction of organized religion. He opposed established Christianity and called for the separation of church and state. And he believed that Christians were on the wrong side of history. As Jefferson famously wrote to his friend Dr. Thomas Cooper in 1822, “Unitarianism…will, ere long, be the religion of the majority from north to south, I have no doubt.”

Update: Raw Story picked up Fea's article.

Why Does Satan Have the Best Music?

I just noticed Peter Lillback wrote a song about George Washington & Christianity embedded below:


Compare that to Michael Newdow's tune on GW & SHMG. Sorry but Newdow's is better. Much better.

Paul Boller, RIP

He died in 2014. Blog brother Ray Soller tipped me off to this. I wrote Boller a note about Peter Lillback and Boller replied. If I can find the letter I might post the image.

Boller wrote a book which became the standard bearer on George Washington and religion that argued GW was *some* kind of Deist. The book doesn't argue GW was a Deist of the absentee landlord type. But perhaps Boller's book does deserve some blame for later scholars who mistakenly conclude GW was.

Lillback's book, self published (nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it was badly in need of an editor) attacks Boller in a mean spirited tone. Lillback's book is not without its virtues. It really does make a great reference for George Washington's quotations. And it does "step up" the game in terms of meticulously examining the scholarly record.

I was surprised by the polemical tone of Lillback's book because when I have seen him speak via video clips he comes across as a kind and gentle man with a very civil tone.

And I suppose, fighting fire with fire, I adopted the same harsh tone in my criticisms of Lillback.

I didn't want and do not want people to think Lillback's over 1000 page book gets the last word or demolishes Boller. He claims to have demolished the thesis that Washington was a "Deist." And if we define Deism as absentee landlord deity-ism, a creed that is bitterly dismissive of all revealed religions, then Lillback did indeed do this.

However, Lillback and those of his worldview have high standards for what it means to be a "Christian." This is why Lillback was desperate to prove GW an "orthodox Trinitarian Christian."

That's where he shoots too far. We might term GW a "theistic rationalist," a "Christian-Deist." Or perhaps a "Christian" in the very ecumenical, latitudinarian wing of the Anglican Church which downplays doctrine and really doesn't care too much about notions like the Trinity.

Jesus' Role in Christian-Deism

As Dr. Joseph Waligore has pointed out, there were three notable figures from England who called themselves "Christian Deists": 1. Thomas Morgan; 2. Thomas Amory; and 3. Matthew Tindal.

They disregarded orthodox doctrines like the Trinity and the Atonement but still saw a special place for Jesus as Messiah.

We argue over which terms are proper. Sometimes it makes sense to attach a term to a movement that the thinkers did not use. For instance, the early "Thomists" or "Calvinistis" probably didn't use those terms to describe themselves (though such terms are entirely apt). However, the above three thinkers did accepted the label of "Christian-Deist."

Others, however with parallel views might not have self consciously understood themselves as "Christian-Deists"; but it still might make sense to attach such label to them. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, considered himself a "Christian" and a "Unitarian." He, like Franklin, tended to qualify his preferred version of "Christianity" with the adjective "rational" ("rational Christianity").

Jefferson did not, I don't think, consider himself a "Deist" and the only time of which I am aware he used that term, what he meant by it was the belief in one God. Hence Jefferson called the Old Testament Jews "Deists" because they believed in one God.

But in terms of openness to the supernatural doctrines of traditional Christianity (i.e., miracles) Jefferson was arguably less of a "Christian" than Morgan, Amory or Tindal were. Still, the label "Christian-Deist" may "fit" with Jefferson. (Or maybe Jefferson wasn't "Christian" enough, even though he understood himself to be one.)

The question then for whether it's appropriate to label the "key Founders" to be "Christian-Deists" is whether their beliefs mesh with the "Christian-Deism" as articulated by the above three: Morgan, Amory and Tindal.

With Ben Franklin, if we take what he detailed in the Samuel Hemphill affair as reflecting his personal creed, I think the answer is yes.

How this relates to Jesus. The "Christian-Deists" saw Jesus as Messiah, but in an unorthodox way. They were probably influenced by John Locke in this regard. As I understand it they didn't worry about the Trinity or other orthodox doctrines. Rather, they understood there is a natural law determinable by reason. And some brilliant philosophers (Aristotle?) can get the results without Jesus, but with much intricate intellectual work.

In fact Franklin explicitly notes in A Defense of Mr. Hemphill's Observations that before the coming of Jesus, "many would be able to save themselves by a good Use of their Reason and the Light of Nature."

I guess this depends on what it means by "many." That is, because man's reason is flawed such that your average Joe Sixpack can't properly understand Aristotle and hence, many also won't be able to save themselves by trying to live according to such principles.

Jesus perfectly lived out and captured these principles in such a way that ordinary people could understand and follow. This is what the Christian-Deist concept of Christianity republishing the law of nature refers to. In fact, John Locke has a line about Jesus' teachings being so clear that "ignorant fisherman" could follow them. So Jesus saves by perfecting and modeling virtue and teaching it in such a way that everyone could follow and hence yields a net increase in moral practice.

Berean Research on David Barton

See the proper hardcore Protestant evangelical fundamentalist view of David Barton's research and the American Founding here. A taste:

Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) announced that David Barton has been given his own TV show which first aired January 8. ...

Well this is interesting.  Glenn Beck will be a guest on the show?  Beck’s a member in good standing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Um…Mormons reject the Trinity, as in the T in TBN. Do Jan & Sons not know that Mormons contend they’re the true remnant of the Christian church — the one true church?

Since Mormonism denies central doctrines of the faith it’s not Christian by any stretch.  In fact, Mormonism is considered a theological cult or a sect.  Don’t be fooled by the rumor that has been circulating for several years, fueled by David Barton, that Glenn Beck is a Christian and that he’s saved.  If this is true, then why would Beck keep the news from his friends and fans?  Moreover, a truly regenerate Christian would understand that he must cut all ties with the LDS Church and join a church where the true gospel of Christ is preached.

But Glenn Beck hasn’t cut ties with his church.  Instead he promotes Mormonism.

Yes that which believes Mormonism is "not Christian by any stretch" should also see the political theology of the American Founding as "not Christian by any stretch."

James Pitt on the Christian Deist view of Justification

Dr. Joseph Waligore's article convinced me that the English Christian-Deist James Pitt is the likely source of theological inspiration for Ben Franklin in his dealings with the Samuel Hemphill affair.

In those writings Franklin rejects among others, the orthodox Protestant doctrine of Sola Fide, that men are justified through faith alone. As Franklin wrote:

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.

Other writings of Franklin indicate he didn't like perhaps Thomas Jefferson did, believe in a "works alone" scheme of justification. But rather, simply Franklin rejected "faith alone." The conclusion is Franklin believed in some mysterious combination of faith and works, or perhaps, faith, grace and works, for salvation.

James Pitt wrote something strikingly similar. From Dr. Waligore's paper:

Pitt agreed that many biblical passages emphasized faith, but he disagreed with the traditional Protestant doctrine that people were justified by faith alone. Instead, Pitt reinterpreted these passages to say that faith was always related to virtue. To Pitt, faith meant “Faith of a moral nature; not a Sett [sic] of speculative Opinions; not Faith absolutely considered in itself; but Faith as it relates to Virtue.” He explained that true faith was a belief that God had ordered the universe so that morally good people would be rewarded in the next life. Pitt thought Christ came to teach this belief, and so he wrote, “This Faith in Jesus Christ, as the Messiah, or Sent of God, is a supernatural Means of believing in God, or acknowledging the Truth of this practical Proposition, That God will finally make Good Men happy.”64

Everything about what Franklin wrote relating to the Hemphill affair saw not just "faith" but "faith in Jesus Christ" as a means as opposed to an end.  Though faith in Jesus was the best means out of all of them.

James Pitt, Christian Deist

One of the English Deists featured in Dr. Joseph Waligore's article is James Pitt. He is noted as a possible influence on Ben Franklin's Christian Deism. Franklin was familiar with and published some of Pitt's work.

Quoting Pitt on the Trinity:

All those Controversies which have been so hotly agitated at the Expence of the Peace, and Blood of the Christian World, about the Person of Jesus Christ, concerning the Trinity, and a Thousand other Things, make us neither wiser nor better. We may embrace one Scheme, or t’other, or neither, as Evidence appears to us, and be equally good Christians, and faithful Subjects of the Kingdom of God.54

This mirrors Franklin's utter indifference towards that doctrine in his end of life letter to Ezra Stiles.

Later in the 19th Century, when such "heresy" could be preached openly in America with less controversy, we see the capital U Unitarians echoing such sentiments (while giving the spiritual credit to Unitarianism).

As James Freeman Clarke put it in 1838:

We are almost born Calvinists, Catholics, Swedenborgians, Universalists; for, as a man's nature is, so are his views of God and man, and thence, of religion; his nature develops, is modified, is changed, born again, and his elements of faith change likewise. If you would fix his faith, then, affect his spirit. And if you believe Unitarianism to be the truth, rest assured that the Catholic, and the Baptist, and the Presbyterian, and the Deist, while they are preaching in a Christian spirit, and aiding to spread that spirit, — are preaching Unitarianism. ...