Waligore on Washington, Providence & Prayer

And how it relates to Deism.

Joseph Waligore sent over another excerpt from his forthcoming book on Deism that relates to George Washington's belief in a Providential God. I am going to publish it in two posts. The first is below.
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On the morning of March 5, 1776, George Washington was with the troops of the American army in Boston, encouraging them to fight bravely if the British attacked. So far in their war for independence, the Americans had yet to win a significant victory. Things were looking bleak, and it was a major defeat for the Americans that the British troops were in control of Boston, the center of resistance to British rule and one of the most important cities in America. However, the previous night the Americans had managed to secretly drag cannons up Dorchester Heights, a bluff of land that was within cannon range of the British troops. The British either had to dislodge the Americans from Dorchester Heights or evacuate Boston. Otherwise, the Americans would just rain cannonballs on the British troops. Furthermore, the British attack had to happen immediately since the longer the Americans were on the hill, the better they could fortify their position and resist any assault. The British general ordered the troops to immediately attack, but a wind and snow storm arose, which was so violent, the British troops were unable to move. By the time the storm was over, the Americans had so fortified their position, the British called off their assault and chose to evacuate Boston instead. George Washington claimed it was God who had caused the storm and helped the Americans win their first major victory of the war. He claimed that the storm that prevented the British attack “must be ascribed to the interposition of that Providence, which has manifestly appeared in our behalf through the whole of this important struggle.” He then said, “May that Being, who is powerful to save, and in whose hands is the fate of nations, look down with an eye of tender pity and compassion upon the whole of the United Colonies; may he continue to smile upon their counsels and arms, and crown them with success, whilst employed in the cause of virtue and mankind.”1

Unlike the religious beliefs of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, Washington wrote extremely little about his religious beliefs. Those who think he should be considered a Christian, often focus on two major pieces of evidence. One, he believed God miraculously helped the Americans during their war for independence. Two, he often prayed, and particularly he often prayed for God’s help in worldly events. When it is assumed deists had a distant and withdrawn God who never intervened in the world, then these two points are good evidence that Washington was not a deist, or not exclusively a deist. However, when one gets a better historical understanding of deism, these two points tell us nothing at all about whether Washington was a Christian or a deist.

Providence and the deists of the French Revolution

As shown by Washington’s statement that the Boston storm was an act of God, he believed God intervened to help the Americans win the Revolutionary War. Because many scholars define a deist as a person who believed in a distant, inactive deity, the scholars then assert that Washington could not have been a deist. For example, Vincent Phillip Munoz declared that “Washington’s belief in divine providence means, by definition, that he could not be labeled a deist.”2 A number of scholars go even further and claim that when Washington was mentioning the interposition of Providence, he must have been referring to the Christian God because only the Christian God helps people in a providential way. So Kristo Miettinen declared, "’Providence’ is not some squishy generic God-term. . . . Deists, to the extent that they invoked God as Providence, were making an explicitly Christian theological claim.”3

While the English deists believed in an active God who cared about people, they did not mention God helping countries fighting for their liberty. This, however, was most likely due to historical circumstances: the English deists were writing at a time when England was generally secure from foreign invasion, and none of them were worried about their freedom. Thus we should not make any claims about the deist God being unconcerned with helping countries based on the English deists. We should instead look at the large number of French deists who were fighting both internal oppressors and foreign invaders during the French Revolution. These French deists continually claimed God miraculously helped their revolution survive, and unlike the American deists, almost all of these French deists despised Christianity, equating it with pure superstition. Thus anything the French deists claimed about God, they were referring purely to the deist God.

I have been arguing throughout this book that the deist God was more completely good and fair than the Christian deity. It is not clear that there is any necessary link between a good deity and one who helps nations become free. Nevertheless, if a good deity is one that helps downtrodden countries fight for their liberty, the deists believed in that kind of deity also.

In 1789, the French Revolution began when the Bastille prison was stormed and its prisoners were released. As the Revolution progressed, one of the most important questions was whether the king, Louis XVI, should be deposed, or whether the country should try to forge a constitutional monarchy like England. This question was especially troubling as the other European monarchs, led by the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, threatened to invade France if they mistreated the king or the royal family. The other monarchs saw the mistreatment of the French king as a matter of concern to all the monarchs. The French soon imprisoned the king and his queen, Marie Antoinette. This caused the monarchs of Europe to unite, and the French were soon at war with Prussia, Spain, Naples, Netherlands, Portugal, Britain, and the Holy Roman Empire. The situation for the French Revolution was dire at first as many people inside France, especially the Catholics, were against the Revolution, and the French army was so disheartened that in one of the early battles, the French soldiers all fled.

Many of the prominent leaders of the French Revolution, including Jean-Paul Marat, Camille Desmoulins, Maximilien Robespierre, and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, were deists. Considering the rest of Europe was attacking France, and the French themselves were divided over the Revolution, the French situation in the early 1790s was similar to the American situation at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Just as Washington thought God helped the Americans in their fight for liberty, so too did the French deists think God’s Providence helped the French in their struggle for liberty.

The best-known example of a French deist claiming God providentially helped the French Revolution came from Maximilien Robespierre, the most prominent of the radical revolutionary leaders. Robespierre claimed God had purposively killed the leader of the countries that were attacking France, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Despite being a healthy man in his forties, Leopold suddenly and mysteriously died at the beginning of March in 1792. His death was a great blow to the anti-French forces, and Robespierre claimed God killed Leopold in order to help the French defeat the foreign powers who were attacking France. A short while after Leopold’s death, Robespierre spoke to the Jacobin club, the most radical faction of revolutionary leaders. Robespierre declared that France had been menaced by foreign armies organized by Leopold II, as well as civil war, and traitors in the army. At this time of deep trouble, he claimed that “Providence, which always watches over us much better than our own wisdom, by striking Leopold dead, disrupted for some time our enemy’s projects.” Then another revolutionary leader, Marguerite-Élie Guadet, interrupted Robespierre. Gaudet said that “I do not see any sense in this idea” of providence. He claimed that the French did not fight “for three years to rid ourselves of the slavery of despotism, to afterwards put ourselves under the slavery of superstition.” After Gaudet spoke, a commotion broke out in the hall, with some people murmuring and some applauding. Robespierre could have replied that he was just speaking rhetorically, and he did not really believe in Providence. Instead, he repeated his claim saying that “the eternal Being influences essentially the destiny of all nations, and he appears to me to watch in a particularly singular manner over the French Revolution.” Finally, he declared that the belief in God’s providential care “is a heartfelt belief, it is a feeling with which I cannot dispense.”4

Robespierre was far from the only French deist who thought Providence had a part in the death of Leopold II of Austria. Another prominent leader of the radical revolutionary faction, Georges Auguste Couthon, agreed. Couthon said of Leopold’s death that “Providence, who always has greatly served the revolution, has killed Leopold, one of our most cruel enemies.” Couthon often talked about Providence helping the French Revolution, but the event that Couthon thought most showed God’s miraculous Providence was the attempted assassination in May of 1794 of the revolutionary leaders Robespierre and Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois. Couthon wrote that the assassination failed even though the assassin had planned it well, because “in truth there was a miracle.” Couthon then went on to describe the event in detail. First, the assassin presented himself at Robespierre’s home, “but Heaven wished that he not be admitted.” Then the assassin went to the door Robespierre always entered and left his home. Couthon claimed, in a passage he did not explain, that “Robespierre’s custodian spirit (génie conservateur) made him take a different route that day.” When he could not kill Robespierre, the assassin went to Collot’s home. This time the assassin was able to find Collot and get very close to him. The assassin tried to shoot Collot once, but the pistol did not go off. The assassin fired a second time and, even though he was standing right next to Collot, the assassin missed him. Couthon finished by writing, “I wish to say again that it is by a miracle that Robespierre and Collot escaped. When one is guarded by Providence and the virtue of the people, one is well-guarded . . . it is the supreme Being who guards us.”5 It was not just Couthon who thought God was personally protecting Robespierre. Another French revolutionary leader, Louis Legendre, asserted that the assassin tried to kill Robespierre, “but the God of nature did not suffer that the crime was successful.”6

Robespierre, Couthon, and Legendre were major political leaders during the Revolution, and one can always wonder about the sincerity of political leaders talking of God helping their cause. But a large number of French deists who were not political leaders made the same claim about God helping the Revolution. For example, Jean-Baptiste Febvé was an obscure official in the criminal bureau of the department of Meurthe. In 1794, in the city of Nancy, Febve gave a long speech honoring God for all the help God had recently given the French. He declared, that the only way to explain all the miracles of the French Revolution was “the power of divine Providence. . . . The projects of the enemies of liberty were always confounded, their criminal maneuvers discovered, their plots always destroyed. . . . The most formidable powers of Europe were allied against France, and France was victorious… doesn’t this show well enough the existence of a Supreme Being who protects the French nation?” Another example is a speech in 1797 given by Louis Dubroca, a former Catholic priest who had become a prominent deist leader. In this speech, which was read to many deists gathered throughout France to worship God, Dubroca proclaimed that it was all due to God’s help that France had won the war. He declared,

Oh God . . .we love to proclaim that it was you who guided in combat the invincible battalions of our troops, who roused the heroic fighters, and who aided their generous devotion by victory. They fought for their fatherland, for their liberty, how could you, God powerful and good, not sustain a cause so beautiful? … when you have crowned a peace which fulfills our wishes, who is able to doubt your Providence did not itself preside over the new destiny of France, that the republic is not your work?7

Dubroca proclaimed that no one could doubt that God guided the French troops in battle and presided over the establishment of the French Republic.

  

Deists are commonly seen as so emphasizing natural laws, that they believed that God never broke these natural laws. I have argued throughout this book that the English and American deists did not fit this stereotype, and they believed in miracles and other forms of divine intervention. The French Revolutionary deists were so far from fitting this stereotype that they saw God and nature as their allies helping them defeat their enemies. For example, when bad weather shipwrecked some English warships on the French coast, Georges Auguste Couthon wrote, “it is evidently Providence which produces these miracles.” In her book on the way nature was pictured in the French Revolution, Mary Ashburn Miller claims it was common for the French revolutionaries to see nature itself as a “revolutionary and providential force. Nature became a space of particular providence, not just a regulating system.”8

Deists living during the French Revolution in the 1790s, who were very anti-Christian, continually claimed God was providentially helping them by defeating the plans of their enemies. Thus there is no connection between believing in God’s providential help and being a Christian. So Washington’s belief that God miraculously intervened during the American Revolution gives no support to him being a Christian.

Frazer on Metaxas' Book on America as a "Republic"

When Eric Metaxas' book "If You Can Keep It" came out in 2016, I don't remember paying much attention to it. With Warren Throckmorton's post, the book is somewhat current again. Throckmorton's post links to among other things, Gregg Frazer's review of it. From Frazer:

Metaxas seems to make the common error of determining religious belief by denominational affiliation. He declares John Adams to have been “a committed and theologically orthodox Christian” (56). But Adams vehemently rejected the deity of Christ, the atonement, the Trinity, and eternal punishment in hell. Adams said that placing all religion “in grace, and its offspring, faith” is “anti-Christianity.” He believed the best source for “orthodox” theology was the Hindu Shastra, that philosophy was at least equivalent in authority to the Bible, and that pagans who became “virtuous” went to heaven. Adams outrageously said he wouldn’t believe in the Trinity even if God himself told him on Mt. Sinai that it was true.

Having decided that Plymouth was the first colony, Metaxas (like many on the Christian Right) proceeds as if the Pilgrims and Puritans founded America rather than simply Massachusetts (189). It’s worth mentioning that roughly 150 years passed between Plymouth and the founding of the United States. He proceeds as if John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” pronouncement was meant for—and applies to—all of America for all time and not simply to the colony the Puritans were establishing in pursuit of God’s will (234). It’s important to note that seven of the twelve other colonies were not founded for religious reasons. As for the success of Winthrop’s “city on a hill” vision, Metaxas claims the Puritans’ “distinctly biblical model carried on beyond the Massachusetts Bay Colony and into the United States of America (215).” In fact, before the 17th century ended, the descendants of the original Puritan settlers were heavily engaged in the slave trade and making rum. Similarly, because he approves of its guarantee of religious freedom, Metaxas claims that the charter of Rhode Island speaks for all of America (72). This is particularly ironic since the Rhode Island colony was founded by castoffs seeking the religious freedom denied them by the Puritans.

Waligore on the Kinds of Deism that Influenced Ben Franklin, Part III

By Dr. Joseph Waligore. See Below:

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The Pythagorean influence on Franklin  

Franklin never wrote about his relationship to Dr. Lyons, but there is no doubt that Franklin was influenced by the Pythagoreans just like Dr. Lyons was. The only question is how deep the Pythagorean influence was.

About a year after he befriended Lyons, Franklin went back to Philadelphia. There he soon embarked on a project to systematically develop more virtuous habits in his life. In this endeavor, he daily examined himself concerning personal virtues he wished to develop. The thirteen virtues he focused on included temperance, frugality, moderation, and humility. He spent a day on each virtue, keeping a careful ledger of whether he had succeeded that day in practicing that particular virtue. There is no doubt that Franklin was influenced by the Pythagoreans in starting this project because he explicitly declared in his autobiography that he was encouraged to start this project by reading a celebrated Pythagorean text, The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. The Pythagoreans, along with other ancient philosophers they influenced, had long emphasized the importance of self-examination if a person wanted to become more focused on divine matters, and this tradition was emphasized in The Golden Verses. In his autobiography, right before discussing his daily efforts to examine himself about the virtues, Franklin asserted, “Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary, I contrived the following method for conducting that examination.”11 In a manuscript note to his autobiography, Franklin even stated that the appropriate part of Golden Verses should be added to his autobiography, although this did not happen. In 1758, though, Franklin published a an essay “A Letter from Father Abraham to His Beloved Son.” In this essay he again stated that the idea of a “daily strict Self-Examination” was very ancient as it was “recommended by Pythagoras, in his truly Golden Verses, and practiced since in every Age, with Success, by Men of all Religions.” He then included the parts of the Golden Verses that inspired him to start his program of daily examination. 12 

 After Franklin started his project of developing the virtues, the next major statement of his religious beliefs was entitled “Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion.” In this piece, Franklin asserted that a supreme God existed, but he was so infinitely above people that he desired neither their worship nor their praise, nor was he concerned with their fate. This supreme and distant deity then created many lesser deities, and each of these lesser deities created their own solar system. Franklin declared that these intermediary deities created us and cared for us and so they were worthy of our prayers and praise.13 

Scholars have had a difficult time understanding this statement of Franklin’s religious beliefs. The most popular explanation is given by Kerry Walters, who sees it as an attempt of Franklin to reconcile the distant God of deism with the caring God of his youth.14 The trouble with this explanation is that none of the English deists believed in a distant, uncaring deity. Indeed, as the earlier parts of this chapter have shown, six of the deists Franklin read believed God or angels still directly communicated with people or gave them guidance. Matthew Stewart, in his book on the secular ideas of the Founding Fathers, categorizes Franklin as an Epicurean.15 Epicurus was one of the most secular of the ancient philosophers: he believed there were gods, but these gods never involved themselves in human affairs at all. This description fits Franklin’s supreme God, but his intermediary deities are very different from Epicurean deities as they care about humans and help them. So Franklin was not a follower of Epicurus. 

Scholars like Walters and Stewart, because they are unaware of the spirituality the English deists, miss a much better explanation for the religious ideas found in Franklin’s “Articles of Beliefs”: the considerable similarity of Franklin’s theology to the Neoplatonists, a philosophical school in late antiquity that merged the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato. As the classical scholar John Burnet noted, “The Neoplatonists were quite justified in regarding themselves as the spiritual heirs of Pythagoras; and, in their hands, philosophy ceased to exist as such, and became theology.”16 The Neoplatonic philosophers stressed the supreme God’s transcendence and remoteness from the material world and human concerns, just like Franklin’s supreme God. At the same time, they (especially Iamblichus, one of the most prominent Neoplatonists) also stressed that there were many intermediary deities between the supreme God and humans. The Neoplatonists thought these deities cared for humans and we should worship them.17 Franklin never shared why in 1728 he believed in intermediary deities, so we can never really know his reasons, but the theology of his “Articles of Belief” was a Pythagorean-Neoplatonic theology, and not an Epicurean one. 

Another belief Franklin had that was associated with the Pythagoreans was his belief that some dreams revealed the future to him. When he was serving as America’s ambassador to France during the Revolutionary War, Franklin often had long discussions with many intellectuals. One intellectual he often talked with was the French philosopher Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis. In his memoirs, Cabanis recounted a conversation in which Franklin asserted that he had dreams which accurately revealed to him the future. As the scholar Alfred Owen Aldridge reported, Cabanis wrote that “Franklin believed he had more than once received a revelation in his dreams of the outcome of his affairs and despite his otherwise strong mind devoid of his prejudice, he could not give up faith in these inner voices.”18 We have no idea when Franklin adopted his belief in prescient dreams or who, if anyone, influenced him to believe in them. But Dr. Lyons and other Pythagoreans emphasized the importance of these types of dreams. 

One of the key beliefs of the Pythagoreans was reincarnation. There is no clear evidence Franklin believed in it, but there is some evidence he might have. As a young man in 1728, Franklin had composed his own mock epitaph which read: 

The Body of B. Franklin, Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended By the Author. 

It is not clear what Franklin means in this epitath. The first part obviously means the worms will eat his body. But it is not clear what he means when he writes that “the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended By the Author.” He could mean that God will give him a more pure body in heaven. Or it could mean that after learning lessons in this life, he will reincarnate somewhere else in a better edition of himself. We cannot know what he meant, but there were at least nine other deists who believed in reincarnation. Besides Thomas Tryon, the English deists John Holwell and Soame Jenyns believed in it, with Jenyns emphasizing that reincarnation was the only way to reconcile God’s goodness with people’s earthly suffering. Other deists who believed in reincarnation were the Scottish deist Lord Monboddo, the French deist Pierre Dupont, the Dutch deist Isaac Titsingh, and the German deists Theodor Ludwig Lau and George Schade.19 While those deists are relatively obscure, there is one famous deist who believed in reincarnation: the German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Lessing stated a belief in reincarnation in several of his works and often discussed his previous lifetimes with his brother. We cannot know if Franklin was referring to reincarnation with this epitath, but there were at least nine other deists who believed in it. 

A final matter showing the possible influence of the Pythagoreans on Franklin was his vegetarianism. It was standard practice in the eighteenth century to refer to a vegetarian as a Pythagorean as the Pythagoreans were the most prominent advocates of that kind of diet. It is well-known that Benjamin Franklin occasionally practiced vegetarianism. In his autobiography, he portrayed his vegetarianism as purely a practical way to save money and time. It might be that simple, but a number of scholars have contended that Franklin was a master of masking his true beliefs behind a façade. So in his writings, Franklin often created pseudonymous personas such as Silence Dogood and presented his beliefs through these characters. This style of writing allowed Franklin to present his beliefs in a form his readers were more comfortable with. It is also likely that in his autobiography and letters he was not presenting a straight-forward statement of his true past or of his real beliefs. Some scholars, most especially Jerry Weinberger, who titled his book Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, argue that Franklin was hiding behind the mask or persona of a gentle tolerant deist, while he actually held much more skeptical or radical beliefs including not believing in God at all.20 But skeptics or atheists afraid of persecution or social ostracism were not the only people to hide their true beliefs: the Pythagoreans also believed that the spiritual elite should hide their spiritual truths from the common herd. So in making light of his vegetarianism, Franklin could have been masking his Pythagoreans beliefs. 

We know that Franklin was influenced by the Pythagoreans because he stated that he started one of his most celebrated projects, the endeavor to develop the virtues, because he read a Pythagorean text. His first statement of his religious beliefs, the “Articles of Belief,” also advocated a Pythagorean cosmology. Furthermore, like the Pythagoreans he believed in prescient dreams and occasionally practiced vegetarianism, and he might have believed in reincarnation. In his concern for the ancient Greek spiritual tradition, Franklin is like many other English deists that he read when he was a teenager.

Waligore on the Kinds of Deism that Influenced Ben Franklin, Part II

By Joseph Waligore. See below:

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Three deists who believed angels still communicated with people 

Franklin’s first taste of the English deists came through reading Thomas Tryon, who was well-known in both England and America for advocating vegetarianism. While often depicted as a mere health-food advocate, he was also a deist. His book Knowledge of a Man’s Self the Surest Guide to the True Worship of God included a long chapter entitled “Of True and Universal Religion.” Here Tryon expressed the typical deist position that there was one universal religion which taught that God was completely good, and God only wanted people to love him and be virtuous. Tryon believed that every human being who had ever lived was aware of this religion, but, over time, priests and ministers had convinced and coerced people into performing meaningless ceremonies and believing mysterious doctrines.2

Tryon was a follower of Pythagoras, the early Greek philosopher. Pythagoras was passionate about mathematics, and was reputed to have discovered the Pythagorean theorem about the length of the sides of a triangle which had a right angle in it. He also believed that everything was ultimately composed of numbers, although what this meant to him we do not currently understand. While he was very intellectually oriented, he established an ascetic, religious community where people ate vegetarian food. The people in this community were noted in antiquity for never sharing their spiritual secrets with the common people. Later Pythagoreans emphasized that angelic-like beings communicated with people during their dreams. Tryon was like the Pythagoreans, not only in his emphasis on vegetarianism as an ascetic practice, but also in his belief that angelic beings still directly communicated with people. Tryon believed that the real reason Christians thought divine communications had ceased after biblical times was because people were no longer practicing true Christianity. He identified true Christianity with a mystical kind of Christianity which he believed was compatible with his Pythagoreanism. He thought it was reasonable to believe divine communications and visions have actually increased in later, post-biblical times since the good spirits were inflamed with the same zeal for spreading the glory of God now as formerly, and people still needed it. For this reason, he asked, “why then should we think all intercourse cut off between us and these blessed spirits have ceased?”

In his book Pythagoras His Mystick [sic] Philosophy Reviv’d; or, the Mystery of Dreams Unfolded, Tryon gave very explicit instructions on how people could prepare themselves to receive angelic communications in their dreams. To attract the attention of good angels, people first needed to purify their bodies by avoiding tobacco, drugs, alcohol, and meat. Then they need to divest themself of all worldly cares and focus their attention on godly matters. Such preparation opened the way for divinely inspired dreams. In these dreams, good spirits warned people of impending dangers and reveal spiritual secrets. Tryon stressed the importance of discretion if such angelic communications occurred. “Above all things,” he insisted, one should not tell the common multitude about their angelic visitations “for nothing drives away, and offend [sic] the divine Powers & good Angel Guardians more then [sic] to publish mysteries to the profane multitude.”3 In his emphasis on vegetarianism, asceticism, angelic communications, and not sharing their secrets with the common people, Tryon was following the ancient Pythagorean tradition.

In 1724, when he was eighteen, Franklin traveled to London and got a job at a printing shop. There he helped set the type for the William Wollaston’s deist book The Religion of Nature Delineated. In this book, Wollaston, like Tryon, emphasized that divine beings directly communicated with people by placing ideas and suggestions into people’s minds. Wollaston contended that God or the angels influenced us “by means of secret and sometimes sudden influences on our minds,” or by “suggestion, and impulse, or other silent communications of some spiritual being.” He said these direct influences caused a person to want to avoid a street where a building was about to fall or where a dangerous enemy was lying in wait for him. Through such divine communications, God or the angels care for us without altering any laws of nature. Wollaston thought these influences happened “so frequently” that anyone who closely observed his thoughts and actions could observe them. He also thought that these divine influences had important consequences in world history: he cryptically suggested that God planted the idea into Hannibal’s mind to never directly attack Rome, and thus Hannibal lost his chance to destroy Rome.4

After setting print Wollaston’s book, the young Franklin encountered Dr. Lyons, who in 1721 wrote the book The Infallibility of Human Judgment. While current scholars of English deism never list him among the English deists, eighteenth-century Germans considered him a noteworthy English deist.5 Moreover, eighteenth-century French thinkers considered his book such an articulate exposition of deist ideas that it was clandestinely circulated in manuscript form in France.6 Scholars of American deism are aware that Lyons was a deist because he befriended Franklin while Franklin was in London. These American scholars, though, have not noticed that Lyons had many religious beliefs and was particularly influenced by Pythagorean philosophy. Indeed, Lyons venerated Pythagoras, calling him “this Great Man” and “our Divine Philosopher,” and Lyons shared many Pythagorean beliefs.7

Just as Tryon thought angels communicated with people, Lyons asserted that divine beings cared for people by putting helpful guidance, commands, thoughts, and strong emotions into their minds. Lyons declared, “A judicious and curious Observation of these Things will lead a Man to the Sight of several Matters of Fact, which discover a certain secret interposing Power, which is commonly call’d Providence.” He emphasized this providence worked in two ways. One way was divine beings putting commands or thoughts into people’s minds, with Socrates being the best-known example of this phenomenon. He asserted that chance, natural consequences, and Providence are “distinguishable to the Wise; to whom the Story of Socrates’s Daemon will not seem impossible, there being suchlike real Matters to be frequently observ’d.” Providence also worked by inciting strong emotions in a person’s mind and thus helping him or her avoid danger. He declared that sometimes “there are also some sudden and strong Emotions exciting Men to Actions they can see no reason for, which appear afterwards to have been necessary for the avoiding an unknown (tho’ imminent) Danger.”8

Most significantly for discussing Franklin, Lyons believed that dreams often tell people about the future. Lyons claimed that knowledge of the future via dreams is “an evident Matter of Fact . . . against which very few are able to shut their Eyes, and which needs no Argument or Persuasion to defend or prove it.” He claimed the knowledge of what was going to happen in the future was “presented to us, sometimes by a real View of the Thing it self, or by symbolical Representations.” So he asserted that “if a Man dreamt he was cutting or killing another, this may perhaps be only an Endeavour of the Mind to explain to him, that some Person will do him an injurious Action the next Day.” Lyons did not know how prescient dreams worked, but, among other ways, he hypothesized it might work because people are “assisted by some other Daemon or Spirit.”9

The Pythagoreans strongly stressed the division between the foolish, common people who were centered on worldly things and the spiritual elite, who cared about God and divine matters. The Pythagoreans were forbidden to share their religious beliefs with the masses and instead only shared their spiritual teachings with the elite few. Lyons concurred with these views, talking of the “Fools” who were stuck in common opinions versus “the Wise” who understood the reality of divine messages. While he did not disclose significant spiritual secrets in his book, he hinted he knew of deeper spiritual knowledge. Immediately after discussing prescient dreams and divine suggestions, he asserted, “let the Curious follow these delightful Processes for themselves, which will sufficiently reward their Industry.” He claimed that if people followed the hints he was giving them, “The Temple of Knowledge is open’d, the Bars removed, and a Clue of Thread in their hand, with which they may enter the Labyrinth, and search all its secret Recesses, without confounding or losing themselves.”10

Waligore on the Kinds of Deism that Influenced Ben Franklin

Joseph Waligore has sent over a chapter of a book he is working on about English and American Deism. The chapter is about the kind of Deism that influenced Ben Franklin. I am going to publish it in three parts. Below is part one.

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The earlier chapters demonstrated the English deists, the ones who influenced the Founding Fathers before they declared their independence, believed in an active God who performed miracles. In fact, the English deists young Franklin read were so far from believing in a non-intervening deity that their deity was more active than the Protestant deity. Protestants generally believed God and the angels had directly communicated with people in biblical times from the Garden of Eden to Jesus’ time. But almost all the English Protestants in the early eighteenth century believed this communication had ceased once the Christian church had been established near the end of the first century C. E. On the other hand, classical philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurelius believed God, gods, angels, or angelic-like beings never stopped directly communicating with people and actively guiding them. This means any English deist who asserted that God or angels still communicated with people was clearing showing that he was not a stereotypical Enlightenment thinker who emphasized a cold, distant, and withdrawn deity. Instead, he was showing that he shared the Greek philosophers’ spiritual worldview or at least was deeply influenced by it. 

When Franklin was formulating his ideas about deism as a teenager, scholars know that he studied seven English deists because he mentioned reading them in his autobiography, quoted them, or encountered them in London. These seven were Anthony Collins, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Thomas Tryon, Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, William Wollaston, and Doctor Lyons. All seven of these deists were deeply knowledgeable about the Greek philosophical tradition. For example, in his most influential book, A Discourse of Free-thinking, Anthony Collins called Socrates the first free-thinker. (Free-thinker was often synonymous with deist during the eighteenth century.) Collins then listed other Greek and Roman sages as free-thinkers, and later on he worked on a project to translate Cicero, one of the most important Roman philosophers.1 The same goes for the other six deists. Of these seven English deists, six believed divine beings directly communicated with people by giving them messages to help them or guide them. Most importantly, these deists explicitly claimed divine communications were still happening nowadays, and so these deists were not influenced by their mainstream Protestant contemporaries. Three of these deists, Shaftesbury, Thomas Gordon, and John Trenchard, believed God communicated with people and this did not stop when the Protestants claimed it did. More interestingly three deists, Thomas Tryon, William Wollaston, and Dr. Lyons, believed angels or angelic-like beings still communicated with people.

Pinker: "The Enlightenment Is Working"

Steven  Pinker, writing about his new book in The Wall Street Journal, here. A taste:

The headway made around the turn of the millennium is not a fluke. It’s a continuation of a process set in motion by the Enlightenment in the late 18th century that has brought improvements in every measure of human flourishing.

Comment: Reflect on the word "progress" and "progressive." "Progressive" has come to be associated with a left political movement. But let's reflect on its literal sense. Human Progress. It's not the Left-Progressives who are behind this excellent site that validates Pinker's thesis and data.

I think someone like Peter Thiel, who isn't as optimistic as Pinker, as almost like a visionary prophet for human progress, especially as viewed through a technological lens. His thesis is that we have been stagnating since the 1970s. Yet, much of Pinker's data has shown how much better the rest of the world has become since 70s. Yes, the least well off parts of the world. And they've become better off while taking advantage of the breakthroughs of the 1st world which Thiel sees as stagnating since 1970.

Information Technology of course, is excepted. (And what a big exception it is.)

Regarding the "Enlightenment" part of the thesis, it helps to look at periods on a timeline. The way I see it, Enlightenment ended around 1800, the very year in which all of this progress started to take off. It could be what triggered the growth is that's when aliens or spirits started diffusing knowledge down to humanity. But that, alas, is not a falsifiable hypothesis, with the current level of empirical understanding we have.

So I'm assuming and concluding it was the seeds planted by the Enlightenment figures like America's Founders and their influences. Men like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, all of whom were either actual or armchair scientists and wanted to put man's focus on figuring out how material things work and how we can improve things.

As Franklin put it:

I have been long impressed with the same sentiments you so well express, of the growing felicity of mankind, from the improvements in philosophy, morals, politics, and even the conveniences of common living, and the invention and acquisition of new and useful utensils and instruments; so that I have sometimes almost wished it had been my destiny to be born two or three centuries hence. For invention and improvement are prolific, and beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. Many of great importance, now unthought of, will, before that period, be produced; and then I might not only enjoy their advantages, but have my curiosity gratified in knowing what they are to be. I see a little absurdity in what I have just written, but it is to a friend, who will wink and let it pass, while I mention one reason more for such a wish, which is, that, if the art of physic shall be improved in proportion to other arts, we may then be able to avoid diseases, and live as long as the patriarchs in Genesis; to which, I suppose, we should have little objection.

It's interesting to see how Franklin mentions wanting to live 200-300 years in the future to see how all of this unfolds. He wrote the letter in 1788. Meaning Franklin wants to see 1988-2088. In other words, right now.

Alex Knepper on Strauss & Christianity

Alex Knepper gained notoriety as a very young, bright writer a number of years back. He has since gone on to get his Master's Degree degree from St. John's College, one of the places that specializes in studying the thought of Leo Strauss, along with Strauss' followers and critics.

This is what he posted on Facebook today:

There is a criticism that the Straussian account of the history of ideas willfully denies Christianity a place at its table. Of course Strauss believes that an artful writer knows how to communicate with silence. And the relative silence of the Straussian account of the history on Christianity, of which it is hardly ignorant, surely testifies to its antagonism toward it. Insofar as there is an elusive or storytelling element to any historical account*, the storyteller can consciously arrange his presentation to suit his preferences and goals, without deceiving himself about what he is doing. Strauss, in choosing to write out certain elements of thought in history, is always silently opining on how he thinks Christianity ought to be viewed: as a great and horrible tragedy inflicted on Europe which all true philosophy has always fought to overturn. Christianity's foreground presence in the works of many philosophers -- say, Locke -- speaks merely to their historical situation and is not indicative of their true opinions. Such philosophers invoked Christian doctrine in a way that weaponizes it against itself, in a conscious attempt to undermine it for the long-term. Strauss, and Straussians perhaps, seem to believe that the time has passed in which the threat of Christian persecution is so great that it requires that kind of appeasement any longer, and we are now freed to speak of philosophers' true intentions without genuflecting to the conventions of the common people of the time. (Whether liberals in 2018 demand genuflection from true philosophers is another question.) 

h/t Jon Rowe

This is the original comment I left that led to Knepper's thought and hat tip:

Some of my interlocutors who think the Straussian history of ideas inadequate like to play this game where they demonstrate more authentically Christian sources for "good" ideas that Locke gave the Anglo-Enlightenment. They usually trace the ideas to obscure medieval Catholic thought (i.e., "the schoolmen").   

I think we can do something similar with Rousseau's egalitarianism. A lot of Whig opposition "republicans" like Harrington. Those who used biblical language for redistribution under the auspices of agrarian laws. Even the term Utopia -- an island where both wealth and poverty were abolished -- comes from Catholic Thomas Moore.

This was Alex's original comment to which I responded:

The difference between European liberalism and American liberalism can, with only a bit of exaggeration, be explained by reference to the fact that the American Founders just barely missed the emergence of Rousseau on the scene. They built a regime fundamentally grounded and fixed in the thought of John Locke and various contemporaries (eg, Montesquieu), which has since then absorbed only a refracted view of everything which has dialectically proceeded from Rousseau. Hence, for instance, the otherwise near-inexplicable fact that the thought of Herbert Spencer resonated with Americans more than that of his contemporary Marx. Certainly much so-called 'continental' philosophy and political theory remains totally elusive to Americans. 

This is not to say that Rousseau would necessarily be more pleased with Europe in 2018 than with America: Rousseau was not above playing with the fire of populism, the popular denigration of the arts and sciences, or the glorification of militarism; there is no necessary support for a larger welfare state in Rousseau, no necessary support for liberal internationalism, no necessary support for multiculturalism -- the list goes on (though we can be sure that he considered himself part of a spiritual 'elite' exempt from ordinary laws and customs) -- but merely that, as a regime built on fixed ideas, America receives the insights of Rousseau and everything proceeding from his thought, or at any rate what it represents, through a refracted lens and hence will never see eye-to-eye with 'the continent.' 

Vox: Latest Hit on David Barton

It's entitled, Understanding the fake historian behind America’s religious right. A taste:

Of course, it’s worth saying that all accounts of history — left-wing or right-wing, secular or Christian — can also be, in a sense, a form of propaganda. Any narrative of America’s foundation will, of course, be mediated by the specific biases and concerns of the teller. (Historian Fea does a great job pointing out that the secular counterpart to the Barton narrative, that all founding fathers were non-Christian, deist secularists, is also wrong).

Swedenborg Was Not a Modalist (Sabellian)

I recently received a note from a Swedenborgian minister about this post. He posted these two comments (one, two) clarifying the proper understanding. 

From the second comment:

Swedenborg was not, in fact, a modalist, despite that doctrine being sometimes attributed to him by traditional Christians. He explicitly rejected Sabellianism as a heresy, among many other heresies, in True Christianity #378. 

Though Swedenborg rejected the Nicene/Athanasian Trinity of Persons, considering it unbiblical and false, his version of the Trinity did not, as the modalist Trinity does, consider Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be various "modes" of a single God, or different ways that a single God appears to humans. Rather, Swedenborg saw Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as "essential components" (Latin: essentialia) of a single Person of God, equivalent to the soul, body, and actions of human beings--whom, according to Genesis 1:26-27, God created "in the image and likeness of God." 

For more on the difference between Swedenborg's Trinity and the modalistic (Sabellian) view, please see my article, "What is the difference between the Swedenborgian and Oneness Pentecostal doctrines of God?"

From the linked article at his site:

However, Swedenborg’s theology rejects the defining characteristic of modalist doctrine, which is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different modes of God, or three different ways that God manifests himself to humans. 

Instead, Swedenborg’s theology states that:  

1. The Father is the transcendent, unknowable soul of God, of which we can have no direct knowledge or experience at all. 

2. The Son is the human body or visible appearance of God—and, since the Incarnation, is the sole avenue by which the Father is known to human beings. 

3. The Holy Spirit is the divine truth and power flowing out from God, and in effect is the manifestation of God to human beings.

Swedenborg calls this a Trinity of “essential components” (Latin essentialia) of one God. 

These three are not different modes or manifestations to us of some underlying divine Spirit. 

In Swedenborg’s system, the Father is the underlying divine being, and is not perceivable by us at all. We finite humans are incapable of grasping or comprehending the infinite divine being of God. Only through the Son can we have any knowledge of God. And the Holy Spirit is the knowledge and power of God as it flows out from the Son, enlightening us and giving us spiritual life.

When I first read this, I wondered whether instead of understanding God as the modalists do -- three different forms or modes of one God -- Swedenborg's position was the Trinity is three different functions of one God. Three different functions not forms.

I'm not sure if that's right. Three different components is more like a Voltron like dynamic. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not, individually, fully God, but rather together are fully God. By the way, Swedenborg viewed God as one Person and Jesus Christ is that Person (that is JC IS the Father, Son AND Holy Spirit).

George Washington on Immigration

From George Washington to Joshua Holmes, 2 December 1783

To the Members of the volunteer Associations & other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland who have lately arrived in the City of New York. 

Gentlemen 

The testimony of your satisfaction at the glorious termination of the late contest, and your indulgent opinion of my Agency in it, afford me singular pleasure & merit my warmest acknowledgments. 

If the Example of the Americans successfully contending in the Cause of Freedom, can be of any use to other Nations; we shall have an additional Motive for rejoycing at so prosperous an Event. 

It was not an uninteresting consideration, to learn, that the Kingdom of Ireland, by bold & manly conduct had obtained redress of many of its greivances—and it is much to be wished, that the blessings of equal Liberty & unrestrained Commerce may yet prevail more extensively in the Mean time, you may be assured, Gentlemen, that the Hospitality & Benificence of your Countrymen, to our Brethren who have been Prisoners of War, are neither unknown, or unregarded. 

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights & previleges, if by decency & propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment. 

Go: Washington

Law & Liberty Review on Democratic Religion

The book being reviewed is "Democratic Religion from Locke to Obama," by Giorgi Areshidze. The review is by WILL MORRISEY and you can read it here. 

A taste:

Locke was not historicist. He based liberalism squarely on a doctrine of natural, not historical rights. Very astutely, Areshidze remarks that the argument for religious toleration made by Locke in his 1689 Letter on Toleration differs from his argument in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which he was writing at the same time. The Letter “bases toleration on a religious argument about the sanctity of human conscience” as each individual searches for “religious truth.” The Essay “grounds toleration on the limits of human knowledge”—on a form of skepticism. The Letter rests on an appeal to the prevailing opinion of the time, relying on Biblical exegesis; the Essay relies on reason alone. One book is “popular,” the other “philosophic.” 

Not that the Biblical exegesis Locke propounds in the Letter fully comports with the prevailing Christian orthodoxy of his time—or indeed with the teaching of the Bible itself. Mutual toleration among Christians is alleged to be “the chief characteristic of a true church,” although the New Testament attests to love, not toleration. When Locke does testify to the fact of Christian lovingkindness, he makes it serve toleration and good works. 

Crucially, in enlisting the support of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Locke accurately quotes Paul as to sins not to be tolerated by Christians—“works of the Flesh,” generally—but leaves out such Pauline sins as “seditions and heresies”—works of the mind, as it were. It was dissenters’ public declarations of such spiritual sins that persuaded Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin to enlist governments in the task of suppressing the full range of un-Christian acts; Aquinas went so far as to urge the death penalty for heretics. (Perhaps glancing back at Rawls and Obama, Areshidze describes this as a “nearly uninterrupted Christian consensus”—bad news indeed for Rawlsian liberals.) 

To this Locke replies in the Letter that coercion can never genuinely persuade, and that only a persuaded soul can enter Heaven through the strait gate. But in the Essay Locke admits that, on the contrary, beliefs are indeed formed by a mixture of coercion and consent. There, he argues not from the Bible but from what later writers would call epistemology: the Bible speaks of “knowing” God, but what is knowledge?

Ben Franklin on Alcohol

See TVD's post for the money quote. This is the article that gives more detail to Ben Franklin's position. I think the quote is more interesting than the apparently phony quotation about beer. From the article:

Indeed, in 1724, when Franklin was just 18, he worked at a printing house in London where his co-workers’ diets were mostly liquid. 

“The pressman at British printing houses thrived on a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint in the afternoon at about 6 o’clock and yet another when the day’s work was done,” Eighmey writes. 

Franklin, meanwhile, drank only water at work — his colleagues called him a “Water-American” — and was able to lift and carry twice as much type as anyone else there. 

So Franklin, in an early demonstration of the sort of supreme negotiating skills that would later help form our nation, persuaded his co-workers to drink less by arguing that the nutrition beer afforded them could be obtained by eating bread, which would make them more energetic for work.

Happy New Year.

James Stoner on Thomas West's New Book

See here. A taste:

West’s failure to distinguish political philosophy from political theory makes it too easy for him to dismiss competing interpretations of the Founders’ work and its vulnerabilities. We who teach in the field often elide the terms when we describe what we do to our colleagues in political science, on the one hand, and to those in the departments of philosophy on the other. But in speaking of the political theory of the Founding, West dodges the question of its relation to the account of natural rights and natural law in political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

He uses Locke from time to time to clarify and elaborate the Founders’ theory, as I say, but he backs away from him whenever the Founders did not agree with his conclusions. This prompts one to wonder, did the Founders pull back from logical implications they did not want to face, or did they find Locke’s theory philosophically inadequate?

West can only refute the amalgam theory—the view that the Founders drew on philosophically distinct and therefore philosophically incompatible political philosophies or fundamental traditions—if he can show that the Founders dismissed Locke for theoretical reasons, not just to avoid facing the practical consequences his principles demanded (for example, permitting divorce). The argument of Leo Strauss in the first place, and his successors such as Harvey Mansfield and Thomas Pangle, is that there are aspects of Locke’s political philosophy, not least its deep indebtedness to Hobbes’ philosophy, that lead eventually but inexorably to the materialist individualism and anomie of our current predicament—in other words, toward a crisis of liberalism—and that insofar as the Founders invited Locke into their homes and made his theoretical framework their own, they risked undermining their handiwork.

In short, if the Founding is Lockean, it is no amalgam, but it is unstable, carrying with it untoward Lockean consequences. If it is only partially Lockean, it might avoid the bad consequences, but would do so by being less pure (by being amalgamated). To be less abstract: The weakening of the family, enormous economic inequality, and maybe even eventual recourse to executive predominance arguably follow from Lockean political philosophy even if none of this is what the Founders had in mind.

See also this comment which links to how West has responded to a similar criticism. A taste, quoting West:

“In regard to the decline of our current world… our world is the way it is not because of the Founding, but something else that happened in the last two hundred and some years… if you look at the history of western countries in the 1960s, all of them went through the exact same metamorphosis, almost at the same moment. And so, countries for example like Germany and Britain, that have long had establishment of religion, official churches and all the things that the Americans didn’t do all had that exact same thing. There was immediate institution of no-fault divorce throughout the world in the 1970s in almost every country, immediate institution of barriers on employers in terms of their freedom of contract with their employees. There was a complete collapse of sexual mores throughout the Western world all at once, whether it was New Zealand, Australia, Germany, England America.

This is not due to the Founding Fathers, I can assure you of that… Nietzsche’s diagnosis of what’s wrong with us- that’s where you need to go to understand our current situation. It’s a psychological malady that is a profound indication of a deep dissatisfaction in the Western soul now that it has gotten rid of God, now that it has gotten rid of nature, and reason- it has gotten rid of all meaning in human life. It has put us exactly in the situation.. Tocqueville worried about, where we’re living in the present moment. That’s where we are, and that is not something that the Founding Fathers can be blamed for, and I also agree to some degree that is something the Founding Fathers can’t help us solve, that’s something we’re going to have to solve ourselves.”

I think it's absolutely true that this was an international phenomenon that affected Western culture in general, not just America in particular. Certain folks might operate with blinders and assume since America isn't Europe, let's look for particular American villains to blame -- Alfred Kinsey, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Abbie Hoffman, etc. -- and ignore Europe. The Straussians by the way don't do this and for good reason. They understand the ideas came from continental Europe and migrated their way to America.

I like their analysis much more than that of those who fulminate against "cultural Marxism." But at least they too understand that the "Frankfurt school" whom they blame for cultural Marxism are Europeans whose thought (as well as some of their people) came to America.

I don't think however, what's quoted above from West adequately answers the claim he tries to refute. Here's why: America was founded as a liberal democracy, arguably the first modern one. Lockean ideas began in Great Britain; but GB still was no modern liberal democracy if for no other reason than they still had a throne (monarchy) and altar (state established church), things liberal democracy were meant to if not abolish, defang.

By the 1960s all of the nations in Western Europe were, like America and France, liberal democracies. Indeed, America and France influenced them in becoming such. So yes, these nations are Lockean, because they followed America and France. Yes, many of those nations, like Great Britain still had both monarchies and state established churches as they do to this day. But they are "defanged"; they are titular. As liberal democracies, they have to be.

But before these nations became liberal democracies, those institutions were not titular. There is only one area where Western state established churches and monarchies still have power, and that's that they have money. And money is power.

Russell Moore on Kidd's Book on Franklin's Religion

Thomas Kidd's book on Ben Franklin's religion was one of Russell Moore's favorite books of 2017. Check out Moore's brief review here. A taste:

I’ve long said that the cultural Christianity around us often resembles the religion of Benjamin Franklin rather than that of his friend and contemporary George Whitefield. ...

... Kidd portrays a dying Franklin in a room with a painting of the Matthew 25 scene of Jesus dividing the sheep from the goats at his Judgment Seat: “What was going on in Franklin’s mind, as he gazed at God separating the saved and the damned? To the end, Franklin’s faith was enigmatic. It was clear that by the end of his life, he affirmed God’s Providence, and God’s future rewards and punishments. But after a lifetime of questions…doubts still lingered. He had sought to live by a code of Christian ethics. But had he fully lived up to them? The doctor believed that those who enter heaven must do so by their virtue. But he knew that the Calvinist questioners saw this as false hope. No one merited salvation by their goodness, they said. They thought Franklin was wrong. He thought they were wrong. And so, Franklin waited, with ragged breathing, eyes fixed on the painting.”

Benjamin Rush on "Sects"

I don't think I've ever shared this quotation. There was a prevailing zeitgeist of religious correctness that dissenters of the era bucked. The "Athanasian" divines held that folks who didn't believe in among other things the Trinity weren't "Christians" whatever they called themselves.

Benjamin Rush, a Trinitarian Universalist, wasn't one of those religiously correct folks. His universalism made him a dissenter.

Below is the quotation from July 18 1792:

There is a propensity in all sciences to simplify themselves and to ascribe that to one which should be divided among many causes. For example, how few sects honor Father, Son and Holy Ghost in religion as they should do. The Socinians honor the Father only; the Catholics the Saviour chiefly, and the Quakers the Holy Spirit above both; how few include all the ends of our Saviour's death in their belief of the Atonement; each contends for one end only while six or seven other ends are clearly revealed in the Scriptures; many exalt one power or one set of powers only in the mind instead of all, many confine religion to one power only instead of applying it to all. The Episcopalians to the understanding, the Methodists to the passions and the Quakers the moral powers.

Socinians, Catholics and Quakers each were controversial in their own right. That Rush includes Socinians as a "Christian" sect demonstrates his sympathy with the dissenters and against the orthodox forces of religious correctness that would deny them such label.

Kathryn Gin Lum: "Damnation, American style: How American preachers reinvented hell"

I missed this, published at Salon in 2014. The author has an academic book on a subject that is of interest to this blog. A taste:

Excerpted from “Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction”

Among the many congratulatory letters George Washington received after assuming the presidency was one from “the Convention of the Universal Church, assembled in Philadelphia.” “SIR,” it began, “Permit us, in the name of the society which we represent, to concur in the numerous congratulations which have been offered to you.” The letter reassured the president that “the peculiar doctrine which we hold, is not less friendly to the order and happiness of society, than it is essential to the perfection of the Deity.” One of its signers, Universalist minister John Murray, had known Washington since serving as a chaplain in the Revolutionary War. The minister and his second wife, Judith Sargent Murray, had even stopped to dine with the Washingtons on their way to the Convention. Thanks in large part to their efforts, universal salvation was no longer an obscure creed espoused by a scattered few. Now the Convention sought to establish Universalism as a recognized, socially responsible faith.

Washington responded favorably. “GENTLEMEN,” he began, thanking them for their well-wishes, “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.” Such affirmation of the Universalists’ civic friendliness, from none other than the first president of the newly United States, must have gratified the Convention. They were well aware that other Protestant clergy, especially the Calvinists, disdained their “peculiar doctrine.”

Article on Winchester & Murray

I found this very informative article on Elhanan Winchester, a Baptist Universalist who influenced among others Benjamin Rush. It brings to mind Rush's quotation:

At Dr. Finley’s school, I was more fully instructed in those principles by means of the Westminster catechism. I retained them without any affection for them until about the year 1780. I then read for the first time Fletcher’s controversy with the Calvinists, in favor of the universality of the atonement. This prepared my mind to admit the doctrine of universal salvation, which was then preached in our city by the Rev. Mr. Winchester. It embraced and reconciled my ancient Calvinistical and my newly adopted Arminian principles. From that time I have never doubted upon the subject of the salvation of all men. My conviction of the truth of this doctrine was derived from reading the works of Stonehouse, Seigvolk, White, Chauncey and Winchester, and afterwards from an attentive perusal of the Scriptures. I always admitted with each of those authors future punishment, and of long duration.

Curiously, one name missing from Rush's list is that of the other most notable Universalist of America's Founding era, John Murray. The article sheds light on why that might be so [it relates to Murray's denial of temporary punishment in the afterlife]:

During the Revolutionary Era and Early Republic, the two leading universalists in America were Winchester and John Murray; the latter was a onetime friend of George Whitefield who eventually came to embrace the universalist views of a Welsh minister named James Relly. Both Relly and Murray had been pro-revival Calvinists prior to their conversion to universalist sentiments. In 1770, Murray relocated to America and spent the next forty-five years promoting the universalist cause from Virginia to New England. Murray met Winchester shortly after First Baptist Church of Philadelphia split over Winchester’s views. The two men became friendly acquaintances, and on August 5, 1785 Murray and Winchester founded a Universalist Society in Oxford, Massachusetts. ...

Though the two men were co-laborers for the universalist cause in the mid-1780s, they represented two distinct versions of universal restoration.42 Following Relly, Murray argued for what might be called a Calvinistic version of universalism that affirmed unconditional election and effectual atonement, but applied them to all of humanity. Murray argued that all people are presently reconciled with Christ, even if they do not know it, and are thus ushered into Christ’s presence upon their death. For Murray, conversion was about awakening to the reality that you are already saved; Christians are those who simply live in light of that reality.43 Murray denied that there would be any punishment for sin in the afterlife, believing that sin is punished temporally in the present life; this emphasis on temporal punishment marked a key difference between Murray and Winchester.

Winchester advocated a different understanding of universal restoration. James Leo Garrett argues Winchester built his cases for universalism around three key ideas: God’s love is his central attribute, Christ’s atonement is general in its provision, and salvation is inclusive of all people.45 Unlike Murray, Winchester argued for the necessity of post- mortem punishment as a means to reform unrepentant sinners and reconcile them to God. Eventually, all people would be purged of their sin and be saved. For Winchester, conversion was about resting in the saving work of Christ in this life and avoiding God’s just punishment of sinners in the next life.46 Though a universalist, Elhanan Winchester was in every other respect a mainstream evangelical.

I think that Winchester's view of "future punishment, and of long duration" probably predominated among then Universalists. However, one still can't discount Murray's influence during the American Founding.  In 1775, George Washington defended Murray as a chaplain during the revolutionary war when the "religiously correct" sought to disqualify Murray for the position because of his universalism.

Later, in 1790, responding to a letter co-written by Murray, Washington gave his props to the Convention of the Universal Church. Though I don't think this group privileged Murray's view of the afterlife over Winchester's (Winchester also, apparently played a leadership role in that group).

[The notes to Washington's letter to the Convention also interestingly detail George and Martha's social relationship with the Murrays.]

Still, one thing about Murray's view reported above, to me, sticks out as striking a very important note that resonates with classical and Christian thought of yesterday and today: "believing that sin is punished temporally in the present life[.]"

Of that era, most Unitarans, Universalists, Deists and so on, along with Jews, orthodox Christians and Muslims believed in at the very least the doctrine of an overriding Providence and future state of rewards and punishments. While Murray's view is consistent with Providence and a future state of rewards, what about the punishment part? Yes, there is punishment for sin, or for the more philosophically minded, violation of the natural law. But to Murray, it's more of a present punishment than a future one.

This is Aristotle's notion of Eudaimonia, that there is, as George Washington put it in his First Inaugural "an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness." Perhaps this explains why Washington could venerate Murray's theology.

Robert G. Brown on The Great Spirit

Robert G. Brown is, apparently a professor of physics at Duke University. He also has an interest in theology and has written on the Natives' "Great Spirit" whom, among others, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison invoked by name when speaking to the Natives and referencing God.

A taste:

The Great Spirit (Wakan Tanka, Gitchi Manitou of Native American cultures) is a beautiful example of a non-theistic belief in an active, personal, non-anthropomorphic Deity that is intertwined with the fabric of the Universe itself on the large scale and yet is personally engaged with the web of living things and the world on an earthly scale. These cultures are not completely homogeneous, and there are a variety of creation mythologies that need not concern us as (in my opinion at least) these cultures have always been aware that their mythologies are myths, that their legends are legends, that their sacred stories are stories, and thus they have avoided the curse of socially enforced orthodoxy or any sort of insistence on ``belief''. The myths themselves are intended and used as teaching stories that guide individual behavior in ways that support the individual and the community, not as metaphysical speculation. These religions also seem to lack the hellfire and damnation meme - the Great Spirit doesn't punish people for being bad, doesn't inflict eternal torment on people for ``not believing in It''. In these cultures, a life out of balance with the Great Spirit, with the earth, with the community is its own punishment.

Brookhiser on Wood's new book on Adams & Jefferson

Read about it in the New York Times here. Richard Brookhiser reviews Gordon Wood's new book on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. A taste:

Silence fell between the two men. Abigail sent Jefferson a letter of condolence after the death of his daughter Polly in 1804, but their tentative correspondence almost immediately went nuclear. Friendship was finally restored through the efforts of Benjamin Rush, a colleague from the Continental Congress, who conducted a two-year campaign of exhortation, flattery and guile. Among Rush’s stratagems was telling Adams that he had had a dream in which Adams broke the ice by writing Jefferson. Adams finally did so on New Year’s Day, 1812. Enemies no more, the two corresponded until the end.