Ye Will Say I Am No Christian

Bruce Braden is the editor of “Ye Will Say I Am No Christian: The Thomas Jefferson/John Adams Correspondence on Religion, Morals, and Values." He posted a video where he reads Adams' letter to Jefferson where Adams claims he wouldn't believe in the Trinity if God Himself told him it were true.

Rodda on Barton and Jefferson-Scottish Common Sense

David Barton, in "The Jefferson Lies," claimed Thomas Jefferson was imbibed in Scottish Common Sense philosophy (also known as Scottish Common Sense Enlightenment).  Chris Rodda disagrees.  Interestingly, Garry Wills argued something similar (though Wills said David Hume influenced Jefferson and I doubt Barton would admit the "bad" Hume could influence the "good" Jefferson even if it were true).   The recently departed Ronald Hamowy, who was the preeminent expert on the Scottish Enlightenment, disagreed with Wills in this devastating attack.

At least two very important founders, by the way, were unquestionably strongly influenced by SCSE: John Witherspoon and James Wilson.

Gregg Frazer on Albert Mohler's Show

Here is the audio.  And here is the transcript. 

Akhil Amar and Justice Thomas

I admit I haven't yet watched this video; but I can't wait to savor it.

Also see these two posts (one and two) by Ilya Somin on whether blacks were part of "We The People."  It's often said that, if you looked at what America's Founders did, "rights" belonged to white propertied Protestant males.  Not exactly (it's complicated).  Viewed through the lens of "states' rights," the states did different things.  Blacks, women, non-Protestants had "rights" in some states, not others.

Justice Thomas' point is interesting.  The Constitution unmoored from the Declaration gives us a pro-slavery Founding.  Read together, we get an anti-slavery Founding.

Get Well Warren Throckmorton

He had a heart attack.  He's been doing such outstanding work over the past year on the American Founding and religion.

Akhil Amar on Constitutional Gender Equality

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, he find it in the 14th Amendment.  A taste:

Two hundred and twenty-five years ago this week - right here in Philadelphia, "where it all began" - America's Founding Fathers went public with a proposed Constitution promising more democracy than the world had ever seen. Even so, in September 1787, "We the People" basically meant "We the Men." This year, the fate of this manly constitutional project rests more than ever in the hands of women. 

More women than men will cast votes in November. Just for fun, imagine that women were to vote as a unified bloc. Virtually every election in America at every level of government - both candidate elections and issue elections - would be decided by the female vote. More plausibly, note that in any election in which men are closely divided, the candidate or issue position decisively favored by women will prevail. 

For this remarkable turn of events, we must credit not just the Founding Fathers but also their amending daughters, granddaughters, and so on, who have rewritten the Constitution in both word and deed. 

The gender-bending of the Philadelphia Constitution began in earnest after the Civil War with the 14th Amendment, which promises "equal protection" to all - not merely racial equal protection but more generally. The amendment also proudly affirms that all homegrown Americans are "born" with equal civil rights. Just as a child born black or brown enjoys the same civil rights as a child born white, so, too, those born female are equal in civil rights to those born male.

What does the term "equal protection" mean?  I've seen some impressive originalist scholarship that argues both the due process and equal protection clauses were meant to be entirely procedural, not substantive.  That is, properly understood, there is not even a substantive right to be free from government racial discrimination under "equal protection" principles.  Rather, it's a command to the executive branch of government that no individual or group of individuals be excluded from whatever general laws are on the books.  And as written, these clauses do speak of "persons" and "citizens" and don't even mention race.   To use a reduction ad absurdum, even the worst individuals you could imagine -- rapists and pedophiles -- are entitled to procedural equal protection.  We could imagine someone accused of these horrific crimes being singled out by a mob and the police standing by and letting the mob have their way with them.  That would be a denial of equal protection and due process rights to rapists and pedophiles.

(And yes, something like that was done to blacks in Jim Crow, although in a much more sophisticated way; they got access to police calls and their days in court, where the arresting officers and judges on the bench were sympathetic to or sometimes the same hooded Klansmen who violated them; hence no real access to an impartial police force or day in court.)

Yet, there clearly was some substantive right to equality the 14th Amendment intended for racial groups.  And arguably all substantive rights -- including equality rights -- were meant to derive from the privileges or immunities clause.

That's one narrative I think entirely defensible.  I also think originalist scholars can convincingly argue for substantive rights to liberty and equality through the due process and equal protection clauses, respectively (see for instance Timothy Sandefur's work on substantive due process).

Yet, if you gut the privileges or immunities clause (ala Slaughterhouses) those substantive liberty and equality rights will pop up elsewhere as in a game of whack a mole.  And the mole will pop its head from those parts of the text most similar to the rights being asserted.  Hence a substantive right to "liberty" where the term "liberty" appears in the due process clause and a substantive right to "equality" where the term "equal" appears in the "equal protection" clause.

What I am getting at:  The text of the Constitution can do a lot of things and I consider myself a textualist, meaning, viable constitutional law must read the text for what it is in a logically coherent way.  But the text isn't enough; we need more.  We need some kind of theory to undergird and supplement it.  Hence, Akhil Amar's work on an "Unwritten Constitution."

Myron Magnet on William Livingston

Here.  William Livingston is one of those 2nd tier Founders about whom we should be more aware.

Akhil Amar Guest Blogging At Volokh

Law law professor Akhil Amar is guest blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy.  And he's taking on the Conspirators.  He is arguably America's preeminent professor of constitutional law; therefore, his stuff is worth a careful read.

The Democrats' Platform

Guest post by Michael Meyerson for American Creation here.

Ronald Hamowy, RIP

Ron edited Cato's Encyclopedia of Libertarianism for which I was honored to write the entry on George Washington. He wonderfully edited my piece making it read much better than as originally written. Ron was an expert on, among other things, the Scottish Enlightenment. You can read more about him here.

Another Evangelical Calls Out David Barton

Warren Throckmorton tells us about it here.  A taste from the original piece:

I am afraid I must put this shortly. It is well nigh impossible to cram four years of reading and discussion into a paragraph. I had been deluded by historical exaggerations about a “Christian nation” and a “Biblically-based” Founding. The truth was much messier: in colonial America, the Enlightenment skepticism met with Dissenter Protestantism (plus magisterial Anglicanism and even some Catholicism thrown in). Various liberalisms embodied in the moderate Whig and radical Jacobin strutted about the world revolutionary stage. From a larger, longer perspective: what is a “Christian nation” anyway and how does it apply to America? Wasn’t the Holy Roman Empire a Christian nation which was blessed by the undivided church and in constant communion with the Pope? What about Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire or Canterbury and England, in which the monarch heads the church? The “Christian principle of religious freedom” can be more accurately described as the “Baptist principle of religious freedom.” It was a more recent development that found wide acceptance in a pluralistic confederation of states. Thinkers like Richard John Neuhaus thought America could be Christian, but only in a certain sense. This is left open for debate.

David Barton’s U.S. Capitol Tour: Did Congress Print the First Bible in English for the Use of Schools?

By Warren Throckmorton here.

Endowed By Our Creator

By Michael I. Meyerson.  I have the book.  From what I've read of it, it's good.  You may read more about it here.

Christian Reconstructionist Takes David Barton to Task for Faulty History in The Jefferson Lies

By Warren Throckmorton here.

FYI Republicans: Tocqueville Was Actually Insulting America When He Referred to It Being "Exceptional"

Is this true?  From Chris Rodda here.

Joseph Priestley As A Baseline

Since Thomas Jefferson's religious views are in the news, perhaps we should appreciate Joseph Priestley's theology as a possible baseline for judging Jefferson's.  Jefferson was a self proclaimed "sect" unto himself.  And he was bigheaded. So he disagreed with Priestley on a few things.  As we will see below, Priestley believed in the Resurrection and Jefferson did not.  Yet out of all of the "authorities" out there for whom Jefferson professed respect, Priestley got Jefferson's highest regards.

I observe non-sequiturs regarding Jefferson's writings, particularly the Jefferson Bible.  Let us assume that Jefferson believed in the divine inspiration of what made it into his cut up Bible.  Then what?  I think it proves that he wasn't a strict deist.  

But what was he and what does it prove?  Let me give an example of a non-sequitur I observed Glenn Beck make to David Barton on this.  They were marveling over the fact that Jefferson apparently left in supernatural passages, not consistent with strict deism.  Beck said something along the lines of (and Barton nodded his head), if TJ believed in Jesus' miracles, then he believed in his divinity.

That is a non-sequitur.

Joseph Priestley did not believe in Jesus' divinity, but believed in his miracles, resurrection and the divinity of Jesus mission.  Priestley thought 1. original sin, 2. trinity, 3. incarnation, 4. atonement, and 5. the plenary inspiration of scripture were false "corruptions" of true Christianity ("rational Christianity").  I (mistakenly?) thought Priestley believed in the virgin birth.  Maybe he did at one point.  I thought I read something from Priestley that argued for the compatibility of both the virgin birth AND Jesus 100% human, 0% divine nature.  The logic went something like this: those who argue for a divine Jesus say the virgin birth necessarily means Jesus is divine. No.  That is a non-sequitur.  Why?  Jesus was sent to be a second Adam to correct the first's errors. And the first Adam also was of divine origin but was 100% human, 0% divine.

That is just a paraphrase of what I remember.  I will have to read up on where I got it from and the context.  And that's because when Joseph Priestley proselytized his Socinian rational Christianity to the Jews, he made it quite clear that he disbelieved in the Virgin Birth along with the Trinity, etc.  As he wrote to them [paragraphs added for clarity]:

You expect that your Messiah will be lineally descended from David, and therefore you cannot be reconciled to the idea of Jesus being that Messiah, because Christians say that he had no human father; so that according to your rules of genealogy, he could not be said to be the son of David. But it is no where said that the person who is characterized by the title of Messiah, should be descended from David, but only that prince under whom you are to enjoy. 

However, the history of the miraculous conception of Jesus does not appear to me to be sufficiently authenticated.  The evidence of it is by no means the same with that of his public life, his miracles, his death and resurrection, which are all that the truth of Christianity requires, (and of which there were many witnesses,) and the original Gospel of Matthew, received by your countrymen, did not contain it. 

Your sacred books, as well as ours, being written by men, neither of them can be expected to be, entirely free from mistakes, or exempt from interpolations. Yours, as you must acknowledge, have, in a course of time, suffered in these respects. But it is sufficient for us both, that the great events, on which every thing that is of importance to our religion depends, are true. As to any thing that is not necessarily connected with such events, and therefore is not supported by their evidence, we should think ourselves at liberty to receive or reject it, according to its separate evidence.  

Myself, and many other Christians, are no believers in the miraculous conception of Jesus, but are of opinion, that he was the legitimate son of Joseph, who was of the family of David; and such seems to have been the opinion of the great body of Jewish Christians, who had more opportunity of informing themselves concerning the fact than the Gentiles had. But we are not less firm believers in all the public transactions of the life of Jesus, in his miracles, his death, and his resurrection ; and consequently, in his divine mission. With respect to his supposed miraculous conception, and other articles relating to Christianity, but not essential to it, do you examine and judge for yourselves.

So there you go:  You could disbelieve in 1. original sin, 2. trinity, 3. incarnation, 4. atonement, 5. virgin birth, and 6. the infallibility of the Bible, BUT STILL believe in Jesus' miracles, resurrection, and the divinity of his mission.  That's what Jefferson's theological mentor believed.  Though, as noted, Jefferson did not, like Priestley, believe in Jesus' resurrection.  

Keep these things in mind when interpreting the Jefferson Bible.

Triumph of infidelity Rightly Attended An Electronic Edition

By Rev. Timothy Dwight, here.  It's a satirical poem.  It's the kind of thing that you have to read very carefully to understand.  As far as I understand it, the work attacks not just the "deists" but also the "soft infidels" like Rev. Charles Chauncy whose understanding of reason and revelation led him to deny both the Trinity and eternal damnation.  This is important because "the key Founders" -- without question, Jefferson, J. Adams and Franklin, and probably Washington and Madison -- believed in a theological system that was closest to Chauncy's, not Dwight's, and not that of the "hard deists."  Was it a form of "soft infidelity?"  Or was it a kinder, gentler form of "Christianity"?  I won't judge; I'll just throw the issue out there.

Anyway here is a passage from the poem:

There stood the infidel of modern breed,      
Blest vegetation of infernal seed,      
Alike no Deist, and no Christian, he;      
But from all principle, all virtue, free.      

To him all things the same, as good or evil;      
Jehovah, Jove, the Lama, or the Devil;      
Mohammed's braying, or Isaiah's lays;      
The Indian's powaws, or the Christian's praise.      
With him all natural desires are good; .
His thirst for stews; the Mohawk's thirst for blood:      
Made, not to know, or love, the all beauteous mind;      
Or wing thro' heaven his path to bliss refin'd:      
But his dear self, choice Dagon! to adore;      
To dress, to game, to swear, to drink, to whore; .
To race his steeds; or cheat, when others run;      
Pit tortur'd cocks, and swear 'tis glorious fun:      
His soul not cloath'd with attributes divine;      
But a nice watch-spring to that grand machine,      
That work more nice than Rittenhouse can plan, .
The body; man's chief part; himself, the man;      
Man, that illustrious brute of noblest shape,      
A swine unbristled, and an untail'd ape:      
To couple, eat, and die–his glorious doom–      
The oyster's church-yard, and the capon's tomb.

That is Dwight describing the "rational Christianity" of the American Founding, what Gregg Frazer terms "theistic rationalism."

Jefferson and the Bible: A Response to David Barton on the Glenn Beck Show, Part Five

From Warren Throckmorton here.

Jefferson and the Bible: A Response to David Barton on the Glenn Beck Show, Part Four

By Warren Throckmorton here.  (This is an especially good one.)

John Adams Promotes Rational Christianity

In his letter to Jefferson 29 May 1818.  As he writes:

As Holly is a diamond of a superior water, it would be crushed to powder by mountainous oppression in any other country. Even in this he is a light shining in a dark place. His system is founded in the hopes of mankind, but they delight more in their fears. When will man have juster notions of the universal, eternal cause? Then will rational Christianity prevail. I regret Holly’s misfortune in not finding you, [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] account, to whom an interview with [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] a lasting gratification. 

Waterhouse’s pen, [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] on with too much fluency. I have not [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] activity, memory, or promptitude and [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] which he ascribes to me. I can [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] of the letters I receive, and those only [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] [Editor: Illegible word] pen.

I should check my Cappon Ed. to see what those Illegible words are.  I suspect Adams was very drunk and slurring his pen.

Update:  Here is a readable version.