In the first link one can find a collection of Dr. Green's law review articles. This one entitled "Understanding the 'Christian Nation' Myth" seems aptest to the book. A taste from the article:
The general consensus among historians today is that the members of the founding generation relied on multiple ideological sources when they were developing their arguments for revolution, republicanism, and constitutional government. Overall, the Founders were well-educated and well-read for their time; they engulfed histories and theoretical works about classical and medieval republics, the common law, the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution. They drew their inspiration about the necessities and forms of republicanism chiefly from Enlightenment and Whig theorists of the preceding generations: John Locke, Baron Montesquieu, Hugo Grotius, Henry St. John Lord Bolingbroke, and James Burgh, among others. Also influential were those writers of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment— Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and Thomas Reid—whose “common sense” rationalism influenced many of the Founders including James Madison, John Adams, and James Wilson. Most of these writers were religious nonconformists or skeptics who sought to disassociate the legitimacy for government from religious authority. In his influential Letter on Toleration , Locke wrote that “the whole power of civil government is concerned only with men’s civil goods, is confined to the care of the things of this world, and has nothing whatever to do with the world to come.” 16 Because the “care of souls” was not the business of government, “the civil power ought not to prescribe articles of faith, or doctrines, or forms of worshipping God, by civil law.” 17 Such words were groundbreaking, in that they implied a commonwealth unconcerned with religious fealty or the maintenance of public virtue. Most scholars acknowledge the commanding influence of Locke and other Enlightenment and Whig thinkers on the founding generation. 18
12 comments:
Jon,
The link to the law review article "This one" goes to the Google Book review.
Fixed it. Thanks!
"Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding"
Well, I guess we know how this one ends. ;-P
Professor Steven K. Green joined the Willamette faculty in August 2001, after serving for 10 years as legal director and special counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
He had that crap job for 10 years? What kind of purblind ideologue wants to spend ten years of their life writing silly amicus briefs at the behest of Barry Lynn?
If I'm not mistaken, law schools tend to be very resistant to hiring working lawyers for professorships outside of clinical and adjunct faculty and have a strong preference for people whose experience has been largely limited to judicial clerkships. However, this law in Oregon is willing to hire someone who was for ten years the GC of what may be the federal capital's most inane advocacy group.
He's also a contributor to one of Marci A. Hamilton's more recent efforts.
Douglas Laycock on one of Prof. Hamilton's previous efforts:
Occasional errors are inevitable, but here the extraordinary number of errors, often with reference to famous cases and basic doctrines, implies a reckless disregard for truth. I document these errors for a reason. No one should cite this book. No one should rely on it for any purpose …
Prof. Green's not selective about his collaborators.
Well, I don't think it's fair to saddle him with Marci Hamilton's shoddy work.
That said, he's obviously into strict separationist activism and that does put a red flag on his work. And while he thanks Daniel Dreisbach, Mark David Hall and Phillip Munoz for their "discussions," he entrusted reliable liberals John Fea, David Sehat and Randall Balmer with the early drafts of this book.
BTW, some may enjoy my latest assay of Balmer's recent attempt at turd-polishing, in "1½ Reasons Why Jimmy Carter Wasn't So Bad".
He's not responsible for anything Marci Hamilton writes. However, he's willing to collaborate with Marci Hamilton. It's not as if academics do not make use of social exclusion. Douglas Laycock's review goes right up to the line of saying Hamilton's work manifests incompetence or fraud. That does not bother Steven K. Green.
Clayton Cramer offered that some correspondence he had back in 2000 persuaded him that American history (of which constitutional law can be understood as a dimension) was a corrupted subdiscipline, inasmuch as there was now a non-zero population of faculty willing to tolerate fraud for their causes, and some of them were holding gatekeeper positions. One name he named was the professor who at that time edited Journal of the Early Republic. Another he has discussed has been Saul Cornell.
I might write a partial defense of Jimmy Carter's term of office. Carter made a mess of mistakes in office, but the ill-repute in which he is held is much overstated.
I recall controversies a decade ago concerning Balmer's opinion journalism and Alan Jacobs offering that he found Balmer's contentions re the evangelical academy to be baffling, the reason being that (per Jacobs) he was offering as factual contentions he had to know were untrue. I've long forgotten what the precise issues were, but it's difficult to believe that someone capable of nonsense talk like, "The leaders of the religious right have led their sheep astray from the gospel of Jesus Christ to the false gospel of neoconservative ideology and into the maw of the Republican Party." in a matter adjacent to his own discipline has for decades had positions at private research universities.
If you have any links on Balmer-Jacobs, pls post them. I had my own reservations with icon Mark Noll along similar lines.
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2011/05/mark-noll-when-historians-attack.html
Clayton Cramer offered that some correspondence he had back in 2000 persuaded him that American history (of which constitutional law can be understood as a dimension) was a corrupted subdiscipline, inasmuch as there was now a non-zero population of faculty willing to tolerate fraud for their causes, and some of them were holding gatekeeper positions.
This too.
There is a left-leaning community that seems to be occupying center stage in the academic history of America and religion, and Balmer is on the left edge of that. "Religious history" is a rather new field--or at least a newly fashionable one--and the molds are being laid down as we speak. Persons such as Steven Green's colleague David Sehat ["The Myth of American Religious Freedom," seeing a pattern here?] on one hand disparage the Founders, and on the other call the Founders irrelevant.
http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2015/05/david-sehat-on-jefferson-rule.html
"Given all the challenges we face today—global warming, international terrorism, pandemics, species loss, political corruption, and so on—I vote that we jettison our obsession with the Founders and instead plunge into addressing the new realities of our time."
which spurred this reply ;-)
"Then let the left be honest that it washes its hands of the Founders. Let 'the Tea Party Republicans of today' claim them--if they can."
"Given all the challenges we face today—global warming, international terrorism, pandemics, species loss, political corruption, and so on—I vote that we jettison our obsession with the Founders and instead plunge into addressing the new realities of our time."
A concatenation of fashionable anxieties. He forgot peak oil (or maybe that's passe). Putting the character string 'The Myth of...' in a history book or article is enough of a cliche that you wonder that it persists.
If you have any links on Balmer-Jacobs, pls post them.
My regrets. I think they were in the archives of The American Scene which were scrubbed when they changed platforms.
Here's another on Balmer's more recent writing.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/05/the-real-origins-of-an-evangelical-hit-piece/
If the author is providing a correct summary of Balmer's writing, it beggars belief that he is advancing this thesis. Segregation was not a live issue in 1979 and the public disputes most proximate to it were in regard to school busing. Those disputes were most intense in places like Boston and Cleveland which did not have county school districts. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson never had much of a constituency in that part of the country, nor (IIRC) did Falwell involve himself in those controversies. Falwell had no supralocal audience prior to 1979 nor much of a history of organizing re topical questions. The 'religious right' figure most prominent prior to 1979 was Anita Bryant, who was in grade school when segregation was first a matter of public controversy and a young mother cutting old-style pop records for Columbia Records when it was last a matter of public controversy.
Jon - thanks for the post. I read Professor Green's Cardozo Law Review article years ago. It is well worth a careful read by everyone at AC, and I look forward to his new book on the same topic. I also recommend his "Second Disestablishment" book (focused on the 19th century).
In the meantime, I urge "Art" to refrain from the circumstantial ad hominem attacks. Any U.S. religious historian would welcome positive reviews from the likes of Jon Butler, Randall Balmer and John Fea.
In the meantime, I urge "Art" to refrain from the circumstantial ad hominem attacks.
That term does not mean what you think it means.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/05/the-real-origins-of-an-evangelical-hit-piece/
Depending on what day it is, the Religious Right is viewed as being full of unintelligent buffoons incapable of grasping simple facts of science or they are shrewd political geniuses secretly leading our nation to become a full-fledged theocracy. Some days, they’re both.
Apparently, that was the case when Politico decided to run Randall Balmer’s piece on conservative evangelicals – “The Real Origins of the Religious Right.”
While one would think Politico would be interested in running balanced journalism, Balmer’s disapproval of those he considers to be the Religious Right drips from every paragraph. He literally has written books about the evils of conservative evangelicals who have led people “astray from the gospel of Jesus Christ to the false gospel of neoconservative ideology and into the maw of the Republican Party.”
No less polemical than a Glenn Beck. The infestation of American academia and media by left-wing advocacy continues unabated, and here, Balmer and Politico pull off the doubleheader.
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