Gary Scott Smith: "A nation on a hill?"
From the
Christian History Institute here. A taste:
When
the colonies came together as the United States, the new nation broke
with this 1,450-year practice of religious establishment. Not having a
king was radical enough, but even more radical was the new nation’s
decision not to establish a national church. The First Amendment to the
Constitution, adopted in 1789 and ratified in 1791, prohibited Congress
from establishing a church and from preventing citizens from worshiping
as they pleased.
The decision
frightened many. Western societies had long assumed that most residents
would act morally only if they were compelled to participate regularly
in the church; Thomas Jefferson disagreed, calling America’s arrangement
“the fair experiment.” Prominent nineteenth-century jurist Dudley Field
called America’s separation of church and state the world’s “greatest
achievement . . . in the cause of human progress.”
The founding fathers adopted this arrangement for several reasons. For
one thing, they knew that the experiment had already been tried for over
a century, and it had not led to the moral collapse many feared. The
exiled Roger Williams had permitted freedom of worship in the colony of
Rhode Island, which he founded in 1636. So did Quaker William Penn in
Pennsylvania, which he established in 1681. And these colonies were
thriving.
Moreover, the founders’ Enlightenment convictions led them to make several arguments on behalf of religious liberty. ...
4 comments:
but even more radical was the new nation’s decision not to establish a national church. The First Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1789 and ratified in 1791, prohibited Congress from establishing a church and from preventing citizens from worshiping as they pleased.
You think maybe crafting a jerry-rigged institutional structure for 13 polities which had amongst them Anglican establishments, Calvinist establishments, tangles between Anglicans and the Calvinists they'd displaced in establishment, and loci (Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island) with no establishment might have incorporated some ad hoc compromises which were not, er, 'radical' at all?
Mr. Deco nails it. I remain unimpressed with Dr. Smith. Religion was left to the states--some of which HAD officially established churches--and with the fractiousness of Protestantism
“There were not just Presbyterians, but Old and New School Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians, Springfield Presbyterians, Reformed Presbyterians, and Associated Presbyterians; not just Baptists, but General Baptists, Regular Baptists, Free Will Baptists, Separate Baptists, Dutch River Baptists, Permanent Baptists, and Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Baptists.”
--and those are just the Calvinists--"Christianity" could never be usefully defined in the first place let alone be made a national religion even if they wanted to.
Professor Smith presents what strikes me as a brief yet informative, interesting review of the founders' views on the role of religion vis-a-vis government and, in the end, offers his own assessment--falling somewhere between the extremes of current culture-war viewpoints.
Of all Smith says, can it be that only a semantic quibble--about his characterization of the founders' decision not to establish a national church as "radical"--is all that sufficiently stirs Art and Tom to voice objection?
My objection is the same as it always is. People attribute to this collection of 18th century politicians (who were, to be sure, liberally educated in ways rare today) insight and intentionality on the order of Isaac Asimov's fictional Hari Seldon, rather than viewing them people working in a matrix they did not manufacture and having varying opinions amongst themselves on matters august and scruffy. This is seen with regard not merely to contentious matters regarding religion, but to matters of political architecture which were worked out over a 15 week period after consideration of an assortment of alternatives. I recently saw some pundit babble about how carefully considered was the Electoral College and what a sublime expression of Grand Theory it all was. Of course, it never worked as expected after 1796, had defects the same politicians (or people at most one-degree-of-separation removed) thought worth repairing not 16 years after it was first drafted, and was selected in preference over other plans considered (e.g. election by state legislators). The most annoying of the Madison cargo cult fancy all of our problems of political economy are attributable to the 16th and 17th amendments.
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