Thursday, February 11, 2016

George Washington's Defense of the Godless Constitution

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

In fact, I was reminded of George Washington's response to a group of Presbyterians who were concerned about the omission of a reference to the Christian religion in the US Constitution. Washington attempted to alleviate their concern writing:
The tribute of thanksgiving, which you offer to the gracious FATHER OF LIGHTS, for his inspiration of our publick councils with wisdom and firmness to complete the National Constitution, is worthy of men, who, devoted to the pious purposes of religion, desire their accomplishment by such means as advance the temporal happiness of their fellow men. And, here, I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain, as to require but little POLITICAL direction.
To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation respecting religion from the Magna Charta of our country. To the guidance of the Ministers of the Gospel, this important object is, perhaps, more properly committed. It will be your care to instruct the ignorant, and to reclaim the devious: And in the progress of morality and science, to which our Government will give every furtherance, we may confidently expect the advancement of true religion, and the completion of our happiness.
I pray the munificent Rewarder of virtue, that your agency in this work, may receive its compensation here and hereafter.
This same group of people -- the religiously correct "orthodox" -- also bothered William Livingston about the explicit lack of Christianity as the foundation for American law in the Articles of Confederation (which unlike the Constitution, isn't a Godless document, but rather, like the Declaration of Independence, appeals to God in a more generic sense).

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

To the effect ... that of promoting purity of manners, all legislators and magistrates are bound by a superior obligation to that of any vote or compact of their own; and the inseparable connexion between the morals of the people and the good of society will compel them to pay due attention to external regularity and decorum; but true piety again has never been agreed upon by mankind, and I should not be willing that any human tribunal should settle its definition for me.
The tone of the two statesmen are different. But the effect is the same. Government (at least the Federal one) is going to be hands off on religion; the religious ball rather is in the court of voluntary, private entities.

12 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

Livingston seems to be [rightly] saying that the problem is sectarianism--not that religion shouldn't be the guiding light, but the impossibility of getting the entire nation to agree, and the undesirability of having the government decide religious questions.

Seminal constitutional scholar Justice Joseph Story said pretty much the same thing.

&440. The first amendment is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;...

&441. The same policy, which introduced into the Constitution the prohibition of a religious test, led to the more extended prohibition of any religious test, led to the more extended prohibition of the interference of Congress in religious concerns. We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity, (which none could hold in more reverence, than the framers of the Constitution,) but to dread by the people of the influence of ecclesiastical power in matters of government; a dread which their ancestors brought with them from the parent country, and which, unhappily for human infirmity, their own conduct, after their emigration, had not, in any just degree, tended to diminish. It was also obvious, from the numerous and powerful sects existing in the United States, that there would be perpetual temptations to struggles for ascendency in the National councils, if any one might thus be introduced, to an extent utterly subversive of the true interests and good order of the Republic. The most effective mode of suppressing evil, in the view of the people, was, to strike down the temptations of its introduction.

Jonathan Rowe said...

Yes, Joseph Story the Unitarian, so argues for and benefits from that kind of radical non-sectarianism.

Part of the story of the march of public secularism is not, as I see it, the triumph of "atheism" as a "public truth" on which modern politics is premised. But rather, a public non-sectarianism (a lowest common denominator if you will) that eventually runs into atheism and polytheism and thus has to lower itself to "zero" as an LCD.

Government can't endorse TULIP over Arminianism, Luther over Roman Catholicism, Christianity over Judaism, and so on.

Once the atheists and polytheists are included into such public equation ... that's our modern dilemma.

Tom Van Dyke said...

This is why the left--the 'Godless constitutionalists," have no legitimate claim to the Founding principles.

§ 988. Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as it is not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

§ 989. It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether say free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem, as yet new in the history of the world, abundant, as it has been, in experiments in the theory of government.

sbh said...

§ 992. It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, thus exemplified in our domestic, as well as in foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject. The situation, too, of the different states equally proclaimed the policy, as well as the necessity, of such an exclusion. In some of the states, episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others, presbyterians; in others, congregationalists; in others, quakers; and in others again, there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible, that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition (as we have seen) of all religious tests. Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments

And only in this way is the Constitution "godless," not in the modern strict separationist way where the public square is to be "naked" of religious expression.

jimmiraybob said...

"...the modern strict separationist way where the public square is to be "naked" of religious expression"

Of course, the flaw here is that the public square is brimming with religious expression. What gets Tom's goat, and the rest of the Christian right, is that they can't effectively secure the power of the state or national governmental institutions to impose Biblical authority - to have government authorities unduly advancing a specific religious preference against others via the coercive power of the state.

What business is it of the state to impose a religious authority over the otherwise peaceful, ethical, and moral citizen that contributes to its success and to the prosperity and security of there fellow citizens? It is of no business of the state. It then becomes only the business of those with a vested interest in one religion or another or one sect or another that want to find a way to secure their particular theology through the power of coercion rather than be subject to a free marketplace of ideas.

Unfortunately, Tom's other thesis that "... the left--the 'Godless constitutionalists," have no legitimate claim to the Founding principles" is a bust. They inherit the rights of citizenship due to all, especially two of the fundamental founding principles enshrined in the DOI, the right to freedom of conscience and the right of free expression.

Tom Van Dyke said...

It then becomes only the business of those with a vested interest in one religion or another or one sect or another that want to find a way to secure their particular theology through the power of coercion rather than be subject to a free marketplace of ideas.

In other words, the exact opposite of what I said and the Joseph Story quotes do too.

jimmiraybob said...

TVD - ”In other words, the exact opposite of what I said and the Joseph Story quotes do too."

Joseph story is a prime example of someone with a vested interest in the idea that Christianity is and should be the foundation of law and governance. Or, as I said, “a vested interest in one religion.”

And, at the time of the framing and his writing the Commentaries, two things were a fact: 1) Christianity, in the form of mutually-antagonistic sects, was the dominant religion and 2) sectarian rancor and violence was no stranger to the colonial and European experience.

The problem that the framers had to overcome can be broken down in two ways: 1) they had to deal with the local exigencies of their day which consisted primarily of Christian sectarian divisions and 2) the question of how to interact with the rest of the world that was largely scarred by religious-Christian extremism, warfare and oppression (Christian against Christian – again sectarian). So, when Story writes, “Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, …“ he is correct in as far as the statement goes.

However, the Constitution incorporates fundamental principles that transcend sectarian boundaries, whether within one religion or between religions or between competing philosophical and ideological positions. The right of free conscience and the right of free expression are protections for all citizens and not just Christian citizens (despite your protestations that those of different ideology persuasion than yours "have no legitimate claim to the Founding principles").

There is nowhere in the Constitution that confers rights to a special protected class and withholds them from others. As they said at the time, "E Pluribus Unum."

And given that we are a different nation today than the founders and framers could ever have imagined in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the transcendence of those fundamental principles are more visible.

jimmiraybob said...

§ 1873. “It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, thus exemplified in our domestic, as well as in foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.”

– separation is no doubt a dual protection: government from religious zeal and religion from government zeal.

Tom Van Dyke said...

You don't seem to appreciate what "ecclesiastical" means. Or what "national" means.

jimmiraybob said...

Interesting. Please enlighten.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Not interesting. Disingenuous.