Mark David Hall has published a piece for the Spring 2015 issue (pp. 285-291)
entitled "A Failed Attempt at Partisan Scholarship." It reviews Matthew Stewart,
We get an exclusive preview. See below:
Matthew Stewart is upset. It seems there have been many attempts, “most
of them misinformed, some shamelessly deceitful,” to deny the “basic fact” that
America’s founders embraced a version of deism that is “functionally indistinguishable
from what we would now call ‘pantheism’; and pantheism is really just a pretty
word for atheism” (4-5). “Christian
nationalists” such as David Barton, Gary DeMar, John Eidsmoe, and “Tim La Haye”
[sic] who challenge this reality not
only “misread the American Revolution . . . they betray it” (445).
Given this complaint, one might think that
Stewart would engage books written by these men. But he ignores them. Instead, he points to four volumes that
provide “a good start on exposing the deceitful historiography of Christian
nationalism” (445). Of these books,
Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming
(2007), Jeff Sharlet’s The Family (2008),
Rob Boston’s Why the Religious Right is
Wrong about the Separation of Church and State (2003), and Chris Rodda’s Liars For Jesus (2006), only the
latter—a self-published screed—comes close to meeting this description. The others make occasional references to
David Barton but are far more interested in revealing theocratic conspiracies
by leaders of the religious right.
In addition to popular Christian
authors, “new Christian nationalists” are also a “powerful force” within the
academy (445). The only example Stewart
gives of such a work is a volume I co-edited with Daniel L. Dreisbach and “Jeffery”
[sic] Morrison entitled The Forgotten
Founders on Religion and Public Life (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009). We,
in cooperation with contributors Mark Noll, Edith Gelles, Gary Scott Smith,
William Casto, Gregg Frazer, Thomas Buckley, Jonathan Den Hartog, David
Voelker, Kevin Hardwick, Robert Abzug, and Rosemarie Zaggari, succeed in
“creating the illusion of a debate where in substance there is none” (445). That Stewart considers any of these scholars
to be “Christian nationalists,” new or otherwise, should give anyone familiar with
the literature on religion and the American founding pause. Many of these scholars have also written well-received
books and articles on the subject, yet these are completely ignored by
Stewart. So are relevant works penned by
Jane Calvert, Thomas Curry, John Fea, Nathan Hatch, James Hutson, Thomas Kidd, Donald
Lutz, George Marsden, Vincent Philip Muñoz, Ellis Sandoz, and Barry Shain.
Stewart does mention books by Alan
Heimert, Steven Waldman, Patricia Bonomi, T.H. Breen, and Jack Rakove that contend,
in his estimation, that “the American Republic owes its independence and its
individual freedom to its Protestant Christian legacy” (72, 460). But he dismisses this view as getting “the
history of ideas almost exactly wrong” (73).
These authors miss, in Stewart’s mind, the central truth that the
“Reformed religion brought carnage to Britain and Germany in the seventeenth
century and madness to America in the eighteenth because it was a symptom of
modernity, not a cause—a pathology, not a theory” (73).
In
contrast to “new Christian nationalists” and others who see the relationship
between religion and the American founders as complex, Stewart much prefers the
clarity of R.R. Palmer, who “could still write” as late as 1959 that, “[a]s for
the leaders of the American Revolution, it should be unnecessary to demonstrate
that most of them were deists” (445).
Those were the good old days.
Or were they?
It seems to me that it is still quite common for writers to echo
Palmer’s assertion. Included among their
number are Brooke Allen, Edwin Gaustad, Steven Green, Richard Hughes, Susan
Jacoby, Harvey Kaye, Steven Keillor, Isaac
Kramnick, Frank Lambert, William
Martin, R. Laurence Moore, Geoffrey
Stone, John Wilsey, and Gordon Wood. If these authors bother to defend their
claims, something R.R. Palmer did not do, they follow a distressingly common
and problematic path. In most cases they
focus on the religious views of some combination of the following men: Benjamin
Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
Thomas Paine, and Alexander Hamilton. On
rare occasions they reach beyond this select fraternity to include another
founder, and almost inevitably they concede that not all founders were as enlightened as the ones they profile. However, they leave the distinct impression
that most founders, and certainly the important ones, were deists.
Stewart departs little from this
pattern. The vast majority of the
examples he gives of founders rejecting orthodox Christian views come from five
men: Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Ethan Allen and Thomas Young. Virtually no one—including popular Christian
authors—denies that these men came to embrace heterodox views. The first three are well known and are
regularly discussed in books of this sort.
Stewart’s relatively minor deviation from the common approach is his
heavy reliance on Allen and Young.
Ethan Allen is reasonably well known as the
hero of Fort Ticonderoga, an important advocate for Vermont statehood, and the
author of the first American book advocating deism, Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1785). Even admirers recognize that Allen was a poor
writer, that the book sold fewer than 200 copies, and that it had almost no
influence. After its publication he
played virtually no role in American politics, which perhaps helps explain why
writers who argue that America’s founders were deists do not spend a great deal
of time discussing him.
One
contribution of Nature’s God is to
introduce the deist founder Thomas Young.
Young is not unknown to students of religion and the founding, but he is
usually described in passing as Ethan Allen’s mentor and the unacknowledged
coauthor of Reason the Only Oracle of Man. Stewart contends that Young was not, in fact,
the volume’s coauthor. As well, he does
a good job of highlighting Young’s underappreciated contributions such as
advocating resistance to perceived acts of British tyranny in Boston and
helping to craft the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. Yet Young died in 1777 and so played little
role in the creation of America’s constitutional order.
No
reasonable student of religion and the founding denies that the five founders
regularly quoted by Stewart rejected orthodox Christian beliefs. But the case is far more questionable with
the other important founders Stewart claims as radical deists: Washington and
Madison. Indeed, Stewart gives no
evidence that they rejected orthodox Christian ideas, to say nothing of
embracing deism or pantheism. Like other
texts in this genre, the proof he offers is highly selective or misleading.
For
instance, Stewart writes: “Jefferson, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Gouverneur Morris, and
possibly the Reverend Ashbel Green, Washington’s own minister . . . were
convinced” that Washington was “a deist, not a Christian” (31). As evidence he cites Jefferson’s diary
entries for February 1, 1800, where he recalled that Rush told him that Green
observed that Washington was not forthright about his religious views and a
second entry where he reported that Morris told him that Washington was not a
Christian. It is noteworthy that there
is no mention of anyone even suggesting that Washington was a deist, and
contrary to Stewart, it is not clear from Jefferson’s “tone” what the Sage of
Monticello thought (452). Using second and third hand accounts is
inherently problematic, but if Stewart is going to do so, he should engage
competing accounts. For example, John
Marshall, the great jurist who served on Washington’s staff during the War for
Independence, wrote that the general was a “sincere believer in the Christian
faith, and a truly devout man.” Similarly, a Frenchman who knew Washington
said that “[e]very day of the year, he rises at five in the morning; as soon as
he is up, he dresses, then prays reverently to God.” Yet Stewart ignores these accounts.
Even
more troubling, Stewart quotes Washington selectively and uses ellipses to
remove problematic words in his quest to prove him to be a child of the Enlightenment. Consider his use of Washington’s famous
Circular to the States (1783), which he quotes to show that America’s first
president joined the radical deistical project of discarding, in Stewart’s
words, “the politically dangerous delusions that arise from the common
religious consciousness” (389). In a
footnote to this sentence he concedes that Washington also gives credit for
America’s progress to “the pure and benign light of revelation,” but dismisses
this as “a characteristic gesture of Washington and the deistic
Enlightenment—to give credit for pacifying the rebarbative masses…” (528). But consider the sentence in full (passages
quoted by Stewart in bold):
The foundation of
our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at
an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly
defined, than at any former period, the researches of
the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent,
the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and
Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use,
and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our
forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension
of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of
sentiment, and above all, the pure
and benign light of Revelation, have had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of
Society.
Given Stewart’s argument, it would seem
reasonable for him to address Washington’s claim that “the light of Revelation”
has had an influence “above all”
other factors.
But
things get worse (at least for Stewart’s argument) if one reads the last
sentence in the Circular:
I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would
have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he
would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination
and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for
one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and
particularly for brethren who have served in the Field; and finally that he
would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do Justice, to love
mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility, and pacific temper
of mind, which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed
Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we
can never hope to be a happy Nation.
Do popular Christian authors make too
much of this paragraph with its prayer, paraphrase of Micah 6:8, and reference
to Jesus Christ (“the Divine Author of our religion”)? Perhaps.
But a scholar interested in presenting an accurate account of
Washington’s views should engage this part of the text, not simply ignore
it. It is ironic that Stewart’s use of
primary sources, here and elsewhere, bears a strong resemblance to the worst
practices of the popular Christian authors that he criticizes.
Stewart
makes a weak case that Washington is a deist, and he offers even less reason to
believe that Madison is appropriately labeled as such. He does mention in passing a few other
founders who held heterodox views, e.g., John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, Joel
Barlow and Philip Freneau. But rejecting
some tenets of orthodox Christianity is not the same thing as embracing deism,
a distinction that seems lost on Stewart.
Indeed, it is shocking how little evidence Stewart offers to support
this affirmative claim.
Those
who argue that America’s founders were deists often limit their claims to
“key,” if unrepresentative, founders, but Stewart also contends that deism
“spread in America far beyond the educated elite” (5). He provides few examples of such deists, but
he does offer several contemporary accounts.
For instance, he quotes the following passage from a 1785 evangelical
petition against Patrick Henry’s general assessment bill: “Deism with its
ballefull Influence is spreading itself over the state” (31). But again, consideration of the full text
from which Stewart is quoting tells a different story. The full sentence reads: “But it is said
Religion is taking its flight, and that Deism with its banefull Influence is
spreading itself over the state.” Note that the authors are not themselves
making the claim; they are referring to someone else, presumably supporters of
the general assessment bill. Advocates
of government subsidies have an obvious incentive to exaggerate the problems
they seek to address with taxpayer dollars.
Many
scholars who contend that the founders were deists understand the god of deism
to be, in Stewart’s words, “a ‘watchmaker God’ who fashions a world of
mechanical wonders and then walks away to the sound of ticking noises. Deism, according to this line of
interpretation, was just a watery expression of the Christian religion…”
(5). Stewart rejects this conventional
view. Instead, he contends that
America’s founders embraced a form of deism that is “functionally
indistinguishable from what we would now call ‘pantheism,’ and pantheism is
really just a pretty word for atheism” (5).
America’s founders as functional atheists; now there is an interesting
claim.
Stewart
spends a good portion of Nature’s God examining
the philosophical roots of America’s heretical origins. He traces them to Epicurus and Lucretius, who
developed a rationalist, materialist philosophy that looks to nature, not God,
for guidance. Their quest was embraced
by modern thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Isaac Newton, but
critical to this enterprise is the work of Benedict de Spinoza. Spinoza, it turns out, is the “principal
architect of the radical political philosophy that achieves its ultimate
expression in the American republic” (147-48).
Stewart concedes that “[t]here was—and is—no meaningful evidence at all
in revolutionary America” of Spinoza’s influence (3). But this doesn’t matter as Locke embraced
Spinoza, and Locke is “the single greatest intellectual influence on America’s
revolutionaries” (141). We know this because Carl Becker told us so in 1922
(141). Ah, the good old days.
Stewart
recognizes that Locke can be read as being more or less compatible with
Christianity, but he dismisses this debate with the unsupported assertion that
“by the time his work reached American ears, only the radical interpretation
[of Locke’s works] mattered” (241).
Making almost no reference to what the founders (elite or otherwise)
actually read or cited, he argues for a clear line of influence from Epicurus
to Hobbes to Spinoza to Locke to the American founders.
Stewart
regularly makes sweeping statements that leave the impression America’s
founders were radical deists who wanted to create a godless republic, but he
occasionally offers the qualification that many Americans were traditional
Christians and that intellectual traditions not antithetically opposed to
Christianity may have had some influence as well (e.g. 32, 352). But these qualifications are too few, faint,
and far between. By focusing on a
handful of founders with radical religious views, some important—Franklin,
Jefferson, and Paine—and others relatively unimportant—Allen and Young—he
grossly distorts the founders’ religious views and political commitments. Even brief consideration of a wider range of
founders reveals a very different picture.
Before
concluding, I should observe that Stewart’s grasp of basic political and constitutional
issues in the era leaves much to be desired.
To give just a few examples, Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776 did not
contain a “bristling array of checks and balances” (376). James Wilson was the only delegate to the
federal convention of 1787 to argue for the direct, popular, and proportional
election of members of the House and Senate and the President, yet Stewart
labels him the “personification of the ‘conservative’ side of the Revolution”
(387). Presumably to convince readers
that Wilson was a conservative, Stewart notes that he was “the architect of the
‘three-fifths’ compromise that embedded the institution of slavery in the new
Constitution” (387). Wilson did propose
this compromise in Philadelphia, but scholars have long debated who, exactly,
should be considered its “architect.” And
if Wilson’s association with slavery makes him “conservative,” it should
perhaps be noted that he voluntarily manumitted the one slave he owned, whereas
“radical deists” such as Jefferson, Madison, and Washington felt no need to do the
same (at least during their lifetimes) for their hundreds of slaves.
Nature’s God suffers from a number of
serious flaws. Stewart virtually ignores
the vast literature on the role of religion in the American founding and he
utterly fails to engage scholars whose works challenge his thesis. He misuses and misconstrues primary sources
and largely ignores founders (key and otherwise) who do not fit his thesis. Alan Ryan, in a friendly blurb, describes the book
as “partisan scholarship.” It seems to
me that Ryan is half right. Readers
interested in a polemical account of religion in the American founding almost
completely ungrounded in history may enjoy this book, but anyone interested in
a serious treatment of religion in the era should look elsewhere.
Mark David Hall
Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor
of Politics
Faculty Fellow William Penn Honors
Program
George Fox University
