A Press Conference with Dr. Donald Kennon

Historical Perspectives on the Inaugural Swearing in Ceremony

U. S. Department of State

Donald Kennon,
Ph.D., Vice President for Scholarship and Education,
U.S. Capitol Historical Society
Foreign Press Center
Washington, DC
January 14, 2009


Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce to everybody today Dr. Donald Kennon. He is the Chief Historian of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He’s also the Vice President of Fellowship and Education for the Society.

Dr. Kennon received his PhD in American History from the University of Maryland and has been involved in several publications dealing with the history of the United States.

Some of his publications include Speaker of the House of Representatives, a bibliography; and the Committee on Ways and Means -- a Bicentennial History.

I’ll turn the time over to Dr. Kennon.

Donald Kennon: Thank you, Matt, for that introduction. Four years ago I did a similar briefing here for the Foreign Press Center. Some of you may have been here at that time. I have changed my remarks somewhat. At that time I gave pretty much a prepared speech and tried to be deep and philosophical about the meaning of America’s presidential inaugurations. Today what I want to do is give you a little bit of that, but mostly to talk about some of the interesting precedents in American history involving presidential inaugurations and how it has evolved to what you will see on January 20th, next Tuesday. Then I’ll be very happy to take any questions you might have.

dot - dot - dot

There is one controversy surrounding the taking of the oath of office, and you probably have seen it in reporting already. That is the use of the phrase “so help me God” at the close of the oath.

Four years ago when I made this presentation I said that that precedent had been established by George Washington. I was wrong, and I’m happy to admit it. In fact when this presentation was placed on the Internet I got an e-mail from someone I’d never heard of before and I want to personally thank him. [italics added] His name is Raymond Soller. He asked me, what’s your source of that? I said well, all of the other writing and research on presidential inaugurations says that George Washington when he finished saying the oath said, “so help me God,” and kissed the Bible. And as far as I knew the primary source of that was the multi-volume definitive biography of Washington by historian Douglas Southall Freeman many years ago. He point[ed] out to me well, have you ever checked Freeman’s source? I said I know what his source was, it was a letter by George Washington’s private secretary Tobias Lear. He said, have you ever looked at that letter? I said, well no, I’ve not been to the [Duke University Library] Archives in North Carolina to look at it. He says, well I have, and it’s not there. So I checked it out and he’s right. There is no primary contemporary source that states that George Washington said, “so help me God.”

Why is this important? It’s important because there are a lot of people who are upset that over the years, and especially in the 20th Century, it’s become commonplace for the Chief Justice to add that phrase, “so help me God,” to the oath of office, and it’s not in the Constitution.

As you may have seen, there’s currently a lawsuit in the Supreme Court seeking to prevent the Chief Justice from adding the phrase. As the lawsuit states, they have no objection whatsoever if President Obama chooses voluntarily to say “so help me God,” and of course President-elect Obama has stated that he will say “so help me God,” so that’s where it is. An interesting, I think, example of how history works and historical fellowship works.

By the way, further research, I don’t want to take too much time on this, further research has been done and we found that the real source that Freeman was using was a book [RS-Republican Court, or American Society in the Days of Washington] that had been written in 1855, [RS-actually 1854] that said Washington added “so help me God,” and it used as its source the memories of Washington Irving, a New York writer. Washington Irving was six years old in 1789, so it’s not terribly likely that his memory was ideal. [RS-Besides, it is known that Washington Irving when he wrote his biography of Washington three years later that he stole the bulk of his inaugural narrative from the Memoir of Eliza Susan Morton Quincy.]

But in the 20th Century [RS-starting with FDR in 1933] it’s been commonplace to add that.

[End of excerpt from Dr. Kennon's January 14, 2009, press briefing.]

Five days later at home in Duluth, Georgia, with Raymond Soller.

Ray Soller:

Thank you, Dr. Kennon for acknowledging that "[t]here is no primary contemporary source that states that George Washington said, 'so help me God.'” Sources at the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, Library of Congress, and the Senate Historical Office have finally said just about the same thing. I suspect this information would not have been made public if it weren't for the publicity surrounding the Newdow v. Roberts lawsuit.

I do have one question, though. That "conversation" we had that you referred to, I don't have a record of receiving a reply to any of my e-mails. I know I'm getting on at age sixty-nine, so if you still have a record of just when it was that you replied, I would deeply appreciate it.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Moderator: Thank you everyone for your interest.

Democracy V. Republic

We often hear certain figures (mostly from the extreme political right) claim America was founded to be a republic not a democracy. That statement is a half truth. Some of the folks who utter it understand what they are talking about; many don't. And unfortunately, I see David Barton as one of the chief perpetrators of the "ignorant" understanding of the phrase.

The United States was founded to be a small l liberal small d democracy. All small d democracy means is voting (i.e., consent of the governed). And small l liberal means certain rights are antecedent to majority rule. The Declaration of Independence is the quintessential "liberal democratic" document. The US Constitution established the United States as a constitutional republic. And a constitutional republic is simply a form of "liberal democracy."

You do see quotations from the Founding Fathers criticizing the concept of "democracy" in favor of "republicanism"; but what they are really criticizing is direct democracy or mob rule. There are certain "republican" checks that must be built in to the democratic rule of the people. Chiefly, it's representatives not "the people" who make the laws. Another republican check is that certain individual rights are prior to majority rule. Ultimately, all of the following terms correctly describe the American system of government: "liberal democracy," "representative democracy," "representative republic" or "democratic republic." The following term does NOT: "direct democracy." And that's what the Founders criticized when they noted our form of government was a "republic" not a "democracy."

Now, on to David Barton's distortions of this dynamic. This should help explain why so many Christian Nationalists repeat "we are a republic, not a democracy" as a mindless mantra:

If you study the history of "republicanism", you see it was invented by Western Culture's noble pagan Greco-Roman heritage. The Greeks tried direct democracy, saw that it didn't work. And the Romans pioneered "republicanism." Indeed, the Founding Fathers looked back at noble pagan republican Rome with a great affinity. Indeed, when they wrote with surnames they picked ones from republican Rome, not the Bible. The Founders thought of themselves as new versions of Cato, Cincinnatus, Brutus, Novanglus, and of course Publius. Yet, what they were arguing for wasn't exactly what ancient Rome had, but rather something more modern. 18th Century republicanism was more of an Enlightenment construct.

The Bible spoke little to ideals of 18th Century republicanism. The authors of the Federalist Papers never quoted the Bible in support of the provisions in the US Constitution. But outside of the Federalist Papers, some Enlightenment thinkers and ministers did "read in" republicanism to the Biblical record. As rationalists, America's Founders and the ministers who worked with them picked and chose from all sources of world history, including the biblical record, what they thought "rational" and ignored or discarded the rest. And along the way they did a lot of "reading in" to those sources what they wanted to see to fit their "Whig" ideology.

When framing the Constitution, Noah Webster perfectly captured this Enlightenment zeitgeist that undergirded the US Constitution:

Of all the memorable eras that have marked the progress of men from the savage state to the refinements of luxury, that which has combined them into society, under a wise system of government, and given form to a nation, has ever been recorded and celebrated as the most important. Legislators have ever been deemed the greatest benefactors of mankind—respected when living, and often deified after their death. Hence the fame of Fohi and Confucius—of Moses, Solon and Lycurgus—of Romulus and Numa—of Alfred, Peter the Great, and Mango Capac; whose names will be celebrated through all ages, for framing and improving constitutions of government, which introduced order into society and secured the benefits of law to millions of the human race.

This western world now beholds an era important beyond conception, and which posterity will number with the age of Czar of Muscovy, and with the promulgation of the Jewish laws at Mount Sinai. The names of those men who have digested a system of constitutions for the American empire, will be enrolled with those of Zamolxis and Odin, and celebrated by posterity with the honors which less enlightened nations have paid to the fabled demi-gods of antiquity.

But the origin of the AMERICAN REPUBLIC is distinguished by peculiar circumstances. Other nations have been driven together by fear and necessity—the governments have generally been the result of a single man’s observations; or the offspring of particular interests. IN the formation of our constitution, the wisdom of all ages is collected—the legislators of antiquity are consulted—as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. In short, in it an empire of reason.

Now, Webster wrote these words in 1787; later when the French revolted and tried to construct their "empire" on "reason," it didn't work so well and Webster, apparently, rethought his confidence in "reason" as the rock that undergirds the American republic. In the 19th Century Webster began talking like a Christian Nationalist, and consequently, offers Barton et al. many quotations. Here is the offending article from Wallbuilders.

The quotations criticizing democracy from the other Founders are apt; but, as we have seen, what they criticize is direct democracy. But what Barton quotes from Webster for how a republic defines is an extremely self-serving and distortionist definition. Here is what he reproduces from Webster:

[O]ur citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.13

The other quotations are from Founders explaining how they believed "law" ultimately traced to the divine. The Founders did believe in an immutable God given "natural law" discovered by reason. But they disagreed on the proper relationship between reason and revelation. The most notable "republicans" like Jefferson, J. Adams, Franklin and Madison were rationalists who believed man's reason penultimate for discovering that "higher law," in both private and public life. But I'm sure many other FFs disagreed. Because they disagreed on the Bible's proper role in politics (how to properly understand the Bible led to sectarian arguments which they were trying to avoid), they formed a consensus that, in politics, we would look to "reason" to determine God given natural law.

Now, that there is an immutable "higher law" that trumps majority rule (indeed it's the source of "unalienable rights") was one republican check on democratic rule. However, it's arguably not the sine qua non of "republicanism." If anything the central feature of republicanism v. direct democracy is representatives make the law, not "the people."

But to David Barton and those who follow him, the difference between "republicanism" and "democracy" is democracy is majority rule, republicanism is "God's law." And of course "God's law" simply reduces to the Bible to be used as a "proof-texting" trump as today's evangelicals currently do. So when Ben Franklin said America was given “A Republic, if you can keep it,” he apparently meant, according to Barton, that we must act like evangelical proof texters believing the Bible the infallible Word of God. And, by the way, Ben Franklin believed "that the[re are] several Things in the old Testament impossible to be given by divine Inspiration,..."

Barton's theory ignores the fact that the Founders turned chiefly to "reason" and avoided proof texting the Bible to determine the content of the God given natural law. As John Adams put it:

To him who believes in the Existence and Attributes physical and moral of a God, there can be no obscurity or perplexity in defining the Law of Nature to be his wise benign and all powerful Will, discovered by Reason.

– John Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, March 19, 1794. Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 377, Library of Congress. Seen in James H. Hutson’s, “The Founders on Religion,” p. 132.

Apocolypse Now?

Nah, later.
Much later, if ever...
by Tom Van Dyke

My blogsister Lindsey Shuman posts an alarming alarm by the very alarmed Michelle Goldberg about the very alarming "Rise of Christian Nationalism."

Then some of the readers of this blog seemed to get very alarmed themselves.

The centerpiece of Ms. Goldberg's jeremiad is a cabal of "Dominionists" like RJ Rushdoony and his Chalcedon Foundation. A "Christian Nation" is established, and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ follows.

Oy. That's very alarming. Let's look at what they're saying, then:

For one thing, I like the Wikipedia OK, but the link above calls Gary North a "well-known" theologian.

But Gary North is not a well-known theologian, even if my colleague Jonathan Rowe quotes him often enough. Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar are well-known theologians. Gary North is just some guy with a Ph.D in economic history from the University of California (Riverside) who happens to be the son-in-law of the late Rousas John Rushdoony, the Dominionist godfather.

Rushdoony is more well-known: whether or not he's a theologian is questionable, as the man was equally uncredentialed. But let's get past all that and get to their theologico-political claims:

As near as I can figger out their theology, the Second Coming of Jesus won't happen until mankind freely chooses to establish a Biblical theocracy and have it last for 1000 years, more or less. Post-millenialism, they call it.

So in other words, even the Dominionists [also called "Christian Reconstructionists"]---who are "extreme" by any socio-political measure, I suppose---don't aspire to take over the government by force. Their theology is simply that if/when a Christian theocracy is established [with the Second Coming to follow some 1000 years later], it will be by man's free choice.

OK.

Now, back here in the real world, there seems little danger of this ever growing into anything more than an abstract hope, in our lifetime or any other. Because if man could live under Biblical principles or even the "natural law" for 1000 years, he wouldn't even need a Heaven. Earth would become one.

Mebbe our Puritanism expert Lori Stokes can help out here, but even the Mayflower types couldn't fill up a single boat with Puritans for the maiden voyage to these shores. They were forced to include a bunch of non-Puritan riffraff to fill the holds for their one-way ticket to paradise just to finance the trip.

So much for the promise of theocracy. You can't even round up enough people to fill up a boat, and even if you did, things would go to hell soon after you landed.

We needn't worry about Michelle Goldberg's bogeymen, the Christian Reconstructionists, I think. They aren't oiling up their guns or sharpening their knives, nor have they bombed anything or anyone. They know that at least for any foreseeable future, the riffraff will always be with us, as they were from the beginning.

They're quite comporting with the American Way, to convince rather than coerce, fair play under the American principle of pluralism. I think it's safe to turn off the alarm for at least another 1000 years or so.

Bush Derangement Syndrome, Iraq & Liberal Democracy

I wasn't entirely convinced Bush Derangement Syndrome existed until I made my farewell post at Dispatches From the Culture War and am getting nailed in the comments to it. And, I mean this as no insult to Ed; he has a great blog and I'm grateful that he invited me to guest blog. Let me further say I didn't vote for Bush either times (I voted Libertarian). And I do not support the Iraq War -- I think it was a mistake -- and never promoted it.

First of all on why Bush took us to war:

My post originally gave a "shout out" to my blogfather Timothy Sandefur who was a supporter of Bush's War in Iraq. He argued after Christopher Hitchens, that the War was for secular values against theocratic totalitarianism.

I do believe that the war was fought chiefly for liberal democratic values (small l, small d). And that Bush believes liberal democratic ideas are God-given human rights as he has told us, as the Declaration of Independence says. Whether liberal democratic values are "secular" is debatable, but I think you can make that case. For instance, Bush's Straussian advisors who pushed him into this war (who tend to be atheists) understand that the Declaration of Independence's ideas of "unalienable rights" to liberty and equality are NOT authentically Christian, but essentially modern ideas. So it's not too much of a stretch to say a war against Islamic fanaticism fought on behalf of universal human rights of liberty and equality is an essentially secular project. Or it's at the very least a "modern" project.

The problem is it didn't work; we could force those values on Germany and Japan (as we did), but could not on the Islamic world.

I also believe that Bush & his Straussians advisors were involved in a concerted effort to "reform" Islam to be a more moderate and enlightened religion (i.e., the idea that Islam is a "religion of peace" and that Muslims worship the same God Jews and Christians do). But whether that can work as well is not for certain; I see that as a work in progress and a noble one at that.

Some of Bush's critics -- mostly the paleoconservatives at the Lew Rockwell Crowd -- who have termed neoconservatives "neo-Jacobins" have a kernel of truth in their argument. While I can't speak for Cheney or other parts of Bush's administration, everything I've seen, read and heard from Bush supports my contention that he fought the war in Iraq chiefly to put an American footprint in the Middle East of liberty, equality, and modern democracy. The ends were noble (that is liberal democracy is the best form of government and we should wish to see all nations adopt it); the means were not. You can't "nation build" and establish liberal democracy by force in most of the illiberal un-democratic lands. According to internal theory of liberal democracy, the "people" in those lands have to "consent" to the liberal democratic (or "constitutionally republican") form of government.

And by the way, though I don't agree with the Straussians on many issues, I've learned much about political philosophy and the American Founding from them. While I'm not certain if the term "neo-Jacobin" is proper, the idea of fighting wars for liberal democratic values can be gleaned from the American Founding record. Though I wouldn't call them "Jacobins," America's Founders certainly were Francophiles. One of the many revisionist myths of the "Christian Nation" proponents is that the American Founders did not support the French Revolution. The opposite is true. The French were vital allies in defeating the British and a consensus among both the Founders and the population at large was the French Revolution was a continuation of the American Revolution, that eventually such a revolutionary republican spirit would sweep the globe and make this the *final* form of government.

And it wasn't just the deists, unitarians and rationalists who supported the French Revolution, but orthodox Trinitarian Christians, like Ezra Stiles, as well. Indeed ministers, whether heterodox unitarians like Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, or orthodox Trinitarians like Ezra Stiles synthesized such revolutionary republican ideas with the Bible and thought the French Revolution would triumphantly usher in a "millennial republic" of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Men like John Adams and Edmund Burke -- Whigs who supported the American cause, but opposed the French Revolution from the start -- were in the minority at the very beginning. And then, as with Iraq II and Vietnam, what began as a popular movement eventually began to lose support as things started to go wrong. And when it was all over, of course, we realized just how different the American and French Revolutions were, why the former succeeded and the later failed. And men like Burke and Adams got to say "I told you so" just like LewRockwell.com and Counterpunch are now saying "I told you so."

And again, I write all of this just to try and get some perspective on the last 8 years of Bush's Presidency. I don't support him or his failed war. And I think the Founding Fathers, though they CERTAINLY believed (as Bush does) that liberal democracy (i.e., what's written in the Declaration of Independence) was *the* form of government that all nations *ought* to adopt, and consequently would "cheer on" and support nations that revolted on behalf of "the rights of man," they were also wisely prudent about engaging in "foreign entanglements" on behalf of causes that we might like.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

Hello everyone! I just wanted to stop in and share a recent C-Span video that I saw (yes, I know that admitting to watching C-Span shows that I have little to no life, but oh well). In this video, Michelle Goldberg, discusses her book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (You can read an interesting review of the book by clicking here). Goldberg is a former contributing writer at Salon.com and blogs at The Huffington Post. In this video, Goldberg discusses her book at the All Souls Unitarian Church in Indianapolis.

Part One:


Part Two:


Part Three:


Here is a link to the other 4 parts of this discussion.

Lessons from Washington's First Inaugural

When it comes to discussing George Washington's First Inaugural, the debate on this site seems to focus on whether he added "so help me God" at the end of his official oath. Even if Mr. Soller and other like-minded activists succeed in casting doubt on the historical tradition (which, of course, holds that Washington said those words), I'm reminded of the phrase "cutting off the nose to spite the face."

***For more on this, see my article "So WHAT if Washington Didn't Say 'So Help Me God'"?

There are deeper, and much clearer, lessons to be gleaned from Washington's First Inaugural Address. And, since this blog deals with the religious dimensions of our founding, I will focus on the religious nature of Washington's First Inaugural.

What follows is the key portion of Washington's First Inaugural, where he calls on the American people to embrace a deeper faith in and obedience to Almighty God....

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.

As one can see, there's a lot of meat to what President Washington says in this important address. Too often we get lost in debates over whether GW was an orthodox Trinitarian evangelical or whether he said "so help me God" in the oath. These are peripheral debates to the central, moral leadership that George Washington provided our early Republic.

There are several lessons to be learned from Washington's First Inaugural, but I will focus on only three....

1. The American people should clearly and unequivocally embrace the EXISTENCE of God and their reliance on Him.

2. The American people should ADORE God - and that OBVIOUSLY means more than just a casual, dismissive "Yeah, I believe in God, but..." No, Washington is calling on the American people to embrace a deep, meaningful, contemplative relationship with God.

3. The United States has been blessed by God - and will continue to receive God's blessings, based upon their continued homage, adoration, and obedience.

Let's not mince words here or allow ourselves to get lost in some kind of detached, abstract, academic exercise. George Washington is sounding like an Old Testament prophet in this speech. Washington is celebrating America's new government, but he's also expressing some trepiditation and wants the American people to keep their prayers and their faith going.

I am reminded of the words of the late Supreme Court Justice William Douglas: "We are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."

George Washington would've agreed!

John Adams' Christianity

At least for one day in 1810, it wasn't exactly what I thought...
by Tom Van Dyke

I find John Adams confusing at best---and make that confused---in his dabblings in theology, and I've previously called him a twit and a ninny when it comes to these things. An opinion I've not been led to change, mind you: I find his understanding shallow when it comes to his tourism of other religions, a fragment from the Greeks here, a page from the Hindus there, and he's not particularly incisive when it comes to the Christian religion, with which he was most familiar.

Neither do I think Adams' and Jefferson's letters [frequently to each other] after they left public life are particularly relevant to our studies, a) because these ex-presidents were out of the game and b) because their letters were private.

But I'd like to look at a letter I recently ran across from Adams to Dr. Benjamin Rush [who himself got Adams and Jefferson writing to each other again after a long estrangement]: first, because some folks think Adams' thoughts are important, and second because I think this letter might be typical of general attitudes toward Christianity back in those days, and probably our own days as well.

"Shallow" would be too pejorative, but what Jefferson called the "pillow of ignorance" in his younger and wiser days before he too decided to become a theological "expert" fits here: that most of us don't worry much about what can't be known about God or Jesus or whatever, although we have a dim awareness---seeing through a glass darkly, as an evangelist once put it---about answering the most immediate philosophical question, How Should Man Live?

JOHN ADAMS' LETTER TO BENJAMIN RUSH

JANUARY 21, 1810

"[Thomas Paine's] political writings, I am singular enough to believe, have done more harm than his irreligious ones. He understood neither government nor religion."

Oh, my. For John Adams to say Paine didn't understand religion, well, we might compare the color of their kettles, but let's move on. Paine, of course, was the author of The Age of Reason, which trashed the Bible and religion in general, and for which he got trashed by just about everyone in America in return.

"From a malignant heart he wrote virulent declamations, which the enthusiastic fury of the times intimidated all men, even Mr. Burke, from answering as he ought."

Wow. A "malignant heart," and one that could intimidate even the best of men like Edmund Burke. A sage observation, although perhaps Christian charity and the quality of mercy might have tempered what would have been Burke's just response.

"[Paine's] deism, as it appears to me, has promoted rather than retarded the cause of revolution in America, and indeed in Europe."

This would be 1810, not 1776. I don't think Adams means this as praise: Revolution would be a bad thing, and therefore deism, too, at least Paine's deism. By this time, Paine had made his way to revolutionary France, where he was thrown in prison as an agitator. President Washington let his "malignant heart" stew there. [And oh!, you should know about Thomas Paine, revolutionary France, and President George Washington. What a drama!] But back to the action:

His [Paine's] billingsgate, stolen from Blount's Oracles of Reason, from Bolingbroke., Voltaire, Berenger, &c.,

Paine's not even a visionary, he's a mere plagiarist in John Adams' eyes. Voltaire, of course is just the type of "Enlightenment" figure whose hostility to Christianity was ill-received in the new United States, as Adams ills that hostility:

"...will never discredit Christianity, which will hold its ground in some degree as long as human nature shall have any thing moral or intellectual left in it."

Ah. Christianity comports with human nature, then, or at least what is best in man. This is an important point, as "natural law" acknowledges human nature, and is also "the law written on man's heart," as the aforementioned evangelist [OK, OK---it was Paul, who wrote the Epistles in the Bible] also noted.

"The Christian religion, as I understand it, is the brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the character of the eternal, self-existent, independent, benevolent, all powerful and all merciful creator, preserver, and father of the universe, the first good, first perfect, and first fair. It will last as long as the world."

All John Adams is saying here is that Christian teaching [religion] reflects the true nature of God. That's nice, but as a tourist of other religions, Adams often says the same thing about them, too. So let's continue:

Neither savage nor civilized man, without a revelation, could ever have discovered or invented it.

Aha. Just one sentence later, our eureka moment! What is essentially Christian could only have come from God, and only by direct revelation!

I mean, why would "the law of nature" oblige you to "turn the other cheek?" That's crazy, man. Dogs that do that become bottom dog, not Top Dog, and that's only if he doesn't get eaten by his fellows.

This is where the "law of nature" as expressed by Thomas Hobbes comes in, the view that life is nasty, brutish and short and that man enters into the "social contract" of government mostly out of a fear of violent death. Or one might enter into the "social contract" to preserve his "right" of hedonism!

Adams is arguing anything but.

"Ask me not, then, whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian. As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow-disciple with them all."

How ecumenical of John Adams here, but why not?

I think we find him at his most honest here, and probably pretty close to many of us in 2009---content to sleep on the "pillow of ignorance," but we still have to get up in the morning, look at ourselves in the mirror, then go face the world.

After reading so many of John Adams' letters expressing his theological doubts and explorations but still seeking a universality of religious truth, I was a bit surprised to run across this. But it jibes/vibes/chimes with all of his other writings. Just because a man doubts and inquires and explores beyond his self-drawn boundaries, that should never be taken that he abandoned his home.

"Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good," said that aforementioned evangelist. "Breathe," Paul might well have said to equal effect, because that's how man, armed with free will, seems to be wired.

My opinion of John Adams as theological dilettante and poseur has been moderated by looking at this letter. And if Thomas Paine could intimidate even the estimable Edmund Burke, we should not doubt that the vociferious skeptic Thomas Jefferson could intimidate John Adams, and we might read their correspondence with that in mind. After all, Jefferson had once cut off his correspondence with this same Benjamin Rush over just who Jesus was. [Rush was what we might call an "ecumenical" Christian himself, a little of this, a little of that, but still recognizably Christian.]

And so, Adams never wrote to Jefferson like he does here to Rush; Jefferson was quite clear that he considered Jesus a philosopher, perhaps the greatest moral philosopher of all time, but still just a philosopher. But at least on one day in 1810, Adams states the belief that Jesus' moral philosophy came from God, not man.

As we try to get a handle on the religious landscape of the Founding, this is not a small thing.

"So Help Me God": A George Washington Myth that Should Be Discarded

A January 12, 2009 History News Network article by Peter R. Henriques.

Peter Henriques is Professor of History, Emeritus, at George Mason University and author of Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington. Professor Henriques' HNN article was originally prepared with the intent that it would be published as a newspaper Opinion Editorial. As fate would have it, the article found its way into an Amicus Brief filed in conjunction with the Newdow v. Roberts lawsuit.

The following statement, Interest of Amici Curaie, preceded the article:

The Amici have no personal interest in the outcome of this case. The Amici are a collection of historians and scholars who have studied the early history of the United States and who stand up for historical accuracy. The Amici give no opinion to how the Court should decide this case but merely request that the Court use real history of the United States and not perpetuated falsehoods.

Here now with permission of the author is the entire article with the series of endnotes that accompanied the Amicus Brief.

One of the most widely held myths about George Washington is that immediately after he took the prescribed oath to become the nation’s first President, he solemnly added the words, "So help me God"and thus began a tradition that has been followed ever since. Unfortunately, this myth, accepted by such fine historians as David McCullough and Kenneth C. Davis, is given further credence in a video released by The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies maintained by the Senate Rules Committee. Entitled "So Help Me God," it shows president after president uttering the words and authoritatively declares that George Washington first used the phrase. In fact, an examination of the historical evidence demonstrates that such a claim is almost certainly false.

There is absolutely no extant contemporary evidence that President Washington altered the language of the oath as laid down in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” A long letter by the French foreign minister Comte de Moustier, who attended the ceremony, repeated the oath verbatim and did not include the additional words.  Apparently, it was not until 65 years after the event that the story that Washington added this phrase first appeared in a published volume. In his book, The Republican Court, Rufus Griswold cited a childhood memory of Washington Irving as his source. It took another 27 years before the first clearly documented case of a President adding the words, “So help me God,” was recorded — when Chester A. Arthur took the oath in 1881.

Moreover, it would have been completely out of character for George Washington to have tampered with the constitutional text in this way. He presided over the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, and he took the Constitution produced there very seriously. He was, in many ways, a Constitutional literalist. Would such a man, during the very act of becoming the nation’s first President, alter an oath that had been decided upon and written into the nation’s fundamental charter? It is far more likely that his political philosophy, and not his religious beliefs, shaped his actions in this incident.

Proponents of the myth contend that Washington had expressed no personal objection to saying “So help me God” and had routinely taken such oaths during the colonial era. Perhaps, they contend, he simply added it as an afterthought or because he was caught up in the solemnity and reverence of the moment.  While at first glance this is plausible, it seems certain that any such modification of the oath would have created comment at the time that would have survived in the historical record.

The reason for this assertion is at exactly the same time as these inaugural events were unfolding, the first Congress was debating what oath the new members of the new federal government should take so as to comply with the Constitution. Article Six called for an oath but specifically added, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Early arrivals to the House of Representatives had taken an oath that included the words, “So help me God.” But, following the lead of a committee led by James Madison, legislators passed a new oath act on April 27, 1789 — just three days before Washington’s inauguration —   that excluded the words “So help me God.”  The Senate, after adding unrelated amendments, passed the bill on May 5, 1789. Would the Senate have passed an oath bill without the words, “So help me God,” only five days after the great hero of the American people “solemnly” and “with fervor” added them to his own oath? And do so without any contemporary comment surviving?

Taken together, the complete lack of contemporary evidence, George Washington’s political philosophy of strictly following the Constitution and the concurrent debate over the proper wording of oaths under the new Constitution make it virtually certain that George Washington did not add the words “So help me God” to his inaugural oath.

Does it make any difference whether he added the words or not?  Beyond a historian’s desire to reconstruct the past as accurately as possible, I think the story has pertinence to our current debate over the proper relationship between the national government and religion. Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution, first published in 1833, explained why the clause banning religious test oaths was included. Its main object, he wrote, was “to cut off forever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source.”

The issue in this case is not whether the founding fathers were religious. Many were. George Washington kissed the Bible on which he took his oath, and he and other government officials immediately attended religious services at Saint Paul’s church following his inaugural address. The issue that concerned them was what role the national government should play in religion. James Madison made the view of most of the founders clear during the ratification debate in Virginia. “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant violation.”

ENDNOTES

historians as David McCullough and Kenneth C. Davis ...

McCullough, David, John Adams, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York, 2001, paperback edition January 2008, page 387.

Davis, Kenneth C., Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned, Harper Collins, New York, 2003, paperback - 2007, page 131.

video released by The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies ...

Website: Inaugural History - Facts and Firsts - Watch the Video "'So Help Me God'", a historical look at the Inaugural Ceremonies 1789-2005" - spokesperson Beth Hahn, Historical Editor, Senate Historical Office (accessed 1/20/2009).

At about the two-minute and fifty-second mark into the  video, the spokesperson tells us, "Everyone [that is, all presidents beginning with Washington's inauguration] has since said 'So help me God' at the end of the oath."

A long letter by the French foreign minister ...

Documentary History First Federal Congress, Vol. 15, pages 404-405
Excerpt from French consul letter - retranslated from the French

After every one had taken his seat, the Vice-President rose to announce to the President that the members of both Houses were ready to escort him to witness the oath he was going to take in conformity with the Constitution. A balcony adjoined the Senate-chamber, permitting all classes of people to witness the ceremony in greater number. Three doors communicating with this balcony were opened. The President passed by the middle one, followed by the Vice-President and the Chancellor of the State of New York, who was to administer the oath. The Senators went out by the right, and the Representatives by the left.

On an embroidered cushion a Bible was brought, upon which the President placed his hand and repeated the following words after the Chancellor: "I solemnly swear to discharge with fidelity the functions of President of the United States, and to do all in my power to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America." Thereupon the Chancellor, making a sign with his hat to the people, exclaimed, 'Long live George Washington, President of the United States!" Three hurrahs, the customary acclamation of the people, followed; the President saluted the public profoundly, and re-entered with the Senators and the Representatives.

In his book, The Republican Court, ...

Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, The Republican Court, or American Society in the Days of Washington, First published in 1854 as a subscriber edition in 25 sections, republished 1856, New York: D. Appleton and Company.

(page 141) ... he [Chancellor Robert R. Livingston] pronounced slowly and distinctly the words of the oath. The Bible was raised, and as the President bowed to kiss its sacred pages, he said audibly, " I swear," and added, with fervor, his eyes closed, that his whole soul might be absorbed in the supplication, "So help me God!" Then the Chancellor said, "It is done," and, turning to the multitude, waved his hand, and with a loud voice exclaimed, "Long live George Washington, President of the United States!"

Griswold, at this point, did not indicate a specific source. Later on, he leads the reader to believe that Washington Irving could have been his source.

(page 142) Few persons are now living who witnessed the induction of the first President of the United States into his office; but walking, not many months ago, near the middle of a night of unusual beauty, through Broadway - at that hour scarcely disturbed by any voices or footfalls except our own - Washington Irving related to Dr. [John Wakefield] Francis [1789 - 1861] and myself his recollections of these scenes, with that graceful conversational eloquence of which he is one of the greatest of living masters. He had watched the procession till the President entered Federal Hall, and from the corner of New street and Wall street [about 200 feet away] had observed the subsequent proceedings in the balcony.

a childhood memory ...

Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783 in the last weeks of the American Revolution. He had turned six-years old just weeks before Washington's inauguration on April 30, 1789.

when Chester A. Arthur took the oath in 1881

New York Times, Sept. 23, 1881, pg 5; The New Administration President Arthur Formally Inaugurated. 

Washington Post, Sept.23, 1881, Arthur Inaugurated: Clerk McKinney then advanced and presented a small Bible, which he held in his hand to the President. The latter laid his hand upon it and Chief Justice Waite solemnly administered the oath of office, Gen. Arthur holding up his right hand. "so help me God," said the President in a clear voice as he kissed the Bible.

oath that included the words, “So help me God.”

April 6, 1789 the House appointed a committee to prepare a bill "to regulate the taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by the sixth Article of the Constitution." The House then voted for the following wording for their own oath: "I, A B a Representative of the United States in the Congress thereof, do solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) in the presence of Almighty GOD, that I will support the Constitution of the United States. So help me GOD."
Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 1st Congress, 1st Session, page 101.

excluded the words “So help me God.”

April 27 the House reads and approves the bill, [which specifies "I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States."], and forwards it to the Senate for its consideration.
Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 1st Congress, 1st Session, page 215.

Senate ... passed the bill

May 5, the Senate reads the bill a third time and passed the Oath Act "with amendments".
Annals of Congress, Senate, 1st Congress, 1st Session, page 31.
May 7, the Senate agreed to bill as amended by the House. Journal of the House Representatives: 1st-13th Congress, page 31.

On a Lighter Note

Things have been getting a little "spicy" around here as of late, so I thought a somewhat mindless little exercise in history might get our minds off things.

In just a couple of days our nation will witness the inauguration of its 44th president. As is the case with any president about to leave office, historians, politicians, etc. are making their early historical assessments of the Bush Administration by comparing him to the presidents of the past. Of course ranking a president is a bit ridiculous to begin with. After all, we are comparing so many variables that it is virtually impossible to make any serious scholarly inquiry on the matter. But since I am not trying to be "scholarly" at all in this post, I think this might be some fun.

So, with this in mind, where do YOU rank our presidents? Who, in your opinion, were the top 10 GREATEST presidents? Who were the 10 WORST? Which president, in your opinion, was the most overrated? The most underrated?

Yes, I know this has nothing to do with the blog and is not a profound post in the least, and that is EXACTLY what I think we need right now. Just a brief moment to unplug from the founders and religion and discuss something that is somewhat mindless, completely biased, and really has nothing to do with the blog.

Let the debating begin!!!

Another Look at Steven Waldman's "Founding Faith"

And his 13 January 2009 Journal Entry at Beliefnet.com
by Ray Soller

Recently, Tom Van Dyke brought to our attention Michael P. Orsi's review of Steven Waldman's book, Founding Faith. In addition, I'd like to draw attention to another review written by John R. Vile. His review can be found here. (And yes, I've read the book.)

I'm sure to no great surprise for those who have tracked my blogs here at American Creation, the part of the review that caught my eye is this particular item:

As the editor of Beliefnet.com and former editor of U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Waldman writes in a readable style that will engage most readers ... Occasionally Waldman will miss an issue as when he reports (p.160) that Washington said “So Help me God” when taking his oath without indicating that there is a contemporary dispute about the matter, but he is generally aware of nuance. Thus, he correctly reports that the Constitutional Convention did not adopt Franklin’s proposal to begin each day’s proceedings with prayer and reasonably suggests, with reference to an earlier Continental Congress, that delegates may have failed to do so for fear that choosing a chaplain would further divide the group.

Here on page 160 is the snippet to which Professor Vile is referring:

Other points of consensus about God and government were quickly established during Washington's two terms. Washington took office by putting his hand on a Bible and declaring "So help me God," and many presidents since have done the same. The House of Representatives' building was used for worship services during the presidencies of Washington [RS-huh?!], Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. On the other hand, the new government abandoned the practice of the Continental Congress of officially referring to the United States as a "Christian nation."

Like Professor Vile says, Waldman doesn't seem to be aware not only that there is a "contemporary dispute" over whether George Washington added an extra-constitutional codicil to his presidential oath, but there's no reliable indication that any of our first twenty presidents thought of doing so either. In the matter of the Bible, neither Washington at his second inauguration, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, or John Quincy Adams are known to have used a Bible to solemnize their oath of office. (I could go on and comment about the practice of allowing worship service in federal buildings, but that would be a diversion.)

Now, all of a sudden, Steven Waldman has had an epiphany. Here's his exclamation, "So Help Me God" Came from Chester Arthur -- Not George Washington?!, and here are the mind-enlightening details:

Beth Hahn, historical editor for the U.S. Senate Historical Office, once made a video ["So Help Me God", a historical look at the Inaugural Ceremonies 1789-2005] describing how George Washington began the tradition of saying "So help me God" during a presidential swearing in. [accessed 1/20/2009]

Then she did some research -- and changed her mind. "When I made the video, it was common wisdom that he said it, and I did not check it," Hahn told Cathy Grossman of USA Today. "After investigating this, I would say there is no eyewitness documentation that he did -- or did not -- say this."

It was common practice to use the phrase back then but, Hahn said, the first actual eye-witness account of a President using the statement came in 1881 at Chester Arthur's swearing in.

I suspect Steven Waldman would agree with Beth Hahn that at the time Waldman composed his thoughts describing George Washington's first inaugural ceremony "it was common wisdom" to envision our first president as having added "So help me God" to his oath, and the whole reason for this is people simply "did not check it out." It had become unquestioned part of our founding faith.

Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War

One of my graduate professors, Dr. Paul Harvey of the Religion in American History blog, has posted a link to an interesting piece done by Christopher Grasso, an editor of The William and Mary Quarterly and a professor of history at the College of William and Mary. In this post, Grasso discusses his current research, which centers on Skepticism and American faith from the Revolution to the Civil War. I recommend reading the entire post, which you can find at this link.

Here are a few highlights from the article:

My own project was initially sparked by reading the Ezra Stiles Papers at Yale in the late 1980s. Stiles (1727-1795), a Congregationalist minister in Rhode Island and then president of Yale College, struggled with doubts about the truth of Christianity when he was a young man and wandered for a few years in what he later called the "darksome valley" of deism and skepticism. I was especially struck by the extent to which Stiles's doubts were his secret shame, concealed even from his family and closest friends as he shivered with fever on what he thought was his deathbed. After the American Revolution, the Reverend Stiles watched with grave concern as other doubters and deists came out of the closet and started to achieve positions of social prestige and political power. This was especially worrying at a time when states were rewriting their constitutions and reframing the relationship of church and state. There were few outspoken critics of Christianity like Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero from Vermont who published Reason, the Only Oracle of Man in 1785. But Stiles saw dangerous trends in voters who were indifferent to a candidate's religious opinions and in public sentiments that seemed to oppose not only government establishing a particular Protestant sect but even the state merely patronizing and privileging Christianity in general. Stiles, therefore, understood religious skepticism first as a personal psychological struggle, later as a matter of intellectual debate (safely confined to the republic of letters), and finally as an ideological and political problem threatening the new American republic.

At the time I wondered to what degree Stiles's concerns could represent much more than his own religious and intellectual development. He was, after all, a clergyman's son in a region famous for the lingering habits of Puritanism, so dabbling in deism and skepticism might have seemed particularly radical and dangerous. He was also a revealing but not necessarily a representative thinker, and perhaps he was just projecting his own experience onto the nation. But reading and research in the years that followed have convinced me that from the creation of the first American republic in the Revolution to its dissolution in the Civil War, the relation of skepticism and faith would be played out again and again in similar terms but in different contexts.

For most people in this period, skepticism was more than the anxious uncertainty of doubt; it was doubt elaborated as a tool of inquiry and critique. In late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America, too, the term "skeptic" primarily and popularly referred to religious skeptics—that is, those who questioned or criticized the truth claims of what was considered to be true religion—Christianity—and not to the rare epistemologist using classical arguments or Cartesian methods to deny certainty in all forms of knowledge. There had long been plenty of sermons and tracts written for doubting Christians, who usually had doubts about the state of their souls or the pertinence of this or that Christian doctrine to their own lives. The skeptic, however, stepped outside the whole belief system, examining it from a critical distance and finding it wanting.

Faith, on the other hand, meant more than intellectual assent to a set of doctrines. It was a commitment of the whole self, a hope and trust that, if genuine, ought to be the foundation of an entire way of life and vision of the world. Beliefs, we might say, are linguistic formulations that try to give expression to and elaborate the cognitive content of faith as a lived experience; skepticism is the systematic critique of those beliefs and therefore of the rational dimensions of the faithful way of life

For spiritual power and authority, Protestants looked up to God through his word, they looked alongside themselves to fellow followers of Christ as they built Christian communities, and they looked within themselves for the work of the Holy Spirit. Skepticism attacked the authenticity of the scriptures, challenged the idea that either the sociability of religious affections or the historical success of the church attested to the truth of doctrine, and contested the notion that subjective experience could evidence contact with things supernatural and divine. Skepticism and faith were in a dynamic tension that was critically important to understanding the development of a dominant Protestantism.

[...]

Readers of the standard religious histories will ask the same question. The eminently quotable Alexis de Tocqueville said, after all, that Americans were skeptical about everything but religion. Our own America—where churches thrive, supernaturalism sells, spirituality can trump other issues at the ballot box, and God consistently gets great poll numbers—has long been considered the Western world's exception to the secularization and disenchantment that was expected to attend modernity. Whereas previous historical explanations of this state of affairs looked to our supposed Puritan heritage, more recent interpretations have focused on precisely the period of my study. In the decades immediately following 1776, according to one prominent account, American Christianity was democratized, its surge of religious revivals revealing a religious movement that absorbed and directed the radical, egalitarian, populist, individualistic energies of the Revolution. In the early nineteenth century, according to another, as proselytizers and promoters vigorously competed for adherents in a denominational free market, a higher proportion of Americans formed closer associations with Christian institutions, ideas, and practices than ever before. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, according to a third, Americans created a powerful intellectual synthesis fusing republican political ideology, common-sense moral reasoning, and evangelical Protestantism. A rich and deep historiography shows us how the evangelicalism that emerged from what's called the Second Great Awakening shaped the politics of the second party system; how activist Protestantism fueled the great movements for social reform; how religious faith and scriptural argument provided the foundations for proslavery, antislavery, and every conceivable moral argument; how Christian views of Providence and creation dictated understandings of nature, history, and progress; and how pious sentimentalism was the beating heart of family life. Christianity refined and polished the genteel, rocked the cradle of the middle class, and provided both comfort and a language of resistance for the poor, the oppressed, and the enslaved.

So where were the skeptics? Some of the Founding Fathers—Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson most notably—were deists who believed in a creator and in morals derived from nature but not in the divinity of either the Bible or Jesus. While these gentlemen kept—or tried to keep—their heterodox views to themselves, small groups of other deists, inspired by Thomas Paine's Age of Reason (1794) and the lectures of former Presbyterian minister Elihu Palmer, organized a few deistical societies and published newspapers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The socioeconomic transformations wrought by new markets and new modes of industrial production after 1815 launched a new generation of social and religious radicalism. From the mid-1820s to about 1840, reformers like Robert Owen, Frances Wright, and Abner Kneeland identified themselves as religious skeptics and freethinkers—or "free enquirers"—who doubted or denied most or all of Christianity's claims about God, man, and salvation. Their point of view was aptly summarized by a loyal reader's testimonial in one of their free-thought newspapers in 1829. "I am now a sceptic … I live for this world, because I know nothing of any other. I doubt all revelations from heaven, because they appear to me improbable and inconsistent … I desire to see men's wishes bounded by what they can see and know; for I am convinced that they would thus become more contented, more practically benevolent, and more permanently happy, than any dreams of futurity can make them." As with the deists, the free enquirers' energies were divided between criticizing traditional (supernatural) religion and trying to offer an alternate vision for life in the world.

Christians called the deists and free enquirers "infidels," a pejorative term that some of the latter would defiantly adopt as their own, the way that some activist homosexuals in the twentieth century adopted "queer." They are understudied: the standard works on deism and organized free thought in the period were published in the 1930s and 1940s; the first half of a short study by Martin E. Marty titled The Infidel: Freethought in American Religion, published in 1961, has nearly been the last word on the subject. Certainly the efforts of these small groups of infidels were dwarfed by the legions conducting religious revivals, creating missions and moral reform societies, distributing Bibles and Christian tracts, and building churches across the land. Just as certainly, though, the experiences of people labeled infidels and the ideas branded as "infidelity" have remained hidden because of the stories we have chosen to tell about the nation's religious past. Even if few Americans publicly challenged Christian truth claims, Christianity's hegemonic triumph remains to be accounted for, and the reasons why and how the skeptical critique continued to haunt American Christianity need to be explained.

A Request for Clarification

My colleague Brad Hart, using this website as a source, writes in a post below:

In fact, David Barton, a popular Christian nation apologist, has seized upon the perceived orthodoxy of these various universities to defend his claim that 52 of the 55 signers to the Constitution were orthodox Christians.

[For those who came in late, David Barton is a well-reviled right-wing historian-advocate who argues for the Christian origins of the United States.]


Here's the thing---there were 40 signers of the Constitution, not 55.

There were 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, not 55.

When I google "52 of 55 signers," I get a lot of hits, most of them cut-and-pastes of a pro-Christian email, the rest are cut-and-pastes of a secularist rebuttal featuring historian Clinton Rossiter's opinion, which Brad Hart also reproduces below.

What I can't find is Barton's actual claim, only second-hand accounts of what Barton supposedly said. Apparently it comes from a Barton book called "America's Godly Heritage," actually a 40-page pamphlet that accompanies a 1993 video of the same name.

Barton made some amateurish errors back then and has attempted to clean up his scholar act since then. Does Barton still make that claim? What claim was it?

How many out of how many signers of what document were what? I'm so confused...

Universities and the Founding Era

An Evolution From Orthodoxy
To "Heresy."

Here at American Creation, we have argued that one of the central components to identifying America's true founding heritage rests on our understanding of Christian orthodoxy. Were the founding fathers Christian in the orthodox Trinitarian sense, or did they embrace a more "heretical" faith in divinity? For many Christian nation apologists, this argument is paramount to their overall thesis. Proving that the founders, or at least the majority of founders, were orthodox Christians -- i.e. that they believed in the Trinity, incarnation, the Bible's infallible nature, etc. -- would in essence add credence to their notion that America was indeed founded as a Christian nation. In contrast, those of the secular persuasion maintain that by disproving the orthodoxy of the founders -- especially the key founders -- they effectively punch enough holes into the Christian nation argument, thereby proving that America was founded as a secular nation.

One of the more interesting tidbits of debate in this ongoing saga centers on the religious nature of the various universities of the founding era. After all, these universities became the central "breeding grounds" for the development of the clergy in their respective denominations. As a result, virtually every single religious denomination endeavored to establish their own university, which was then dedicated to the instruction of their future clergy. In his book, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, David Holmes explains the nature and development of these universities:

Readers can gain a good indication of where religious groups were concentrated in colonial America by looking at its colleges. Because religious groups established all but one of the ten institutions of higher education in the colonies, the schools tended to be located where a denomination had strength. Thus in New England, Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth were Congregationalist, though Harvard later became Unitarian (a denomination that emerged from the liberal wing of Congregationalism). In Rhode Island, where several churches had strength, Baptists founded the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University). Since colleges were small, there were probably fewer than one thousand college students in America at any time. The colleges had the primary purposes of producing ministers and educated laity for their denominations, though in time all accepted members of other churches.

[...]

Upon entering the most northern of the middle colonies, New York, the visitors would have learned that the only college in the colony -- King's College (now Columbia University) -- was an Anglican institution. Its existence testified to the status of the Church of England as the colony's established church, though only in the area of densest population from Staten Island to Westchester County (14-15).

Since the overwhelming majority of colonial universities were established by a particular religious denomination, Christian nation supporters maintain that those who attended such universities would naturally have received a heavy dose of religious instruction, thus increasing their devotion to Christian orthodoxy. In fact, David Barton, a popular Christian nation apologist, has seized upon the perceived orthodoxy of these various universities to defend his claim that 52 of the 55 signers to the Constitution were orthodox Christians. Barton defends this claim by pointing to the fact that roughly 27 of the signers attended one of the various universities of their day. As a result, Barton insinuates that these signers were, as a result of their education, prone to embrace and defend orthodox Christian teachings. This assertion has gained such wide notoriety among Christian nation advocates that even a former presidential candidate mentioned it in the course of a debate.

A large number of historians, however, are not convinced. For example, the Late Clinton Rossiter, professor of history at Cornell University had the following to say on the perceived orthodoxy of the founders:

Although it had its share of strenuous Christians ... the gathering at Philadelphia was largely made up of men in whom the old fires were under control or had even flickered out. Most were nominally members of one of the traditional churches in their part of the country ... and most were men who could take their religion or leave it alone. Although no one in this sober gathering would have dreamed of invoking the Goddess of Reason, neither would anyone have dared to proclaim his opinions had the support of the God of Abraham and Paul. The Convention of 1787 was highly rationalist and even secular in spirit (The Grand Convention, pp. 147-148).

In addition, Chris Rodda, author of the book, Liars for Jesus and passionate "Barton-debunker" gives the following rebuttal to Barton's claim:

All this means, of course, is that twenty-seven of the signers of the Declaration went to college -- twenty at a total of five different American colleges, and seven in Europe. Twenty-four definitely received degrees; three don't appear to have graduated. Almost all of the twenty-seven studied either law or business, and one studied medicine.

Only one of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration was a minister. This was John Witherspoon, the president of Princeton University (at that time called the College of New Jersey). There were two others, William Williams and Robert Treat Paine, who did seriously study of theology at some point in their educations, but neither pursued the ministry as a career. Williams studied under his clergyman father for a time after college, but ended up becoming a merchant. Paine became a lawyer. As for the rest, they may have had to follow the religious rules of the colleges they attended -- mandatory chapel attendance, strict observation of the Sabbath, etc. -- but since their only options were to attend a denominational school and follow its rules or not go to college at all, no conclusions about their religious opinions can be drawn from this.

Despite the criticism, David Barton and others remain steadfast in their assertion that the majority of the founders were orthodox in their Christian belief, and that most received such instruction from the major universities of their day. But just how orthodox were these colleges?

Historian Sydney Ahlstrom, author of the book, A Religious History of the American People, points out that a large number of these once highly orthodox universities underwent a religious metamorphosis, which adopted the "heretical" Unitarian teachings that were becoming quite popular at the time. With the rise of preachers like Charles Chauncy, Samuel Clarke, Richard Price and others, the traditional piety of American religion began to be challenged. As Ahlstrom points out:

The central doctrinal characteristic of this liberal movement was that which gave its early adherents the name "Arminian." They assaulted the Reformed or Westminster conceptions of God, man, and the divine-human relationship, stressing God's role as the Architect and Governor of the universe, though also placing an unmistakably Christian emphasis on his fatherhood...God's grace and mercy were needed, to be sure,; yet with regard to the nature of man and human ability, these liberal ministers showed perhaps a greater measure of confidence than any significant group of churchmen in the Reformed tradition. And what buoyed their confidence above all was the exhilaration of national independence, the economic and social advances of the American people, and the great destiny (already manifest) of this New World democracy. The idea prevailed that "this new man, this American" was a new Adam, sinless, innocent -- mankind's great second chance. Nowhere was it given so well-rooted a Christian interpretation as among these New England liberals, whose ideas on man were far more determinative than the ideas about the Godhead which later won the name "Unitarian." (391-392).

As these new teachings made their way into the various universities of colonial America, a shift away from tradition Christian orthodoxy occurred. Ahlstrom notes that American universities began hiring more liberal instructors of theology, who themselves adhered more to the principles of Unitarianism than traditional orthodoxy. The Reverend William Channing's remarks capture just how prevalent Unitarian doctrine was becoming in America's universities. In a letter to his colleagues, Channing urged the continuation of Unitarian teaching in Boston colleges:

Let them learn the distinction between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism. Many use these words without meaning, and are very zealous about sounds. Some suppose that Trinitarianism consists in believing in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But we all believe in these; we all believe that the Father sent the Son, and gives, to those that ask, the Holy Spirit. We are all Trinitarians, is this is belief in Trinitarianism. But it is not. The Trinitarian believes that the one God is three distinct persons called the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost; and he believes that each is the only true God, and yet that the three are only one God. This is Trinitarianism. The Unitarian believes that there is but one person possessing supreme Divinity, even the Father. This is the great distinction; let it be kept steadily in view...I am persuaded, that under these classes of high Unitarians many Christians ought to be ranked who call themselves orthodox and are Trinitarians...as such is the prevailing sentiment of our Universities (Ahlstrom, 395-396).

Even the case of James Madison reveals the changing nature in the religious teachings of American universities. From his youth, James Madison was raised in an orthodox Anglican home, where his father, James Madison Sr., was a vestryman in the church. When Madison was able to attend college, he and his family chose to send young James to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). Instead of attending nearby William and Mary College, Madison chose to travel north and attend the College of New Jersey, because of its reputation for being “the principle training ground for American Presbyterian clergy” (Holmes, Faith of Founding Fathers, 92).

While attending college in New Jersey, Madison witnessed two evangelical revivals, which split the student body into two groups. Steven Waldman, author of Founding Faith, notes that these two groups (known as the Cliosophical Society and the American Whig Society) differed in how they perceived religion. The “Cliosophes” were more evangelical in their sentiments, while the American Whigs were more cerebral and Unitarian. Madison took part in the latter (Founding Faith, 96).

The fact that Madison favored an intellectual and Unitarian perspective on religion may suggest that the orthodox teachings of his youth were beginning to change. After all, Madison had begun to investigate the teachings of Deism while under the tutelage of Donald Robertson and Alexander Martin.

Whatever their actual religious leanings were, it is clear that American universities, just prior to the founding, were embroiled in a religious "revolution" of sorts, which overturned much of the traditional orthodoxy of the day. As a result, American universities became a breeding ground for "heretical" interpretations of Christianity, which may explain why some founders kept orthodoxy at a distance.

Steven Waldman's Founding Faith

Folks on this blog often speak well of journalist/author/editor Steven Waldman as an even-handed and honest inquirer, and Mr. Waldman has a new book, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America. I'd like to clip from Michael P. Orsi's review in the new AmSpec:

The place of religion in America is a problem as old as our republic. It has been a flash point of debate between liberals and conservatives on a wide range of issues--such as aid to parochial schools, prayer at civic gatherings, nativity scenes on public property, government assistance to faith-based organizations, and many other concerns. The locus of the problem is interpreting the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment (1791), which reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”

Constitutional originalists hold to a strict interpretation of this text. They contend that when the First Amendment was ratified it simply prohibited the federal government from declaring itself in support of a national religion or acting in favor of a particular faith. On the other hand, proponents of a dynamic Constitution contend that what the phrase really means is that a strict separation must be maintained between the state and all religion in any form.

In Founding Faith, Steven Waldman, editor in chief of the popular online religion journal Beliefnet.com, investigates the genesis of the Establishment Clause. He presents the religious, philosophical, and political beliefs held by the authors and promoters of the Bill of Rights when the First Amendment was drafted.

Like most writers who delve into the First Amendment, Waldman explores the thinking of the great figures behind the Constitution, in particular the “Big Five”--Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Washington--that small circle generally thought of as the key Founding Fathers. He notes a bottom-line fact: the “Big Five” were decidedly pro-religion, and not at all the vague, quasi-secular, hands-off-God deists they are often represented as being. Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Washington all agreed on the importance of religion to a healthy democracy.

All to some degree believed that God intervened in the lives of men, and had chosen America for special blessing (the idea often referred to as American exceptionalism). That included Jefferson, whom Waldman presents as the least conventional of the five in his religious sensibilities. The Founders’ real concern was determining how religion could flourish best in America. Madison, whom Waldman paints as the most traditionally pious of the group, was the prime agent behind the First Amendment. He held a strong desire for a strict separation between church and state, because he believed that government presented the greatest potential obstacle to its flourishing. His view reflected his disgust with the European model of national churches, the history of which ultimately proved damaging to religion and an impediment to the freedom of conscience that was sacred to all the Founders.

But Waldman makes the important point that constitutional study has tended to focus too narrowly on the thinking of the “Big Five.” As much as Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Washington believed in God and His providential care (both for human beings and for our country) and agreed on the importance of religion in buttressing public morality, Waldman insists that their personal opinions are not the only standard by which the words of the Establishment Clause are to be understood. Indeed, to grasp fully the clause and its implications for religious freedom, it is essential to explore the views of a much wider group, including the members of the committee that drafted the Bill of Rights, as well as the congressional ratifiers.

The input and votes of all these men were vital in bringing the document to its final form and passage. And as Waldman wisely emphasizes, they all had their personal preferences regarding church-state relations, and moreover, represented states with widely divergent approaches to the concept of religious establishment. Some states, like Virginia, had prohibited funding of the Anglican Church as early as 1776, while Massachusetts continued to support the Congregationalist Church until 1833. That the First Amendment emerged from the framing process as it did reflects the fact that the Founders were, first and foremost, politicians willing and able to compromise in order to accomplish what was doable under the circumstances.

Waldman explores the ways in which the culture and denominational composition of each state, as well as the politicians’ personal beliefs, influenced how the Establishment Clause was understood. Pressure from Jefferson and Madison certainly provided encouragement to Virginia’s disestablishment law, while the views of Massachusetts’s John Adams and Fisher Ames, who considered government support for religion essential, had its effect in their state. Participation by men of such conflicting outlooks in the constitutional process argues forcefully that a narrow reading of the agreed-upon amendment is the only fair assessment that can be made. In other words, the First Amendment was intended only to prohibit a federally sponsored religion. Individual states could make their own laws.

TVD: Now, I've tended to skip books like Waldman's in favor of reading the Founders for myself, and I admit it's gratifying to independently come to many of the same conclusions as Waldman, particularly:

---on the objection to "key" Founders theses that tend to ignore or diminish the other Founders;
---that the personal opinions of these "key" Founders shouldn't be our standard to judge the First Amendment, nor were they were unanimous on things;
---that the other Founders [Ratifiers] are fully worthy of our attention;
---that even the "key" Founders are not nearly as secular or deist as "common knowledge" proclaims them to be;
---that the Bill of Rights' Establishment Clause was designed as anti-sectarian, not anti-religion;
---and the importance of federalism, which left many religious questions to the states, and that the signing of the constitution by no means ceded such jurisdiction to the federal government as many might think today.

Waldman also explicitly claims what I've only held as a suspicion: that James Madison's reticence to speak about religion came not from disbelief, but from a very humble piety. And "American exceptionalism" is a mainstream we haven't even begun to ford around here.

The second half of the book [and review] is about expansive judicial interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, where the federal government's claim to supremacy in such matters has been enforced. Certainly a worthy topic, but one presently outside the scope of this blog, for which I for one am thankful. Should others be interested in the method of working backwards from 2009 instead of forward from 1776, I recommend Jonathan Rowe's other groupblog, Positive Liberty.