04/19/07
The nature of our founding moral minority -
Categories: Religion and Theology, History -
twv
@ 10:57:58 am
I'm reading through Brooke Allen's Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, and I'm learning a few things.
Before reading the book, I knew that George Washington was tight-lipped about religion and probably not a Christian at all; I hadn't known that he made sure he didn't go to church on communion days! (Early on he had left his wife at church for communion, and made the carriage come back for her. When the preacher remonstrated him for leaving church before communion, he accepted the criticism and made a point of not showing up on Communion Sundays.)
I knew that Ben Franklin was latitudinarian and more interested in science than religion; I had forgotten that he expressed, at the very end of his life, doubts about the divinity of Jesus, and did not accept the doctrines espoused in the New Testament, believing Jesus' message had become corrupted.
I knew that Thomas Jefferson had argued that Jesus' message had been corrupted by his besotted admirers, and had even pared down the gospels to a manageable set of sayings. Further, I knew him to be a Deist of sorts, and that, unlike Washington, who leaned Stoic, he leaned Epicurean. (The latter, alas, not covered in the book.) I had not realized, though, how much he hated priests and preachers.
So far, halfway through the book, the biggest surprises concern John Adams, son of Calvinism, but a man who grew to repudiate most of its doctrines. His disgust with the religion of his time, and with the Second Great Awakening, I had no clue of. Perhaps I'd avoided Adams too much.
The book is easy to read, and quotes amply from original source material, such as letters and journal entries. As this book makes clear, there is no doubt that the myth of America's founding fathers as Christians was perpetrated by liars and believed by gullible fools.
Of course, this was aided, in part, by the care with which these men took not to upset the religious people of their time. Even Jefferson, the most obviously un-Christian of them all, didn't spout every one of his beliefs and reasons to the public. Still, the public knew what they were voting for when they voted for him. One of the main Federalist ploys in the Jefferson-Adams contest was to characterize Jefferson as an anti-Christ.
Adams blamed losing the election, though, to his making a national day of fasting, midway through his term, regarding the prospect of a war with France. This was seen by some as too religious, and Jefferson's support came from many religious people who could not trust mainline Christian denominations. Yes, the Methodists and the Baptists backed the atheist
rather than Adams, who was perceived to be too doctrinaire, and thus not safe!
The basic lesson from our founders' religious and ethical beliefs is that ethics is not linked inextricably to any particular religion . . . or even to religion in general. It is possible to be good and do good without any god prompting by holy carrot or hellish stick.
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