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from The Economist and Zionica.com:
Religion at the founding
Faith of our fathers
Mar 18th 2011, 19:25 by R.L.G.
NEW YORK
.TIM PAWLENTY recently told Iowa's Faith and Freedom Coalition the following:
We need to remember as others try to push out or marginalise people of faith—we need to remember this and always remember it—the constitution was designed to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith.
Cute as the phrasing is—shades of "religion requires freedom just as freedom requires religion" in its chiasmic form—there's a lot of confusion in those 43 words.
Yes, the constitution did seek to protect people of faith from government. One of the ways it sought to do so was by banning Congress from establishing religions. With the benefit of hindsight it looks like the framers protected America against an unlikely threat. It now seems impossible that America would establish a church. But what many Americans don't remember is that in the founders' period, government and churches were deeply entwined. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson, a deist, proposed disestablishing the Episcopal church in Virginia. (Many other states kept established churches well into the independence period. The first amendment merely prohibited Congress from establishing a religion.) Patrick Henry counter-proposed that Virginians be taxed for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion" and that "multiple establishments" be supported, not just the Episcopalian one. James Madison, the chief writer of the constitution, sharply disagreed in an elegant "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments."
Madison's goal was twofold; to protect religion from government influence was, indeed, one of them. But the other was, in fact, to protect the government from undue religious influence. Of official churches and their clergy, he wrote
In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people.
The founders established a pattern that helped make America one of the most religious countries in the world. The separation of church and state—yes, that is exactly what Jefferson and Madison wanted—was to protect both from each other. Modern secularists like to play up deists like Jefferson and quotations like Madison's above to downplay the religiosity of the early republic; they go too far when they make simple statements like "the founders were deists." Many were not.
The modern religious activists like Mr Pawlenty, though, commit the worse intellectual crime of effacing the secularism, deism and disestablishmentarianism of so many of the founders, baldly claiming they meant to put (Christianity's) God at the centre of American public life. On the whole, they most certainly did not. Mr Pawlenty notes that the Declaration of Independence mentions the "Creator". He probably knows, but does not mention, that the writer was the most deist of all the founders, Jefferson. Mr Pawlenty also says that 49 of 50 state constitutions mention God. He forgot one thing: the federal constitution does not. This was not because it slipped the founders' minds.
(Photo credit: AFP)
Religion at the founding
Faith of our fathers
Mar 18th 2011, 19:25 by R.L.G.
NEW YORK
.TIM PAWLENTY recently told Iowa's Faith and Freedom Coalition the following:
We need to remember as others try to push out or marginalise people of faith—we need to remember this and always remember it—the constitution was designed to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith.Cute as the phrasing is—shades of "religion requires freedom just as freedom requires religion" in its chiasmic form—there's a lot of confusion in those 43 words.
Yes, the constitution did seek to protect people of faith from government. One of the ways it sought to do so was by banning Congress from establishing religions. With the benefit of hindsight it looks like the framers protected America against an unlikely threat. It now seems impossible that America would establish a church. But what many Americans don't remember is that in the founders' period, government and churches were deeply entwined. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson, a deist, proposed disestablishing the Episcopal church in Virginia. (Many other states kept established churches well into the independence period. The first amendment merely prohibited Congress from establishing a religion.) Patrick Henry counter-proposed that Virginians be taxed for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion" and that "multiple establishments" be supported, not just the Episcopalian one. James Madison, the chief writer of the constitution, sharply disagreed in an elegant "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments."
Madison's goal was twofold; to protect religion from government influence was, indeed, one of them. But the other was, in fact, to protect the government from undue religious influence. Of official churches and their clergy, he wrote
In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people.
The founders established a pattern that helped make America one of the most religious countries in the world. The separation of church and state—yes, that is exactly what Jefferson and Madison wanted—was to protect both from each other. Modern secularists like to play up deists like Jefferson and quotations like Madison's above to downplay the religiosity of the early republic; they go too far when they make simple statements like "the founders were deists." Many were not.
The modern religious activists like Mr Pawlenty, though, commit the worse intellectual crime of effacing the secularism, deism and disestablishmentarianism of so many of the founders, baldly claiming they meant to put (Christianity's) God at the centre of American public life. On the whole, they most certainly did not. Mr Pawlenty notes that the Declaration of Independence mentions the "Creator". He probably knows, but does not mention, that the writer was the most deist of all the founders, Jefferson. Mr Pawlenty also says that 49 of 50 state constitutions mention God. He forgot one thing: the federal constitution does not. This was not because it slipped the founders' minds.
(Photo credit: AFP)
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