faith of the founding fathers

8/3/2019 Faith of the Founding Fathers

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By Ron Barnett

Patriotic fife and drum music filled a Greenville, S.C., churchas a teen-age mime-and-drama group demonstrated its

vision of what has gone wrong with America.The devil a young man dressed in black and smeared withred makeup snatched Bibles from schoolchildren, an imagethe group used to illustrate the 1963 Supreme Court decisionthey said "kicked God out of school." Drugs, teen pregnancy,crime and unprecedented moral decay are the result, anarrator said.

The heroes of this drama are America's Founding Fathers,who were described in terms familiar to evangelicalChristians of the 1990s."Over 200 years ago they shook off the chains of tyrannyfrom Great Britain by divine call," the narrator said.But since then, "We eliminated God from the equation of

American life, thus eliminating the reason this nation firstbegan," he said. "And beyond the grave I hear the voices ofour Founding Fathers pleading, `We need God in Americaagain!"'

That recent performance at Redemption Outreach Center inGreenville sounded a popular theme, especially inconservative churches, that America needs to return to the

values of a more virtuous, Bible-based past.

The nation's founders increasingly are invoked as moralanchors whose religious views, some believe, have beenignored.


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But historians say the message that comes across in theportrayals of the Founding Fathers by some conservativeChristians is the incorrect one that they were fundamentalistChristians."Sometimes I cringe a little bit when I hear theseinterpretations," said David Beale, a professor of churchhistory at Bob Jones University. "They're trying to Christianizepeople who were not Christians in the evangelical sense ofthe term.""The main politicians in those days, especially in the 18thcentury, were certainly not trying to defend Christianity

exclusively," Beale said. "It was morality. It wasn't justChristianity. It was God and good ethics."A patriotic appealIn a speech by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson that wasmailed to members of his politicalaction group, theChristian Coalition, he quoted the first three presidents to

support his argument for a constitutionalamendment "that guarantees religious expression for youngand old, in our schools and every other public place ..."Such an amendment is needed, Robertson said, "to restorethe proper understanding of the First Amendment," whichprotects "the free exercise" of religion.

To illustrate the need for such an amendment, Robertsongave an example of moral decline in late 20th-centuryAmerica: the gang rape of a teen-age girl a few years ago ina crowded Rhode Island pool hall. He then told of "a muchmore insidious crime," which he called "a rape of our nation'sreligious


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heritage" and "rape of our governing document, the UnitedStates Constitution."

The "suspects" in this "crime," Robertson said, were "learnedjustices of the Supreme Court, so-called legal scholars withmultiple degrees from prestigious schools of law, paidrepresentatives of such benign-sounding organizations as theAmerican Civil Liberties Union, and atheists like MadalynMurray O'Hair."Heroes or heretics?It's not hard to see why the framers of the Constitution, adocument held in patriotic reverence for its time-tested

wisdom, are held high to support the theme of spiritualrenewal. Numerous references to God can be found in theirwritings.Robertson concluded that "one simply cannot understand theAmerican experiment of ordered liberty withoutunderstanding the role of faith in God and the tenets ofScripture in the lives of the nation's founders."

Yet Jefferson and others expressed religious beliefs that areheretical to fundamentalist Christianity, according to CharlesLippy, a former Clemson University religion professor nowteaching religion in American culture at the University of

Tennessee-Chattanooga."I think the religious right misunderstands completely both

the religious views of many of the Founding Fathers as well asthe religious complexion of the nation at the time of theRevolution and the adoption of the Constitution," Lippy said.It was religious freedom, the right of people "to think forthemselves," not the promotion of any particular religion,


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that was the cornerstone of the United States government,Lippy said."From what I see from some of the material from theChristian Coalition and other groups of that sort is anassumption almost that all of these people werefundamentalists," Lippy said. "And the term did not evenexist at the time. And they clearly were not that."

The Founding Fathers tended to assume all forms ofChristianity would produce people with good morals, Lippysaid.

"But they didn't want to be in the business of identifying anyone of them as Truth with a capital T," he said.Freedom of conscience Jefferson, for example, edited his ownversion of the Gospels with a pair of scissors and paste,clipping out the miracles of Jesus and other portions hebelieved to be legend. He pasted together the parts heaccepted as genuine into two compilations he called "The

Philosophy of Jesus" and "The Life and Morals of Jesus."One ends with Jesus' death on the cross and the other withhis being laid in the tomb. Both omit the Resurrection story,which is central to Christian doctrine.Historians said Jefferson was reluctant to talk about hisreligious views because of his passionate belief in the right ofthe individual to seek truth unimpeded.

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God;because, if there be one, he must more approve of thehomage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear,"

Jefferson wrote to his nephew in 1787.


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Just as the Founding Fathers weren't unanimous in theiropinions on what shape the new nation's government shouldtake, they weren't monolithic in their views of religion, saidBill Steirer, a Clemson Universityhistory professor who specializes in the study of the AmericanRevolution and the early years of the nation.While virtually all apparently believed in a Supreme Beingand esteemed the moral and ethical guidelines ofChristianity, many questioned the basics of Christiantheology, Steirer said."You could find almost anything you wanted to find among

them in terms of their beliefs," Steirer said.Some of the Founding Fathers, like James Madison, a formertheology student, were devout Christians.Others, Steirer said, were not.Also, the church as an institution wasn't uniformly strong

throughout the colonies, he said. The Puritans held sway inNew England, but in many areas of the Southern and middlecolonies, churches were few and farbetween, he said.

The founders saw JudeoChristian values as a cultural,ethical framework necessary for an orderly society ratherthan as a religious doctrine, Steirer said.

He also said it's a mistake to try to take the Founding Fathersout of their historical context and try to imagine how theywould react to problems of the late 20th century."One of the reasons why they were such successful politiciansin their own day was their adaptability and their skill in


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dealing with the contemporary issues in visionary ways,"Steirer said. "Who knows what they would do with today'sissues, because I assume they'd apply those samecharacteristics of adaptability and vision and everythingelse."

The Age of Reason Influenced by the Enlightenment and itsemphasis on understanding the universe through science andrational thinking, some of America's most prominent earlyleaders were deists, holding to theview that God created the universe but takes no part in itsfunctioning, historians said.

Franklin, whom historians regard as a free-thinker and criticof organized religion, believed in God but questioned thedivinity of Christ."As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularlydesire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he leftthem to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; butI apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I

have, with most of the present dissenters in England, somedoubts as to his divinity ...," Franklin wrote in 1790.

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet "Common Sense" helpedgalvanize support for the revolutionary cause, wrote out hisunorthodox creed in his work "The Age of Reason.""I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness

beyond this life. ... I do not believe in the creed professed bythe Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the GreekChurch, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, norby any church that I know of. My own mind is my ownchurch."He was criticized for his beliefs, according to his biographers.


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Chief Justice John Jay, on the other hand, was a staunchEpiscopalian and one of the early presidents of the AmericanBible Society.

Yet Jay objected to a motion that daily sessions of the FirstContinental Congress be opened with prayer, arguing therewas too much diversity of faith among the delegates to makeprayer feasible. His objection wasoverridden after an impassioned speech by Samuel Adams, aPuritan beer brewer and fervent revolutionary.Constance B. Shulz, a history professor at the University of

South Carolina who has done extensive study on religion inearly America, said the beginnings of the evangelicalmovement in the 1790s put the brakes on acentury of "much more freewheeling religious beliefs."She said today's religious right is similar to the early Puritansin believing that there is "only one possible set of values" bywhich people should live.

"No one disagrees with them that moral teaching isnecessary," Shulz said. "The issue is who will decide what arethe moral values that should be taught."

Jefferson believed the Creator endowed humans with aninborn sense of morals and that organized religion too oftenattempts to control people through fear and mystery, she

said. Jefferson was attacked by some of thereligious conservatives of his time, she said.David White, a Southern Baptist minister and host of aSunday morning radio show on WORD-AM who has studiedAmerican Christianity, said the social ills the religious right


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attributes to loss of traditional religion stem more fromincreasing materialism and the gap between rich and poor."I think moral decay is something that has occurred in everymajor civilization since the beginning of time," White said.

The Constitution, he believes, was meant to be adapted tochanging needs."The thing that the Christian Right and other groups arebasically attempting to do is make the argument that theintention of the Founding Fathers was to establish essentiallya Christian nation without favoring any particular

denomination or incarnation of Christian faith in otherwords no state-supported church," White said."But the issue is not the intention of the Founding Fathers.

The issue is modern realities and the flexibility of theConstitution."For example, the Constitution was amended long after the

days of the Founding Fathers to abolish slavery and givewomen the right to vote."It was a different era," White said. "They did not live in amulticultural society like we live in today."Religion or ethics?

A Robertson spokesman said the religious broadcaster isn'ttrying to claim that all the Founding Fathers were orthodoxChristians."He's never made a point to suggest that all of thempracticed a particular type of Christianity or were indeed


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Washington won handily after plying voters with 169 gallonsof rum, wine, beer and cider, the book said.Also, the percentage of Americans attending church now ismuch higher than it was during the Revolutionary War era,Huff said.If moral standards in America today are declining, at leastsome values have risen, Huff said."In the past we very often excused violence within the family,or between the races," he said.

Still, some members of the Christian Coalition believe historyhas been "revised" to take God out of the nation's foundation."I'm not really an expert (in history), but I know enough toknow that our Founding Fathers founded it that way and Ithink that we should follow those same beliefs," said AlPadgett, co-chairman of the Greenville County Christian

Coalition.

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