A Christian Nation? Be Careful What You Preach

A good friend sent me this article the other night written by Rob Boston and published in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette.  My friend wanted to know my thoughts about the article.   He also wanted to know if the article was factual. 

After reading the entire piece I advised my friend the article was indeed factual even though it was contrary to those who happen to think certain members of the Founding Fathers were Christians in the same sense the Religious Right profess to be.

For the most part while I tend to be a Conservative in political matters, I also tend to part ways with the Religious Right in this county who follow a hard-line stance regarding their view concerning our nation was founded on Christian beliefs.  

  

It really comes down to understanding what the Religious Right believes a Christian to be and how the majority of our Founding Fathers actually viewed Christianity when you place them under a microscope.

I advised my friend, “We have to remember these were all educated men during their time and as such their classical education included views of the Age of Enlightenment….science and fact took the lead.  While they believed in God their views regarding Christianity don’t exactly match up with the Christian Right today.

Boston brings up the issue of Deism when discussing George Washington.  Deists believed in God but didn't necessarily see him as active in human affairs. He set things in motion and then stepped back.

Washington saw religion as necessary for good moral behavior but didn't accept all Christian dogma. He seemed to have a special gripe against communion and would usually leave services before it was offered.

Stories of Washington's deep religiosity, such as tales of him praying in the snow at Valley Forge, are pious legends invented after his death.

I have to agree with Boston.   Back in 2007, I wrote about Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge here and here.   I’ve also examined the controversy about Washington’s inauguration and the fact that there really isn’t any true documentation regarding those little words, “So help me God!” here.

Boston didn’t just pick on historical myths regarding Georgia Washington.   He discussed John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Thomas Paine as well.

Boston states John Adams was Unitarian, although he was raised a Congregationalist and never officially left that church. Adams rejected belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, core concepts of Christian dogma. In his personal writings, Adams makes it clear that he considered some Christian dogma to be incomprehensible.

In February 1756, Adams wrote in his diary about a discussion he had had with a conservative Christian named Major Greene. The two argued over the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity. Questioned on the matter of Jesus' divinity, Greene fell back on an old standby: some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand.

Adams was not impressed. In his diary he wrote, "Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity."

As president, Adams signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated, "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion ..."

It is very well known among historians that Thomas Jefferson, our third president, did not believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. He was hostile to many conservative Christian clerics, whom he believed had perverted the teachings of that faith.

Boston goes on to discuss what is known as The Jefferson Bible…..

Although not an orthodox Christian, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher. In one of his most unusual acts, Jefferson edited the New Testament, cutting away the stories of miracles and divinity and leaving behind a very human Jesus, whose teachings Jefferson found "sublime." This "Jefferson Bible" is a remarkable document -- and it would ensure his political defeat today. (Imagine the TV commercials the religious right would run: Thomas Jefferson hates Jesus! He mutilates Bibles!)

While I have written about James Madison and his college days at Jersey College….we know it today as Princeton… I have left his religious beliefs alone until now.   Boston doesn’t.  He advises….Nominally Anglican, Madison, some of his biographers believe, was really a Deist. He went through a period of enthusiasm for Christianity as a young man, but this seems to have faded. Unlike many of today's politicians, who eagerly wear religion on their sleeves and brag about the ways their faith will guide their policy decisions, Madison was notoriously reluctant to talk publicly about his religious beliefs.

Madison was perhaps the strictest church-state separationist among the founders; taking stands that make the ACLU look like a bunch of pikers. He opposed government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military. As president, Madison rejected a proposed census because it involved counting people by profession. For the government to count the clergy, Madison said, would violate the First Amendment.

Madison, who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, also opposed government prayer proclamations. He issued a few during the War of 1812 at the insistence of Congress but later concluded that his actions had been unconstitutional. He vetoed legislation granting federal land to a church and a plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor through a largely symbolic charter. In both cases, he cited the First Amendment. 

Finally, we come to Thomas Paine.  The man who never held office but wrote a little pamphlet we remember as “Common Sense.”  

Boston advises he was also a radical Deist whose later work, "The Age of Reason," still infuriates fundamentalists.

In the tome, Paine attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity. He rejected prophecies and miracles and called on readers to embrace reason. The Bible, Paine asserted, can in no way be infallible. He called the god of the Old Testament "wicked" and the entire Bible "the pretended word of God." (There go the Red States!)

Boston states, “There was a time when Americans voted for candidates who were skeptical of core concepts of Christianity like the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus and the virgin birth. The question is, could any of them get elected today? The sad answer is probably not.

Based on this knowledge, wouldn’t it would be interesting to see the founding of our nation played out in more contemporary times?

I have a feeling it would be as much of a circus as our primary and election seasons have become today.

A Parent's Love....

Halloween night Mr. EHT and I received a phone call that every parent dreads…one from a stranger identifying himself as an EMT.

My mind worked furiously to comprehend what he was saying, but all I wanted to say was, “Surely sir, you have the wrong number.” He just kept rattling off information ---he was with my daughter, there had been an accident, he and his wife ( a nurse) had been driving by, he assured me they would stay by Dear Daughter’s side until she was in the ambulance.

Ambulance??????

I finally got the words out…..”Is she….is she ok?”

The voice on the other end of the phone said, “Yes, she’s complaining (hmmmm…….complaining….that’s good, I thought) of back and neck pain, and they have her on a backboard to stabilize her until they can see what is causing her pain.

After arriving at the hospital, Mr. EHT and I discovered barring any findings from the x-rays, Dear Daughter was just very scared and hurting from the slam of the airbag deploying and the strain against the seatbelt.

Dear Daughter’s Youth Minister had at arrived at the hospital about the same time her father and I had walked in. We left him in a near empty waiting room to see our daughter. Fifteen minutes later I returned to the waiting room to advise Pastor Danny how Dear Daughter was doing and to see if he wanted to go back to see her.

I was taken aback. The empty room, in that very short span of fifteen minutes had filled up with various members of our church and several teens. The room was full. We were overwhelmed with the support we had. Most stayed until Dear Daughter went home later that night.

Friends and family…..they certainly come in handy in the time of a crisis, don’t they?

Since that night I’ve continued to think about the support that was freely given to my family and as I tend to do I began to put a historical spin on the whole episode. My thoughts zeroed in on Thomas Jefferson and his daughters. He certainly knew what it was like to depend on friends and family during moments of crisis and upheaval.

Head on over to American Presidents to see where I’m heading with all of this……..here

The letter pictured at the beginning of this post was written by Mary Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson Lived Here and Here and Here...

I usually have to make a trade off each year in order to claim the privilege of teaching history. The trade off is teaching Language Arts as well to one or two groups of students. One of the writing assignments I provide students with each year is an essay regarding the different places they have lived, or if they haven’t moved around a bit they can write about their present home.

I might as well be telling my fourth graders we are going to move a pile of bricks from one location to another over and over for the entire day when I introduce a new writing assignment. The minute I even announce a writing assignment a wide assortment of groans and moans escape the mouths of my students. I can’t really blame them because in my own writing life I don’t want to be given a topic and then told to perform right then and there. Writing is personal. You have to want to do it. You must be connected to your topic in some way, and sometimes it just takes time.

Therefore I often try to get students motivated with some sort of connection-building exercise. I tell them some sort quirky detail from my own life (I have several), I read a short story aloud to them, or I have also shown a video clip. I follow this with a discussion where as a whole group we brainstorm various points they could include in their writing.

In order to motivate students to write about their homes I like to use Thomas Jefferson as my bridge. Want to know what I share with students? Then head on over to the American Presidents Blog for my entire post.

Related Postings: At His Father's Knee
A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and Thou

At His Father's Knee

Many schoolchildren across our fair country learn about the Louisiana Purchase followed by the Lewis and Clark expedition. I agree with that sequence of study. Those two events did follow each other chronologically, however, our collective interest in the west began much earlier, and Thomas Jefferson’s interest in exploring the west began much earlier than 1801. I contend that Jefferson’s love of the west….an area he never visited…began at his father’s knee.

We learn many things at our father’s knee---how to ride a bike, how to shoot a basket, and in my case I learned how to drive a tractor and plow a straight line. Thomas Jefferson was no different and it was from his father and father-type figures in his early life that he became facinated with the western frontier.

Head on over to American Presidents for my newest article about Thomas Jefferson and his quest for exploration of the west.

An Influential Table

When attempting to learn more about certain figures in history I find it helpful to look at the people who were involved early on in the life of the historical figure. For example, I believe many historians would agree that Abraham Lincoln’s stepmother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, had an unbelievable influence in his life. Lincoln himself said so.

The man featured in this week’s Wordless Wednesday had great influence over one of our Founding Fathers….some might say our greatest Founding Father…Thomas Jefferson.

My focus this week was Francis Fauquier who served as Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia from 1758 to 1768 due to the absence of Governors John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun followed by Sir Jeffrey Amherst. This was a normal practice as appointed governors rarely ventured over to the colonies. During his administration Fauquier dealt with the French and Indian War and subsequent Indian raids on the frontier. Fauquier was successful because he often ignored orders from London in order to effectively address the issues of Virginia. Even though he had sympathies with the colonist he dissolved the House of Burgesses after they issued a resolution regarding the Stamp Act.

Fauquier was exposed early on to great thinking as his father, Dr. John Francis Fauquier travelled from France to Britain to work with his friend Sir Isaac Newton. By the time Francis was in charge of Virginia’s government he knew all the social graces of the time, he was an academic, an amateur scientist, musician, and had inherited a modest fortune at twenty-three. He also drank sometimes to excess and loved to gamble and attend the races.

By the time Fauquier was in charge of Virginia’s government his children were grown. He and his wife enjoyed many social occaisions such as lavish dinners and concerts in Williamsburg, and they were known to invite many of the young men and professors from William and Mary to their levees.

Some of the attendees were Dr. William Small, a teacher of Natural History, George Wythe, an attorney and law professor, and their student protégé Thomas Jefferson. At these dinners Jefferson enjoyed the company of three of Virginia’s greatest minds----Small, Wythe, and Fauquier. It makes one wonder if Jefferson had not been invited to these dinners would his thoughts have taken a different turn later on.

In February 5, 2000, Timothy J. Sullivan, William and Mary’s president stated the following in a Charter Day speech:

How fortunate for humanity was Small’s success in instilling that spirit in his young student. He opened Jefferson’s mind to the wisdom of Bacon, who proclaimed the universal power of reason and to the compelling claims of Locke, who argued with cool reason and crackling passion that only the consent of the governed legitimizes the exercise of public power.

Small saw to it that Jefferson’s education in state craft was not limited to books. He arranged for Jefferson to be invited to small dinner parties hosted by Governor Francis Fauquier and often attended by George Wythe, the Colony’s most brilliant legal mind. The lively political conversation at the Governor’s table taught Jefferson to appreciate the complexities the ironies and the absurdities from which the art of governing in his or any other age can never be separated.
When Jefferson chose the law, Wythe succeeded Small as friend and mentor. Like Small, an intellectual child of the Enlightenment, Wythe taught Jefferson to revere Lord Coke, whose life vividly and whose commentaries powerfully taught the supremacy of law, supremacy to which even a king must kneel.

History is testament to the transforming power of William Small and George Wythe, that hot summer day in Philadelphia when his colleagues, and I think destiny, summoned him to give eloquence to their convictions, persuasive power to their inward confidence and wings to their sacred honor.

It is clear that Small and Wyeth provided the tutelage while Fauquier provided the stage for Jefferson to practice his lessons while engaged in lively conversation.

Eventually Virginia named a county for Francis Fauquier carved from the lands of Prince William County. I find it ironic that I began this essay with a reference to Nancy Hart Lincoln and I’m ending with another. You see, Fauquier County, named for a mentor of Thomas Jefferson is the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln’s mentor, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. She was born in Fauquier County in 1784.

A Loaf of Bread, a Jug of Wine, and Thou

When I was in Joy Fulton’s literature class at Woodward Academy we chewed up, digested, and spit out many or the world’s best known bits of prose. One that I remember quite vividly was The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam. In my young romantic mind I could see myself with the love of my life on a beautiful blanket in a forest setting while we broke bread, drank wine, had a fantastic conversation, and gazed longingly in each other’s eyes.

Of course, even back then Dear Hubby and I spent many of our dates in some of Atlanta’s finer restaurants while our friends were satisfied with McDonalds. The love of my life and I knew the food was important, the wine was a wonderful addition, but it was “thou”---the person we were with and our conversation that made a memorable meal. However, this post really isn’t about my adventures through Atlanta’s main dining rooms…..I have a presidential purpose here.

You don’t want to miss the rest of the story so go on over to American Presidents where I have posted about Thomas Jefferson, the Galloping Gourmet of our presidents.