Morality, Religion, and America (for Randall)

What I said:

I'll suggest that morality and spirituality in politics is central and absolutely necessary, on one hand, and incredibly dangerous on the other. I'll follow with the assertion that the genius of the American Foundation was that it both provided a sphere for a politics centered on moral and spiritual values, and that it explicitly denied morality and spiritual values a seat at the political table.

This was a brilliant bank shot which has led to the American genius of assimilation and to the cultural openness which has made us the dominant force in the world for over a hundred years.

Let's go to some sources. Washington's "Farewell Address" is best known for the 'no foreign entanglements' meme; there were other significant ones strung through it, including a vital point on religion:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Washington was not the only deeply religious Founder:

The Continental-Confederation Congress, a legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, contained an extraordinary number of deeply religious men. The amount of energy that Congress invested in encouraging the practice of religion in the new nation exceeded that expended by any subsequent American national government. Although the Articles of Confederation did not officially authorize Congress to concern itself with religion, the citizenry did not object to such activities. This lack of objection suggests that both the legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, nonpolemical Christianity.

The Continental Congress asked for a "day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer" throughout the colonies. The Congress urged its fellow citizens to "confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God's] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness."

Congress proclaimed days of fasting and of thanksgiving annually throughout the Revolutionary War. This proclamation by Congress set May 17, 1776, as a "day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer" throughout the colonies. Congress urges its fellow citizens to "confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God's] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness." Massachusetts ordered a "suitable Number" of these proclamations to be printed so "that each of the religious Assemblies in this Colony, may be furnished with a Copy of the same" and added the motto "God Save This People" as a substitute for "God Save the King."

But somehow, this piety did not translate into a political role for any Church.

From Franklin:

OCTOBER 9, 1780

I am fully of your opinion respecting religious tests; but, though the people of Massachusetts have not in their new constitution kept quite clear of them, yet, if we consider what that people were one hundred years ago, we must allow they have gone great lengths in liberality of sentiment on religious subjects; and we may hope for greater degrees of perfection, when their constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine tests would never have existed; for I think they were invented, not so much to secure religion itself, as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. . . .

Source of Information:

Excerpt of letter written by Benjamin Franklin to Dr. Richard Price, October 9, 1780. Works of Benjamin Franklin (Sparks ed.)

From Adams:

Writing in 1786, just before the federal Constitution was written, he took it as given that political constitutions were wholly secular enterprises free of godly involvement or inspiration. "The United States of America," he wrote, marks "the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature." The architects of American governments never "had interviews with the gods or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven." Government, Adams insisted, is "contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses." Adams's view of constitution making is also caught up in the secular ideals of the Age of Reason. "Neither the people nor their conventions, committees, or subcommittees," he wrote, "considered legislation in any other light than as ordinary arts and sciences, only more important... . The people were universally too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice. . . . [G]overnments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind."

The Godless Constitution, The Case Against Religious Correctness. By Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore.

de Toqueville says:

Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion; for who can search the human heart? but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.

Democracy in America, Volume I

And at the Constitutional Convention:

MONDAY AUGUST 20 1787, IN CONVENTION (Philadelphia)

Mr. PINKNEY submitted to the house, in order to be referred to the committee of detail, the following propositions----

. . . No religious test or qualification shall ever be annexed to any oath of office under the authority of the U.S. These propositions were referred to the Committee of detain without debate or consideration of them, by the House.

Bicentennial Edition, Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Reported by James Madison, With an introduction by Adrienne Koch.

There's a great exhibit online at the Library of Congress:

When the Constitution was submitted to the American public, "many pious people" complained that the document had slighted God, for it contained "no recognition of his mercies to us . . . or even of his existence." The Constitution was reticent about religion for two reasons: first, many delegates were committed federalists, who believed that the power to legislate on religion, if it existed at all, lay within the domain of the state, not the national, governments; second, the delegates believed that it would be a tactical mistake to introduce such a politically controversial issue as religion into the Constitution. The only "religious clause" in the document--the proscription of religious tests as qualifications for federal office in Article Six--was intended to defuse controversy by disarming potential critics who might claim religious discrimination in eligibility for public office.

That religion was not otherwise addressed in the Constitution did not make it an "irreligious" document any more than the Articles of Confederation was an "irreligious" document. The Constitution dealt with the church precisely as the Articles had, thereby maintaining, at the national level, the religious status quo. In neither document did the people yield any explicit power to act in the field of religion. But the absence of expressed powers did not prevent either the Continental-Confederation Congress or the Congress under the Constitution from sponsoring a program to support general, nonsectarian religion.

And in a paper by Derek H. Davis of Baylor:

As written at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Constitution gave little attention to religion. Its only reference to religion was the prohibition against religious tests for federal officeholders. This provision had a dual purpose - one principled, one practical. The principled aim was to preclude the possibility of any church-state union or the establishment of a state church, neither of which was possible if religion could not bar one’s service to his country. The provision ensured that the establishment models of the New England and other states would not frame the federal regime. The practical consideration was that even had the framers wanted to impose a religious test, given the diversity of belief in America, disagreements among Americans on what the test should be would stall ratification of the Constitution.

In 1787, within the whole of Western political culture, the secularity of the American Constitution was an isolated anomaly. Religious establishments reigned all over Europe, not just Great Britain. The U.S. Constitution, then, can rightly be viewed as the document that marked the real beginning of political modernity. Government was now to be mostly a human affair; God might lend a helping providential hand, but the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of governments rested with men, not with angels. Without a provision placing the nation under divine rule, it is little wonder that as the Constitution was presented to the states for ratification, disconcerted religious traditionalists, including many of Puritan persuasion, voiced their disapproval.

The specific criticism against the Constitution, voiced repeatedly, was that the document essentially ignored religion. Much of the criticism came from Puritanism’s strongholds, the states of New England. Many objected to the "no religious test," but similar objections were made to the Constitution’s failure to acknowledge God in some specific way. For one Connecticut critic, it was "a sinful omission in the . . . Constitution, in not looking to God for direction, and of omitting the mention of the name of God." The framers weathered these objections, but did agree to add an amendment that would make it clear that the free exercise rights of all Americans were in no way jeopardized by the Constitution. Thus, the First Amemdment provides: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ." This language ensured religious freedom, principally by disabling government from "establishing" religion in ways that could interfere with Americans’ own religious beliefs.

(emphasis added)

So I hope you can begin to see how I can assert that, on one hand, religion and morality were deeply entwined in the daily lives of the Founders, and at the same time, how the explicit exclusion of an established religion or religious test for office in the Constitution was extraordinary and powerful.

Every time I go back to the source documents, I am in awe of the brilliance and wisdom of those who founded this Republic, and at the complex issues they resolved with several simle rules.

In contemporary life, we face issues - both institutional, forseen by many of the Founders, and social which I doubt they could forsee as the role and ordering power of a shared religion and shared values is diminished.

How we confront those issues will be central to our well-being over the next century.