The Founding Myth Read online

  George Washington promised “that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny…. Every man…ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”51 A few weeks after issuing the nation’s first Thanksgiving proclamation—at Congress’s official command—Washington responded to a letter from Presbyterian ministers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They expressed their approval for the Thanksgiving proclamation and their dismay that “some Explicit acknowledgement of the only true God and Jesus Christ” was absent from the American Magna Carta—the Constitution.52 In his response, Washington observed “that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country.”53 He continued, writing of piety, “To the guidance of the ministers of the gospel this important object is, perhaps, more properly committed.”54

  Washington thought that religion was best left to the private sphere. He defended the Constitution’s godlessness. The government would “give every furtherance” to “morality and science,” which might incidentally advance religion, but religion was a personal, not a government matter.55

  The Constitution separated state and church even before the First Amendment reinforced that separation, as Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist. Advocating ratification of the Constitution, Hamilton compared the powers of the new office of president of the United States to the powers of the king of Great Britain. “The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church!” he exclaimed.56 Hamilton “sounded a theme that was to resonate straight through the Revolution and beyond: that the best government posture toward religion was one of passive tolerance, not active promotion of an established church,” according to Ron Chernow, who is Hamilton’s biographer as well as Washington’s.57

  Jefferson wrote the very metaphor our courts use to interpret the government’s relation to religion: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people [the First Amendment] which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”58 Jefferson also authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, upon which the First Amendment would be based. That law, along with the University of Virginia and the Declaration of Independence, were the only achievements he wanted inscribed on his gravestone. The statute guaranteed religious freedom by guaranteeing a secular government. In the statute, Jefferson skewered “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others.”59 The law ensured:

  1. that there would be no governmental support of religion (“to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical”);

  2. that the government could not take away a citizen’s rights because of their opinion on religion (“our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry”); and

  3. that religious tests for public office were prohibited (“proscribing any citizen as unworthy [of] the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity…unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which…he has a natural right.”)

  In 1785, six years after Jefferson first proposed the statute for religious freedom, Madison shepherded it through the state legislature (as he would later push the First Amendment through the House), making Virginia the first state to separate government and religion. The statute was unique in another respect. It was less a declaration of positive law and more a declaration of a natural right: “the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.” Relying on natural law to protect rights was a Jeffersonian motif, as we shall see in chapters 3 and 4 on the Declaration of Independence.

  Madison is not only the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights, but also perhaps the greatest advocate for the separation of state and church. “Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance;” he wrote in 1822, adding, “And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”60 Madison argued that the separation existed as much to protect religion as to protect government. In response to a sermon he received from a New York clergyman, Madison wrote that “the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported.”61

  As president, Madison vetoed two bills granting land to churches. He set down the reason for his vetoes in an 1811 letter to several Baptist churches in North Carolina. He wrote that he had “always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.”62 For Madison, the tendency of government and religion to mix and corrupt each other is so great “that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded against.”63

  James Madison also wrote the greatest defense of the wall of separation. His anonymously published essay of 1785, “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” convinced the people of Virginia to vote against the bill giving financial support to Christian ministers. The Supreme Court consistently cites the “Memorial” when interpreting the religion clauses of the First Amendment. “Pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution” were the “fruits” of fifteen centuries of established Christianity, Madison wrote.64 Echoing Gibbon, he observed, “Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.”65 But it wasn’t just about keeping religion out of government. Madison urged the government not to legislate religious matters either. Doing so “implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension…the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”66 Separation benefits all sides.

  Incidentally, according to the Episcopal bishop of Virginia, William Meade, who knew the Madison family, James Madison’s “religious feeling” was “short lived” because of “his political associations with those of infidel principles, of whom there were many in his day.”67 According to the bishop at least, infidel principles, not Judeo-Christian principles, influenced the Father of the Constitution.

  THAT THE FOUNDERS SOUGHT TO BUILD this wall of separation does not necessarily mean that they were personally irreligious. One can be religious and endorse this separation. Indeed, many minority religious sects favored separation at the founding. Madison’s 1811 letter to Baptist churches in North Carolina explaining his church land grant veto was actually a reply. Those churches had written first to congratulate Madison for vetoing “a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory.” Baptists were objecting to public land going to Baptists and thanking the president for vetoing the deal. In that reply, Madison commended the Baptist sect for favoring separationism: “Among the various religious societies in our Country, none has been more vigilant or co
nstant in maintaining that distinction [i.e., the separation] than the Society of which you make a part, and it is an honorable proof of your sincerity and integrity, that you are as ready to do so in a case favoring the interest of your brethren as in other cases.”68 Even some Roman Catholics were for strict separation. When the First Congress was debating the First Amendment, one of only three Catholics in Congress, Representative Daniel Carroll of Maryland, was “very much in favor” of the separation because “the rights of conscience are, in their nature, of peculiar delicacy, and will little bear the gentlest touch of governmental hand.”69 (Senator Charles Carroll of Maryland and Representative Thomas Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania were the other two Catholics, out of ninety members.)

  Regardless of their personal religious beliefs, the founders chose to safeguard liberty by “building a wall of separation between Church & State.”70 And according to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, writing an opinion in 1948, “Separation means separation, not something less. Jefferson’s metaphor in describing the relation between Church and State speaks of a ‘wall of separation,’ not a fine line easily overstepped.”71 Separation is not a one-way street that allows religion to influence government while preventing government from influencing religion; it is a wall preventing religion from tainting government as well. State and church “will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together,” as Madison explained.72

  2

  “Religion and Morality”: Religion for the Masses, Reason for the Founders

  “In regard to the furtherance of morality, [religion’s] utility is, for the most part, problematical…. Of course it is quite a different matter if we consider the utility of religion as a prop of thrones; for those where these are held ‘by the grace of God,’ throne and altar are intimately associated.”

  — Arthur Schopenhauer, On Religion: A Dialogue, 18911

  “It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read.”

  — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. Samuel H. Smith, Monticello, August 6, 18162

  Whatever religion, if any, the founders believed in, they agreed that those beliefs were personal, not for public display or political benefit. The founders were not perfect and sometimes expressed their views with language that confuses Christian nationalists. For instance, John Adams seemed to be relying on reason and faith when he wrote in 1787: “The experiment is made, and has completely succeeded; it can no longer be called in question, whether authority in magistrates and obedience of citizens can be grounded on reason, morality, and the Christian religion, without the monkery of priests, or the knavery of politicians.”3 “Eureka!” the Christian nationalist might exclaim, here’s a Christian founder talking about a government based on Christianity. But that conclusion lacks the discerning subtlety of the founders. By “Christian religion,” Adams meant something like what Jefferson meant when he used similar phrases—the ideals of Jesus, his philosophy, without organized religion—hence Adams’s pejorative qualifier “without the monkery of priests.” But quotes like these, which pull in two directions, lead to the inevitable aspect of this fight: the religion, or lack thereof, of the founders. We may never know to which group they belonged because, like Washington, many kept their religion to themselves. This reticence may have arisen from the idea that even if they themselves were not orthodox in religion, they thought others should be.

  Christian nationalists assert that Christianity was the source of the founders’ morality, and that, as a democratic republic, our nation needs religion because it needs a moral people4 (see page 44). These claims are not only illogical, but also disrespectful on two fronts.

  First, the nationalists credit Christianity for the triumph and sacrifice of thoughtful, committed individuals—the men and women who fought the American Revolution and implemented a theory of self-government with its accompanying rights. America is quintessentially a human achievement. The glory and recognition should go to the individuals who realized previously theoretical ideals. God is not responsible for America. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and thousands more earned that honor. Attributing to a god the sacrifice of that generation diminishes the sacrifice. To call our government “God-given democratic institutions,”5 as Billy Graham and so many other religious leaders and pandering politicians have done, denigrates the founding generation.

  Giving undue glory to a god is nothing new. Within a month of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Ethan Allen and a nominally in-command Benedict Arnold led Allen’s Green Mountain Boys to Canada and captured Fort Ticonderoga. Colonel (later, general) Henry Knox brought more than fifty cannons from the fort to Boston so that Washington could bombard the British blockade. When the British awoke to find Dorchester Heights manned and gunned courtesy of Allen and Knox, they retreated. Together, Washington, Knox, Allen, and the rest of the colonial irregulars had lifted the British Empire’s siege of Boston. Shortly after the Ticonderoga victory, the Reverend Jedediah Dewey preached a long sermon thanking God and giving him credit for the victory. Ethan Allen rose and shouted, “Don’t forget, Parson, that I was there!” But Dewey refused to recognize the human side of the accomplishment. He harangued Allen as a “bold blasphemer” for daring to take credit.6

  But other founders agreed with Allen. Franklin touched on the idea in Poor Richard’s Almanack: “God helps those who help themselves.”7 (Though not original to Franklin,8 this advice does not, as three-quarters of Americans believe, come from the bible.9) John Jay wrote, “Providence seldom interposes in human affairs but through the agency of human means.”10 And John Adams thought, “Miracles will not be wrought for us…. If we will have government, we must use the human and natural means.”11

  The blood and treasure spilled and spent by the founding generation was their own. Abigail Adams, daughter of a clergyman and a founder in her own right, was a religious woman, but refused to ascribe the patriot sacrifice to heaven. In a letter to her husband, she likened the peace after the Revolutionary War to a blanket of freedom: “The garb of this favorite of America, is woven of an admirable texture and proves the great skill, wisdom, and abilities, of the master workmen.”12 But she would not give credit to god, the French, or the English. The peace and liberty were American achievements: “It was not fabricated in the Loom of France, nor are the materials english, but they are the product of our own American soil, raised and Nurtured, not by the gentle showers of Heaven but by the hard Labour and indefatigable industry and firmness of her sons, and watered by the Blood of many of them.”13

  The second reason the claims are inappropriate is that they exclude from the founding pantheon, almost by definition, the contributions of the many founders who were not Christian.14 Entire shelves of books explore the founders’ religious beliefs, with conclusions all over the spectrum.

  “It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read,” Jefferson wrote.15 If this is true, we should look less to out-of-context quotes and more to the actions of the founders. We’ve seen that George Washington rarely prayed, attended church, or mentioned Jesus in his correspondence and that he shunned priests at his deathbed. Many people tried to pry some religious endorsement or personal religious information from Washington, but “the old fox was too cunning for them,” as Jefferson merrily recalled.16

  Jefferson rewrote the New Testament using a razor, editing out the supernatural and salvaging what he considered worthy lessons from a mortal man. By his own admission, he excised “the immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc.”17 It was, Jefferson wrote, like pulling “diamonds” from “dunghills.”18

  Gouverneur Morris spoke more than any other delegate to the Constitutional Convention (173 times19) and actually penned much of the final wording of the Constit
ution, including the poetic preamble. He also had sex with a married woman…in a convent, hardly respecting the nunnery as a believer would. The peg-legged bon vivant was the US minister plenipotentiary to France in the early 1790s. While there, he carried on a tryst with Adélaïde-Emilie Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho (later Madame de Flahaut). Morris and Adele, as he called her, “had each other whenever they could,” notes one biographer, including “in his carriage; and in the visitors’ waiting room of a convent in Chaillot where Adele’s old governess lived as a nun.”20 On another occasion, Morris visited the married woman and, as he put it, “we perform[ed] the first Commandment given to Adam, or at least we use the means.”21 That is, they didn’t actually bear fruit and multiply, but they went through the motions. He got to know her in the biblical sense while violating biblical principles. Another biographer captured Morris’s sexual escapades nicely. Flahaut “and Morris were eventually so ‘wanton and flagrant’ that they engaged in intercourse ‘in the passage…at the harpsichord…down stairs…the doors all open,’ and in a coach with the coachman staring straight ahead.”22

  Morris’s roguery was not merely the result of passion kindled by this particular woman. Morris lost his left leg below the knee after a carriage accident in Philadelphia. According to one story, likely apocryphal and perhaps encouraged by Morris himself, he was fleeing a wrathful husband he had cuckolded at the time of the accident. Morris’s womanizing was so rampant that it led John Jay, one of the more pious founders, to remark that instead of losing his leg in a carriage accident, Jay wished Morris had “lost something else.”23