After reading the comments regarding the prayer banner in Cranston, I would like to add a few comments.
To begin: any sentence that contains “the founding fathers believed/thought/said/wanted/intended/were, etc is necessarily wrong.
Yes. wrong.
The founding fathers were not a monolithic bunch. Exactly the opposite. They were a group of men, many of whom had long years of experience in politics in some form. As such, as a group and for the most part, they understood the necessity of compromise. Not all of them; there were some doctrinaire ideologues, especially in the earlier days, but they were weeded out as time passed.
A great example of this is Sam Adams–whose father was a brewer, by the way. He played a major role in the early days of the protests that led up to the outbreak of fighting, but he did not have the political chops to play any role in congress during the war.
So, to say that the founding fathers were not Christians is wrong. This is the fallacy of composition, ascribing traits of component parts to the whole group. To say they were Christians is doubly wrong.
Many were devout Christians. However, Thomas Jefferson is probably best described as a theist. He believed in a Higher Power–the Creator of the Declaration–but he did not believe Jesus was divine. In fact, he created his own edition of the New Testament. He retained what Jesus said, but cut out all references to miracles, including the Resurrection. Not to believe in Jesus’ resurrection means you are not, and cannot be, called a Christian. Belief in Jesus’ divinity is the sine qua non of being a Christian.
Ben Franklin would probably also best be described as a non-Christian theist. George Washington and several others were Masons, which is nominally Christian, but with a number of beliefs that would not pass muster with either the Pope or the Southern Baptist Conference.
It is also important to recognize that, after the Revolution, a number of the several states had established an official religion. However, this created problems for minority religions. For example, Virginia was officially Anglican (now Episcopalian). This meant that the Episcopal Church was subsidized by the state. For many, who belonged to minority sects such as Baptists, found this problematic for numerous reasons.
Note also, that, in the body of the constitution, Madison made no express mention of religion, one way or the other. That he chose not to is highly significant. He did not want the federal government–or state governments–to have an official religion. Hence the careful wording: Congress shall make no law. This ensures that, well, Congress shall make no law to establish any one religion.
At the time, this meant the various flavors of Christianity. The federal government was not to promote Catholicism over Episcopalianism. However, the wording is such that it is not restricted to various forms of Christianity. It can apply to establishing Christianity per se as a religion. Take this, along with the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which sought to guarantee that the individual states could not deny the recently freed slaves their new rights as full citizens, and you come to the situation where we are.
Because of this amendment, no individual state can establish a religion, just as no state can deny a citizen the right to vote. This also means that it is unlawful for public tax money to be spent on religion, or for any organ of the state to promote a particular religion. Hence, the law is such that a public school cannot promote any religion. And it’s also important to recognize that atheism is a religious belief, even if it’s negative. So to promote theism over atheism is not permitted under the constitution.
I hope this is clear, and I apologize for the length.
*sigh* You actually apologize for being longwinded in a piece that would count for short in my catalog.
I’d like to add that it really doesn’t matter what those people thought. They’re dead. This is our problem, and we need to find our way through it. WHICH IS THE POINT OF THE CONSTITUTION!
One question: does your conclusion not beg the question, posed in the other comments, that this ruling promotes atheism over theism and is equally in violation? How should/could the court strike a balance?
One bit of house-keeping: could you please click a category in the column a left in the editing screen? Also, add a couple of tags. That’s how we’re trying to be more search engine friendly.
But, by all means, man, WRITE!
OK, sorry about the tags, etc. Good points that I will remember. And it seemed a tad long for a blog post. And thanks for the encouragement.
Does it promote atheism?
No. It promotes neutrality. Promoting atheism requires a positive action, such as displaying a banner that says ‘there is no god.’ Or, ‘god is a figment of the imagination.’ That is the active promotion of atheism.
Saying nothing promotes just that: nothing.
Does that answer your question/objection?
Completely. And it was a question I put out there to get the answer. If I had had the response to that charge, I would have given it days ago.
Oswald,
I cleaned up your post, added some tags, categories, a title, and a pretty image!
Here are some other thought I has about the Founding Fathers as Christians fallacy, taken from the post about the new Freedom from Religion Billboard in RI.
www.rifuture.org//have-you-seen-the-new-freedom-from-religion-foundation-billboard.html
The Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams in 1797 reads:
In Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists (1802), he wrote:
Another stellar example was James Madison’s response to Jasper Adams’ pamphlet (a graduate of Brown University), The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States, in which he wrote:
While I agree that the men who were the leading figures in creating the United States may have been (in varying degrees) religion, they were not necessarily Christians. So thank you Oswald.
How about these:
John Adams -
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.
Gunning Bedford (signer of the Constitution) -
To the triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost – be ascribed all honor and dominion, forevermore – Amen
The oft mention Thomas Jefferson -
I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.
I could go on to say that at least 24 of the 56 signers had theological/seminary degrees, but I doubt any of you would actually find that of merit. The preponderance of evidence is on the side that the signers of the Constitution were Christian men.
Don, let me put this in plain, simple terms: So what? These guys were whatever they were. Why do I care?
Frymaster -I teach my kids not to lie. I find that telling the truth is of value in and of itself. I see what’s being purported here, that the founding fathers were not Christians, as to be blunt a lie.
Thus, in my opinion it’s important to tell the truth about them. Our document has changed a lot since they signed it, but I think the better question is why is there a need to paint them in a light that they weren’t?
What’s the goal in saying they weren’t Christian? Does it somehow validate today’s political ethos? Does is undermine Christianity itself? In other words, what’s the point of lying when the truth is out there in plain view?
That’s a very pointed question but it seems that many here are going through a lot of trouble and frequently citing the treaty of tripoli to say that these dudes weren’t Christians. Most were.
Did they create a theocracy? No. Were most Christians? Yes.
In your original comment, you assert that, because the Framers (hate that Fathers rhetoric) wrote this or that, said this or that or were this or that, that should have an impact on 1st Amendment jurisprudence.
THAT is “a lie”.
In fact, they went out of their way to use completely secular language in the Constitution. And the one reference to God in the Declaration was a giant battle in which “Nature and Nature’s God” served to subdue any sense of religiosity but mollify the ultra-religious that they got their magic word into the document. Even though, for the sake of argument, most of the Framers were some sort of “Christian”, it seems clear that they viewed religion as a danger to be limited and managed.
Counter-intuitive? Not my problem.
So to hear self-professed Christians claiming that the Framers personal beliefs, which they took so much trouble to keep OUT of the Constitution, should be reason to overturn two centuries of jurisprudence on the matter is the kind of thing that makes people, well, scared that religious zealots are out to undo that very jurisprudence and force their faith on people that could take it or leave it on their own.
As to the “lies”, all is fair in love and war. And blogging.
Per Oswald’s reply to my direct question on the subject, supporting atheism requires a positive act, like hanging a banner that says “There is no god.” So, no, this ruling neither enforces atheism nor denies any other faith. In reality, it’s a no-brainer, as simple as the 10 Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court.
You have failed to sway me. Let’s say the Framers were Christians. I still don’t care.
You’re missing the context. The framers purposely did not establish a religion not because they did not believe in God but that their Protestant sects weren’t uniform. indeed most Americans were religious refugees.
I believe it’s clear they felt and understood that a federal religion would cause problems. It’s funny their historical memory doesn’t seem to be as shortsighted as hours. About the same distance existed between their regime and Henry VIIIs withdrawal from the Catholic church and today to them. Still, as Oswald pointed out, many states had their own established churches and such a practice would probably not have been unconstitutional until the 1947 decision.
You’re also joining two different arguments. I’m making the point that the Framers/Fathers (name is a semantic exercise to me) were Christians. That’s all. Thus, it should come as no surprise that their Christianity was a mere reflection of the populous of which they served. Ergo, you see religious under/overtones in many of the institutions/mores extant in 21st century America.
In this thread, I wasn’t trying to answer your question regarding the support of atheism over every other religion by disallowing religious epiteths in the public sphere.
On a slightly unrelated note, I’m curious why you don’t like Fathers and prefer Framers?
[...] banner controversy does define an important distinction about what government can and cannot do. The thoughts of Oswald Krell also serve to give more historical context to the discussion: [...]To begin: any sentence that contains “the founding fathers [...]