The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life

Preface

Preface Two weaknesses in much of the scholarship on the American founding inspired this collection of essays. First, there has long been a tendency to discount or ignore the role of religion in the American founding in general, and in the political thought of influential founders in particular. Second, much that has been written about the founders has emphasized the thoughts, words, and deeds of an elite fraternity of famous founders, ignoring a large company of now forgotten men and women who made salient, consequential contributions to the construction of the American republic and its institutions. In the course of their study, the editors have come to believe that religion played a vital role in the American founding project and that limiting the study of this period to the contributions of a select few famous figures impoverishes an understanding of the founding. This volume, which builds on the editors’ prior collaborations, was conceived in order to redress these weaknesses in much of the existing scholarship. Why is it that since the mid-twentieth century scholars have often discounted or ignored the role of faith in the founders’ lives and political thought? It might reflect the inclination of many intellectuals to emphasize the strictly rational and avoid transcendent themes in their work. Some writers might be protecting their audiences from views on God and religion that offendtwenty -first-century,secularsensibilities. GeorgeWashington , for example, warned that one who labors to subvert a public xiii role for religion and morality cannot call himself a patriot,1 yet this admonition from his Farewell Address is seldom mentioned in the scholarly literature. Such rhetoric, unexceptional in its time, is discordant with the secular ethos of our time. Other founders held views similarly out of step with secular academic and popular sentiments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as advocating state support for Protestant denominations and restricting the civil and religious rights of Catholics, Unitarians, atheists, and Jews. Another explanation for the inattention given to the founders’ faith has to do with a lack of familiarity with religion and religious themes— aformof “religiousilliteracy”—amongsecularscholars.2 ManyWashington scholars, for example, have asserted that the Virginian rarely quoted or mentioned the Bible. Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison, winner of the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes, stated, “I have found no trace of Biblical phraseology” in Washington’s letters.3 That such an ill-informed statement could be made by a serious scholar is remarkable, indeed. Even a cursory review of Washington’s papers reveals scores of quotations from and unmistakable allusions to the Bible. One finds in Washington’s correspondence dozens of references to the ancient Hebrew blessing in which every man sits in safety under his own vine and fig tree (Micah 4:4; 1 Kings 4:25; Zechariah 3:10).4 He was fond of the biblical description of an age when nations will convert “swords into plowshares” and “spears into pruninghooks” (Micah 4:3, Isaiah 2:4; Joel 3:10).5 He incorporated Solomon’sproverbsintotheadvicehedispensed.6 InanApril1789missive to Philadelphia’s German Lutherans, Washington quoted Proverbs 14:34, which speaks of “that righteousness which exalteth a nation.”7 Again, a widespread biblical or religious “illiteracy” is one explanation for the failure of modern scholars to account adequately for the place of religion— specifically Christianity—in the lives of the American founders. Limiting the focus to the perspectives of five or six elite founders is another unfortunate tendency exhibited by authors writing on the founders ’ views of Christianity, religious liberty, or church-state relations. These celebrated founders were among those most influenced by the Enlightenment and most likely to embrace church-state separation. It is true thatfounderslikeThomas Jeffersonand JamesMadison(thosemostlikely to be discussed) were influential, but their religious views and their views xiv | Preface on church-state relations are among the least representative of the founders . Other founders often covered in the leading scholarship include Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, George Washington, and John Adams, all of whom were probably heterodox in their religious beliefs and who, with the exception of Washington and Adams, were ardent critics of the ecclesiastical establishments of their day. A good example of this tendency is Edwin S. Gaustad’s Faith of Our Fathers, which explores the founders’ attitudes toward religion by carefully considering only the views of Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, and Washington.8 More recently, Steven Waldman’s Founding Faith: Providence...