In yesterday's (03-16-2008) Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, a local minister's article appeared on the editorial page wondering if our founders could/would have been elected were they running for office today. I've incorporated the editorial into this note:
My Turn: Could the Founding Fathers get elected?
Published: Sunday, March 16, 2008
By Gary Kowalski It's happened before: God is getting mixed up in presidential politics and spiritual correctness is en vogue. Candidates have been as
One wonders, would the Founding Fathers pass the religious litmus test now required for public office? How would our first four presidents -- George Washington, or John Adams, or Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison -- measure up?
During the bitterly contested election of 1800, the Gazette of the United States intoned that voters faced a single question: "Shall I continue in allegiance to God and a Religious President; Or impiously declare for Jefferson and No God!!!" Many considered Thomas Jefferson a heathen, and clergy in New England warned their flocks the man from Monticello would confiscate their Bibles if elected. Instead, Jefferson wrote his own version of the New Testament, scrapping the miracles. But despite that, the author of the Declaration of Independence and engineer of the Louisiana Purchase was an outstanding president.
Job performance has little to do with private devotion, anyway. George Washington indicated that he was willing to hire "Mohometans, Jews, or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists" on his Mount Vernon estate so long as they were able workers. He himself attended church only sporadically and avoided Sundays when he knew communion would be served. His diaries never mentioned Christ nor any spiritual reflections that occurred to him when he did sit through a sermon. His mind was on other things: defeating the British army, presiding successfully over the Constitutional Convention and, by limiting his presidency to two terms, assuring a peaceful transfer of power in the world's first democracy.
Unlike Washington, John Adams attended worship almost every week, along with Abigail, who said she preferred "liberal good sense from the pulpit." But far from receiving divine guidance for the nation, Adams cautioned that the framers of the Constitution "never had interviews with the gods or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven." Putting God's name in the document -- or other theological assertions -- could only stir up trouble, for America even then was a land of diverse faiths.
The Constitution in Article Six specifically prohibits religious tests for public office. During ratification, some Virginians wanted the clause re-worded: "no other religious test shall ever be required than a belief in the one only true God, who is the rewarder of the good, and the punisher of evil." But this change was rejected. James Madison wisely defended Article Six as welcoming people of every persuasion into the field of public service: "The door of the Federal Government is open to men of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith."
If tested for orthodoxy, the Father of the Constitution might never have been allowed into the White House. Madison's own creed, according to the rather shocked testimony of Rev. William Meade, bishop of Virginia's Episcopal Church, "was not strictly regulated by the Bible."
Had spiritual correctness been required, would any of these founders have been elected president? Citizens have every right to take their religion into the polling booth, of course. But a look back at history should remind Americans not to demand any narrow definitions of godliness in the leaders they select.
Gary Kowalski of Burlington, senior minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, is the author of "Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of Americas Founding Fathers "(BlueBridge, 2008).
+++++++++++++++++++
A few days ago, while driving back to Vermont from Troy, NY, accompanied by one of the region's public radio stations, I listened to a Christian scholar describe the basis for our founder's insistence on and ambivalence about our "freedom of religion" phrasing in the Constitution.
I hadn't known that early colonists, escaping the religious and political tyranny(ies) of Europe to settle in North America, manifested literally no acceptance of religious freedom. In fact, in many of the early colonies, accusations and punishment by death, in the name of one religion or another were rampant. By the time the founders gathered to consider the meaning of independance for the nation they intended to form, religious freedom, per se, in North American was all but absent - a situation which had existed from the 1600s to 1776. Perhaps if I had read and learned more about my ancestry and family history during residence in Plimuth Plantation and, later, as founders of Salem, Massachusetts, I would have known about colonial intolerance for those who believed differently.
In fact, the founders we hold in reverence today, represented several disparate views about the importance and meaning of religion, and notes from that period indicate several heated discussions might have occurred before the freedom of religion clause was drafted and accepted.
My point with these references is to challenge those who read these notes and who espouse their genuine belief that our nation was founded based on Protestant religious principles to do some real research and learning about the religions of the world, their beginnings, their influences (negative and positive), and what beliefs about religiosity were extant during the period leading up to, during and following our nation's struggle for independence and nationhood.
A couple of weeks ago, someone sent me a lengthy piece with an accompanying video which describes what true Biblical scholars have known and understood for decades about the origins of many of Christianity's beliefs. Having studied world religions as part of my history minor in college, I found the article and explanation to be both encouraging (of my belief system), enlightening, and intelligently challenging. If I can find that material, I'll forward it and/or perhaps paste it into my blog at http://samcvt.blogspot.com.
Sam Conant
Colchester, Vermont
Monday, March 17, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
