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Breezy
When readers
bring a sense of playfulness to Richard Brookhiser’s
latest book, What
Would the Founders Do?, they are likely to come away with satisfaction
and pleasure. Those who expect the rigorous discipline shown in his earlier
books on the founders will find this book annoying. I liked it. The subtitle,
“Our Questions: Their Answers,” reveals the structure of the book. Taking a
cue from the “What Would Jesus Do?” style, Brookhiser
considers modern question and tries to find evidence of behavior in the life
of the founders that would reveal how they would act if faced with our
contemporary questions. Many readers will neither like nor agree with some of
the answers Brookhiser presents. That, too, is part
of the fun. There are no answers to be found, but it brings great pleasure to
consider a possible case. Here’s an excerpt, from the middle of Chapter 4,
“God and Man,” pp. 62-67:
Did the Founders Think America Was a Christian Nation?
In 1797,
the Senate considered a treaty, negotiated the previous year, with the bashaw of Tripoli.
The United States agreed
to give him cash and presents, and declared, in one clause, that America
bore “no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmens,” for it was “not, in any sense, founded on
the Christian religion.” Tripoli and the countries
of North Africa ran a naval protection
racket, extorting ransoms for captives they seized, or selling their good
behavior, in treaties such as this one. North African slavery was horrible,
and since the United
States could not protect its shipping or
its citizens, it found it prudent to pay in advance. Tripoli’s true religion was thievery, but
the clause on Christianity and Islam was designed to remove any pretext for
trouble. The Senate passed the treaty unanimously, and President Adams signed
it three days later. When honor yields to necessity, there is no point
quibbling over details. (Four years later the bashaw
upped his price and declared war, forcing us to deal with him differently.)
In
fact, there was no cause to quibble with the bashaw
about creeds. The United
States was not founded on the Christian
religion. The First Amendment, forbidding a national religious establishment,
had been ratified in 1791. The year before, President Washington wrote the
congregation of Touro Synagogue in Newport
that America
did not practice “toleration”: it was not “by the indulgence of one class of
people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. . . . All
possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities
of citizenship.” In 1793, he wrote the Swedenborgian New
Church in Baltimore “that every person may here
worship God according to the dictates of his own heart.” That amendment and
these statements are a better guide to the founders’. views
than a treaty with pirates.
Washington had invoked Christ in
one critical public statement, his 1783 circular to the states as the
Revolution was winding down. This, as far as Washington
knew at the time, was his farewell address, his last significant official
communication with the state governments and the people of America. He ended it with a
prayer that God (a more particular name than Providence) would “dispose us
all, to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean [conduct] ourselves with
that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristicks of the divine author of our blessed
religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things,
we can never hope to be a happy nation.” The Touro
Synagogue would be pleased that he quoted Micah 6:8 on the importance of
justice and mercy. But neither they nor any Musselmens
who happened to be in America
would consider Jesus Christ the author of their religions. Washington was not asking Americans to
think of Jesus in a religious context, however—as Savior, or Son of God. He
was asking them to imitate Jesus’ qualities—charity, humility, peacefulness.
Washington
had seen little enough of “pacific temper” during the war, and he would see
little more when he came back into public life as president. But some
sufficient residue had to exist, or the country would fly apart. Whatever Washington believed
about Christ, the Christ of his statement is a political figure, the model
citizen.
What
Role Did the Founders Believe That Religion Should Play in Public Lift?
In March 1790, one
month before he died, Benjamin Franklin answered a letter from the Reverend
Ezra Stiles, a Congregationalist minister and president of Yale College.
Stiles wanted to know what Franklin
believed. Franklin
answered that this was the first time anyone had ever asked him (clearly, he
did not believe in the Ninth Commandment), then stated his creed. It was
essentially Unitarian: God rules the world, the best way to serve him is by
serving mankind, and Jesus was a great moral teacher. Franklin doubted Jesus’ divinity, but would
not worry about the matter now, “when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing
the truth with less trouble.” If believing in Jesus’ divinity encouraged
people to follow his teachings, that was probably a good thing. Franklin ended by asking
Stiles to keep his letter confidential. “All sects here [in Philadelphia]
have experienced my good will in assisting them with subscriptions for
building their new places of worship; and, as I have never [publicly] opposed
any of their doctrines, I hope to go out of the world in peace with them
all.” Franklin believed that religion was good
for the public; if the public thought he was religious, that was good for Franklin.
If
the founders did not make America
a Christian nation, many of them thought it should be a religious nation. In
their view religions sustained the civic culture of the state. Franklin said as much in
his letter to Stiles; George Washington said it quite directly in his actual
Farewell Address, printed in the newspapers in 1796 as his last term was
ending. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political
prosperity,” Washington
wrote, “religion and morality are indispensable supports.” He also called
them “pillars of human happiness” and “props of the duties of men and
citizens.” He gave an example: “Where is the security for property, for
reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation
desert the oaths” taken in court? (Was Washington right? Two hundred years later,
the nation would be convulsed because President Clinton lied under oath, yet Clinton was a religious
man.) Philosophy could not do the job of propping, pillaring, and supporting
alone. “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality
can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
The
background of these concerns was the French Revolution, by then in its
eighth year. Its enemies, who by 1796 included Washington, often argued that the
revolution threatened the political and moral fabric of the world. Washington wanted to shore up America. He proposed no
government action; given his political principles, how could he? He called
for intellectual, and individual, vigilance. What friend of “free
government,” he asked, “can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the
foundation. . .
Other founders thought
free government was threatened by religion, not revolution. Thomas Jefferson
was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution because he believed,
as he wrote George Wythe, that France had been “loaded with
misery, by kings, nobles, and priests, and by them alone.” France’s clerical establishment
had been as crushing as its political one. America was fortunate not to have
such a thing, but politicized orthodoxy was a threat even here. That, Jefferson believed, was why the principles of liberty
had to be entrenched in law, and publicly honored. During his first term as
president, he sent a letter to supporters in Danbury, Connecticut,
in which he admitted religious feelings—for the First Amendment. “I
contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people.”
The First Amendment, he explained, after quoting it, “buil[t]
a wall of separation between church and state.” The wall of separation had
holes in it, as Jefferson knew, for the First Amendment allowed states to
maintain religious establishments, and several, including Connecticut, did so; the supporters, to
whom he was writing, were a group of Baptists who chafed at their minority
position in a Congregationalist state. But Jefferson
hoped to see “the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man
all his natural rights.”
Washington and
Jefferson were both amateur architects, whose houses—Mount
Vernon and Monticello—are
American masterpieces. Building metaphors came naturally to them. But when
they looked to religion, from the point of view of freedom, Washington
thought of pillars, Jefferson of walls.
Readers can zip through What
Would the Founders Do? rapidly, spending extra
time on those questions of particular interest. The breezy approach Brookhiser uses allows the flow of Q&A to proceed
easily, and those readers open to being entertained will enjoy this book.
Steve Hopkins,
August 25, 2006
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