What Does History Teach Us About Faith and Our Nation's Founding?

Few issues have been more mischaracterized than religion, and the founder's early
government's attitude toward religion. Modern Americans readily cite the "separation of church and state," phrase that does not appear in the Constitution, yet is a concept that has become a guiding force in the disestablishment of religion in America.

Most settlers had come to America with the quest for religious freedom constituting an important, if not THE most important, goal of their journey.

Maryland was a formed as a Catholic state; Pennsylvania, a Quaker state; Massachusetts, a Puritan state; and so on. But when Thomas Jefferson penned Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom (enacted 1786), the states relationship to religion seemed to change. Or did it?

Jefferson wrote the Virginia sabbath law, as well as ordinances sanctioning
public days of prayer and fasting and even incorporated some of the Levitica
code into the state's marriage laws. In 1784, however, controversy arose
over the incorporation of the Protestant Episcopal Church, with Baptists and
Presbyterians complaining that the act unfairly bound church and state. The
matter, along with some related issues, came before several courts, which by
1804 had led the legislature to refuse petitions for incorporation by
churches or other religious bodies.

By that time, the American religious experience had developed several
characteristics that separated it from any of the European churches.
Americans de-emphasized the clergy. Not only did states such as Virginia
refuse to fund the salaries of ministers, but the Calvinist/Puritan
tradition that each man read, and interpret, the Bible for himself meant
that the clergy's authority had already diminished.

Second, Americans were at once both evangelically active and liturgically lax. What mattered was salvation and "right" living, not the form or structure of the religion.
Ceremonies and practices differed wildly, even within denominations.

Finally, as with America's new government itself, the nation's religion made
central the personal salvation experience. All of this had the effect of
separating American churches from their European ancestors, but also
fostering sects and divisions within American Christianity itself.

Above all, of course, America was a Christian nation. Jews, nonbelievers,
and the few Muslims or adherents to other religions who might make it to the
shores of North America in the late 1700's were treated not so much with
tolerance as with indifference. People knew Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or
others were a minority and, they thought, were going to remain a minority.

So in the legal context, the debates never included non-Christian groups in
the deliberations. At the same time, this generic Christian faith, wherein
everyone agreed to disagree, served as a unifying element by breaking down
parish boundaries and, in the process, destroying other political and
geographic boundaries. The Great Awakening had galvanized American
Christianity. pushing it even further into evangelism, and it served as a
springboard to the Revolution itself, fueling the political fire with
religious fervor and imbuing in the Founders a sense of rightness of cause.

To some extent, then, the essential difference between the American
Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution was a
religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event.
John Adams said as much when he observed that the "Revolution was in the
mind and hearts of the people; and change in their religious sentiments of
their duties and obligations."

Consequently, America, while attaching itself to no specific variant of
Christianity, operated on an understanding that the nation would adopt an
unofficial, generic, Christianity that fit hand in glove with republicanism.

Alexis de Tocqueville, whose perceptive "Democracy in America" (1835)
provided a virtual road map for the future direction of the young nation,
observed that in the United States the spirit of religion and he spirit of
freedom "were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the
same country." Americans, he added, viewed religion as "indispensable to the
maintenance of the republican institutions," because it facilitated free
institutions. Certain fundamentals seemed appropriate; prayers in virtually
all official and public functions were expected; America was particularly
blessed because of her trust in God; and even when individuals in civic life
did not ascribe to a specific faith, they were expected to "act" like "good
Christians" and conduct themselves as would a believer.

Politicians like Washington walked a fine line between maintaining the secularist form and yet supplying the necessary spiritual substance. In part, this explains why
so many of the writings and speeches of the Founders were both timeless and uplifting. Their message of spiritual virtue, cloaked in republican processes if civic duty, reflected a sense of providential mission for the young country.

Isn't it interesting how the facts from history are so different from what we are now being told about history? Wonder if it is done on purpose? Could it be the same reason that Alexis de Tocqueville's book when it was re-edited and abridged in 1956 went from 770 pages to 270 pages losing every reference about God and faith?