A Defense of Religious Liberty

Thesis to Be Proved

Religious liberty is the freedom
of the people to publicly profess whatever religious truths
are agreeable to the reasoned judgment of the majority

Preface

The appearance of religious liberty within the socio-political order signals an underlying agreement among all believers; therefore, it cannot be the product of any one faith. Instead, the idea of religious liberty coincides with the appearance of a purely rational conception of God among the people. By “rational conception” I mean God as conceived by the mind independently of any supernatural faith. Despite this non-sectarian character, Christianity has played a key role in the development of religious liberty.

Two Proofs

This thesis is proved in two ways, first, on the basis of historical fact; second, on the basis of philosophic reason.

The first proof examines the decision of the American Founders to declare political independence from England, a political act that gave birth to the United States. The establishment of this nation as a separate power under the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God was an the exercise of the natural right of religious liberty by the American people.

The second proof is more complex.  It begins with a description of economic life as the pursuit of the various goods of nature, for example, the good of food. The people are free to pursue their own economic interests prior to government; the political order thus rests on a natural economic foundation. The idea that the people have rights in nature, and so prior to government, follows from the common insight that the various goods of nature are created by God. This rational idea of God blossoms within a society comprised of a variety of separate religious faiths. Political unity within such a society is possible only under religious ideas that transcend all sectarian differences; reason thus becomes the standard of religion in the public life of a free people.

The freedom of the people to profess whatever religious truths are agreeable to the reasoned judgment of the majority is the key philosophical insight of the modern democratic republic. Under this political system, the people claim their rights directly from God, not on the basis of faith, but as on the basis of rational argumentation and “self-evident”) truths. The suppression of this claim by modern republics is a direct act of political injustice against thire people. Religious liberty, as defined above, underlies any political system in which the people are rightful arbiters of public law.

First Proof:
Historical Fact of the Founding

This is a demonstration of the fact (demonstration quia).

The act that brought the United States into existence was a rational agreement among a majority of the people’s elected delegates that God is the author of the rights of the people. 

The idea that God is the author of rights is the central religious insight of a people who have the natural right right of self-government. Under this conception of the political order, government is founded to secure God-given rights.

The Declaration of Independence contains many theological, moral, and political truths, for example, that God is the Divine Providence, that we are created equals, and that citizenship is a sacred honor. Although the assertion that God is the author of our right would be sufficient of itself to prove that the definition of religious liberty given above is accurate, it is important to see that there is in fact a set of theological and moral ideas that were originally deemed agreeable to the reasoned judgment of the majority at the founding of this country. The Declaration of Independence enunciates only a small number of the religious ideas that the philosophers and the people have affirmed to be evident to reason. The sum of all of those ideas constitutes the philosophy of natural religion.

The delegates to the Second Continental Congress were overwhelmingly Christian, but they belonged to different branches of that ancient faith. They disagreed among themselves about various dogmatic teachings. Many colonists had left England and Europe to escape the religious persecutions that afflicted those countries; yet, most delegates at the Philadelphia Convention represented colonies that had religions established in law as the official faith of their citizens. No delegate was prepared to abandon its established faith in favor of another.

Thomas Jefferson was a prominent American Deist from Virginia. He was asked to write the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. He was joined on the Committee of Five by Benjamin Franklin, another well-known Deist from Pennsylvania, and John Adams, a Christian from New England who had strong rational tendencies. Together these three men formed a majority on the Committee of Five. Only Franklin made any substantive alterations to the initial draft, which was then presented to the Congress where it underwent further revisions.

In the course of this process, all doctrines that were unique to any one branch of Christianity were struck away. Given the conflicting faith commitments of the various delegates, agreement on the supernatural doctrines of Christianity was not possible. Agreement could only be founded on those theological, moral, and political truths that were agreeable to a majority of the delegates. Thus the supernatural doctrines of the Christian faith were excluded from the document; only those religious truths agreeable to reason found their way into the text.

The definition is thus proved. The “freedom of the people” signifies our delegates at the Second Continental Congress, who brought our nation about through the Declaration of Independence. . “To publicly profess” refers to the announcement of our founding truths to the world. “Whatever religious truths are agreeable to reason” signifies those theological and moral ideas that remained intact following the debates and discussions of our original delegates in Congress. This body of rational truth, stripped of the dogmatic teachings of Christianity and affirming only rational religious truths, was affirmed by the “judgment of the majority.”

Thus religious liberty is the freedom of the people to publicly profess whatever religious truths are agreeable to the reasoned judgment of the majority.

Second Proof:
Philosophical Idea of the Republic

This is a demonstration of the reason for the fact (demonstration propter quid).

The religious understanding that is evident to reason, independently of any supernatural revelation, is known to history as natural religion; it is comprised of two branches, natural theology and natural law morality. The earliest defenders of this ancient system of religious thought were the philosophers of Greece and Rome. The theory allied itself with Christianity, developed over the course of Western history, and played an instrumental role in the rise of the modern republic and the founding of the United States of America.

 

PART ONE
THE REPUBLIC AND NATURAL LAW

Atheism and Natural Law

There is an order of dependence between the two main branches of natural religion. Natural theology is first in the order of being, but second in the order of discovery. This means that the branch discovered first depends on that which is discovered second. This reverse order occurs because an effect is naturally known prior to its cause. God is the cause of the moral order, but natural law ethics can be known independently of any theological conception.

As a result, one can be an atheist and live a moral life. No one today doubts this possibility. The idea of the good is self-evident, that is, it is immediately grasped within experience. Although education in the moral life is essential in the development of this intuition, the mind has the natural ability to distinguish between good and evil. No one needs to tell us, for example, that an injury to the body is harmful. This is a lesson that nature teaches us directly. On the basis of such simple lessons as this the whole of natural law ethics arises.

The problem for the atheist is that he does not inquire deeply enough about first principles. Even though he prides himself on his use of the power of reason, he limits its exercise to science. This is wholly inadequate. Empirical science tells us little about the moral life, which is bound up instead with the use of common sense and sound practical judgment. The good is not an object of scientific inquiry. In short, the atheist surrenders reason to science and accepts its authority as gospel. He rests in the irrational conclusion that the whole of nature exists without a cause and thus results from chance.

Economic Life

A proper proof of God’s existence begins with the self-evident facts of experience. All sound argumentation begins with what is immediately known to the mind. Various arguments for God’s existence have been offered over the course of history by the great philosophers, but the most relevant to the foundation of the republic begins with reflection on the good, which is the natural object of human desire. The Republic is founded on the idea that government is ordered by nature to the good of the people: “Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto.”

The goods of nature are self-evident. They are not mental products. Everyone who encounters the good immediately recognizes that the good exists objectively. This simple fact is the starting-point of all reasoning in morality and ethics. We first learn how to secure the most fundamental goods of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter, and then how to acquire those higher goods that constitute the perfection of the social order, such as knowledge, friendship, and virtue. Because politics, properly considered, has its foundation the order of justice that exists within nature, the natural pursuit of what is good is the starting point of all reasoning about government.

Some goods are real; others are merely possible, but none is a product of human invention. This point is of capital importance. The sophisticates like to convince themselves that “good” is a mental construct, but this is delusory. The goodness of food, for example, exists by nature; we do not decide that food is good. The very idea is an absurdity. Our desire for food exists as a fundamental law of human nature. We can no more eradicate our desire for food than we can eradicate the law of gravity. The same holds true of every good. We are bound to obey the laws of nature if we are to secure the blessings of happiness for ourselves, our families, and our country .

The acquisition of the good is governed by objective laws. The growing of food, for example, requires knowledge of the times and seasons, the types of seeds, and how to cultivate and till the soil. This endeavor is connected to innumerable activities of others. A division of labor is inevitable within society because of the interconnected diversity of goods, the natural distribution of human skills, and the increase in productivity that results from cooperation. One who must spend his time plowing a field is better served if someone else makes the plow. The aim of one effort to secure good typically benefits another aim within the larger social order.

The Good of the Social Order

The pursuit of the good, as exhibited by the productive actions of all working in concert, constitutes the good of the social order as a whole. The one who makes tires for the truck, who refines gasoline for engines, who makes the asphalt for the roads---all of these help the farmer sells his goods at public market. So too do those who produce the ships, operate the trains, and fly the aircraft that enable those who buy these goods at market to supply them to those throughout the world.  A sack of grain transported to a distant shore has benefited from so many human hands that it is impossible to enumerate the contributions— there are a million small but essential endeavors.

Reason learns how to secure its aims through observation on nature, by studying its principles and causes, and by intervening upon its existing instrumentalities. We cannot change the course of nature; we can only learn how to cooperate with its powers. The vast expanse of the sea is a standing request that we build ships, just as distant markets call us to pursue economic enterprise on an ever-widening scale. Economic activity is natural to the human race. The pursuit of the good through economic means exists prior to the establishment of any political system. There is a natural order of justice that governs the social order independently of government.

The Political Order

The political order arises on the pre-existing system of natural economic activity. Within the original state of nature, each person is free to pursue his own economic interests. The equal freedom of all to enjoy the fruits of their labors is a right that belongs everyone prior to the establishment of government. Only thosee who seek an unfair advantage over others would deny that each of us must be free to maintain the liberty of his own actions and thus the freedom to pursue the goods that secure happiness. A correctly ordered political system will recognize the original freedom and equality all human human beings within the original state of nature.

This freedom and equality is the basis of those original moral laws that oblige us to treat everyone else as we ourselves would like to be treated. This moral law was not invented by the human mind, much less by the state, but is found in existence prior to any choice on our part. We do not create our own freedom and equality, but find ourselves to be free and equal. Freedom and equality are the common rights of all members of a just civil society. Additional rights accrue to each of us as members of a family and the larger social order as a whole. The mutual recognition of the rights that belong to the people within society is the first step toward a just political order.

In an ideal society, there would be no need to establish any political system or enact any written laws. If whole of society lived followed the law of nature that is equally evident to every human mind, the laws of nature would be sufficient for securing justice.

Rise of the Republic

The natural justice of the social order is disrupted by chance and malice. Natural advantages, such as strength, health, beauty, and inherited wealth, cause inequalities. Considered in themselves, these inequalities are not unjust, but result from the finitude and temporality of the natural world. Nonetheless, these advantages also provoke strong jealousies and hatreds, which in turn cause injustices. Some use violence or intrigue to acquire unfair advantages over others. Others allow themselves to be ruled by their passions, thus subjecting reason to the slavery of desire. All in all, reason does not rule with equanimity, but is subjected to various disorders and abuses.

The natural system of freedom and equality is thus spoiled by malice. The law of nature remains in full effect, and a fully rational people would observe it without question, but the depredations of a few compel the remainder to resort to the establishment of some system of political representation in which the good of all will be preserved through force. The authority of the people is thus placed into the hands of a selected few who are charged with representing the good of society as a whole. This power is transmitted on the understanding that those who exercise this authority will follow the original laws of justice that are equally evident to all in nature.

The first forms of government imitated the rule of family in the household. A single individual acted as if he were the parent of the whole of society. His power was rarely absolute; the king was obliged to resolve tensions among his subjects, principally between the wealthy and the poor. At times, a wealthy few gained power over the king and ruled as an aristocracy; at other times the poor took control of the levers of power and gave rise to simple democracies. Political theorists, through observation on these events over the course of history, realized that the most stable form of government was a mixture of these three types: monarchy, artistocrary, and democracy.

Indeed, the “mixed form” of government has been identified as the ideal since ancient times, even though it rarely appeared in practice. The ancient Roman Republic was an early and successful instance of this form, in which political power was shared among the Emperor, the Senate, and the people, represented by the Tribunes. When this mixed form was joined with the idea of elected representation, the modern republic was born. Power was initially divided between king and parliament, as in England, which parliament was further separated into an upper and lower chamber, which represented the interests of the wealthy and the poor.

Unlike the earlier mixed forms of government, which divided power according to the interests of class, the Constitution of the United States divided political authority according to the faculties of mind. This is made clear in the Federalist Papers, especially those written by James Madison. The executive, legislative, and judiciary branches exist as the representation of the will, reason, and judgment of the citizens. The American Republic is thus a transmission to elected representatives of the power of self-government that belongs to each and every person in the original state of nature; its branches reflect the rational power of self-rule that exists within the individual.

 

PART TWO
THE REPUBLIC AND NATURAL THEOLOGY

God as Author of Rights

The law of nature binds us to the pursuit of what is good. We govern ourselves well when we follow those laws that are evident to reason in nature and that enable us secure the good for ourselves, our families, and our society as a whole. The freedom of the individual to pursue the good is what the people transmit to government as their representative. That transmission is always partial; no one can completely divest himself of the duty of self-governance. The political order is charged with the special task of protecting the good of society as a whole.

The protection of the common good is not secure until it is grounded in the idea that God is author of nature’s law and therefore the source of the natural rights of the people. When this theological truth is grasped, the state recognizes—for the first time—the existence of inalienable rights. For example, the law of nature protects innocent human life. As a pre-existing and fundamental good of the nature, the elected representatives of the republic have a duty to protect the lives of the innocent. From the existence of such self-evident truths as this, the mind deduces all of the duties that bind the political order to the pursuit of the good on behalf of the people.

The Political Idea of God

To arrive at the conclusion that nature is governed by God, the mind must first realize that the natural good is not the product of material forces, but follows instead from the inherent purposefulness of nature. Purposes do not happen without reason, but result from thoughtful intention. Observation on the general tendency of all things in nature to seek the good thus leads the mind to the conclusion that nature is governed by Divine Intelligence. This insight is compatible with almost every religious faith, but it is not secured within the political order until it is affirmed by the people on the basis of reason. Only then does it become the focal point of union under a republic.

Reflection reveals that nature is a teleological system (telos [purpose] + logos [thought]). Human beings, like every other creature, seek the goods that perfect their nature. The goods of the body include food, clothing, and shelter. The goods of the mind include knowledge, friendship, and virtue. All of these goods exist as objects of rational desire. On the basis of the desirability of these self-evident goods of nature, the mind concludes to the existence of a body of moral law that ought to govern society as a whole. The rational recognition that God is the cause of that body of law, via the inherent purposefulness of nature, includes the political insight of inalienable rights.

The God who infuses nature with purposes calls us to secure the good under laws that He has made evident to reason in nature. Reason is the means by which we secure that good. We are rational creatures and we deduce through reflection on nature that God is also rational. Self-governance is thus an imitation of the work of the Divine Reason. The right of the people to govern themselves under the laws that God has made evident to reason in nature stands at the core of the political structure of the republic.

Despite its grounding in theology, the conclusion that we are to govern ourselves under the Laws of Nature’s God is not the private doctrine of any religious faith. The idea contains no supernatural doctrine; its theological content is wholly ordered to reason. In order for this political idea to take root within society, and thus serve as the foundation of the modern republic, it must be acknowledged among the people as a whole---or at least among a majority. Only then will the idea of God as the Author of Rights bind the written laws of the state to the protection of the most fundamental goods of the people, namely, their freedom and happiness.

The final step in securing the moral order of the republic, and with it, the highest good of the people, is the acknowledgment of the inalienable right of every citizen to affirm whatever truths are agreeable to reason. The rational pursuit of religious truth thus forms a central part of self-governance. This liberty is fundamental to the republic because the pursuit of religious truth is what enables the people to discover the principles of government; thus, it precedes all other rights in gravity and importance. Without this freedom, the people cannot defend the theological insight that God---and not government---is the author of their rights. They fall prey to tyranny.

Appearance of Religious Liberty

When a people seek to overcome the dogmatic differences that separate them into distinct religious faiths, the possibility of religious liberty first appears. The supernatural faiths that explain the mysteries of death, the passage to the next world, and the means of salvation, exist differently within different cultures. Even within Christianity, the dominant religion of the West, there is little unity among the various denominations that make up that large and complex religious system. These dogmatic differences are the source of deep divisions among the people; tragically, they also cause of war and injustices. The world’s religious faiths are similarly situated as a whole.

Although God’s existence is affirmed by every religion worthy of the name, the separation of Church and State does not take root within society until there is a strong distinction in the mind of the people between revealed and rational religion. By “church,” of course, I mean any religious establishment whatsoever (church, temple, mosque, shrine, etc.). Revealed religion concerns all those supernatural mysteries that are not comprehensible to the ordinary powers of the rational mind. Rational religion, in contrast, consists of all of those ideas about God and morality that can be understood by reason independently of any act of faith.

Without the distinction between reason and revelation, the political order remains within the grip of the most politically powerful faith, either because of its numerical superiority or through the simple use of force. Obviously, neither is a true justification for political supremacy. Indeed, the union of Church and State is inherently unjust, for it presumes that those who hold political power have the authority to compel the mind to acts of belief and worship. This infringes on the rights of conscience and the free exericse of religion---two inalienable rights of nature. The written laws of the state thus become measures to oppress minority faiths.

Among the religions of the world, Christianity has been the most open to the life of reason; therefore, it was the first to openly embrace the separation of Church and State. Many of Christianity’s greatest leaders were directly influenced by philosophical ideas derived from non-Christian sources, especially those of ancient Greece and Rome. Christian philosophers have recognized, for example, that various proofs for God’s existence have been successfully offered by pagan thinkers. Under its best intellectual leaders, Christianity added the unique doctrines of its supernatural faith to those religious truths that were already known to reason.

The Progress of Natural Religion

The political idea of the republic developed in conjunction with the progress of natural religion. The various proofs for the existence of God, both Christian and non-Christian, were at first confined to the researches of the great philosophers. The defenders of the modern republic joined this rational theology to the idea of a society that is ordered to justice under a system of natural rights. The freedom and happiness of the people, according to these modern theorists, was to be found within a political system that acknowledged the rational truth that God is the author of the rights of the people. We are called to pursue the good under the Law of Nature’s God.

This theological conception was gradually wedded to the religious beliefs of the people, especially within Christianity. Of course, the vast majority of Christians affirmed this truth not as philosophical conviction, but as an obviously corollary to their faith. Within the United States, the appearance of prominent Deists, and the openness of the Christians of that time to the life of reason, led the government of that nation to become the first to openly acknowledge in its founding document that its people claimed their rights from God under the Laws of Nature.

Generally speaking, the protection of religious liberty under laws of the state begins as soon as the people agree to the universal protection of all religious faiths. This development cannot occur within a homogenous society, but requires the existence of a social order with numerous incompatible faiths roughly equivalent in political power. This was the circumstance at the founding of the United States of America. [See first proof above.] The need for political consensus among these diverse traditions necessitated that the different sects set aside their doctrinal differences and find unity under religious truths agreeable to the reasoned judgment of the majority.

Freedom and Religious Truth

Among the various rights that belong to the people in the original state of nature is the freedom to profess, teach, and defend the philosophical conclusion that God is the author of their rights. This right is known to the people independently of faith through reasoned reflection on nature. The assemblage of all of religious truths known to the people through the exercise of reason constitutes the philosophy of natural religion. The right of self-government necessarily includes the freedom to profess, teach, and defend the truths of natural religion.

As truths known to the people through the light of reason, natural theology and natural law ethics are not the private possession of any private sect of religion. The republic, in fact, is nothing more than the expression of those theological and moral truths that God has made evident to reason in nature. Government by the people rests on these self-evident principles. The measure of freedom by which a people are able to profess, teach, and defend the first principles of their political union is the measure by which a republic gives expression to its essential form.

The truths of natural religion include the principles of natural justice that the people know prior to government. The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God are thus the source and pattern for all of the written laws of the state. The citizens assign political power to their elected representatives on condition that they will follow the laws of nature whenever they enact written law on their behalf. So long as the people are free to give public expression to those religious truths that are evident to reason, the political union of the republic will be preserved.

The falsehood that rights are the gift of government has crushed the human spirit throughout most of its history. This error was overcome only through the advent and slow development, over the course of many centuries, of rational theology within the West. The republic places this rational conception of God at the center of its political life; it guarantees the freedom of the people to acknowledge God; and it tests the justice of every written law by the unwritten laws that God has established in nature.

Separation of Church and State

Reason is the standard by which the people must decide all public matters, including the question of which religious truths belong to the people within their public life. Whatever religious affirmations are within the range of ordinary and uninspired reason may be freely joined to public life; whenever this principle is forgotten, the truths of the republic are suppressed. In contrast, whatever religious claims transcend ordinary and uninspired reason must be separated from public life. The supernatural doctrines of faith should never be joined to public law.

The supernatural character of revelation is obvious to any reasonable observer. That one God should be Three Persons or that Three Persons shoul be one God is not evident to reason. Non-Christians rightly object whenever this doctrine is joined to public life. The same objection applies equally to the introduction to public life of the revealed teachings of any other private religious faith. In a republic, the citizens know how to distinguish between what is rational and what is revealed. They know how to separate Church (temple, shrine, mosque, etc.) and State.

They also know that the separation of Church and State does not apply to any religious truth that is within the range of ordinary human reason. The means by which a people decide which truths are agreeable to reason and which are not is public discussion and debate. When freedom of speech in guaranteed in public law, only those truths that are agreeable to the reasoned judgment of the majority find their way into public life. The separation of Church and State is the natural result of free speech and free association among a people of diverse religious faiths.

Those who agree that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and supremely good must necessarily have in mind the same Divine Being, regardless of whatever disagreement they may continue to have over the supernatural doctrines of their respective faiths. There is only one God. He possesses only certain attributes. When two or more citizens employ reason to affirm the supreme knowledge, power, and goodness of God, they forge union under the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God. Thus does a society of incompatible religious faiths arrive at the rational consensus that God is the author of their rights.

Note on the U.S. Constitution

The task of separating Church and State falls to the people. The U.S. Constitution provides no guidance whatsoever on how to carry out this task. The separation clause of the First Amendment is merely negative; it does not concern the theological and moral truths that the people affirm in common as the basis of their union under the light of reason. Likewise, the free exercise clause concerns only the protection of conscience and the private practice of religion. The freedom of the people to affirm the first principles of their own political union precedes the Constitution and is wholly immune from its articles and clauses. The freedom to profess those truths—the truths which are the founding principles of the republic—is the basis of the Constitution. The opposite is not the case.

The right of religious liberty precedes government; it exists prior to any constitution, congress, or court. Within the United States of America, it is the Declaration of Independence---not the Constitution---that evinces the right of the people to publicly profess whatever religious truths are agreeable to reason. The first principles of political union among a people are not subject to the rule of government. Only the people have the authority to establish, set forth, and revise the first principles of their republic. Reason is the standard of that great historical task.

Definition Proved

The second proof is thus concluded. The “freedom of the people” refers to the exercise self-governance, which belongs to the people in the original state of nature and therefore prior to government. “To publicly profess” refers to the freedom of the people to affirm what is known in that original state. The phrase “whatever religious truths are agreeable to reason” refers to the consensus forged among the people on the basis of free intellectual inquiry. And “judgment of the majority” signifies truths that are agreeable to the universal instrument of reason.

Thus religious liberty is the freedom of the people to publicly profess whatever religious truths are agreeable to the reasoned judgment of the majority.

Copyright 2014 Edward J. Furton

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Deism and Christianity by Bill McCracken

I thought it would be interesting to consider what Deism shares with the Christian religion. This topic could be a bit tricky because Deists have no set of codified beliefs. We consider ourselves to be free-thinkers, so we don’t tell each other what to believe. But, in a nutshell, Deists believe in God as revealed in nature, and then use reason to determine for ourselves our other personal beliefs and practices. This makes me reluctant to speak for all Deists everywhere, so I’ll just share the similarities that I know of.    In the first place, modern Deism grew out of Christianity. The earliest Deists, at least in America, were members of churches, usually Anglican. They believed in God. They appreciated and tried to follow Jesus’ teachings, especially the Golden Rule and the importance of loving God and others (something I still hold to). But they also realized that the Church held to many beliefs which just didn’t seem to line up with progressive human understanding. For instance, they questioned the doctrine of the Virgin Birth because everyone knows it takes a male and a female to produce a child. They didn't believe that God impregnates people. They questioned the Christian doctrine that everyone is born evil (Original Sin). They also rejected the doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement, the notion that Jesus had to die in order for God to forgive our sins. So while the Deists affirmed the reality of the Creator and the core teachings of Jesus Christ, they dared to question whether or not Church doctrines or biblical doctrines really line up with reality, with how we know the world really works. But they still affirmed, along with Christians, that God is real and that Jesus taught us how to live good lives.  Another strong tie that Deism has with what Jesus taught is a reverence for nature. Many, if not most, of Jesus’ parables concerned nature – plants, seeds, tree, water, fire, farming, the sun, the wind. He was quite the “country boy” and used stories about nature to illustrate what human relationships to God and to each other should look like. Like Jesus, Deists looked around them at nature and found, not only evidence for God, but spiritual lessons that can teach us how to love, appreciate, and care for one another.  Many Deists consider Jesus to be a great teacher, perhaps an extremely enlightened person who had keen insight into how to relate to God as a Father and to humanity as brothers and sisters. Deists also strongly believe in Jesus’ social gospel of helping others. And many Deists, though not all, believe in some sort of afterlife, another subject that Christianity focuses on.  If Christianity consisted only of the central teachings of Jesus concerning loving God and others, many Deists might consider themselves to be Christians. But Christianity has added many, many other doctrines to its religion over the years that go far beyond what Jesus taught, and Deists find many of these added doctrines to often be irrational, superstitious, and sometimes harmful. Because of all the “extra baggage” that Christianity currently has, most Deists would probably not choose to self-identify as Christians.

As I mentioned in Part 1, Deism in America began in the Church, within Christianity. But it also had a bit of a “love/hate” relationship with Christianity that has not quite abated. Deists affirmed, along with Christians, that God is our Creator and that the creation is good and shows God’s handiwork. And it also often affirmed the central teachings of Jesus about loving God, loving others, and making our world a better place. But it didn’t agree with the Church that all knowledge was confined to the Bible. It didn’t agree with the Church that we had nothing left to learn about ourselves or our universe other than what the Church or the Bible says. Deists embraced the “new knowledge” of the Enlightenment, advances gained in the fields of science, medicine, astronomy, sociology, and even psychology. Deists strongly felt that God was the source of all truth and that God has continued to lead us into truths that people in the Bible days just weren’t privy to. Can you imagine trying to explain to a Roman soldier or a Jewish peasant how an inoculation shot works? Deists embraced these advances in the sciences and in the arts, even in theology (how we think about God), and felt that humanity needed to grow up and out of some of the superstitions of the past.    The Church, to a large degree, was extremely slow in accepting any new knowledge. It felt that everything God wanted us to know was either found in the Bible (for Protestants) or found in the Vatican (for Catholics) or found in the Church Fathers (for Eastern Orthodox). Granted, the Church has made some strides over the last few decades, but let’s be honest, it only recently allowed for inter-racial marriages and it still is opposed to gays “because the Bible says so.” Deists don’t feel that all knowledge is confined to the Bible or the Church. They feel that God teaches us through everything in life and that we should never stop growing. Our beliefs, think most Deists, should come from what we think, given the information and wisdom available to us now, not just residual knowledge held onto simply because people 2000 years ago believed they knew all truth.  So this is where the relationship between Deism and Christianity can sometimes be strained. Deism accepts and incorporates new knowledge wherever it finds it, using reasoning as a measuring stick to judge truth. Christianity looks primarily to the past for what it believes is truth, to the way people thought and believed from 2000 to 4000 years ago. If you were sick, would you want to go to a doctor that only had the medical training from the first century? Or would you want a doctor with the latest in medical training? Similarly, if you want to understand God, would you consider only what people 2000 years ago had to say? Or would you want to consider other sources? Granted, some things from the past, many things in fact, are worth holding onto. But not if it no longer makes sense (like keeping women out of church pulpits) or if it is superstition (like believing God impregnates people) or if it is harmful, as many of the supposed commands of God in the Bible are.  Nevertheless, Deism usually does not wish to be “anti-Christian”. Christianity is a good religion, as far as it goes. But not everything in Christianity is good. And Deism wants to be known more for what it is for than what it is against.

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Deism and Founding Fathers

This short letter was in answer to John Meadows who attempted to paint all the Founding Fathers as Christians written by Dr. Ben Johnson, Doctor of Divinity; Deist. May,1999.

Though the brief description of Deism accurately supports the argument about the faith of our Founding Fathers, it contains many historical inaccuracies that I would like to bring to light.

Deism is assembled around the idea that God is the creator of all, but then steps back from his creations, leaving no further interaction.

Most Deists see organized religion as a system that creates problems such as oppression, violence and warfare; all of which our founding fathers experienced or witnessed, before claiming independence from Great Britain. The only benefit that religion held in deists’ opinion, was the importance of strong ethics and moral values.

Deism was the favored curriculum within the universities our Founding Fathers attended.

They believed the Bible was not the word of God, for the stories throughout went against the laws of nature.

They did however see particular stories throughout the Bible applicable, for they showed the importance of good moral character.

As to the justification of why our founding fathers were Christian, the internet is simply not a source that has enough accuracy to be considered valuable.

There is a very specific process to the craft of historical methodology. This practice includes the process of asking a question, considering the evidence (primary and secondary sources), coming to a conclusion and communicating the knowledge with others historical scholars.

Though a Google search may say that our Founding Fathers were indeed Christian, we must look further into actual historical evidence to provide the basis of our knowledge.

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Deism and the Founding of the United States

In recent decades, the role of deism in the American founding has become highly charged. Evangelical and/or “traditional” Protestants have claimed that Christianity was central to the early history of the United States and that the nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. They point to the use of prayer in Congress, national days of prayer and thanksgiving and the invocation of God as the source of our “unalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence. Secularists respond that large fractions of the principal founding fathers were not Christians at all but deists and the American founding was established on secular foundations. Their principal evidence is the strict separation of church and state they find embedded in the first amendment. They further cite the utter absence of biblical references in our principal founding documents and note that the God of the Declaration of Independence is not described in a scriptural idiom as “God the Father” but instead in deistic terms as a “Creator” and “supreme judge of the world.” Although both sides have some evidence, neither is persuasive. Ultimately, the role of deism in the American founding is just too complex to force into such simplistic formulas.

Deism

Deism or “the religion of nature” was a form of rational theology that emerged among “freethinking” Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. Deists insisted that religious truth should be subject to the authority of human reason rather than divine revelation. Consequently, they denied that the Bible was the revealed word of God and rejected scripture as a source of religious doctrine. As devotees of natural religion, they rejected all the supernatural elements of Christianity. Miracles, prophecies, and divine portents were all proscribed as residues of superstition, as was the providential view of human history. The doctrines of original sin, the account of creation found in Genesis, and the divinity and resurrection of Christ were similarly castigated as irrational beliefs unworthy of an enlightened age. For Deists God was a benevolent, if distant, creator whose revelation was nature and human reason. Applying reason to nature taught most deists that God organized the world to promote human happiness and our greatest religious duty was to further that end by the practice of morality.

 Edward Herbert,  1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, by Isaac Oliver

The origins of English deism lay in the first half of the 17th century. Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury, a prominent English statesman and thinker, laid out the basic deist creed in a series of works beginning with De Veritate (On Truth, as it is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False) in 1624. Herbert was reacting to the ongoing religious strife and bloodletting that had wracked Europe since the onset of the Reformation in the previous century and would shortly spark a revolution and civil war in England itself resulting in the trial and execution of King Charles I. Deism, Herbert hoped, would quell this strife by offering a rational and universal creed. Like his contemporary Thomas Hobbes, Herbert established the existence of God from the so-called cosmological argument that, since everything has a cause, God must be acknowledged as the first cause of the universe itself. Given the existence of God, it is our duty to worship him, repent our failings, strive to be virtuous, and expect punishment and reward in the afterlife. Because this creed was based on reason which was shared by all men (unlike revelation), Herbert hoped it would be acceptable to everyone regardless of their religious background. Indeed, he considered deism the essential core religious belief of all men throughout history, including Jews, Muslims, and even Pagans.

Despite Herbert’s efforts, deism had very little impact in England for most of the 17th century. But in the years from 1690 to 1740, the very height of the Enlightenment in England, deism became a major source of controversy and discussion in English religious and speculative culture. Figures like Charles Blount, Anthony Collins, John Toland, Henry St. John (Lord Bolingbroke), William Wollaston, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Woolston, and Thomas Chubb championed the cause of deism. In so doing, they sparked theological disputes that spread across the channel and the Atlantic.

These Enlightened deists capitalized on two critical developments in the late 17th century to bolster the case for the religion of nature. The first was a transformation in the understanding of nature itself. The path breaking work of physicists like Galileo, Kepler, and, especially, Newton resulted in a vision of the world that was remarkably orderly and precise in its adherence to universal mathematical laws.

The Newtonian universe was often compared to a clock because of the regularity of its mechanical operations. Deists seized on this image to formulate the argument from design, namely that the clockwork order of the universe implied an intelligent designer, i.e. God the cosmic clockmaker. The other critical development was the articulation of John Locke’s empiricist theory of knowledge. Having denied the existence of innate ideas, Locke insisted that the only judge of truth was sense experience aided by reason. Although Locke himself believed that the Christian revelation and the accounts of miracles contained therein passed this standard, his close friend and disciple Anthony Collins did not. The Bible was a merely human text and its doctrines must be judged by reason. Since miracles and prophecies are by their nature violations of the laws of nature, laws whose regularity and universality were confirmed by Newtonian mechanics, they cannot be credited.

Providential intervention in human history similarly interfered with the clocklike workings of the universe and impiously implied the shoddy workmanship of the original design. Unlike the God of Scripture, the deist God was remarkably distant; after designing his clock, he simply wound it up and let it run. At the same time, his benevolence was evidenced by the astounding precision and beauty of his workmanship. Indeed, part of the attraction of deism lay in its foisting a sort of cosmic optimism. A rational and benevolent deity would only design what Voltaire lampooned as “the best of all possible worlds,” and all earthly injustice and suffering was either merely apparent or would be rectified in the hereafter. True deist piety was moral behavior in keeping with the Golden Rule of benevolence.

 Christianity as Old as the  Creation: Or, The Gospel,  a Republication of the  Religion of Nature, by Matthew Tindal

Most English deists downplayed the tensions between their rational theology and that of traditional Christianity. Anthony Collins clamed that “freethinking” in religion was not only a natural right but also a biblically enjoined duty. Matthew Tindal, the author of Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730)—the “Bible of Deism”—argued that the religion of nature was recapitulated in Christianity, and the purpose of the Christian revelation was to free men from superstition. Tindal insisted that he was a Christian deist, as did Thomas Chubb who revered Christ as a divine moral teacher but held that reason, not faith, was the final arbiter of religious belief. How seriously to take these claims has been a matter of intense and prolonged debate. Deism was proscribed by law after all; the Toleration Act of 1689 had specifically excluded all forms of anti-trinitarianism as well as Catholicism. Even in an age of increasing toleration, flaunting one’s heterodoxy could be a dangerous affair, driving many authors into esotericism if not outright deception. When Thomas Woolston attacked the scriptural accounts of miracles and the doctrine of the resurrection, he was fined one hundred pounds sterling and sentenced to one year in prison. Certainly, some deists adopted a materialistic determinism that smacked of atheism. Others, like Collins, Bolingbroke, and Chubb, questioned the immortality of the soul. Even more challenging was the propensity to ascribe the supernatural elements of the Christian religion to “priestcraft,” the cunning deceptions of clergymen who gulled their ignorant flocks by throwing the pixie dust of “mystery” in their eyes. The Dudleian lecture, endowed by Paul Dudley in 1750, is the oldest endowed lecture at Harvard University. Dudley specified that the lecture should be given once a year, and that the topics of the lectures should rotate among four themes: natural religion, revealed religion, the Romish church, and the validity of the ordination of ministers. The first lecture was given in 1755, and it continues to the present day.On the other hand, the rational theology of the deists had been an intrinsic part of Christian thought since Thomas Aquinas, and the argument from design was trumpeted from Anglophone Protestant pulpits of most denominations on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, Harvard instituted a regular series of lectures on natural religion in 1755. Even anti-clericalism had a fine pedigree among dissenting English Protestants since the Reformation. And it is not inconceivable that many deists might have seen themselves as the culmination of the Reformation process, practicing the priesthood of all believers by subjecting all authority, even that of scripture, to the faculty of reason that God had given humanity.

Like their English counterparts, most colonial deists downplayed their distance from their orthodox neighbors. Confined to a small number of educated and generally wealthy elites, colonial deism was a largely private affair that sought to fly below the radar. Benjamin Franklin had been much taken with deist doctrines in his youth and had even published a treatise [A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain] in England on determinism with strong atheistic overtones. But Franklin quickly repented of his action and tried to suppress the distribution of his publication, considering it one of the greatest errors of his youth. Henceforth he kept his religious convictions to himself and his clubbical “pot companions” or drinking friends, and tried to present as orthodox a public appearance as possible. Like his handful of fellow colonial deists, Franklin kept a low theological profile. As a result, deism had very little impact in early America up through the American Revolution.

In the years after independence, however, that began to change. In 1784 Ethan Allen, the hero of Fort Ticonderoga and revolutionary leader of the Green Mountain Boys, published Reason: The Only Oracle of Man. Allen had drafted much of the work some twenty years earlier with Thomas Young, a fellow New England patriot and freethinker. Allen rejected revelation (scriptural or otherwise), prophecies, miracles, and divine providence as well as such specifically Christian doctrines as the trinity, original sin, and the need for atonement. A tedious and long-winded author, Allen’s lengthy tome had little impact other than raising the ire of the New England clergy and the specter of homegrown freethinking. The same could not be said of Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason (1794). The legendary author of Common Sense brought the same militancy and rhetorical flair to the struggle for deism that he had for independence. Paine lambasted the superstitions of Christianity and vilified the priestcraft that supported it. More than simply irrational, Christianity was the last great obstacle to the coming secular chiliad, the Age of Reason. Only when it was vanquished could human happiness and perfectibility be achieved. Paine’s impact was due as much to the punchy power of his prose as the extreme radicalism of his views, as evidenced by this denunciation of the Old Testament:

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debauches, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

Militant deism had arrived in early America with a bang.

The Temple of Reason,

by Elihu Palmer The flame that Paine sparked was fanned by his good friend Elihu Palmer. A former Baptist minister, Palmer traveled along the Atlantic seaboard lecturing audiences large and small about the truths of natural religion as well as the absurdities of revealed Christianity and the clerical priestcraft that supported them. A skilled biblical casuist, Palmer exposed the irrationality of Christianity and its debased moral principles in Principles of Nature (1801). A radical feminist and abolitionist, Palmer found the scriptures filled with an ethical code of intolerance and vengeful cruelty in sharp contrast to the benevolent humanitarianism of his own rational creed. Palmer spread the word in two deist newspapers he edited, The Temple of Reason (1800–1801) and The Prospect (1803–1805). By the time he died in 1806, Palmer had founded deist societies in several cities including New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

Organized deism did not survive Palmer’s demise, as much of the nation was swept up in an evangelical revival. In fact, the militant deism of Paine and Palmer never really threatened mainstream Protestantism in the early Republic. But that was not the way many orthodox divines saw it. In the years after Paine and Palmer began spreading their message, many ministers (particularly in New England) angrily denounced the growing menace of godless deism, French-inspired Atheism, and revolutionary and conspiratorial “illuminatism.” These charges took on an increasingly shrill and partisan edge, so much so that they became a campaign issue in the Presidential election of 1800 which several clergymen depicted as a choice between the Federalist patriot John Adams and the Francophile anti-Christian Thomas Jefferson.

Guiding Discussion

After explaining the nature of deism, you are in a wonderful position to enrich your students understanding of the role of religion in the founding of the United States. The first thing to do is to show the inadequacy of the polemical formulas stated at the outset of this essay. Begin with the secularist case for a deist founding. First note that of those men who signed the Declaration of Independence, sat in the Confederation Congress, or participated in the Constitutional Convention for whom we have reliable information, the vast bulk were fairly traditional in the religious lives. The presumed deists comprise a fairly small group, although most are prominent “A list” founders like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, George Mason, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin. At least two of these names can be struck off the list immediately. Freemasonry

 The teachings and practices of the secret fraternal order of Free and Accepted Masons, the largest worldwide secret society. Spread by the advance of the British Empire, Freemasonry remains most popular in the British Isles and in other countries originally within the empire.

 Freemasonry evolved from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. With the decline of cathedral building, some lodges of operative (working) masons began to accept honorary members to bolster their declining membership. From a few of these lodges developed modern symbolic or speculative Freemasonry, which particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, adopted the rites and trappings of ancient religious orders and of chivalric brotherhoods. In 1717 the first Grand Lodge, an association of lodges, was founded in England.

 Freemasonry has, almost from its inception, encountered considerable opposition from organized religion, especially from the Roman Catholic Church, and from various states.

 Though often mistaken for such, Freemasonry is not a Christian institution. Freemasonry contains many of the elements of a religion; its teachings enjoin morality, charity, and obedience to the law of the land. For admission the applicant is required to be an adult male believing in the existence of a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. In practice, some lodges have been charged with prejudice against Jews, Catholics, and nonwhites. Generally, Freemasonry in Latin countries has attracted freethinkers and anti-clericals, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the membership is drawn largely from among white Protestants.

“Freemasonry” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

 22 Feb. 2008.Hamilton had been fairly devout as a youth, and while there is little evidence of much religiosity during the height of his career, in his final years he returned to a heartfelt and sincere Christian piety. John Adams was far from orthodox in his beliefs but he was no deist; he was a universalist Unitarian whose views were remarkably similar to those of Charles Chauncy, the minister of Boston’s First Church. The next category is those whose deism is ascribed on slender evidence. George Washington’s deism is inferred from his failure to mention Jesus in his writings, his freemasonry, and his apparent refusal to take communion during most of his life. That Washington was not a fundamentalist goes without saying, but there is simply no evidence that he was anything other than what was known at the time as a “liberal” Christian. A regular attendee of religious services and a vestryman in his parish, Washington peppered many of his addresses and speeches with biblical references and appeals to divine providence as well a messages extolling the role of religion in public life. And the evidence of Mason and Madison is even weaker than that for Washington. The only really plausible cases are Franklin and Jefferson. There is no doubt that both were taken with deist doctrines in their youth and that they informed their mature religious convictions. Yet neither entirely embraced the religion of nature, especially in its militant form. Franklin never accepted the divinity of Christ, but he did specifically argue for a providential view of history. As for Jefferson, there is some evidence that by the late 1790’s he had abandoned his deism for he materialist Unitarianism of Joseph Priestly. This is not to suggest that there were no deists in the founding. Thomas Paine assuredly fits the bill, as do Ethan Allen, Phillip Freneau, and possibly Stephen Hopkins. But these comprise a small fraction of the B-list, not the cream of the crop.

Having dispatched the secularists, turn your fire on the case for a Christian founding. First, note that while the aforementioned founders were not deists, they were far from traditional in their beliefs. Washington may not have mentioned Jesus because he doubted the divinity of Christ, a doubt that was assuredly shared by Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and possibly Mason and Madison as well. “Real whigs held that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, denounced standing armies,… argued that ‘freedom of speech is the great bulwark [safeguard] of liberty.’ feared religious establishments,… were preoccupied with limiting government and protecting a sphere of privacy from undue governmental intervention.”

Citizens and Citoyens: Republicans and Liberals in America and France, by Mark Hulliung. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2002. page 11.These were, after all, men of the Enlightenment who, in the words of historian Gordon Wood, “were not all that enthusiastic about religion, certainly not about religious enthusiasm.” And even if their views were somewhat atypical, they certainly did not hamper them from gaining the respect and public support of their more orthodox countrymen. Moreover, it is important to point out that a country founded by and for Christians does not a Christian founding make. The “real whig” ideology that inspired the colonial protest movement of the 1760s drew on classical and early modern rather than Christian sources; there is very little scriptural “During the early modern period, the context of human affairs was changing dramatically. Within the globalization of life, three major changes were of special significance.

1. The development of new-style empires and large state systems that came to dominate global political and military affairs.

2. The internal transformation of the major societies, but especially the transformation of society in western Europe.

3. The emergence of networks of interaction that were global in their scope.

 These developments reoriented the global balance of societal power. In 1500 there were four predominant traditions of civilization in the Eastern Hemisphere in a position of relative parity, but by 1800, one of these societies, the West, was in a position to assume political and military control over the whole world.”

 

The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern,

 6th ed., edited by Peter N. Stearns.

 Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

www.bartleby.com/67/

 February 2008.authority for the maxim “no taxation without representation.” Similarly, the doctrines of mixed and balanced government, the separation of powers, and all the other principles of prudential politics association with the Federal Constitution were drawn from the writings of European philosophers rather than biblical prophets or exegetes.

Once your students have seen the inadequacy of both current formulas, push them to rethink the relation of politics and religion in the early Republic. You might suggest that the natural religious language of the Declaration served as a neutral expression acceptable to all denominations rather than a deist creed precisely because a tradition of natural theology was shared by most Christians at the time. Deist phrases may thus have been a sort of theological lingua franca, and their use by the founders was ecumenical rather than anti-Christian. Such ecumenical striving sheds fresh light on the first amendment and the secular order it established. This secularism forbade the federal government from establishing a national church or interfering with church affairs in the states. However, it did not create a policy of official indifference, much less hostility toward organized religion. Congress hired chaplains, government buildings were used for divine services, and federal policies supported religion in general (ecumenically) as does our tax code to this day. The founding generation always assumed that religion would play a vital part in the political and moral life of the nation. Its ecumenical secularity insured that no particular faith would be excluded from that life, including disbelief itself.

Historians Debate

Unfortunately, many recent books on deism and the Founding of the United States are polemical in intent. There are two notable exceptions however. David L. Holmes, The Faith of the Founding Fathers (2006) makes a scholarly argument for the importance of deism in the founding, albeit by examining a handful of Virginians. Alf J. Mapp, Jr., The Faiths of Our Fathers: What America’s Fathers Really Believed (2003) takes a more balanced view but is based on little primary research and tends to be conjectural in its conclusions. Little work has been done on deism in early America itself besides Kerry S. Walters, Rational Infidels: The American Deists (1992) which remains the best book on the subject. There are, however, hosts of good and popular books on individuals “deist” founders. Two excellent examples are Edwin S. Gaustad’s Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (1996) and Edmund S. Morgan’s Benjamin Franklin (2002). A good general introduction to the role of religion in the early republic is James H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (1998).

Darren Staloff is a Professor of History at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has published many papers and reviews on early American history and is the author of The Making of an American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts (1998) and The Politics of Enlightenment: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams and the Founding of the American Republic (2005).

Address comments or questions to Professor Staloff through TeacherServe “Comments and Questions.”

 

Darren Staloff Professor of History at the City College of New York and he Graduate Center of the City University of New York ©National Humanities Center

 

To cite this essay:

Staloff, Darren. “Deism and the Founding of the United States.” Divining America, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. <http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/deism.htm>

 

 

 

 

 

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