Two Founders on religious freedom

George Washington to the Newport, R.I., Hebrew congregation on August 18, 1790

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

via Teaching American History.

Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Conn., Baptist association on Jan. 1, 1802

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

via Teaching American History.

The Declaration: a persuasive argument

These are the opening words of THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Bert Likko, writing for the League of Ordinary Gentlemen web log, said the importance of the Declaration was that it was A Persuasive Argument.

The proposition that things are or even can be self-evidently true is something that it seems to me philosophers debate to this day.  But who among the readership — a readership consisting of English colonists in the Americas and Europeans — would deny that people should have life that not be taken arbitrarily from them, and that people ought to be happy, or at least be able to pursue happiness? Who would not want life, liberty, and happiness for themselves, and not recognize a similar desire in others? Jefferson frames these unquestioned social goods as rights, and universalizes those rights.

What is radical, or at least radical enough, for 1776 was to do so on an individualized basis, claiming all men as equals to one another.  In a world still steeped with and ruled by hereditary nobility, it was a relatively well-accepted proposition that some people were just plain better than others by virtue of the accident of their births.   To say that all men are created equal denies the very concept of nobility and calls into question the concept of even a social elite.  […]

In defense of hyprocrisy

I am a hypocrite.  I do things that are inconsistent with my principles and ideals, and I sometimes conceal this from others and even myself.  Furthermore I am hypocritical even in my admission of hypocrisy, because I hold back details, so as to allow you to think I am being too hard on myself.

Not a hypocrite

It isn’t good to be a hypocrite, but there are worse things than being a hypocrite.  Winston Churchill was a hypocrite.  He talked about freedom and democracy while trying to preserve British rule in India.  Heinrich Himmler was a mass murderer, but he was not a hypocrite.  What he said was aligned with what he believed, and what he did was aligned with what he said.

The writers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were hypocrites.  They proclaimed political principles and ideals that few, if any of them, fully practiced themselves.  Since my youth, I have been stirred by Thomas Jefferson’s great statements about political, intellectual and religious freedom.  But Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite.   He wrote that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, while owning human beings as property and subjecting them to harsh punishments for their attempts at liberty and happiness.

A hypocrite

Yet I am still stirred by Thomas Jefferson’s great language.  Should we condemn him for his hypocrisy.  Or should we be grateful to him for drafting the Declaration of Independence, risking his life in the cause of American independence and enacting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom?  Would it have been better if he had been an honest and straightforward racist, like John C. Calhoun or Jefferson Davis?

These thoughts are prompted by the annual Fourth of July party given by my philosopher friend and neighbor David White.  We began by reading the Declaration of Independence, then over the years added the Declaration of Sentiments by the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and then “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” Frederick Douglass’s great 1852 speech in Rochester, in which he pointed out that the rights proclaimed in the Declaration and the Constitution did not apply to him as a black man—in other words, that white Americans’ claim to believe that “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” was hypocritical.

The original sin of the United States is that it was founded on slavery.  Without acceptance of slavery, the thirteen rebel British colonies would never have been able to come together as a unified nation.  The saving virtue of the Founders is that many of them were ashamed of this fact.  As Frederick Douglass pointed out in his speech, there is no specific language in the Constitution upholding slavery.  The word “slavery” is first used in the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 which abolishes slavery.

Fewer than 10 years after Douglass made his speech, the Southern states established a Confederacy which honestly proclaimed slavery as a founding principle.   The Confederates were not hypocrites.  They were honest racists and not hypocritical.  On the other hand, many white supporters of the Union, and even some abolitionists, talked about freedom and were racists at heart.  Frederick Douglass had no problem deciding what side he was on, and neither should you and I.   Even a half-truth can be worth fighting for against a total lie.

Hypocrisy is a normal human failing.  The only people who are not hypocrites are saints and sociopaths.  It is good to try to be honest with ourselves and others.  But hypocrisy can be a virtue in the sense that in trying to appear to be better people than we are, we actually become better people than we are.  Amoral cynicism has no such redeeming virtue.  Neither does sneering at flawed people who are trying to do good.

Click on The present belittling the past for an earlier post of mine on contemporaries who look down on the Founders and other great people of the past.

Click on The argument from hypocrisy for an earlier post of mine on the hollowness of hypocrisy-bashers with a great quote from the SF writer Neal Stephenson.

Click on Slavery was America’s original sin for an earlier post of mine on covert references to slavery in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Click on Thomas Jefferson on American freedom for great quotes from one who didn’t always practice what he preached.

Is the United States a Christian nation?

What is the definition of “Christian nation?”

The United States is a Christian nation in the sense that a majority of Americans are Christians, in the sense that United States is a country in which the Christian religion flourishes, in the sense that the United States is part of Western civilization, which is rooted in Christianity, the Bible and the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome.

But the United States is not a Christian nation in the sense that Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan are Muslim nations, Israel is a Jewish nation and the Dalai Lama’s Tibet was a Buddhist nation.  There is no religious test for American citizenship.

Declaration and Constitution don't mention Jesus

On this question, as in other things, we can look to our differing but complementary founding documents for guidance – the Declaration of Independence, a religious document, and the Constitution, a secular document.

The Declaration speaks of “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” entitle them, the inalienable rights with which people are endowed “by their Creator,” with inalienable rights, and “a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence.”

This is a religious statement— an ecumenical religious statement.  There is nothing in the Declaration to which any Christian would object, but the Declaration also is compatible with Judaism, Islam and many other religions, including “deism” – belief in God unconnected from any organized religious body.

The Constitution, on the other hand, does not mention God at all.  It only speaks of religion – that there shall be no religious test for public office, and that Congress shall pass no law regarding the establishment of religion nor limiting the free exercise of religion.

What I take these two documents together to mean is this.  It is assumed that everybody believes in God in some way, shape or form.  But this is not considered any of the government’s business.  Neither the Declaration nor the Constitution provide any justification for forcing religion on anyone, nor relegating anybody to second-class citizenship based on their religious belief or lack of belief.

Thomas Jefferson on American freedom

Original draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776)

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779)

Thomas Jefferson

That Almighty God hath created the mind free,—that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget hahits of … hypocrisy and meanness … that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves by fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible … hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time: … that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics and geometry … that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession and propagation of principles on the supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, … and finally, that truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.