Forefathers Embraced Diverse Ideas

Question: I hope you’ll agree with me that comments about religion, the Religious Right and our country’s Founding Fathers are appropriate to make in a Men’s Lives column.

I’ve been hearing a lot lately that our Founding Fathers were “Christian” and would therefore not believe in the “liberal” practices of our day. The facts are, of course, that many were Unitarians (like Thomas Jefferson) and Deists. I’ve been hearing how these men would definitely want less separation of church and state than we practice now, more teaching about the Christian God, and so on. I don’t know where you stand on all this, but the following quotes might help people cut through the fanatical rhetoric and really get to know where the Founding Fathers stood.

These come from the book “Great Thoughts”: “Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith.” - Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, his nephew, Aug. 10, 1785.

“As to Jesus of Nazareth my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them, to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts of his divinity.” - Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Styles, March 9, 1790.

“… this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.” - John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1816.

“… the religion then of every man must be left to the conviction of conscience of every man; it is the right of every man exercise it as those may dictate.” - James Madison, “A Memorial and Remonstrance” (1784).

“I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church … the connection of church and state is … adulterous.” - Thomas Paine, “The Age of Reason” (1793).

The view expressed by these men who began our country stand in stark contrast to the constricting ideologies of the Religious Right and any connection between the view of the Right and of the Founding Fathers seems to me pretty fanciful. - Jeff, Spokane

Answer: Thank you for sending those quotes. You have reminded us of what many people are forgetting these days - that America is a brilliant cultural experiment built on a vision developed by men and women who had had enough of fanatical religion in their parent countries and wanted to create something different here.

It must certainly be instructive to people who take literally the words of one set of founding fathers (the Bible) to hear challenging words of another set of founding fathers. If we are to take literally the words of Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin and Paine we might find we have to cut even more of the Christian religion from our social programs.

When religion becomes fascism can it still be called spiritual? That, I think, is the great spiritual challenge that faces the Religious Right today. I have friends who call themselves “Religious Right” and I’m proud to call them friends. But there is a fascism and a an egotism, practiced by certain people in the “Religious Right,” that drives them to twist our national historical context, kill abortion doctors, and declare war on any ideology they don’t think came from the Bible.

As much as there may be “evil” in some of the practices these fanatics hate in our culture, there is certainly evil in their lying about the past, their murder of people of other ideologies, and most of all - for it is the most insidious - their claim that anyone who does not agree with them is evil.

Most pertinent to a Men’s Lives column, most of the people who are in the limelight from the fanatical Right are men. I hope these men will read what you’ve written, Jeff, and search their own souls, and finally discover in themselves a capacity to co-create a 21st Century American society with the rest of us. Their hatred for us and for the original vision of America has become impossible for many of us to understand.

All we can do against religious fascism is stand our spiritual ground, in community, as you’ve helped us do in your letter. In the next few years we may find that more and more of us, joined by moderate friends in the Religious Right, will have to stand our ground even more strongly against fanatics. If we don’t, we may risk losing the soul of America.