July 4, 2009
FROM THE ARCHIVES: A PRINCIPLED LOT:
In God We Trust: The history books tell us that the founders of this country were heavily influenced by the principles of the Enlightenment. True enough. But the history books neglect an influence that proved even more important-religious principles. (Michael Novak, Hoover Digest)
[I] want to do something relatively rare these days. I want to give a sense of the religious energy behind the American founding. For a hundred years scholars have stressed the role of the Enlightenment and John Locke in particular. But there are also first principles that come to us from Judaism and Christianity, especially from Judaism. The religious principles in the founding were and are important to many citizens, and they are probably indispensable to the moral health of the Republic, as Washington taught us in his Farewell Address: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." Washington said "indispensable." Reason and faith are the two wings by which the American eagle took flight.When our founders talked religiously about politics they borrowed mostly from the Jewish testament, not the Christian. Scholars often mistakenly refer to the God of the founders as a deist God. But the founders talked about God in terms that are radically Jewish: Creator, Judge, and
Providence. These were the names they most commonly used for him, notably in the Declaration of Independence. For the most part, these are not names that could have come from the Greeks or Romans but only from the Jewish Testament. Perhaps the founders avoided Christian language to avert divisiveness, since different colonies were founded under different Christian inspirations. All found common language in the language of the Jewish Testament.If I stress the religious elements of the story, it is because for the past century scholars have paid too much attention to Jefferson in these matters and ignored the other top one hundred founders, most of whom were profoundly religious men. The crucial point is that all the Founding Fathers-Jefferson included-shared in common a belief that a people cannot maintain liberty
without religion. They understood the power of religion to their cause yet worried that in the eyes of God they would be found wanting. Here is John Adams in 1776: "I sometimes tremble to think that although we are engaged in the best cause that ever employed the human heart, yet the prospect of success is doubtful, not for want of power or of wisdom but of virtue." [...]In the first days of September 1774, from every region, members of the First Continental Congress were riding dustily toward Philadelphia, where they hoped to remind King George III of the rights due to them as Englishmen. As these delegates were gathering, news arrived that the king's troops were shelling Charlestown and Boston, and rumors flew that the city was being
sacked, robbery and murder being committed. Those rumors later turned out not to be true, but that's the news they heard. Thus, as they gathered, the delegates were confronted with impending war. No wonder their first act as a Continental Congress was to request a session of prayer.Mr. Jay of New York and Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina immediately spoke against this motion because (they said) Americans are so divided in religious sentiments-some Episcopalians, some Quakers, some Anabaptists, some Presbyterians, and some Congregationalists-that all could not join in the same act of prayer. Sam Adams rose to say that he could hear a prayer from any gentleman of piety and virtue, as long as he was a patriot. Adams moved that a Reverend Duche be asked to read prayers before Congress on the next morning. The motion carried.
Thus it happened that the first act of Congress on September 7, 1774, was an official prayer, pronounced by an Episcopalian clergyman dressed in his pontificals. And what did he read? He read a Jewish prayer, Psalm 35 in The Book of Common Prayer:
Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of buckler and shield, and rise up for my help. Say to my soul, "I am your salvation." Let those be ashamed and dishonored who seek my life. Let those be turned back and humiliated who devise evil against me.
Before the Reverend Duche knelt Washington, Henry, Randolph, Rutledge, Lee, and Jay. By their side, heads bowed, were the Puritan patriots, who could imagine at that moment their own homes being bombarded by the fleet or overrun by the king's troops. Over these bowed heads the Reverend Duche uttered what all testified was an eloquent prayer for America, for Congress,
for the province of Massachusetts Bay, and especially for the town of Boston. The emotion in the room was palpable, and John Adams wrote to Abigail that night that he had never heard a better prayer or one so well pronounced: "I never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seemed as if heaven had ordained that that Psalm be read on that morning. It was enough to melt a stone. I saw tears gush into the eyes of the old, grave pacific Quakers of Philadelphia."In this fashion, right at its beginning, this nation formed a covenant with God that is repeated in the Declaration: "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." The founders pledged their fidelity to the will of God and asked God to protect their liberty. They would continue to enact this covenant in the years to come in many later acts of Congress.
It was the Quaker and supposed deist or athist (whichever is being claimed these days), Benjamin Franklin, who proposed starting a day of the deliberations on the Constitution with a prayer, when they'd gotten themselves stuck on a few points. The proposal was only voted down because it was feared they'd appear panicky. And the first act of the Congress they created with that Constitution was the hiring of official chaplains for the respective legislative bodies..
[originally posted: 2003-09-28]
