Religion and the Founding of the Nation
"Religion is the basis and Foundation of our Government." James Madison, June 20, 1785.
Nothing enrages a modernist more than a statement such as this. Whether a true atheist, a postmodernist intellectual, an evolutionist, or a homosexual, the mere mention of religion's role in the formation of America is to them outrageous and a violation of their interpretation of things. I find fault in this analysis in two ways. One, rejecting tradition or anything "old" does not mean you are right. Fear can easily be quantified by a "google" search. When I did so for this blog entry, there were as many sites claiming the Founders were not Christian and that the country was in no way founded on Christian principles as there were those supporting the notion. In this case the numbers do not equate to being right but simply to being afraid (who could in their right mind be afraid of Jesus). Two, there is simply too much evidence showing that religion, particularly Christianity, was an integral part of the development of what I will call for lack of a better term American Democracy.
The fearful attempt to label religion based on extremists, zealots, or fundamentalists is unfair at the least and borders on intellectual dishonesty. This is not to say that at times those groups have not been influential, but to characterize all Christians as anti-science, war mongering, ignorant radicals is grossly inaccurate. Even the religiously moderate Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?" Madison said before the General Assembly of Virginia in 1778, "We've staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity...to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." Writing to the President of Yale University in 1790, Benjamin Franklin (another critic of religion) said, "As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, is the best the world has ever saw, or is likely to see."
My point is that religion did influence the Founders in substantial ways and hence the forming of this great nation. The Great Awakening of the early 1700s preached equality before the law and one's right to question authority, both fundamental prerequisites for what's to come in the 1770s and 1780s. The Founding Fathers recognized, learning from history, that a republic or democracy can implode on itself without a firm moral compass. Athenian Democracy fell into chaos during the Peloponnesian Wars because the city-state lost its moral values, it's sense of right and wrong. The Roman Republic followed the same pattern as people began to demand bread and circuses instead of hard work and ethical behavior.
Dear Readers, don't get me wrong. Plenty of death and suffering has occurred due to blind faith in some religious cause; however, religion was the primary belief system throughout history. Only in recent times have alternatives (ie. science, atheism, communism) been offered, and to argue that those systems hold some kind of moral high ground is fallacious. The Greek historian Thucydides observed that the one constant in history is human nature, and as a result we are doomed to repeat the horrors that history teaches us. If religion was non existent, human nature still remains and thus there will still be abuses, discrimination, war, etc. But to deny the role played by religion in the founding of this nation, as much as some may want to ignore it, is an injustice to the truth.
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