Faith and the Founding Fathers

[monk222]

♠
Not since the medieval church baptized, as it were, Aristotle as some sort of early — very early — church father has there been an intellectual hijacking as audacious as the attempt to present America’s principal founders as devout Christians. Such an attempt is now in high gear among people who argue that the founders were kindred spirits with today’s evangelicals, and that they founded a “Christian nation.”

-- George F. Will for The NY Times

George Will writing for the New York Times?! I kinda like the feel of that. And I would have missed it if it were not for Andrew Sullivan's posting this.

Mr. Will is reviewing a book that is tackling this evangelizing of the founding fathers. Will holds that Ms. Brooke Allen, the authoress, overdoes it, maintaining that there was more respect for the popular feelings of religion than Ms. Allen supposedly allows for, but in the main, he does agree with the project, believing that, while respecting religion and the freedom of religion, the founders tended to have a healthy skepticisim. With respect to contemporary Americans, Will optimistically concludes:

Allen and others who fret about a possibly theocratic future can take comfort from the fact that America’s public piety is more frequently avowed than constraining.

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Comments

[antilapsarian.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I'll have to check it out if I get a chance. I'm fresh off The Godless Constitution, of course.

I think it is one of those cases where attempts to paint a pluralistic society (even back then) as uniform are doomed to fail. It might not have been the "Hindoos" and "Mohatmens" and Buddhists you have today, but there were Quakers and Puritans and a few feared Catholics and even atheists back then among the Founders. They bickered. They argued. They knew we would. They largely tried, IMO, to make it so that people would be free to believe as they wish without getting a lot of runaround from others or their government. I think any idea that we are a "Christian" nation immediately has to follow with asking which version of Christianity do they mean? Certainly not the rewritten, miracle-less Jesus of Thomas Jefferson! LOL

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

In addition, the founders presumably took a wise lesson from the experience of England and Europe with established religion and the religious persecution known there.