Fallacy #2 The Founders Weren't Conservative Christians
In my last post, I mentioned the number one "liberal fallacy." Here is one of the common conservative myths: "Most Founding Fathers were serious Christians."
Of course it depends on how one defines the term, but if we use the definition of Christianity offered by those who make this claim – i.e. conservative Christians – then the Founders studied in this book were not Christians. Adams became an active Unitarian, rejecting much Christian doctrine. And Franklin, Jefferson and Adams abhored the Calvinist idea that salvation was determined by divine preference rather than good works. Madison and Washington remained the most silent on matters of personal theology and continued to attend Christian churches but in their voluminous writings never seemed to speak of Jesus as divine. If they must wear labels, the closest fit would be “Unitarian.”
Jefferson & Franklin overtly rejected the divinity of Jesus. Jefferson loathed the entire clerical class and what had become of Christianity. It's really quite amazing to read Jefferson spew venom toward religious leaders. Imagine a president saying some of these things today:
On the Apostles: "ignorant, unlettered men" who laid "a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications."
The Apostle Paul: "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."
The doctrine of the Trinity: The "abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus" and the "hocus-pocus phantasm of a god like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads.”
Immaculate conception: would some day be “classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
Calvin: Best response was the "strait jacket alone"
Priests: "Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion, and they would catch no more flies."
And… "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty." And they've "made of Christendom a slaughter-house."
In fact, it was because he thought Christianity had been so thoroughly corrupted that he created his own Bible, slicing out the miracles and thereby "rescuing" Jesus and separating the "diamonds" from the "dunghill" that was the rest of the Bible. Imagine the attack ads that could be made out of that!
In future posts, I'll discuss why any of this matters. But my point for now is simply that the two most common descriptions of the Founders are highly misleading.
The Founding Fathers were children of the Enlightenment. They saw with their own eyes which cruelties and crimes religion has caused among the population. No wonder that the US Constitution prescribes a strict seperation of church and state. Nonetheless the self appointed defenders of family values and morale (aka conservative Christians or American Taliban) claim all the time that America was founded on Christian principles and therefore secularism and intelligence should be abolished to go back to the Middle Age.
Osama bin Laden might pose a danger for America like a mosquito to a person but the American Taliban poses a much bigger danger, like a rattlesnake to a person.
March 11, 2008 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well said, Charlie.
March 11, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well said. Any conversation about the “establishment clause” that does not reference The Enlightenment is at the level of mere gossip. Now, as then, a sine qua non of an orderly modern society is the separation of church and state. Just ask John Hagee and Bill Donovan. Both of them will tell you that the U.S. is a Christian nation. Then ask them which flavor of Christianity and, well, welcome to Baghdad.
In the larger sense the question of whether or not the U.S. is a Christian nation is a non sequitur. Huckabee and Romney discovered the merits of “separation” during the debate over whether Mormonism is Christian. Ultimately Huckabee told Romney “I said, I would never try, ever to try to somehow pick out some point of your faith and make it an issue, and I wouldn’t,” They wisely abandoned the dispute thus avoiding a divisive contest that would weaken them all. As a practical matter even the most devoted Christians can easily conclude that religious beliefs are outside the bounds of political discourse.
March 11, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I think Hagee and Donovan would both answer exactly the same way if asked "what flavor of Christian nation" the United States is: "a true Christian nation", of course! After all, they wouldn't be making this claim if they were worried about the US being a _heretical_ Christian nation!
And there lies the problem: for people of this ilk, there is only one kind of Christianity, indeed, only one kind of religion: the true one. All others are not "Christianity," indeed not "religion", but heresy and corruption. European leaders and churchmen tried to run their society and governments on this basis for about 800 years, and the results, by 1800, were not pretty. Why would any sane American go back to this way of looking at religion, then?
March 11, 2008 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
One quibble with your postings: Is the fallacy (the misleading statement)in this case that "The Founders Weren't Conservative Christians" as your heading states or is the fallacy "Most Founding Fathers were serious Christians" as your lede states? I get your point in the body of your post but your headings seem contra to your posts.
March 11, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oooh. Good catch. I think probably the best term is "orthodox" or "practicing." I shouldnt have used the word "conservative" there because the word has such different words now than it did then. I was trying to refer more to the seriousness with which they practiced their religion more than anything else.
By the way, my apologies to those on this thread who were expecting me Tuesday and Wednesday to dive into the comment threat. I was under the mistaken impression that I wasnt supposed to go into the comment area. Entirely my fault. In any event, I'm trying to rectify that with active particpation in the third thread (and subsequent ones) and will post some more down below on this thread, too.
March 13, 2008 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Most weren't Christians of any kind, as we just established by tearing Waldman's previous post to shreds. His "argument" there consisted solely of setting up "Deism" as a straw man despite not having a clue what Deism was.
And lo and behold, his new post effectively contradicts the previous one and says pretty much what the commenters on that one were saying. Can you say, "incoherent"? I knew you could!
That must be some book. I don't think I'll waste my time reading it.
March 11, 2008 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's too bad that you won't give the book a chance. Waldman's observations about the Founders are supported by other scholars and writers. Something that you see as Waldman's contradicting himself or backing away from his first argument is what I see as viewing these men as the complex people they were.
Something that defined the Enlightenment was a rejection of belief without the contemplation of the components of that belief. Once anyone starts to examine why they believe something rather than accepting it without question, contradictions arise. It is a process that examines definitions as well as labels.
In a time when Catholics and Quakers were not considered Christians, a thinking person might question what defines someone as a Christian. The definition of "Christian" now is a very different one than in the days of the Enlightenment.
If, as Jefferson did, you can appreciate the teachings of Jesus as the greatest in history but be troubled by attaching mysticism to his legacy, it is no contradiction to feel God's presence in the natural world and, as Waldman described it on Fresh Air this morning, see God's plan in it—something most evangelical Christians would agree with.
Please remember that the colonies founded in the 1600s comprised people whose faiths rejected the "establishment" religions of their time—Catholicism and the Church of England. The Plymouth colony was made up of "fundamentalists" who in many ways were very close to today's Fundamentalists, with their strict Biblical interpretations.
But no matter how these Founding Fathers developed in their faith and spirituality as they lived through their times, their roots were in Christianity. It's where they went from there that is fascinating and inspiring.
March 11, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
"And lo and behold, his new post effectively contradicts the previous one and says pretty much what the commenters on that one were saying. Can you say, 'incoherent'? I knew you could!"
Let's see now. The first post says that the Founding Fathers were not what we now think of as subscribers of deism, where God makes the universe but leaves it alone thereafter, is false. The second post says that the Founding Fathers were not what we'd think of as orthodox Christians. This is not a contradiction.
March 11, 2008 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, the word "Christian" has a pretty specific definition, which depends not at all on fundamentalist nonsense like Biblical literalism. If you can subscribe to the Nicene Creed- which to this day is used by denominations as far to the "left" as the United Church of Christ (albeit in the UCC case, not as a required litmus test)- you are a Christian. Only a fairly small minority of founding fathers (excluding even John Adams, a Unitarian) could meet this test.
March 11, 2008 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nonetheless the self appointed defenders of family values and morale (aka conservative Christians or American Taliban) claim all the time that America was founded on Christian principles...
The sad thing is that not only is this untrue, the Christianists who push it KNOW it's untrue. I guess lying is OK if your cause is just.
The other lie is that that Western law is based upon the 10 Commandments. Have they ever actually read them? Depending upon the version, 3 or 4 of them talk about how to worship god. Then there's honoring mom and dad, and no coveting stuff. That takes care of 6 of 10 in most of the versions.
When all these are culled out, it just leaves no murder, theft, adultery, or bearing false witness. Now there's a list that no non-Judeo-Christian society ever came up with ... except like maybe 98% of them.
March 11, 2008 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
LFC: You left out "Thou shalt not boil a kid goat in its mother's milk".
March 11, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is false equivalency something they beat into everyone attending the nation's journalism schools or is it something those in the corporate media pick up along the way?
Waldman, predictably after yesterday's post, has tried to set up a situation were we can criticize both the left and the right and position himself as a neutral observer.
Strangely, as it always seems to happen, he somehow has missed the fact that those on the right who wish to claim that the founders of this country really would support their dream of an American theocracy are somehow equivalent to those who have overlooked the fact that the soft deists among that generation were not so absolute in their beliefs as not to use words like "God" and "Providence".
But my real question here to Andrew Golis is why are you sending a journalist to do a historian's job? Surely there are any number of historians who write about these topics and would be able to provide some insight into these issues without this kind of amateurish approach. I am sure many historians would do a horrible job editing major magazines, so why does Waldman think he can jump in and write history?
March 11, 2008 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
pretty much my thought as well. though you might even be playing a bit fast and loose with the term 'journalist'...
March 11, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sadly, too many people have allowed themselves to be programmed to instantly reject "leftist propaganda / revisionist history" such as this. A great pity since our country needs clear thinking leaders, ironically, just like the founding fathers.
March 11, 2008 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Founders Weren't Conservative Christians...
Unfortunately Hillary Clinton is. Read more about this little known fact at…
100 REASONS NOT TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON
WHAT THIS PAGE DOESN’T CONTAIN
No Vincent Foster, cocaine smuggling conspiracy theories. No dirty tricks or fraudulent smears. No right-wing BS.
WHAT THIS PAGE DOES CONTAIN
Legitimate, sourced and link filled, point by point criticism of the Hillary Clinton’s politics, positions, and staff.
March 11, 2008 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew? Spam cleanup in Table for One!
March 11, 2008 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why is this spam? People link to outside political sites here all the time.
March 11, 2008 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan,
It's entirely off topic and just an attempt to nject anti-Clintonism into one of the few topics on the board that isn't focused on the primary.
March 11, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't wait for the next thrilling installment to see why any of this matters. I'm guessing it's because there's money to be made in jawing on about faith in public now, and Mr. Waldman has bills to pay. He certainly doesn't seem to be bringing anything new to the subject; it's just the usual a-pox-on-both-their-houses "centrist" nonsense.
March 11, 2008 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just whose holds to these fallacies and who declared them to be number 1? It seems to me that your pulling straw men out of some dark place in pursuance of your ideological purpose.
March 11, 2008 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
The more significant (and underlying) conservative myth is "the founding fathers wanted Christianity to be a state religion." Waldman's first two myths hide the real argument which is "separation of church and state" or "Christian state," which did the founders want? That's why conservatives frame this argument as "the founders were Christian" and keep people cherry picking one quote after another in support or against. The underlying myth is easily disproved with a reading of the constitution.
March 11, 2008 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that too is a crucial myth. (That's one of the other 'myths' dealt with in the book).
One thing I respectfully disagree about is that the Constitution is clear on this. In fact, one thing that frustrated me was why Madison, who was a strict separationist, allowed such ambiguity in the First Amendment that we're still debating it. The answer is that he didn't want to -- but he lost. This was a political process, and he needed to gether up votes, just like any other modern politician. His compromise was to have separation at the federal level but allow states to mingle church and state as much as they wanted. This has changed over time, thanks to the 14th amendment and other developments, but the Founders themselves gave us a somewhat muddy legacy.
March 13, 2008 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Waldman really needs to be in a book club with other contributors who push back rather than in a table for one.
And I don't know if anybody noticed this but this piece actually got posted last night, was then pulled and reposted in the morning. So it seems that Waldman just wrote up his essays ahead of time and sent them all in. If he did that, then trying to engage him on his ideas might not be worth the effort -- he's already gone.
March 11, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
yep. nothing more than an ad campaign dressed up to look like a book tour. crass manipulation of 'new media'. rather insulting if you ask me. TPM should do a better job weeding out this kind of garbage.
March 11, 2008 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matthew 2:12
And the Lord sayeth: "Yea verily, I say unto you, beware the capital gains tax, for it is the work of the Beast!"
March 11, 2008 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well "whatdoiknow", the truth is that you know very little if you believe the canard that the Founding Fathers were christians!
March 11, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
CaptainD, you've mis-interpreted my post completely.
March 11, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe this post should be married with a topic Gleen Greenwalds discussed last week, here is the link;
Maybe Mr.Waldman can take a moment with his next post and declare a winner in this I am reporting ignorant bias theme. I understand that the fundamental nature of right or wrong can be a purely subjective one, but there are facts and documents which prove the case towards one type of thinking versus the rest. I choose the rational path which comes to the conclusion that many of our founding fathers knew the dangers of theoctratic thinking imposed upon the free-assembly and rights of free-men. They had the foresight to see the forest amongst the trees so to speak, and choose the path least travelled. I am sure that many of the citizens of our country at the time wanted a strong Christian doctorine firmly established, and I am sure that many felt disenfranchised by this proposal. Which is why rationale won out, not because of pressure but because the only way to put all of us under the same roof was to ensure that everyone was given the same rights regardless of background. It was essentially a system which was free, although to be fair to history as well, we can also come to the conclusion that these bold steps have been hard to follow.
March 11, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will be curious to see how this subject will be addressed in the HBO series 'John Adams' that begins next week. I dare say that will have a much wider audience than Mr.Waldman's book.
March 11, 2008 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and Mr.Waldman, please apply your editing skills to your own work here. Which is the myth and which is the reality - your headline and first sentence contradict themselves.
March 11, 2008 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Waldman,
Both of these posts seem to rely on stating a strawman and then cherry picking quotes.
I certainly hope your other fallacies are better than these two strawmen.
Paraphrasing you;
Liberal fallacy #1: Founding Father's weren't Christians.
Conservative fallacy #1: Founding Father's were Christians.
Bunk!
March 11, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The first post was a "liberal fallacy." The second post was simply a "fallacy" with no mention of the verboten "conservative fallacy" combination as no such thing is known to exist. :-)
March 11, 2008 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gonzone,
i assumed that the only group who believes the fallacy that the FFs were conservative christians are today's conservative christians... by and large.
i find this table for one lacking in much or any utility.
as most commenters have pointed out, there really doesn't seem to be a raging debate about the level of christian-ness possessed by our Founding Fathers. it's well known jefferson kept a black mistress, all of them were rich white men who would be expected to play a part in the churchs of the time simply from a social perspective, the first amendment is pretty clear no matter what their private intentions...
i could go on and on as to why these posts have been a big yawn despite the senstationalist promise to refute FALLACIES.
March 11, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Christian has become a dirty word that means Fascist. Try being a Human. Try being a Scientist. Jesus was by all accounts a liberal socialist hippie rabbi. Think universal healthcare. I look forward to the John Adams miniseries but do not hold out much hope they included any facts that might piss off the American fascist movement. Not a good business decision. I long for the day when liberal Hollywood lives up to it's reputation and gives us the full monty on the Founding Fathers and Christianity. We need this story told big and told soon.
March 11, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I made it to your website to find misogynist-like overtones in your article entitled, "slut"-brides. What do you call a man lacking good manners and a little good will?(not prince charming)
That said, I find revisionists who try to spin the Christian influence out of American history just as tiresome as the those who misuse American history to try to spin Christian religion into American government in a way the founders never would have intended. If a majority of the founders thought a state religion was a good idea, it would have ended up in the Constitution.
Here's one quote by founder James Madison:
"And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
March 11, 2008 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I said to destor23 in the comments of Waldman's previous post:
"If you knew anything about BeliefNet, you'd know that the site covers a broad spectrum of religious beliefs, ranging from the Unitarianism and the Eastern religions to the conservative stuff that you tried to pass off as if it were representative of the whole site. Heck, the article to which you linked isn't even written by Waldman."
Given the nature of BeliefNet, there is a good chance that there are bound to be views on it that don't represent Waldman's opinions.
March 11, 2008 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yikes! You are right. I thought that article was written by Waldman. Though I wouldn't necessarily characterize the tone of that article "conservative stuff," I sincerely apologize for misdirecting the first part of my comment.
March 11, 2008 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Man, if one does a little research before one spouts off, then one can avoid apologies such as this: I'm sorry, Mr. Waldman, for my upstart comment. You have apparently written a fine book in an effort to set the record straight in an unbiased and reasonable fashion as far as this issue is concerned.
In essence, your position is clear that it is not reasonable to debate the beliefs of the Founders because who the hell really knows what they thought or believed. Those on the right and left of this debate are not looking at the big picture. The fact is, the Founders put together a sound document to guide our nation's future in rather brilliant fashion. Simply put, they sought to allow religious freedom by not allowing any religious group to dominate others via the power of govenment. We all know this but you put to rest the inconsequential debate about what individual Founders thought personally and privately. Kudos to you, Mr. Waldman.
But you are a sneaky bastard, just the same. You tweaked the passions with your first installment and enraged them in your second, all without comment to the fire spitting from the belly of our collective beast of burden, the search for truth.
I look forward to your comments tomorrow, Mr. Waldman. Please accept this apology.
Ed Denver
March 11, 2008 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
One note: The letter from from Jefferson to Adams is referring to the virgin birth as a "fable," NOT Immaculate Conception, i.e., the birth of Mary without original sin (which wasn't officially established by the R.C. Church until 30 years after this letter was written). This is a mistake that you also make on beliefnet.
March 11, 2008 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jesus was a liberal, he showed that on Palm Sunday when he rode a donkey and not an elephant.
March 11, 2008 4:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, if these pieces are just lined up for daily release, and Simon's not going to engage with people who, at least, display a greater understanding of eighteenth-century American belief, there's no real point commenting.
You've set up one straw man -- Deism -- and you're now dealing with another one. Thing is, it's the latter straw man that is propped up by a large, loud swathe of American politicians who want to legislate their religion, not the former. Which means that the appropriate response is to address that fallacy, not offer false equivalency and BS centrism.
What defined the attitude of the Founders towards religion? Their belief that it belonged in a separate domain to that of politics. That it was the stuff of the passions, needing to be reined in by reason: not something to be driven out of the social sphere, but treated appropriately within it.
To present this as some revelation is almost embarrassing to anyone with more than high-school history under their belt.
March 11, 2008 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Christianity is not about this world, it is about the next. So, yes, Christians should agree that governments should be separate from religion. Peter picked up his sword and cut off Malchus' ear in an attempt to stop the crucifixion. Jesus told Peter to put the sword away, then he healed Malchus ear. The central charge against Jesus was that he was trying to be a king of this world. Jesus' answer to that charge was that his kingdom is not of this world. Christians who get very involved in the politics and powers of this world are making the same mistake that Peter made. When a Christian advocates, for instance, bombing Iran, he is missing Christianity by a mile. He may be saying what he believes, but he is not saying what Christ would say. I just do not believe Jesus would bomb Iran. Who is a Christian? He or she is one who tries to follow Christ. Sometimes Christians get quite off that narrow road.
March 11, 2008 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a really important point. It's often assumed that the Baptists of the 18th century supported separation of church and state merely to avoid persecution. That's partly true. But they also had a Biblical rationale, which you have stated eloquently.
March 13, 2008 9:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that to anyone, without an ax to grind, who has studied the early years of our nation and the variety of positions that were held about religious belief at that time understands that anyone who claims that there is a clear and simple explanation is not presenting an accurate picture of what was going on. What we do know is that, like today, there was a wide spectrum of views about religion and the proper role of religion in society... if any. That wide range of views cannot be explained adequately in a sound bit or even in a paragraph or two.
When the right characterizes the founding fathers as "Christians", as though that was some sort of easily defined, monolithic belief, those of us who know a bit about the subject know they are lying. It is also inaccurate to claim they were all deists though IMO that claim is in no way the same as the one made by the right primarily because the latter is simply mistaken and the former is deliberately and knowingly intended to mislead.
We know for certain that in the end, the founders concluded that it was best to separate church and state for many reasons not the least of which was that uniting church and state simply didn't produce good results. The reasons the founders concluded separation was better remain just as valid today as they were then: al of them. The main difference IMO between then and now is that now we have a solid couple of centuries of proof demonstrating what a good idea separation is and what a great benefit it has been to our society. The stupidity required to reject that past couple of centuries of experience and the foolhardiness of such a rejection is hard to fathom given the evidence.
What is sad is that our citizens are so poorly informed about the basic tenets of our government and that those charged with passing along this vital bit of socialization have done a very poor job and continue to do a poor job. Not only are our classrooms failing to pass along a good, solid understanding of the basic principles of our governmental system (the place of religion in our society being one of those things) and the reasons those principles were adopted, but those in the media who ought to be in the forefront of challenging ignorance and falsehood wherever they raise their ugly heads continue to fail to do so. In turn, many of our citizens are now easy prey for the purveyors of lies and myths about the character of the founders, their beliefs and their actions.
March 12, 2008 12:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just wanted to let you know you had a great discussion on Fresh Air today. I really enjoyed the discussion and have a new outlook on the discussion. If your goal was to educate, you've done well by me. I'm still doing some fact checking but I've been impressed so far by everything you brought up. Very enlightening! Thank you.
March 12, 2008 12:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you very much! It's quite difficult, I'm finding, to summarize the thesis (theses) of a book but I certainly find the long form interview easier than the 30 second summary. Thanks for your interest.
March 13, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink