Mr. Waldman,

I don’t quite know why you’re on TPM, save for a contrivance by a booking agent. You’ve been posting brief, specious, straw man arguments and cherry-picking quotes. These are the tactics of an author who doesn’t expect to have to address the flaws in his premise directly. And, true to form, you haven’t.

Mr. Waldman, you have a right to make the same loose and vague arguments on the Internet as it seems you will in this book. But if you won’t address problems with your arguments when we discuss them, maybe you should just move along. You seem to work better with people who will treat you as an authority because you know a little HTML. It’s not your centrism that has been unmanly. It’s been the lack of defense of your points.

TPMCafe doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea.

(Editors: I thought TPMCafe was going to encourage interaction between authors and readers. Mike Connery did a tremendous job of addressing comments last week (or was it two weeks ago?). I know Mr. Connery has experience running FutureMajority.com, but Mr. Waldman’s experience with BeliefNet.com should prepare him to deign to enter the comments section, too.)

My problem with your polemic approach is illustrated in this passage:

"Some argue that because many of the Founders wanted separation of church and state, they therefore must have been either irreligious or wanted less role for religion in American life. It’s as if progressives feel...."

"Some argue" leads to "progressives feel.

Generalize to entire amorphous class, in this case "progressive" the arguments of "some."

This type of profiling is practiced by the intellectually dishonest,ideologues, and those with such small minds they find it necessary to place every concept and person into one of the limited number categories their intellect is able to handle.

Waldman, you've found the essential problem with what you've been posting: What the "Founders" personally believed about religion is IRRELEVANT to the system they instituted. And furthermore, the religious beliefs of the "Founders" does absolutely nothing to inform our legal interpretations and applications of the Constitutional text. We shouldn't talk so much about what they believed as we should about what the CONSTITUTION says and how it has been interpreted over time by our Courts.

So, what are we talking about?

Those are three of the best examples of lazy contempt I've ever seen at TPM to start a comment thread. Waldman starts by engaging a comment, but gets a condescending lecture on not engaging commenters. He begins with "sometimes progressives" and gets another condescending lecture on generalization. He tries to clarify what he thinks the convictions of the founders were, and gets a frothing rant on tatooed brides.

If on were looking for a data point to support the notion that progressives are weak on the discussion of religion in public life, this discussion here would be a good place to start.

"It’s as if progressives feel that if they can prove that the Founders were Deists rather than serious Christians, then that will strengthen the case for separation of church and state."

as AdAbsurdum has stated, and I will second, and go further. This isn't just venturing into strawman territory, it's going whole hog and building a mega-strawman of the size and heft of jonah goldberg. and throw in a healthy dose of concern troll-ism.

it's absolute nonsense to invent an imaginary fault of "progressives" and not cite a single instance of it actually existing. and the fact that you have to write a clarification piece to bolster your prior writing, and only dig your hole deeper in the process doesn't actually speak very well for your abilities.

i believe now i will continue not reading you.

I very much agree with Jamboree's comment.

Steve, FYI, Unitarians today do not as a group believe in an "active God." You can if you want to and still be a Unitarian Universalist in good standing, but there is no creed of that nature at all. UUism today is based on seven principles, which emphasize the inherent dignity and worth of everyone and respect for the interdependent web of existence, of which humans are a small part.

Steven, your "two myths" don't seem to carry equal weight.

1: "Progressives claim the Founders were secular Deists." Your point is that they (may) oversimplify.

2: "Conservatives claim the Founders were conservative Christians." Your point is that they are flat-out wrong.

Apologies for the double post.

Let me be the first commenter to point out that, in fact, many of the Founders WERE Deists and that this fact DOES strengthen the case for separation of church and state, particularly from the perspective of an originalist. (I'm not one, but I imagine Waldman is.) Waldman's not arguing with progressives (imagined or real), he's arguing with history.

"It’s as if progressives feel that if they can prove that the Founders were Deists rather than serious Christians, then that will strengthen the case for separation of church and state. That doesn’t follow either."

The argument put forth about the Founders being Deists is a refutation of the counter-argument made by evangelicals that all the founders had some form of strong dogmatic belief in Christ. Progressives recognize fully well the diversity of religious belief during the colonial and revolutionary periods and the attempt by the Founders to facilitate that diversity by separating the state from any religion's dogma. They valued the diversity of religious belief as an essential part of liberty for all individuals.

It's not that "proving" some Founders were Deists will reinforce the case for separation of church and state. It's that for religious liberty to mean anything, there must be a separation. Otherwise, somebody's liberties are and will be infringed, as was the case with English rule. It is the evangelicals who forget this lesson and want to rewrite history to declare the Founders to have ideas similar to their own. Pointing out that some of the Founders were Deists is simply a refutation of that stance.

The other commenters are correct. You make a generalization fallacy. It probably comes from assuming that the religious framing of the argument by evangelicals is valid. It isn't.

Speaking of Unitarians, the Unitarian minister Forrest Church has written a very good new book on how the religious politics of the first five U.S. presidents established the basic outlines of the separation of church and state: So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State. An excerpt appeared in UU World magazine: "America's Founding Faiths" (http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/50591.shtml).

Church (the son of the late Sen. Frank Church, and the author of many books on religion and politics) gives a rich and nuanced portrait of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and many other prominent religious and political figures from the first few decades. One irony of his book is that John Adams, the only Unitarian church member among the country's theologically liberal first five presidents, was the most pious of the bunch.

I think that you're wrong at least in the case of Thomas Jefferson; he explicitly rejected miracles or any other active intervention of God in the world.

Many of the quotes you used to justify your claims of a belief in an active God were just morale-building (help the troops feel better in the cold winter) or political (saying "God bless our project" to an audience mostly consisting of Christians).

But the key distinction has to do with the role of revelation and of science. A fundamentalist Christian has a book that has all of the answers. A deist, or even a militant Unitarian, doesn't look to a 2000-year-old book for ideas on how the world was made, or its fate, even if he or she respects moral teachers from those times. Rather, he or she looks to science and reason to figure out the world, and will have no trouble adjusting or narrowing the role of the creator (if any) as more facts are known. Because of this rationalist orientation, someone with this philosophy would not dream of imposing a creed on the nation or of the persecution of dissenters.

That's the reason for the association between deism (or militant Unitarianism if you prefer) and freedom of religion.

As usual, the discussion is driven by some drivel out of the mouths of conservatives/righwingers. While a discussion is worth having, it's not at all helpful to start by inviting the swine to view your pearls.

Conservatives impose a motive on the founding fathers actions in the hopes of actually casting a moral high ground in opposition to the actual landscape. Instead of clarifying things, this has a levelling effect and we're left without a recognizable high ground, if we play on these terms. That's what happens when you let anti-intellectuals play with meaning. The play becomes more important than the meaning. When you contort definitions to counter this play, you're really only enforcing it.

Imposing the defintion of Unitarians on the Christians of yesterday, in order to tease out a possible motive, may be the reverse action, but to the same effect.

My reading of the founding fathers, but especially Jefferson who drove the debate the hardest, has little to do with those specific rules and/or theologies to which they may or may not have ascribed, but rather derives from a revulsion of coercion and a reverence for the act of free will: which opposite strands of meaning form the bedrock of both citizenship and religion. I don't see any reason for secularists and christians to disagree on this aspect. Therefore, I can't see why anyone would think this point is something around which the argument would/should pivot.

Jefferson, I think, would agree with me that a separation of church and state is in the best interest of both church and state. There is no zero-sum game (however much Antonin Scalia would like there to be...) where one side wins and the other looses. Both are demeaned and devalued if even the hint of coercion is introduced. Furthermore, the tension between these two can often be the energy by which issues are resolved. This is a good thing, again, for both church and state.

Point well taken, Mr. Waldman. Those in the legal profession will advise not to debate the fine points of an argument because it all boils down to he said-she said/he thinks-she thinks, and in the end nothing is resolved. So it is here, I fear.

The problem with trying to tag individual Founders with whatever they believed and how that resulted in our Constitution is really a very fruitless endeavor. Obviously, the Founders were not sitting alone in this struggle to frame a nation but had to reach some level of compromise with other members of the public and government of the time. Are we to dissect the beliefs of all known and unknown members of that group in order to prove a point?

And what if we did? So what? The Constitution is what it is. The Founders did not add footnotes to the document to justify their judgement or opinions. What they wrote is clear, and I would have to assume that at the time it was crystal clear what their reasoning was: "God damnit, history tells us that when you mix religion and govenment together, it sucks, and everybody knows this, so we can't in good conscience let this screw up our own country, and by God, we won't." I believe that is a direct quote, by the way, from one Elija "Whodathunkit" Plunkittuya, regional director of wood shavings, 1768-1778, Boston, registered God fearing agnostic some of the time, depending on his wife's mood, advisor to Franklin and Adams and some others.

But I think the real tradgedy in all this is that it is an issue at all, or rather that we have been tricked into thinking it is an issue worthy of discussion. For that, we have to blame ourselves for falling into the trap set by the folks who insist it is an issue. Here again, they can win as long as we debate the fine points of who was or wasn't whatever on either side, and I think that is Mr. Waldman's point.

Richardxx and Oleeb, I believe, see this and I hope they stick around for awhile to see where this goes.

Mr. Waldman, please continue.

Ed Denver

I suppose the question that Waldman has to address in the two remaining days is this: how much of the providentialism he regards significant was drawn from the tradition of Cotton Mather, and how much from the Scottish Enlightenment?

This is what happens when someone who is used to preaching to the choir ventures to a site where critical thinking is used. Waldman's arguments have been properly ripped to shreds. Sorry Steven, I don't think you sold any books over here. Nice try.

Nineteen our of thirty-one (19/31) signers of the Constitution were Masons -- members of the Masonic Lodge. Washington and Franklin in particular were prominently Masons.

All Masons swear they are Deist. Masonry is open to all desit faiths, including Hinduism and Islam.

There is every reason to believe that these founders were Christians but very tolerant of other religions. There is every reason to believe that the founders supported the separation of church and state because they wanted to institute a nation of religious liberty for all faiths, not merely their own faith.

I believe it is important to examine the Declaration of Independence and the Constituion within the context of Freemasonic tradition and regulation. Within that context, the environment they most likely would have desired is one of universal religious tolerance and complete dissociation of Law from Religion.

18th century Unitarians were indeed quite different than modern Unitarians. I used the term "militant" to signal that but it merits elaboration. Unitarians then were mostly a) Christian and b) believed in a God that actively intervened in their lives and the nation's history.

Again, let's remember that since each of the colonies, except Rhode Island, had established state churches, membership in which was required to vote or hold office, many of the founders were nominal members of Christian churches. Not that they subscribed to the orthodoxy.

It is possible to go back and forth endlessly regarding who is right or wrong, what the motives are behind one side or another with respect to the separation of church and state. I don't see that as particulary valuabe in a forum such as this where the majority (if not all) of the participants are, for all intents and purposes, on one side of the question and coming from a pretty similar point of view.

The issue we face as citizens and the problem we all wish to solve is the advance of the outright lies and myths about the beliefs of the people who established our country, about how the separation of church and state came about and what the intentions of the people who established the Constitution was. That is why the question of what they believed and what their intentions were is relevant in terms of the public debate... because the disinformation of the fundamentalists is being used to justify abandoning the separation of church and state just as WMD's were used to justify the unnecessary invasion of Iraq. Fortunately, in this case, the bad actors do not have a monopoly on the information available to the public.

These myths and lies, I think we can all agree, are being peddled by Christian fundamentalists who prefer these days to hide behind labels like "conservative" and "evangelical." This effort to undermine and even destroy certain portions of the Constitution is part of a larger effort to change the basic character of our nation, how it functions, and what our national future will look like. The fundamantalists involved in spreading these lies and myths make their goals and purposes quite clear. It is no secret what they are up to.

Of vital importance to the issue of protecting the Constitution in general and the separation of church and state in particular is how and why the fundamentalists have been able to make such progress in foisting this pack of lies on our country. There are numerous similarities between the advance of overall right wing political ideas and the lies about separation of church and state that fundamentalists specialize in spreading. In significant part, their relentless use of the airwaves and other media to market their fundamentalist beliefs is responsible for propagating these lies and myths. A compliant and cowardly news media that refuses to denounce or expose these lies and myths is also part of the problem as is the silence of many civic, political, and yes even religious leaders who oppose the nonsense of fundamentalists. But, in my opinion, the critical factor in allowing an environment to flourish wherein such lies and propaganda is given credence is the complete and utter ignorance of the citizenry about these issues.

Unlike the readers of and contributors to this thread, the general population simply does not possess anything approaching a well-informed, well-reasoned background in any of this. The average citizen's knowledge of these matters is of a most rudimentary nature. They understand only the most basic concepts in a way comparable to that which we would expect of a child in grade school or at best 7th or 8th grade. Accordingly, due to their ignorance specifically on church/state separation and generally with respect to the principles and philosophy that constitutes the foundation of our system of government and beliefs, the typical American can easily be bamboozled into believing the nonsense fundamentalists serve up to them day after day after day on tv and radio and now the internet too.

I would think that Mr. Waldman's book, which I believe attempts to cover a lot of this basic ground, will be useful in debunking the lies spread by the fundmentalists. They understand quite well that this is just another political fight and that if you can manipulate public opinion via whatever means, you create opportunities to advance your political agenda. That's all they care about and nothing else. The ends clearly justify the means for them. Telling lies and spreading disinformation to achieve their goal presents them with no moral dillema at all so long as they win. In tandem with poor education in basic knowledge of our system of government, why we have the system we have, and how it developed the minds of many citizens are become fertile ground for all kinds of outrageous lies and myths.

If our citizens had a solid background in these matters, they would surely be far more resistant to the snake oil of the fundamentalists if not completely resistant. A well educated, well informed citizenry is the best defense against all kinds of charlatans, religious or otherwise.

I have a question for Mr. Waldman.

Of what import is the fact that Jefferson or Madison or Franklin had a rich, inner personal life and sense of wonder about the universe to the absolute ban they attempted to erect between Church and State.

What binds these men together is their reliance on reason, their sense of justice and their explicitly stated desire to keep religion out of government.

The culture war you refer to is more accurately described as an attempt by the Right Wing Social Conservatives to argue that the Founding Father's religious beliefs somehow grants license to ignore the First Amendment.

It doesn't. End of Story.

But... a strong case can be made that the Founding Father's weren't really all that religious anyway and that their participation in organized religion is more properly understood as a social obligation necessitated by politics.

That some "liberals" may have overstated the case of the Founding Father's contempt for organized religion hardly warrants a book.

I mostly agree with you up to the point where you wrote "End of Story." The argument made by some conservatives that the Founders' religious beliefs mean they opposed separation is illogical.

I don't agree that they werent all that religious but I have to concede that it depends a bit on the definition of religious. Jefferson and Franklin didn't believe in Jesus's divinity. Both (plus Adams) had major problems with the church hierarchy, the "priestcraft," and key elements of protestant doctrine. But they were quite spiritual. Washington clearly believed that God intervened in his life and the history of the nation. And even Jefferson believed in an afterlife where his spirit would go and mingle with that of his friends.

So how does the fact that they had a rich spiritual life relate to their views on church and state? They were religious enough that they cared about religious freedom and wanted to encourage religion (as they viewed it as important to the growth of the republic). But they werent so religious that they were attached to a particular denomination or, therefore, inclined to defend the status quo. They had their own spiritual journeys and wanted other Americans to be free to have their own. In Jefferson's case, he was aware that many of his views were deemed heretical and he wanted to live in a nation that tolerated people like him.

Mr. Waldman,

Thank you for the courtesy of your reply.

If I understand your argument correctly, you pretty much agree that the first amendment purports to errect a barrier between church and state.

You also believe that RW social conservatives are incorrect in asserting that the religous beliefs of the FF are sufficient reason to reduce the barriers between church and state does not necessarily follow.

The main thrust of your posts then seems to be that the Founding Fathers were religous, at least in some sense, but you agree that simple fact is no reason to mingle church and government.

I don't think anyone is arguing with you on that point, but, I think your argument is attempting to boot strap legitimacy of religious belief on the basis of the beliefs of our Founding Fathers.

It's that implicit argument that I think should be rejected.

Speaking as a liberal who hasn't spent a lot of time reading up on the Founders since, oh, high school, I have to say it's a useful corrective for Mr. Waldman to show that the Founders' Deism was much more Christian than many people believe. I for one have long thought that the Deists were very much *not* Christian, that their view was of a God who kind of got the ball rolling, universe-wise, and then sat back as everything took its course. I distinctly remember learning this in junior high, Catholic school no less. And I am one who on many occasions has used the "The Founders were not Christians" argument when discussing SoCaS, especially in regard to the beliefs and untruths of contemporary fundamentalists.

Whether the Founders were Xtian or not is, in my view, irrelevant to arguments for SoCaS. I believe in it on principle. Still, knowing what their beliefs were, and how that relates to SoCaS is extremely useful.

Clearly a great many progressives are more on the ball than I am when it comes to understanding the nuances of the Founders' religious beliefs. But I'm an educated person who apparently has held some wrong assumptions, and that is probably true of a lot of liberals/progressives as well as centrists. It's useful to have these notions corrected.

Mr. Waldman,

I must confess I love discussing relgion.

It appears that the purpose of your book was to address two points;

1. that RW religious conservatives are incorrect when they argue that the FF were orthodox christians and that somehow this is a reason to, quoting pink floyd, tear down the wall.

2. that "liberals" who argue that the FF had nothing but contempt for religion are wrong.

You are correct on both points.

The Founding Fathers, to a man, were raised in an society that placed Church on a pedestal and taught a "scripture" that was alleged to be the "word of god." it is fair to assume they were made to know that the word of god is infallibe... in not so many words.

They clearly did believe in a very personal relationship with whomever, if it is a who, created this universe. It is a stretch to say all of the FF believed in Divine Intervention, which is the only way to describe a belief that GOD intervenes in human affairs.

It is interesting to note the obvious appreciation the FF's had for greek and roman literature... not to mention Voltaire, Swift and Blackstone. Clearly, the First Amendment is intended to place a complete, total and irrevocable barrier between government and religion.

You seem to be trying to minimize the blow back generated by the outlandish claims of far right religious wackos from obscuring the fact that, "Hey, the Founding Fathers thought religion was okay."

I guess a Unitarian would do that, and, although I don't see it, perhaps it's good that you do so. I certainly respect your right to do so.

Personally, I am of the view that the FFs were raised and lived in a culture dominated by the Church. It is naturaly that bright and intelligent people would synthesize religous propaganda down to its core element of just what created the universe. The fact that they shed all of the trappings of religion shows just how hollow they felt those trappings to be.

And, while I have you here, I am curious to know your thoughts on William James's Varieties of Human Religious Experience. James makes the case that the capacity for religious experience is biological in nature.