Early American leaders couldn’t afford the risk of their own citizens opposing, en mass, chattel slavery or the war against the Native Americans, nor could they risk the European churches influencing their policies via the populace, and so the separation of church and state was an urgent economic necessity. Deism was an ideal stop-gap for preserving the appearance of religious belief amongst some Founding Fathers, even though their writings exposed their real values:
The first quote is particularly relevant in the light of some claims that the Constitution represents something ‘living’, when in fact it is just a lifeless document subject to change as the economic climate dictates. It is far more useful for our purposes to consider that money is the real living thing in American history, even more so than the people, as elucidated by Franklin above.
(How wonderfully ironic that Christianity was sold to the Native Americans as their religion, even though it wasn’t even ratified as such amongst the white population! “At first we had the land and the white man had the bible. Now we have the Bible and the white man has the land.” -Dan George, 19th Century Canadian Indian)
I am very confused…did you misunderstand that second half of the sentence as well as 99% of my post?
I never suggested that the founding father’s religious views were the basis of the nation they were building.
In fact…I think I spent a large amount of typing space discussing just the opposite.
(btw, it definitely did play “a part”. It aided in the idea of separation of church and state; the founding fathers were of a variety of theological beliefs and they had to even accept their own differences, which aided in accepting the differences as a nation.)
While it is anachronistic to apply it here, freedom of religion is one of those 14th-Amendment sorta things where strong religious belief tends to foster a seperation-of-church-and-state mentality whereas more shallow and utilitarian views on the situation favor a union of the two. We remember a bunch of wacko religious dissidents landing at Plymouth as the original settlers in America, not the venture capitalists landing a little further south (and a little earlier – but shhhh!).
I’m a big fan of populist politics, but you’ve always got to be wary: right or left, secular or sacred, communitarian or individualistic, rural or urban, or any other dichotomy you can conceive – all of them have pitfalls! From my perspective, the current trend in religio-capitalist populism (embodied in mega-churches, the republican party, and libertarianism) is something to be very wary of. But I also disagree with pretty much everything they stand for, so I am also much more willing to assign malign motives to them. Take what I am saying with a grain of salt . . .
I never said you did. I was simply adding to what you said, not disputing it.
Perhaps I should have phrased it:
“That’s probably true, and we should always keep in mind that their religious orientation played absolutely no part in the foundations of the nation they were building. As an analogy, they also so happened to be white - doesn’t mean America was founded on white supremacy.”
I dunno, things like the 3/5ths compromise would argue pretty strongly against that. What needs to be done is to view historical figures in the context in which they lived. For their time, they were wildly progressive. But the march of history has moved on and by modern standards they are downright reactionary. So which element do we embrace? The ahistorical reactionary position or the historical progressive position? I am always wary when people seek to deify the founding fathers. They had their foibles, and that is fine. Their greatness exists not merely in spite of their human failings but because of them, in contrast to them. Great men aren’t great because they lack failings but because they manage to transcend them in the context in which they found themselves.
I more or less agree, Xunzian. Men (and women) promote specific ideals all the time that they don’t follow consistently. Somehow the ideals they promote take on a life all their own. The ideal that all men are created equal was promoted by slave owners. Yet, that doesn’t bring the ideal down to their level. We look back on this ideal and believe in it with as much conviction as we would truly honorable men.
Yup. The sentiment remains the same but our definition of ‘man’ has expanded. That is good and natural. We can honor the sentiment while bringing forth a better expression of it.
But neither does it raise it up to anyone else’s, whatever that could possibly mean. It does, however, prompt the fascinating question of why we need to promote these ideas in the first place.
Contrary to Xunxians rather mystical assertion that ‘our definition of ‘man’ has expanded’, this was only true to a limited extent in the West and should be seen within the context of American industrialists need to expand their power base, preserve the Union and destroy the South economically.
I mean since then. Right now, ‘man’ is understood to encompass people of all races, classes, creeds, and genders. For the Founding Fathers, it meant land-owning white men. Leander is right about how that development occurred, but same situation different perspectives. I wrote about that sort of thing a little bit a while ago while discussing the 14th Amendment and how it relates to the Bill of Rights.
No…the word “man” has always been subjective.
Just look at the Bible, then look at the Founding Fathers, then look at the 1960-70’s America, then look at now.
In order “man” refers to:
Head of household and adult male guest(s)
Land owning White men, and/or White men that could strive to own land
Male of either Black or White race (still didn’t count Asian-American’s, Latin-American’s, Women of any race, etc… in that word much)
