Clicking through I made a 20 second stop on Beck and he was bloviating about how 'self regulation' was the way to liberty by a religious population that self regulated itself based on its religious convictions. This was all part of a divinely inspired plan that the "Founding Fathers" had magically divined and followed and all we had to do was get back to the original teachings of the founding fathers
I believe that Glenn Beck achieved a world record in misstatements or factual errors within that 20 seconds and it would take hours to lay apart how a underpopulated rural 18th century collection of disparate communities didn't really require the same degree of regulation as highly complex 21st century densely populated urban society (get rid of the FAA and have airlines self regulate, get rid of the CDC and bring back small pox, let every community decide its own wattage and phone system).
But that would take all weekend.
Let's just focus on one set of historical inaccuracies:
"founding father's personal religious belief".
The founding father's were not 'evangelicals'. That form of highly individualized personal salvation was largely 19th century phenomena (coming at the same time that individual consumerism was also needed to stoke the emerging AND NEW economic system, capitalism). However the Evangelical movement traces its roots to the "Great Awakening" of 1740. The 'founder' was George Whitefield who attracted huge crowds and preached personal religious choice. He and Franklin became friends but Franklin was a committed secularists and found Whitefield's work helpful because he was able to get the drunken dreggs of society to start thinking of higher moral matters.
But they weren't even conventional Protestants either by and large. For the most part they were Deists, believing in a Creator that established a Natural Order. It was a time of philosophical awakening and A LACK OF CONFIDENCE in established religious teaching.
That is why they were revolutionaries, they thought that what was being taught as 'God's Order' was F***** UP.
The reason that they risked everything was not to establish a new religious order but to establish a new secular order. Those that were well satisfied with the religious order were, by definition, committed to keeping the current political order. From their respective Wikipedia articles
George Washington "Washington practically speaking was a Deist" and he was respectful of others way of belief: "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists.
Ben Franklin "Although Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church, Franklin as a young man adopted the Enlightenment religious belief in Deism, that God’s truths can be found entirely through nature and reason.<90> 'I soon became a thorough Deist.'<91> As a young man he rejected Christian dogma in a 1725 pamphlet."
Thomas Jefferson "The religious views of Thomas Jefferson diverged widely from the orthodox Christianity of his day. Throughout his life Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality.<1> He is most closely connected with the Episcopal Church, Unitarianism, and the religious philosophy of Deism. As the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, he articulated a statement about human rights that most Americans regard as nearly sacred. Together with James Madison, Jefferson carried on a long and successful campaign against state financial support of churches in Virginia.
During his 1800 campaign for the presidency, he had to contend with critics who argued that he was unfit to hold office because he did not have orthodox religious beliefs."
James Madison "Unknown Religion"
from this article
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/secular.html Called the father of the Constitution, Madison had no conventional sense of Christianity. In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments:
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
John Adams Unitarian who did not believe in the divinity of Christ.
" Adams was educated at Harvard when the influence of deism was growing there, and used deistic terms in his speeches and writing. He believed in the essential goodness of the creation, but did not believe that God intervened in the affairs of individuals, and, being a Unitarian, his beliefs excluded the divinity of Christ."
So all of the big hitters, the key 'founding fathers' would not have considered themselves Christian nor would they have been labeled as such by today's Christian orthodoxy.
Looking at some of the second level founding fathers we find
Alexander Hamilton He was originally cynical about religion but became more religious as he became more conventional politically and became an apologist for the rich in American life.
John Witherspoon Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister (the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence) and the only 'Evangelical' among the founding fathers had a very wide and tolerant view of religion and morality which he used as President of Princeton to make the Presbyterian college more secular, not less:
"Witherspoon made fundamental changes to the moral philosophy curriculum, strengthened the college's commitment to natural philosophy (science), and positioned Princeton in the larger transatlantic world of the republic of letters. Witherspoon's common sense approach to morality was more influenced by the Enlightenment ethics of Scottish philosophers Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid than the Christian virtue of Jonathan Edwards. Witherspoon thus believed morality was a science. It could be cultivated in his students or deduced through the development of the moral sense--an ethical compass instilled by God in all human beings and developed through education (Reid) or sociability (Hutcheson). Such an approach to morality owed more to the natural moral laws of the Enlightenment than traditional sources of Christian ethics. Thus, while "public religion" was an important source of social virtue. . ."
John Jay Besides the mercurial and class obsessed Hamilton the only founding father that would be close to Beck is John Jay:
"In a letter addressed to Pennsylvania House of Representatives member John Murray, dated October 12, 1816, Jay wrote, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."<72>
Now of course Jay also considered Catholics unfit for leadership and I would have to assume that Catholics who convert to Mormonism would also have been found unfit.
Its come up before and it will come up again but the Founding Fathers were not Christian, not Protestants, not Evangelicals.
They were rebels. Generally speaking deeply religious people don't support armed revolution unless they are trying to set up a theocracy.
And of course then there is this. None of the leaders were Mormons, which was invented after all the founding fathers were long dead.
It has been estimated that less than 10% of the population in the colonies attended Church regularly at the time of the American Revolution.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
