The Judeo-Christian Foundations of the American Political System

Richard B. Morris

We do not know just what would have done Now what are we to make of a government that started had he been in Philadelphia when the First Continental Con- a revolution with daily invocation to God by an ordained gress convened; for, as John Adams reported the incident to churchman who turned out to be a defector and included God his wife, Abigail: "When the Congress first met, Mr. Cushing in the Declaration of Independence and then drew up a con- [of Massachusetts] made a motion that it should be opened stitution being scrupulously careful to keep God out of it. with Prayer. It was opposed by Mr. Jay of New York and Mr. No statistics would confirm a decline of piety between 1774 Rutledge of South Carolina, because we were so divided in and 1787 — quite the contrary so far as church attendance would religious sentiments, some Episcopalians, some Quakers, some suggest. What seems clear is that if one sees origins through Anabaptists, some Presbyterians and some Congregationalists. the eyes of a Jefferson, a Madison, a Tom Paine, or an Ethan So that we could not join in the same Act of Worship. Mr. Allen one will find one point of view; a Patrick Henry, a John Sam Adams arose and said he was no Bigot, and could hear Adams, or a John Jay, yet another. a Prayer from a Gentleman of Piety and Virtue, who was at The depth and degree of religious conviction was contro- the same time a friend to his country." He then recommended versial then and remains so today. The Founding Fathers varied the Reverend Duché, an Episcopal clergyman, to whose elo- in the degree to which they paid obeisance to rational currents quence John Adams was to attest. That was done and thereafter and in their display of outward piety. True, they were united a chaplain was regularly employed in opening the Congress. in their devotion to the principles of religious toleration, but In fact, and I could be wrong, there is no record of Mr. one can detect subtle shadings of difference in their attitude Madison ever objecting to a chaplain when he himself sat in toward the separation of church and state. Congress. In the main the Founding Fathers would hardly have la- So, instead of a moment of silence, Congress heard a beled themselves orthodox Christian thinkers, but they were preacher read the thirty-fifth Psalm. Christian, dues-paying, if not orthodox. One of the least ortho- There is another incident that comes to mind on the divi- dox, , once remarked, "I never told my own sion of the Founding Fathers over this question. religion, nor scrutinized that of another" and added that he Let us pass ahead some thirteen years, when at the Con- had "ever judged the religion of others by their lives" rather stitutional Convention, as a result of intensified debate over than their words. Yet Jefferson resented the charge that he was the suffrage for the lower house, Benjamin Franklin urged that irreligious. He was assailed by more pious New Englanders a clergyman be invited to offer prayers at the beginning of each when, at the end of his first term, he offered Tom Paine free session. objected on the ground that it was late in passage to America on a sloop-of-war. Yet, by expressing the the day to start the sessions with prayer and that it might give hope that Paine's "useful labors" would continue, he really the public the impression of dissension at the convention. A meant to show that he was not anti-Christian, but rather anti- later version had Hamilton express his confidence that the con- sectarian, whether toward Calvinism, which he loathed, or Uni- vention could transact the business entrusted to its care "with- tarianism. In 1803, while he was president, he began to pick out the necessity of calling in foreign aid." out of the Gospels selections that he felt came from Jesus. Then toward the end of his life he wrote the "Morals of Jesus," which proved, he felt, that he was, in his own words, "a real Chris- Richard Morris is the author of some thirty books on tian," that is to say a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. American history. He is the Gouverneur Morris emeritus pro- Like Jefferson and Franklin, George did not fessor of history at Columbia University in New York. adhere to the dogmas of any single denomination. He attended church without formal affiliation, accepted Christianity in the

32 sense that he did not question the teachings of Jesus, which and the Bill of Rights, and a principal rallier of public opinion he commended to the Indians, but fitted into the deistic pat- against the hated Alien and Sedition Acts, Madison found out tern to which so many of the Founding Fathers conformed. in time that without civil rights and due process no republican The fact that he took no communion once the American Revo- system can survive. lution began may have larger political than religious signifi- Before we leave James Madison, I should point out that cance, considering the tight bonds of the Church of England the latter's campaign against the Virginia assessment bill evoked to the Crown. As he eloquently expressed his liberal sentiments an extraordinary popular response, and figures like George in a communication to the members of the New Church of Washington hoped that the assessment bill would never even Baltimore: "In the enlightened Age and in this Land of equal come up for a vote. Washington, recognizing the division of liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not opinion, feared that agitation over the bill might "convulse the forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right state" and expressed the hope that "the bill could die an easy of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known death." In point of fact, it is believed that the assessment bill in the United States." To date the very highest office in the lost by a bare majority of only three votes. It would be fair land still eludes non-Christians as well as women of any sect. to say that few private papers framed in the Revolutionary Era The religious convictions of the Founding Fathers cover have had as momentous an impact on American constitutional a broad spectrum. At one end range the deistic provisions of a law as did Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance." It was Washington (who preferred "Providence" when speaking of the principal authority for the scholarly dissenting opinion of God), a Franklin, a Jefferson, or a Madison; at the other end, Justice Wiley Rutledge in a 1947 decision of the Supreme Court the orthodox piety of John Jay; and, somewhere in between, in which a 5 to 4 majority upheld reimbursing parents with the religious views of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. public funds for costs of transportation to parochial schools. His later years found John Jay absorbed in the propagation It has been the great omnipresence overhanging every court of the Bible, whose literal truths he accepted without question. that has been confronted with the variety of subterfuges There is every ground to doubt that Jay would have agreed proposed and enacted during the last generation to provide tax with his prestigious chief about eligibility of non-Christians for support for church or private schools or to bring religion into the highest office. In the closing years he questioned whether the public classroom. Madison's "Memorial and Remon- "our religion" permits Christians to vote for "infidel rulers." strance," along with his First Amendment to the Constitution, As for Jay himself, he reminded his correspondents of what raised at that time, and has continued to raise in our own day, the prophet had said to Jehosophat about the attachment to questions as to whether it was the intention of the Founding Ahab: "Shouldst thou help the ungodly and love them that Fathers to forbid completely all governmental aid to religion hate the lord?" In truth, the deistic positions of a Franklin, whatsoever and whether the wall of separation is cracking, as is a Washington, a Jefferson, or a Madison would seem quite so much of the infrastructure of this country. at variance with the orthodox piety of our first chief justice. And now to address myself briefly to some of the points Nor could John Adams by any stretch of definition have raised by the political interest groups: been categorized as a deist. While he did not subscribe to Cal- 1. The Constitution was a sui generis document that paid vinist dogma, he was a Puritan through and through, the obeisance in part to the British constitution, to Montesquieu's author of the Constitution of 1780, which continued the Con- erroneous concept of separation of powers and checks and bal- gregational as the established church of Massachusetts, and a ances in that constitution, to some of the radical thinking of vigorous defender of that establishment whenever it was the commonwealthmen of the seventeenth century, and to crea- challenged. tive notions of its own, like federalism, equality of states, and I cannot stay the urge to point out that, like all great men, the judicial branch quite different from that of England; but James Madison had the virtue of inconsistency. Thus, while one would have to work very hard indeed to make out a case in general he stood for the separation of church and state, he for the Bible as a basis of the founders' contribution. had not the slightest concern for due process so far as Tories 2. The notion that the Founding Fathers were orthodox and enemies of the state were concerned during the Revolution. Christians, that they were interested in creating a Christian He only wished he could get his hands on the Tory printer of nation, and that the principles underlying the American system New York, James Rivington, which New York Whigs man- of government are merely extensions of the "Judeo-Christian" aged to do. We would have had a wonderful example of prior tradition — these are a set of simplistic propositions, but they restraint in the absence of the First Amendment, which he had cannot be dismissed out of hand. To answer them one has to not yet written. When a Scottish parson in Virginia refused consider, first of all, whether we are talking about the seven- to observe the fast designated for July 20, 1775, by the Con- teenth-century "founding fathers," whether they came from tinental Congress, Madison applauded the committee's order- New England or the South, or whether we are talking about ing his church door closed and gleefully anticipated that he the leadership of the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras. would "get ducked in a coat of tar and surplus of feathers." In seventeenth-century New England, there was, it goes With Madison, this vindictiveness toward Tories and other without saying, a great deference to the Bible on the part of dissidents — of which there are numerous examples — passed, the leadership and in fact most New England communities. The as it did in the case of Jefferson, Jay, and the other fair-minded founders were creating a "City on a Hill," prescribed the teach- men of that generation. The champion of liberty of conscience ing of the capital laws of the Old Testament, and rushed to

Summer 1983 33

Statue of James Madison at the Michael Novak, Henry Steele Commager, Richard Morris, Paul Kurtz

Robert Rutland and panel Michael Novak and panel

34 @ /~

Richard Morris Gerald Larue, Robert Alley, and A. E. Dick Howard

Wreath-laying ceremony at the Library of Congress

Paul Kurtz and Lowell Weicker

Summer 1983 35 publish the Bible in the first decade of settlement. Their laws almost daily inspiration from the Old Testament. John Jay, were a blending of common law, local English custom, and in his famous Address to the Convention of the State of New Biblical law. In fact, the first code of laws submitted, but never York in late 1776, argued that the persecution suffered by the adopted, in Massachusetts and authored by the Reverend John American colonists at the hands of the British was worse than Cotton was called "Moses his Judicialls," which, as the title that suffered by the Jews from the tyrants of Egypt. Washing- implies, was a rearrangement and almost a complete copy of ton urged that the "most atrocious" war profiteers be hung on Pentateuchal enactments. This code was printed and widely dis- gallows "five times as high as Haman's," and innumerable like tributed, but in fact was set aside in favor of the "Body of quotations from the revolutionary years can be easily culled. Liberties" of 1641, which, while less Mosaic in substance than Ezra Stiles, that learned Yale Hebraist, envisioned Amer- Cotton's code, provided that the capital laws were to be based ica as the new Israel, and saw that out of the American Revolu- on the Bible, which was also to be the reference in case of a tion would come a vast increase in communications in men, defect of the civil law. A committee of 1647 charged that there manners, and trade. "That prophecy of Daniel is now literally was no conflict between the laws of man and the laws of God fulfilling—there shall be a universal traveling to and fro, and "because if the former tends to the common good it is imme- knowledge shall be increased," he wrote, as the War of the diately a law of God." Revolution came to an end. Thus, what we had in seventeenth-century New England The more the savants stressed the Judeo-Christian heri- was a set of theocracies modeled on that of Massachusetts and tage, the more did scholarly physicians like Dr. Benjamin Rush set up in Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth. In the cele- advocate education in the Christian way. And as for Alexander brated foreword to the 1658 revision of the laws, Plymouth's Hamilton, as an embittered politician he proposed the crea- founders confessed their indebtedness to the Scriptures and tion of a "Christian Constitutional Society," which died aborn- stated that the test of good laws was the extent to which they ing. The Founding Fathers at the Philadelphia convention were agreeable "to the antient platform of God's laws," par- heard the pleas of dissenting groups and Jews and made pro- ticularly singling out the legal code enjoyed by the Jews "as vision in the Constitution that "no religious test shall ever be grounded on principles of moral equity, to which Christians required as a qualification to any office of public trust under especially ought alwaies to have an eye thereunto." the authority of the United States." Aside from the rhetorical excursions into the fundamen- Despite their diversity of religious outlook and the pro- talism of the law of God, one can show a direct relation be- nounced anti-Catholic bias of several of their number, the tween the Puritan concept of a covenant between God and the Founding Fathers stood united on the issue of religious tolera- people—a view, distinctive I believe, to Judaism as adapted tion. Still, it is by no means clear that they would have been by Christianity to its own theological needs. The Pilgrims and united in agreement on how the First Amendment to the Con- Puritans placed special status in a convenant theology, some- stitution should be interpreted, that they would have regarded times called "federal theology." Just as the church was created the federal government as neutral in matters of religion, or by covenantors, so, too, the political order comes into exis- upheld the notion of a wall of separation between church and tence as a voluntary creation of the convenanting members of state, a phrase attributed to Jefferson and reviewed in the society — the "We the People" of the Preamble to the Consti- historic Everson case. Certainly John Adams, for one, would tution. One can trace a direct movement from biblical covenant have dissented to the more recent Supreme Court's imposition to church covenant (Congregationalism) to constitutions, upon the states as well as the federal government of the restric- whether state or federal. tions laid down in the establishment-of-religion clause. But then Other factors would in the course of time have a more even today Americans stand sharply divided on how the First immediate weight. Certainly by the mid-eighteenth century, Amendment affects religion. when New England was being transformed from a simple Before concluding, I should like to utter a word of cau- agrarian and fishing community to a more secular society, a tion about using history as a guide to contemporary problems. nascent merchant capitalistic society, it began to rely more The theocratic Puritans, their more tolerant Founding Fathers, heavily for its defense, both civil and political, upon common and even the less than infallible Supreme Court drew their ex- lawyers and the common law, which Sir William Blackstone periences and decisions from a far more homogeneous society would one day insist was based on Christianity. Hence, by the than we have today. Our present variety and abundance of time of the Revolution the lawyers, while great Bible readers, religious beliefs and nonbeliefs would astonish the Founding studied and practiced the English common-law system, and Fathers. Hence, we today cannot ignore the concerns of groups biblical precedents largely disappeared from the judicial-legal who view the sudden upthrust of interest on the part of the system. government in matters like prayer in school, books in school The Founding Fathers were a product of covenant theol- libraries, and other areas of intrusion into privacy, as evidence ogy, common-law teaching, of a belief in the supremacy of of a new style of thought control. These intrusive efforts arouse Parliament over the king, mixed with radical commonwealth fear in many persons that the whole spectrum of the Bill of thought, plus a heavy dose of Enlightenment thinking, leavened Rights is being systematically chipped away. If the Founding with Hume and Scottish Enlightenment thought, and some Fathers offer ambiguous answers, the American people of the unique constitutional ideas of their own. present day must maintain that vigilant scrutiny that the situa- Yet the Founding Fathers, we should remember, took tion warrants. •

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