What the Founding Fathers Really

FI Feb-Mar 07 Pages 12/26/06 1:04 PM Page 58 REVIEWS as the wolverines (Gulo gulo, some- for it is a human attitude and quality that other species from extinction, as far as times called the devil bear because of has moral and aesthetic dimensions. we can. What is rather noteworthy their ferocious and cunning capacity as Wilson is not simply a “nonbeliever.” about this book is Wilson’s plea to fellow predators or skunk bear because they He rejects the idea that God created the humans on this planet—whether reli- look like a hybrid of the two species). universe and states that there is no evi- gious or not—“that we set aside our dif- Pitchfork ants (Thaumatomyrmex) are dence for life after death and that ethics ferences in order to save the creation. masterpiece rare forms that are distrib- is not derived from theology but comes The defense of living nature is a univer- uted across the tropics. They have a from human experience. On the con- sal value,” he affirms, “it serves without bizarre exotic anatomy, which lends trary, he holds that the theory of natural discrimination all of humanity.” them their title as the “porcupine selection explains the evolution of This book makes important recom- huntresses” of millipedes. All of these species from lower forms; that morality mendations not only for secular human- diverse species are wonders to behold. is related to human needs and interests, ists (atheists, rationalists, skeptics), Wilson quotes Charles Darwin’s rever- biologically grounded and socially func- given the damage to our global habitat, ence for life. In On the Origin of Species, tioning; that humans use science to but for all human beings who share a Darwin presents a profound appreciation understand nature; and that they are common planetary abode with other of its diversity: “There is grandeur in this Prometheans free to develop a better forms of life. We have no alternative but view of life, with its special power having world. We humans, he says, have the to heal wounds and hold out our hands been originally breathed into a few forms task of using “reason, law, honor, and an in a common effort for the betterment of or into one; and that, whilst this planet inborn sense of decency” as a basis of life. This means that we need to bring has gone cycling on according to the fixed our code of ethics. together religionists and scientists— law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, Thus, Wilson is not an “evangelical though there are real differences endless forms more beautiful and more atheist” so much as a secular humanist, between them—to save our common wonderful have been, and are being, holding a core of ethical values and humanity, our respect for other species evolved.” principles. “Human welfare is at the and the planet Earth. This is a powerful The term reverence expresses an center of our thought,” he states. But he and eloquent plea that is especially rel- appreciation, sympathy, and compassion also defends “biophilia” (the love of evant today, and it needs to be heard for life in all its beauty. This does not life). This leads to the following impera- loud and clear, in spite of the naysayers imply any supernatural manifestations, tive: we ought to endeavor to rescue in our midst. nation’s founders has become a cottage WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS industry for both conservatives and liberals. Religious conservatives wish to EALLY HOUGHT prove that the framers of the Consti- R T tution were devout Christians, as if their private beliefs could negate their signa- tures on a secular Constitution that Susan Jacoby makes no mention whatever of God, gods, or even the vaguely deistic The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, by David L. “Providence.” Many secular liberals, by Holmes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, contrast, seem to think that if the ISBN 1955300920) 240 pp. Cloth $20.00. Founders are seen as deists or agnos- tics (a word that did not even exist in Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father the eighteenth century), their rejection of Our Country, by Michael Novak and Jana Novak of orthodox faith can somehow serve as (New York: Basic Books, 2006, ISBN 04650512X) an effective political weapon against the 256 pp. Cloth $26.00. current right-wing assault on the sepa- ration of church and state. The desire to search for guidance on he question I am asked most fre- Thomas Jefferson, and George Wash- every public issue in the lives and writ- quently by interviewers is, “What ington, my customary answer is, “Who ings of the men who wrote the Declar- Twere the real religious beliefs of knows? What they really believed ation of Independence and the Consti- the Founding Fathers?” Since I cannot about religion matters much less than tution is part of the larger phenomenon channel the spirits of John Adams, what they did to separate their person- of Founder worship, a form of idolatry al beliefs from the government they indulged in by many historians as well Susan Jacoby is the author of Free- founded.” as politicians. For religious conserva- thinkers: A History of American Secular- With the rise of the Religious Right tives who idolize the Founders (or, to be ism and the program director of the during the past twenty-five years, dis- more precise, their religiously correct Center for Inquiry/New York City. secting the private religious views of the image of the Founders), it is nearly free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 58 FI Feb-Mar 07 Pages 12/26/06 1:04 PM Page 59 REVIEWS impossible to admit that many of their in motion but subsequently took no One of the Novaks’ least persuasive idols were freethinkers who opposed all active part in the affairs of humans. arguments is that the Enlightenment ecclesiastical hierarchies and entangle- However, deism and freethought can be “borrowed many themes from the ments between church and state. For understood more accurately as a spec- Jewish-Christian past: fraternity, secularists, it is often equally difficult to trum of belief, from “Christian deists” equality, liberty…sensitivity to the cat- acknowledge that some of their most who participated in religious obser- egory of cruel and inhumane treatment revered Founders, while hardly ortho- vances even though they rejected any lit- of human beings, the moral evil of slav- dox Christians, nevertheless believed in eral interpretation of the scriptures to ery, and the rest” (p. 108). They are a supreme being and hoped for some non-Christian deists who eschewed reli- right only in the most obvious sense sort of afterlife. gious rituals and explicitly rejected doc- that all philosophies incorporate, Like the Bible, the writings of the rev- trines like the trinity and the divinity of adapt, and reject many elements of ear- olutionary generation can be used selec- Jesus. Doubters—or, to be more precise, lier philosophies. Before the tively to support almost any point of view. men suspected of being doubters—were Enlightenment, Christianity had pre- The sheer volume of correspondence, numerous in public life but outright athe- cious little to say about the evil of slav- public papers, essays, and books pro- ists (as far as their private letters can be ery and American Christians who used duced by these intellectual omnivores of taken as a true statement of their beliefs) the Bible to justify slavery were far the Enlightenment serves up ample were nonexistent. more numerous, until the middle of the material for polemicists of every stripe. What all of the deists and free- nineteenth century, than those who In The Faiths of the Founding thinkers shared—and they dominated used the Bible to condemn slavery. It Fathers—as the use of the plural the assembly that produced the was Christianity—a nonconformist “faiths” suggests—David L. Holmes has, Constitution—was the conviction that Christianity that embraced the equality in admirable fashion, avoided the ideo- both religious interference with govern- of bodies as well as souls—that was logical ax grinding that leads to ana- ment and government interference with modified by Enlightenment thought. chronistic analyses of the framers’ reli- religion were disastrous. That is why The Jewish Enlightenment did the gious beliefs. Holmes, a professor of Washington, a Christian deist in the same for traditional Judaism, and religious studies at the College of view of most mainstream historians, Spinoza was a towering precursor of William and Mary, covers the entire and Benjamin Franklin, a non-Christian the Enlightenment both within and spectrum of revolutionary religion— deist, could embrace a Constitution that beyond the faith into which he was from Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightenment broke with historical precedent and born. deism and explicit rejection of Christ’s ascribed governmental power not to a As for Jews, applying the term divinity to the orthodoxy of Samuel supreme being but to “We the people.” Judeo-Christian to anyone in the revo- Adams, the fiery Boston patriot who In Washington’s God, Michael lutionary generation is an anachronism, (unlike his cousin, John) remained loyal Novak and Jana Novak, his daughter, born of the desire of today’s apostles of to the Puritanism of his ancestors. accept none of these picky distinctions. religious correctness to pretend that all The book also includes, unusually, a Novak, a fellow at the American Enter- monotheistic Americans have always discussion of the faiths of the wives and prise Institute, is also a conservative been part of the same tradition of sweet- daughters of the Founders—an illumi- Roman Catholic who frequently criti- ness, light, and civic morality.

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