Russell Shorto gives a dispassionate and even-handed account in answer to the question, centering — of course — on the fundamentalist members of the Texas Board of Education.
The question, it seems to me, revolves around two definitions. What do we mean by Founders? If referring to the Puritans and Pilgrims, the answer is self-evident. But the Jamestown Colony preceded both of them, and while they were accompanied at some point by a chaplain (who baptized Pocahontas), their ambitions were notoriously secular. If the title is restricted to the founders of the nation, there is no doubt that they were in their own ways religious. But a fundamentalist of today might look askance of their idea of religion. What, after all, does it take to be a Christian? To accept the Nicene Creed? George Washington would walk out of his Anglican Church every Sunday rather than recite it or take communion. To believe in the Trinity? John Adams, the Unitarian, didn’t believe in it, nor did most of his New England compatriots, nor did the Puritans. To accept Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and Savior? Jefferson snipped out the miracles from the Gospels to try, he said, to discover the authentic, human Jesus hidden by the god-worshippers.
The Founders were almost certainly 95 percent God-fearing Protestants, as Shorto says. But how Washington, Adams, and Jefferson would regard today’s fundamentalist sectarians, including Don McElroy of the Texas Board of Education, is also fairly easy for me to imagine. As for Ben Franklin or Alexander Hamilton, don’t even go there.
One can pick and choose from the historical record to make one’s case, just as one can pick and choose from the Bible to make one’s religion. But in both instances, the conviction usually precedes the evidence selected to back it up.
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I’ve attended two “lectures” by the Christian nationalist history revisionist David Barton, who is featured in the NY Times magazine story. Barton, also a former vice-chair of the Texas Republican Party, weaves a web of half-truths and flat-out falsehoods in his little talks to the faithful, and they lap it up, none the wiser. Barton is to actual historians what creationism is to actual science.
That said, it’s quicksand, and completely unnecessary, to deny the religiosity of the founding fathers and revolutionary America in general. Most insisted on separation precisely because they were religious — they were tired not only of the official English establishment of the Anglican Church, but also of the establishment of various other sects in the colonies. “Establishment” was entirely and specifically rejected by the Constitutional Convention, in no small measure because of codes such as the Mayflower pact written 160 years earlier. (The Pilgrims and the Puritans fled England to avoid persecution for their beliefs alone, and felt entirely justified in persecuting others.)
Baptists in particular railed against being taxed to support other denominations and persecuted for proclaiming their beliefs. Look up a Baptist minister named Leeland – he almost torpedoed ratification of the Constitution in Virginia ( and hence the entire process) because he felt it needed an anti-establishment clause in the body of the document, and wasn’t satisfied with promises of amendments.
The framers agreed that, as a matter of conscience and as an issue between a man and his God, religion had no place in government, nor visa versa. That’s where I set my rhetorical flag; it’s by far the more solid rock.
I know that this article wasn’t focusing on intelligent design, but such debates/conflicts always remind me of the film, “Inherit the Wind”. I will always side on Spencer Tracy’s character, Henry Drummond. Unfortunately, I can’t say that Don McElroy, would be the ideal replacement for Frederic March’s character, Matthew Harrison Brady.
Henry Drummond to Brady and the court:
“Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”
You go, Wick! Be our Spencer Tracy/Drummond.
Eh, nice bit of theater that.
But isn’t it funny how a theory became “settled science” that makes no mention of theory? And isn’t it also interesting how Darwinism became promissory materialism which denies even the existence of consciousness? The establishment of “there is no God” or that this universe needs no God to explain it is the establishment of a religion of Man as the be all and end all. And *that* religion demands the exclusion of any talk of a God or a Deity or a Creative Intelligence. How does that make us freer?
Eric:
We also have a “theory of gravity.” But I guess you can impugn that, too, as you float above the rest of us with your nonsensical comment.
Eric, it’s referred to as “personal responsibility”. That’s when you accept responsibility for making your world better.
Responsibility is the ultimate freedom.
As for Gods of any kind and for whatever reason. I believe that’s easy to understand. All you have to do is look at the believer and you understand God. Kind and compassionate people have a kind and compassionate God. The mean spirited on the other hand have a mean spirited God. If you think about it for any time at all you would almost believe man creates God and not vice versa.
Eric, thank you for the long ad hominem argument.
I am a Christian who happens to believe strongly that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereofof.” Accordingly, I belive that schools should be permitted to teach evolution and intelligent design.
Darwin’s theory is valid science (not saying I either agree or disgree with it); however, it still does not answer where it all started.
@Buck: Glad you got the old dictionary out.
@David: You might want to review your notes on the whole Newtonian/Relativity discussions vis a vis “gravity”.
@cbs: When “intelligent design” has some semblance of basis in science, I’m sure it can be taught. Until then, it belongs in the forced Bible classes.
Let’s take all the time we need to argue pie-in-the-sky, “Look at me, I understand particle physics and Jesus,” because in the next ten years, children in Texas will be learning what Don McLeroy wants them to learn. The whole SBOE situation makes me think of a line from an old Bob Hope movie. The foreign legion gives Hope’s character sodium pentathol and quickly wish the genie back in the bottle, exclaiming, “My God, the man’s mind is a maudlin swamp!”
Think Mink, you have touched on a fundamental issue: “children in Texas will be learing what Don McLeroy wants them to learn.” As a long-time teacher, I assure that much of what children really learn occurs at home. Critical thinking, manners, respect, open-mindedness, fairness, and so many other skills that are crucial to learning are modeled (or not) much more effectively at home. Those are the foundations for acquiring and processing information and discoursing in a civil way.
Parents, please spend time teaching your children these things, reinforce them with what you want them to know, and your child will most likely be able to repel or absorb what is taught in their schools in a way that satisfies you.
As all of you Christians are debating which brand of Christianity is the “true” one and which brand should be taught in public tax-supported schools and which candidates for public office should be demonized for not professing the “true” brand loudly and often enough, you might remember that there are whole groups of non-Christians around you who find your public words and your public deeds to be either scary or funny or just tiresome–these groups including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and others. We are all citizens of this country, we all pay taxes and expect the same rights and privileges that you claim, and we are all tired of your repeated attempts to make us believe and act like you.
You can’t even get the interpretation of your fundamental documents (the Bible and the Constitution) right, so why don’t you just teach your children what you believe is correct, broadcast your evangelical efforts, and keep your narrow prejudices out of the realm of public education and governance.
I thought the NY Times article was well-researched and though provoking. I also found great humor in the fundamentalist view of the world. I kept asking out loud, “are these people serious?” They are serious and they vote and they have the ears of elected leaders. That’s dangerous and the rest of us should act by voting, organizing, and requiring that our government listen to us as well.
I also enjoyed Wick’s blog here — with brevity, he managed to hold people accountable to real history — not the fiction that is being built today by fundamentalists.
It is a secular nation that governs best and works best for its people. That gives each of us the ability to call on our own God or gods.
I think Mr. Allison missed the point of Shorto’s article. The issue has really never been whether the Founding Fathers were Christian. Most were but to a skeptical degree that conservative Christians today would find appallingly open-minded. Why else was the Constitution written without a single reference to any deity at all?
In short, this isn’t about history. The issue is that, as Shorto shows, McLeroy and Dunbar wish to paint America’s entire purpose as fundamentally Christian and then use that as a wedge to shift public education to a political agenda that is anti-evolution, anti-choice, anti-gay and essentially a form of conservative Christian proselytizing. And they wish to put these changes into effect all the way up to the Supreme Court, to spread that agenda beyond the classroom.
Why else, as Shorto notes, would a lawyer like Dunbar serve on the textbook board — when her own kids were home-schooled and, on principle, she has little use for any “state-created, taxpayer-supported” school system? She has written that putting our children in public schools is akin to “throwing them into the enemy’s flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Moloch”?
Sounds like a woman on a partisan, religious mission — and not someone who should have such influence over public school textbooks.
The only decent article that’s been written on the social studies debate.