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PrintIn his intelligent replies to Ms. Allen and me, Mr. Jonathan Rowe raises many good points. But his vision of Christianity matches up neither with the Anglican nor the evangelical tradition. Rowe holds that “the primary ‘end’ of religion is morality itself,” and that the three distinctive tenets “which distinguish Christianity from all the other world religions” are “things like the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement.”
But the Evangelical tradition rejects the understanding of Christianity as mere morality. More important are repentance, and a personal relationship with Jesus as Lord. Meanwhile, most of the American Founding Fathers would have recited the Nicene Creed with some regularity at Anglican services. The tenets of that creed include many more items than Mr. Rowe’s three. Such abstract terms as “Trinity” and “Atonement” do not appear in it.
What is really distinctive about Jewish-Christian faith is its emphasis on the free conscience of the free person in the free community. So Jefferson seems correct when he said that there is no better religion for republican government than Christianity.
Jefferson wrote of his own stripped-down New Testament: “I have made a wee little book…which I call the philosophy of Jesus…a more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.” He saw in his selection, “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”
As Mr. Rowe notes, the founding generation spoke well of “Mahometans,” “Buddhists,” “Hindus,” and others. But this was usually by comparison with atheists, whom they considered unreliable for republican government. Thus, Benjamin Rush (1798):
The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion…I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth, than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is that of the New Testament…A Christian cannot fail of being a republican.
The three most distinctive features of Christianity (in a political context) include constant emphasis upon the axial role of human freedom. For Christians and Jews, freedom is at the heart of the matter.
Second, some things belong to God, and Caesar dare not interfere with those. This teaching about Caesar and God is the great barrier to any form of political totalitarianism. It is the ultimate ground of the “separation” of state and church.
The third distinctive feature is a recognition that humans, even the best, often do what they ought not to do, and do not do what they ought to do. Human sinfulness is a fact of life. It makes necessary checks and balances, and a division of powers.
These three distinctive marks of Christianity are cited frequently by the Founders. Alexander Hamilton in 1802:
Nothing is more fallacious than to expect to produce any valuable or permanent results in political projects by relying merely on the reason of men. Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.
And John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813:
The general principles, on which the Fathers Atchieved [sic] Independence, were…the general Principles of Christianity, in which all those Sects were United: and the general Principles of English and American Liberty…Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.
And Benjamin Rush in 1798:
A Christian, I say again, cannot fail of being a republican, for every precept of the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self-denial, and brotherly kindness, which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy and the pageantry of a court. A Christian cannot fail of being useful to the republic, for his religion teacheth him that no man ‘liveth to himself’…his religion teacheth him, in all things do to others what he would wish, in like circumstances, they should do to him.
These convictions extended to the next generation of Americans. Noah Webster in 1834:
The Christian religion ought to be received, and maintained with firm and cordial support. It is the real source of all genuine republican principles. It teaches the equality of men as to rights and duties; and while it forbids all oppression, it commands due subordination to law and rulers…The religion of Christ and his apostles, in its primitive simplicity and purity, unencumbered with the trappings of power and the pomp of ceremonies, is the surest basis of a republican government.
Some Founders were not always as clear about the characteristics of Christianity and Judaism that make them distinctively fit for free republics. But most went considerably further in this direction than Mr. Rowe makes room for. The Constitution of Massachusetts (1780), for instance, mandated in all schools education in the Protestant Christian faith (as the best suited to a Republic).
Article III. As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality. Therefore…the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require…suitable provision…for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality.
The commitment of the founding generation to Christianity is unmistakable. When the federal Constitution recognized in all other humans the rights they wanted others to recognize in themselves, that was the most Christian step of all.
April 27th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[…] I want to thank Michael Novak for devoting an entire post to my comments at the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog. To make sure that I am not misunderstood, I need to clarify some of my assertions. Novak begins: In his intelligent replies to Ms. Allen and me, Mr. Jonathan Rowe raises many good points. But his vision of Christianity matches up neither with the Anglican nor the evangelical tradition. Rowe holds that “the primary ‘end’ of religion is morality itself,” and that the three distinctive tenets “which distinguish Christianity from all the other world religions” are “things like the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement.” […]
April 30th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Mr. Novak apparently misunderstood Mr. Rowe’s comments and some of the quotes Mr. Novak used to support his own position actually serve to highlight Mr. Rowe’s position. Mr. Rowe did not say that he, personally, believed that morality was the primary end of religion; but, rather that that the key founders believed that.
Mr. Novak quotes Jefferson and comments on it thusly: “’I have made a wee little book…which I call the philosophy of Jesus…a more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.’” He saw in his selection, “’the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.’” This quote actually supports Mr. Rowe’s point — for Jefferson, Christianity was all about ethics and morals.
Mr. Novak’s quote from John Adams’s letter to Jefferson (June 28, 1813) is quite selective and distorts what Adams actually said in context. In the previous paragraph, Adams spoke of the “fine young fellows” who conducted the Revolution. He said that they included all of the various denominations of protestants as well as “Deists and Atheists, and Protestants who believe nothing.” That is the context in which he speaks (as Novak quotes him) of “the general Principles of Christianity, in which all those Sects were United.” The “those Sects” includes deist, atheists, and those who believe nothing. This was clearly not the Christianity of the orthodox, who did not believe that deists, atheists, and those who believe nothing were united with true Christians on any principles of Christianity!
I have a very important question for Mr. Novak — in this entry, as well as in his book On Two Wings, he emphasizes the idea that Christianity includes a “constant emphasis upon the axial role of human freedom” and that: “For Christians and Jews, freedom is at the heart of the matter.” My question is: where, exactly, in the Bible is this idea taught? As I read it, the only discussion of freedom/liberty in the Bible is of SPIRITUAL freedom/liberty — freedom from the bondage of SIN. Where does the Bible ever talk about political freedom/liberty? If it’s not in the Bible, what makes it a Christian principle and what puts it “at the heart” of Christianity?
May 1st, 2007 at 8:17 pm
“For Christians and Jews, freedom is at the heart of the matter.” My question is: where, exactly, in the Bible is this idea taught?
The idea is taught in the Annunciation. God does not force Mary to conceive; she willingly accepts, saying, “Be it done unto me according to Thy will.” Mary’s fiat is a central event in Christianity, and it is a confirmation of the fact that God respects our freedom — even our freedom to reject Him.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:59 am
[…] In short, Jefferson rejected all of the tenets of orthodox Christianity. Yet, as Novak pointed out, Jefferson made his own edited Bible, in part, because he believed Jesus was such a great moral teacher. Jesus’ teachings were, according to Jefferson, “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” […]
May 8th, 2007 at 10:28 am
SR:
With all due respect, the annuntiation is hardly a discusion or an exaltion of freedom. At the best, is an interpretation of the text christians have decided to give (and yet, contradicted in many other places in the bible…like when Moses refused to go see the pharoah and God was decided to kill him). I have yet to see those ideas of political liberty and freedom reflected in the biblical text
July 13th, 2007 at 6:37 am
christainity is actually more than a religion.it is a relation between God and his earthly children .if you love GOD and his other children, the world will be a better place.that to me is true christainity
July 17th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I come to this debate with grave reservations.
As a black man (and not necessarily because of
that), I read much of this pro/con Christian
vs philosophical and ethical, etc.,
perspectives on the ‘founding fathers,’
as so much nonsense. This is because
the level of hypocrisy and moral duplicty
with regard to these ‘Christian male’
is remarkably absent. There are all
sorts of ‘reasons’ for explication with
regard to these ‘religious’ views of
the ‘founding fathers,’ but their behavior
and acts, irrespective of their written
claims to studied proclaimed ‘beliefs,’
belie their beliefs. None of these
founding fathers were as much ‘Christian’ as
they were ‘Deists,’ and rationalists,
rather than Christian, expressed according
to the King James version of the Bible of their day. For example, Jefferson, major mind and thinker of his day in America, no one can deny;
but like many great men, his ‘moral’ sense
and actions, as with Ben Franklin, born
a Quaker, but hardly a practioner of
the faith evenif he was of the ethic, was
a immoralist in the strict of the word.
I’m not thinking so much of either of
these men as ’sinners,’ so much as alleged
‘believers’ of Christ’s message of love,
forgiveness, doing unto others as one
would to oneself, etc. Not to prolong
this, but to say that evidence abounds
of the contradictions, paradoxes, and
plain immorality of these ‘great men’
to forget, if not to forgive, their
paliatives about ‘their’ Christianity.
Indeed, the notion by some Right Wingers
who erroneously rationalize that our
country was founded on “Christianity” is
nonsense and their misreading of history
and the evolution of culture and ‘economic’
development of this country. After all,
what was the foundation of American
economics of the era of the Founding
fathers? Hence, hypocrisy and Christianity
as they reference what Jesus teaches
is an, at best, awkward discourse.
November 5th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Christianity is the downfall of the United States. It is shameful that politicians, particularly right-wingers, use this sordid religion to justify the removal of human rights. Christians supposedly want human “equality” yet many Christians appose the union of a couple based on their sexuality. Human Equality? Gays are still not equal, and yet we persistently call America a democracy! Christianity is not used to benefit this country; it is used to deny rights of our citizens based on their sexual orientation. Obviously the separation of church and state is not working; however Christianity is still at large. Save the country, separate church and state regardless, of what esoteric sect of this religion you are.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
[…] Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, it should be noted, are unitarians. Universalists denied eternal damnation. Invoking these four groups as “Christians” was a sentiment heterodox enough, but understandable given those groups best represent Adams’ own personal theology. Yet, Adams goes further and notes “Deists and theists; and [Protestants who believe nothing]” are part of this lowest common denominator of believers in “general principles of Christianity.” As Dr. Gregg Frazer, himself an evangelical of impeccable orthodoxy, noted: Adams spoke of the “fine young fellows” who conducted the Revolution. He said that they included all of the various denominations of protestants as well as “Deists and Atheists, and Protestants who believe nothing.” That is the context in which he speaks…of “the general Principles of Christianity, in which all those Sects were United.” The “those Sects” includes deist, atheists, and those who believe nothing. This was clearly not the Christianity of the orthodox, who did not believe that deists, atheists, and those who believe nothing were united with true Christians on any principles of Christianity! […]
August 15th, 2009 at 5:46 am
christainity is actually more than a religion.it is a relation between God and his earthly children .if you love GOD and his other children, the world will be a better place.that to me is true christainity
January 18th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
i really think Christianity is the way of life, Roman Catholic is a Christian religion but not all Christian religion is Roman Catholic. I think people should start to understand that Christianity is and will be of Church of God by Jesus Christ.
June 8th, 2010 at 2:43 am
There is something very sinister about incorporating religious beliefs into constitution. In a way, it robs us of human rights. In the name of ‘How we ought to do/behave’, the conservatives instill their agendas. The founders and creators of constitution must have goods of all the humans/citizens in their heart but the way it is implemented and used for political purposes, defeats the actual objective. In any way, despite talking about religions for years, aint we becoming more intolerant and more anti-other religions?
June 29th, 2010 at 10:29 am
Christianity is a religion or a relationship? Some believe it is a relationship with the Almighty and some believe it is a monotheistic system that preaches beliefs, values, and the teachings of Jesus. It is also believed that Jesus gave birth to this religion to stay united with Him but sadly sin in the world has increased so much that we are unable to directly link ourselves to the Almighty.With so much of negativity all around is it possible to bond ourselves to the Lord? Will we ever be able to live the beliefs of Christianity?