Last night Carla Hinton, religion reporter for the Oklahoman, sent me an e-mail and asked what I thought the founding fathers -- and specifically George Washington -- meant by freedom of religion (the first amendment). Here's my response:
The original language proposed for the First Amendment called for "liberty of conscience." The appeal for "liberty of conscience" in the colonies began with a one-time Baptist minister by the name of Roger Williams -- who envisioned it being protected by a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." In the end, the founding fathers spelled out what they meant by liberty of conscience.
America's founding fathers were guaranteeing that church and state would be separated -- no faith could become the established religion of the state. They were insuring that everyone could worship or not worship according to the dictates of their own conscience -- no law could prohibit the free exercise of religion. They were assuring that people could freely assemble and speak to one another about any religion, belief, or opinion.
The best sources for understanding the founding father's convictions about religious liberty are Thomas Jefferson's Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1779), James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance (1785), and Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (1802).
George Washington most assuredly agreed with Madison and Jefferson. All of them were Virginians and members of the established church of that colony. Yet, three years after the jails of Virginia had been filled with Baptist preachers who refused to conform to the legal mandates of their own church and colony, General Washington openly received Baptist chaplains and Baptist soldiers into his revolutionary army.
Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the early Baptists were all fighting for the same thing -- liberty of conscience for people of all faiths and beliefs.
Unfortunately, most politically active Baptists today are hard at work removing the wall separating church and state that the founding fathers and their Baptist forebears erected.
4 comments:
Madison originally didn't think a Bill of Rights necessary, but after he was talked into it (by Baptists like John Leland), he became very careful. The legislative history and notes of the Constitutional Convention show that Madison led in defeating the kind of proposals that the Religious Right claims is all that is protected today. There were proposals for "multi-establishment" or for establishing a simple belief in God--shot down. The claim that all the no establishment clause does is prevent a national church was shot down, too. They went through draft after draft until they got the two clauses that are so vital today--the no establishment clause (which prevents any laws even "respecting" an establishment of religion) and the free exercise clause. That First Freedom is then interwoven with free speech, a free press, and guaranteeing the right to petition the government for redress of grievances (political protest). Liberty of conscience, a Baptist belief shared with Quakers, Mennonites, and many of the Framers is the first freedom, the heart of human dignity from which all other human rights stem. Sadly, today it has more defenders outside Baptist circles than inside them.
Michael,
You said,
"Sadly, today it has more defenders outside Baptist circles than inside them."
Both sad and true.
You may also enjoy a paper from the Baker Institute, at Rice University, Secular State, Religious People--The American Model, by William Martin.
Thanks for helping to uphold baptist principles, especially when America and the world seem most in need of them.
You are correct that Baptists were among the earliest champions of religious freedom in the colonies and later the United States.
You are also correct that George Washington supported religious freedom and was a friend to the Baptists (and was friendly, for that matter, with all the Christian denominations).
However, I'm not sure I agree with your implication that Baptists today are at the forefront of tearing down the wall of separation that our Founders erected. No offense, but that sounds ominously close to the Michael Newdow (take "under God" out of the Pledge) nonsense.
The Founding Fathers absolutely did NOT want religion kept out of the public square. George Washington made it abundantly clear in his Farewell Address that "religion and morality" are "indispensable" to "political prosperity." Lest one might misunderstand his point, he went on to say that it would be "vain" to have morality "without religion."
It was Washington that added "so help me God" to the presidential oath and took said oath on the Bible. He then attended worship services after his inauguration.
There are so many examples of the Congresses (both during the Revolution, after the Revolution, and after the U.S. Constitution) officially voting in days of religious fasting or thanksgiving, printing Bibles at taxpayer expense, hiring chaplains at taxpayer expense, etc.
I could go on and on. The Founding Fathers did not create a high wall of separation between religion and the public square. That is a fiction invented by subsequent court rulings - misinterpretations of Thomas Jefferson's earlier writings.
The debate today over the role of religion in public life has moved far beyond the terms of the debate in the founding era. Virtually ALL of the Founding Fathers today - with the possible exception of Thomas Paine (who went off the deep end anyway) - would be considered on the cultural "Right" end of the political spectrum. Social conservatives all - were they alive today.
-Brian Tubbs
http://americanfounding.blogspot.com
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