Moral Minority

Glenn Reynolds points to an interesting book, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, by Brooke Allen, about the religious views and practices of six of our Founding Fathers. He also points to two interesting reactions to the book.

George Will gives the book a mostly favorable review, although he does note that the author -- as one might expect of many of today's nominally secular intellectuals -- tends to do a little "baptizing" of her own.

Not since the medieval church baptized, as it were, Aristotle as some sort of early -- very early -- church father has there been an intellectual hijacking as audacious as the attempt to present America's principal founders as devout Christians. Such an attempt is now in high gear among people who argue that the founders were kindred spirits with today's evangelicals, and that they founded a "Christian nation."

This irritates Brooke Allen, an author and critic who has distilled her annoyance into "Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers." It is a wonderfully high-spirited and informative polemic that, as polemics often do, occasionally goes too far. Her thesis is that the six most important founders -- Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton -- subscribed, in different ways, to the watery and undemanding Enlightenment faith called deism. That doctrine appealed to rationalists by being explanatory but not inciting: it made the universe intelligible without arousing dangerous zeal.

...

In a grating anachronism unworthy of her serious argument, she calls the founders "the very prototypes, in fact, of the East Coast intellectuals we are always being warned against by today's religious right." (Madison, an NPR listener? Maybe not.) ...

Forget NPR. How 'bout fighting a war against our European betters? That aspect of the book sounds irritating, but at least I've been warned.

Will is mostly spot-on, although he fails to credit sufficiently the realization (often from cruel experience) among the Christians (nominal and otherwise) of early America that religious persecution is something the government can prevent only by not being the agent of any particular faith. The opposite, the placing of force at the disposal of religious authorities is one of the best ways to make the unverifiability of religious dogma particularly dangerous. The Founding Fathers, religious or not, understood this point well. Hence Thomas Jefferson's insistence on a wall between church and state. And adoption of same by his colleagues.

But what I found even more interesting was the kind of argument presented by Michael and Jana Novak in reaction to the idea that more than one of our Founding Fathers might not have been Christians. They do offer good evidence that at minimum many were not simply just Deists. And they do raise many good points. But I laughed when they had to throw in the towel and agree with another author that Thomas Jefferson, the quintessential Founding Father, was an "outlier".

The Novaks write a piece that, again, brings up several good points, but its lynchpin is the following very interesting bit of context-dropping:

Beyond that, one must consider the full implications of Allen's fundamental thesis, as stated by Will: This tiny minority of six expressed a very different set of beliefs privately from those they showed in public. The usual term for that species of action is hypocrisy. Its ingredients are a lack of candor, if not outright dishonesty, and an exceedingly low sense of honor. One has only to express this implication to grasp either its moral repulsiveness or its implausibility. For George Washington, it is out of the question. [bold added]

Would the Novaks (or anyone else), if they consistently followed the code of self-sacrifice called for by their own religion, be nearly as well-off materially, as they are now? I doubt it. Would they, were religious education as prevalent now as it apparently was in Massachussetts in John Adams' day, even belong to their present sect? And by what standard does one religion tolerate the existence of another? And do any such faiths withstand encounters with nontolerant ones like Islam? Religion demands that its followers guide their lives by following arbitrary (and often, astoundingly ridiculous) dictates. Propriety forbids that I inquire about whether these authors regard their own sexual conduct as moral. Nonethless, I will note that propriety has never stopped religious zealots from passing out orders on such a sacred and personal matter. Quick! Ask a Shaker -- before they die out!

The arbitrary dictates of religion are precisely the opposite of how man, the rational animal, must guide his life. Consequently, hypocrisy is a direct consequence of the religious moral code. The Novaks have no business calling anyone on that.

Furthermore, it is interesting that the Novaks point to the following passage from a letter he wrote to the President of Yale as "evidence" that Benjamin Franklin took religion seriously.

I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals, and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England some doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.

Is this second paragraph confidence on Franklin's part, as the Novaks claim, that he "will meet Jesus Christ after death, to see the evidence for [himself]"? Or is this a great way to get a pest off of one's case? Or both? I don't know, but if I recall my own religious training correctly, to believe all the more sincerely because something is ridiculous is a far greater badge of honor in religion than to demand evidence.

Franklin's opening credo to the contrary, his questioning approach is essentially different than the truly religious approach. That stuff flies over the heads of religionists all the time -- at least when they don't have the apparatus of the state at their disposal....

The Novaks, mischaracterize and damn as "hypocrisy" the kind of attitudes and behavior that rational men transitioning away from religion before their time (and having to navigate a more religious society) would almost inevitably display. On the other hand, the Novaks were correct about our age being more "secular" in one sense, only they used the wrong word. "Profane" or "nihilistic" would have been far better. Given that philosophy was not yet developed enough to provide a better alternative, our Founders appear to have relied upon reason in their daily lives. But they also valued moral guidance and had an appreciation for the sublime. I don't damn them for having to resort to religion for those things. And I do not regard that as hypocrisy in any meaningful sense. They were not, after all, trying to perpetuate a fraud. They were, to the extent they did not take orders from zealots, escaping from one.

The question of what religious beliefs were professed by the Founding Fathers and what observances they made are interesting and important, but of far greater import is how they approached knowledge. Did they tend to blindly accept things on faith or were they fundamentally rational? This is the really important question.

And it is in that regard that the Founders resemble neither the theocrats nor the followers of the liberal faith of today.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected typos and made some clarifications.
10-27-06: Corrected more typos.