A nation is simply a collection of people bound together by a common geography; a shared set of defining values, folkways, and customs; tied by shared history; linked by economic, social, and cultural transactions; communicating in a common tongue; and cemented by a universal set of defining myths--beliefs about present and past which are not necessarily objectively true but are subjectively real and powerful. At base a nation is a society.
The state is the organized structure for performing actions on behalf of the nation as instructed by the society acting politically, as a polity. The state is an abstraction. It is a mix of institutions, structures, and their activities which transcends transient personalities and the winds of evanescent fads and foibles. In principle, the state exists to protect, defend, and advance the interests and well-being of the nation against other states as well as those who would seek to rip the mechanisms of state from the control of the nation acting as polity.
As a result, it is necessary to separate nation from state when discussing the impact of religion except in those discrete areas where religiously informed perceptions and beliefs abroad in the nation serve as predicates for the actions of the state. Some of these junctures are easy to identify with precision. Others are not. Still others are, in the language of psychology, "overdetermined."
At the outset it is important to acknowledge that Americans are a very religious people currently. This was underscored today with a Rasmussen poll. The folks with the automated telephone poll found that eighty percent of Americans consider religion to be important in their daily lives. Fifty-seven percent of those responding see religion as "very important."
Look at the results in a more detailed way. Eighty-two percent of evangelical Christians held their faith to be very important in daily life. So did sixty-five percent of all other Protestants, forty-six percent of Catholics, and thirty-seven percent of those belonging to all other faiths. It is to be regretted that the "other faiths" was not broken down by confession given that Americans represent all religions found around the globe.
When one considers the strong hold which faith exercises upon evangelical Christians--and presumably those of a fundamentalist persuasion generally--it is not surprising that it is from this area of religious belief comes the strongest assertions that the US is and always has been a uniquely Christian nation--and state. In pursuing this contention evangelicals have warped American history to meet their desires.
One, particularly egregious, example of this unfortunate tendency toward rhetorical overkill comes from a book written by Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (1981.) Schaeffer, who is both the founder of the evangelical training camp, L'Abri, and a prime theological mover behind the anti-choice movement of the Eighties, proves in this book that history was not taught at his alma mater, Faith Theological Seminary.
Schaeffer would have us believe that the real, honest-to-gosh intellectual prime mover of the American War of Independence was a Scots cleric named Samuel Rutherford. The theological musings of Rutherford were transmitted to the Americans by John Witherspoon the president of Princeton, at that time primarily a divinity school.
Undoubtedly the news that the movement to independence, the war which gained that goal, as well as the Constitution which ultimately came as the capstone were fabricated in the mind of Mr Rutherford would shock the diverse personalities directly involved in these endeavors. The collection of semi-professional revolutionaries, cynical, practical men of politics and idealists with a decent bank account who drove the new state into existence were undoubted well acquainted with both the French and Scottish enlightenment thinking. Most, if not all, were Christians, at least nominally. But, as documents, actions, and politics all show clearly the ideas which underpinned the move to and through independence to the making of a workable constitution were drawn from diverse sources, both ancient and (for the day) contemporary. And, the same words and deeds demonstrate that the men of the revolutionary and early federal period were creative and well understood the human terrain of the thirteen components of the new United States.
Since the Enlightenment was rooted in the Christian basis of Europe, the ideas of the writers of the period whether French, Scots, English, or Colonial reflected values and ideas which were of a clearly Christian nature--including those appropriated by Christian authors from earlier sources. The Enlightenment was not a break from the past. Neither was it the self-conscious desire of most of the thinkers of the day to expunge clearly identifiable Christian ideas and values from the intellectual heritage of Europe.
Neither the thinkers of the Enlightenment nor the practical men of the American War of Independence were seeking to outlaw in some Orwellian way the ideas, values, and concepts which were Christian in basis and nature. Thus it was utterly inevitable and quite unremarkable that Christian notions were rampant during and after the War of Independence and inform at least significant portions of both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
This reality (as well as historical honesty) precludes the need for the sort of gross exaggeration engaged in by Francis Schaeffer and others of the evangelical community. Christian compatable ideas were organic to the time, place, and thoughts. There is no need to artificially enhance their influence or presence.
The language of the Founders was not devoid of Christian terms and ideas if for no other reason than the awareness within this group of politicians that Americans of the day were notably Christian in belief and posture. The Christian foundations of the colonial experiences were well understood as was the potential for religiously based and motivated hatred, discrimination, and violence.
The recognition that religion, particularly the intramural conflicts which had marred both British and colonial history with blood, was a prime reason behind both the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom and its clone in the Bill of Rights. Jefferson, Madison, and others not only feared the social and politically dislocative effects of religious passions but held the belief that free exercise of conscience made for freer men and freer beliefs. In short, prohibiting an intertwining of faith and state benefited citizen, state, and faith alike.
Christian beliefs were worn rather lightly by most Americans during the second half of the Eighteenth century but became both higher profile and more deeply influential following the Second Great Awakening of the early Nineteenth century. Driven by the new denominations, the Methodists particularly but with the Baptists in a close second, waves of camp meetings and revivals blew religious conversions, born again experiences, and the impact of faith on quotidian life to a new high.
Following the Second Great Awakening, faith was used as part and parcel of the splitting of American life (other than on the farm) into the separate spheres of male and female concerns. Increasingly, Christian doctrine and Biblical passages were invoked by both slaveholder and abolitionist to justify their positions. Faith, in a real sense, drove politics as the century rolled on.
Protestant Christianity became more deeply involved in politics even as the last religious tests for office holding, jury duty, and giving testimony in court fell by the wayside. In the fifth decade of the century the Protestant monopoly was seriously challenged by the influx of Catholics from the famine in Ireland. It was also challenged indirectly but with longer lasting results by the Mexican War and its outcome--the expansion of the US into the Spanish colonized areas of the southwest and California.
(It deserves mentioning that Schaeffer thinks that the exalted governmental edifice of Rutherford went to hell in a bucket starting in the 1840s. The Geek does not agree.)
Protestants responded to the perceived Catholic challenge in ways which were, to put it kindly, unseemly. Anti-Catholic prejudice in the guise of "nativism" sought to enlist, or, better, draft the state in its service. A political party, The Order of the Star Spangled Banner, like its predecessor the Anti-Masonic Party in New York state, had as its chief goal the use of state mechanisms to secure a privileged position vis a vis the Catholics in perpetuity. While the Know-Nothings of the Order faded, their campaign entered mainstream American politics and stayed there for generations.
Women, who were conceived of as the custodians of faith based morality in the schemata of the time, sought to draft the mechanisms of the state in assorted campaigns of moral improvement even though women lacked direct political power being voteless. The most notable and longest lived as well as ultimately most disastrous of these was the war on "ardent spirits" which ultimately brought the "noble experiment" of prohibition in the next century. Along with being anti-booze the ladies of the day sought to end pornography. That campaign was also long lived, unsuccessful, and harmful to rights of free expression far beyond the area of dirty pictures.
Looking at the Nineteenth century as a whole, the record of faith based efforts to compel the state to serve faith rooted ideology was spotty to say the least. Both sides on the slavery issue used Bible and preacher in support of opposing positions. On booze and porn the outcome was more bad than good. In the areas of education and penal reform as in that of child labor faith communities scored successes, partial, incomplete, but successes nonetheless.
Throughout the century as was noted by virtually all European observers Americans took their religion, their Protestant Christian religion hot, heavy, and seriously. The American people, it was universally conceded, were uniquely religious. The vast array of voluntary, church based charities stood as a testament to this, a testament which deserved emulation in Europe.
A disinterested historian can conclude only that as long as Christian faith was expressed within the nation, within the people, it was a laudable and successful expression which did much good for many and very little evil to anyone. Only when sincere people of faith attempted to co-opt the machinery of state for a particular purpose did the bad outweigh the good.
The American people to and into the Twentieth century were neither religious zealots nor sanctimonious hypocrites. By and large they took their several belief systems seriously but did not let them impede the often questionable activities of commercial and business life or the equally questionable practice of politics, particularly those of a local sort. Bluntly, Americans believed, even believed deeply, but wore the constraints implied by religion lightly, if at all.
The almost formalistic nature of most but not all American communities of faith in the Mauve decade and beyond was severely tested by the rapid and dramatic changes in the demographics of the US. Some people of faith became convinced that the US envisioned by the Founders could not survive under the pressures of urbanization, industrialization, and floods of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.
To survive some people of great faith argued, the Americans and their state must get back to basics. Or, more properly, must get down to the Fundamentals.
(And so it is water drawing and wood hewing time once more for the Geek. But, he is happy enough with this walk through history to keep on with it in the next post. He hopes readers [if any] see it the same way.)
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