If you are looking for an argument pertaining to the religious sentiments of the majority, that is, that the majority of colonists who originally settled in the American region held to the religious convictions that align with Christianity and therefore the United States was founded as a “Christian Nation”... this article is not for you. Although the first longstanding settlement in the American region was more entrepreneurial than it was inspired by religious matters, there is no question that this land has always proven a land of refuge for religious dissenters. Groups like the Pilgrims, who landed upon the rocky shores of Massachusetts in 1620, and the Quakers, who were granted their charter for the Pennslyvania colony in 1681 under Charles II, are just two of the myriad of examples of historically unrepresented religious minorities who sought out social and religious asylum in America. Surely enough, it would be the descendants of groups like these who would eventually sit down to ratify the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. Yet, influenced by the philosophical work of figures such as Thomas Paine, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a majority of the Founders thought quite differently about religious matters than most mainstream Protestants do today. Influenced by the Enlightenment and the intellectual figures that the movement fostered, a majority of those who did represent the Protestant sects of the day (Congregationalism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, and Quakerism - only three Founders were of the Roman Catholic heritage) ascribed to a given practice due to its reasonableness and virtue rather than out of one’s realization for their own sin and fallenness. So, with that in mind, who is the God that the Founders speak of in the Declaration? There are two core concepts concerning religion that are central to understanding how the Founders yearned to put the spiritual in its rightful place. The two terms, which have been previously explained in other articles, are known as public and private religion (see The American Concept of God: Defining Public and Private religion). In short, if we have an accurate understanding of the difference between these concepts, we can be sure that if our democracy was founded upon the religious ideals of Christianity, the concept of public religion would not be ecumenical, but, directly catered towards the Christian faith. Furthermore, the God that is spoken of in the Declaration is no Christian embodiment of Christ but rather the God of public religion. The God of public religion that is embodied in the Declaration is not Jesus of Nazareth. It is, in turn, Jefferson’s own Deistic idea of the divine. Nature’s God. For the sake of no further confusion, the God of the Declaration is best understood as Nature’s God, Jefferson’s God, the God of Democracy, or the God of public religion. Jefferson’s God ruled by Providence. Providence was God’s way of intervening in human affairs and imposing his will for the betterment of general society. It was God’s way of looking out for and protecting humankind. Inversely, it was also God’s way of punishing humanity for their lack of virtue. Interestingly enough, this Enlightenment philosophy of God ruling over mankind sounds oddly similar to the Buddhist/Hindu idea of Karma. This is besides the point, as the idea of Providence was used by Enlightenment Deists, such as Jefferson, to rationalize the work of God in human affairs without sounding particularly Christian. Ironically, this concept was coined by Reformation-era theologians such as Luther and Calvin to better conceptualize God’s general role in the world he created. As the idea developed over time, its meaning became increasingly less Christian. Intellectuals influenced by the Enlightenment began to use the term to refer the Deistic God’s governance over the world and the term became decreasingly less Christian over time, especially during the years leading up to the Revolutionary Period in America.
The God of Democracy valued reason over divine revelation. If anything lacked reason, it could not be trusted. Such as the miracles of Jesus recorded in the New Testament. Because these events recorded by the Gospel writers were not particularly reasonable to believe, they were deemed unbelievable. Jefferson even expelled most all of Christ’s New Testament miracles from the scriptures in his abridged version of the Bible that he coined The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (known today as the Jefferson Bible). The ideological framework of Nature’s God was assuredly out of sync with orthodox Christianity and thus the religious framework of our government cannot be trusted as traditionally Christian. These are just two definitive positions that envelop the American concept of God. By these truths, we may accurately discern that our political and religious structure was in no way Christian but more closely assigned with Enlightenment thought. The fact of the matter was that a number of representatives at the Constitutional Convention were Christian and could have advocated for a Christian undertone to the Declaration. But almost none did and those who did were passionately shot down. Why was this? It was probably because of the Founders’ knowledge of failed institutional religion in the colonies. Or, possibly, it was due to the frustration that many of their ancestors experienced in the Old World under the Church of England. In conclusion, the God that this country was founded upon was no such Christian envisionment of Jesus. It was rather, the philosophical embodiment of the many ideas that our Founders were so heavily influenced and shaped by. The American God remains in no way similar to Christ, but, rather, can be more aptly associated with the reasonable God of Locke, Newton, or Paine. At the end of the day, the Founders could have taken the chance to use the Christian lingo within both the Declaration and when formulating their public ideas of liberty, for many of them favored the morals of Christianity, but they preferably fancied themselves with Nature’s God.
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Oftentimes, Thomas Jefferson is mischaracterized as one of America’s foundational Christian-philosophers. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The line between public and private religion, for Jefferson, was especially close, unlike the majority of Orthodox Christians (those who subscribe to the most foundational of Christian truths - not to be confused with the sect of Christianity known as Eastern Orthodox). Public religion was and still is today, defined as more of a philanthropic way of thinking of God, rather than ascribing to an all-powerful being who performs miracles, damns sinners to hell, and condemns sinful acts. Jefferson’s God was Nature’s God, the deity that is oftentimes referred to within documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Jefferson received his education at the College of William & Mary, which remains one of the most prestigious places to study the subject of history to this date. At William & Mary, Jefferson studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy. He graduated with honors in two years. It is said that during Jefferson’s time at William & Mary, under the instruction of Professor William Small, he was strongly influenced by deist philosophy. This was probably due to his introduction to Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. Much like the philosophers that were just mentioned, Jefferson found himself extremely vexed with the Christian doctrine of Trinitarianism, the belief that Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit are each individually three distinct persons within one all-powerful Triune God. Jefferson and other proponents of Deism would have most likely agreed, to some extent, with Micheal Severus’ infamous work, On the Errors of the Trinity (1531). A work that had its author sent to burn at the stake for the capital crime of heresy under the reign of Jean Calvin of Geneva, Severus argues that those who fall way to the doctrine of the Trinity are actually worshiping three separate gods rather than one triune entity. Severus, during a time in which both Protestants and Catholics would have executed him for his beliefs, daringly claimed that each individual person within the Godhead was comparable with a three-headed monster and subsequently stated that the concept of Trinitarianism was a deception under the advocation of the devil. Proponents of Deism, like the ones we have mentioned, would have most likely agreed with Severus’s notion that Trinitarianism must be deemed irrational but would have not gone to the extent to which Severus desired to make his point known. Despite Jefferson’s religious alignment with philosophical Deism, he spoke highly of Christianity. In fact, he claimed that the moral precepts of Christianity were some of the finest of any religion. He claimed Jesus to be one of the finest moral teachers to ever walk the earth, but not the savior of the world. Jefferson’s particular conflict with Christianity was the concept of the deity of Christ, which remains the most important doctrine to the Christian faith. Jefferson’s sentiments concerning this issue were far from secret, contrary from Isaac Newton’s beliefs on the subject. The Virginian went as far as cutting out all the portions of scripture that mentioned Christ as the Savior of the world. These passages including numerous sections from the four gospels, miracles, and the resurrection of Jesus. Jefferson titled his revised version of the Christian scriptures The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, or, many may know it as the Jefferson Bible.
In conclusion, it proves rather outlandish for any one person to claim Jefferson as one of Christianity's most important figures. Jefferson may have considered himself Christian to a certain moral extent, but was far from orthodoxy. Our third president was, in no way, convinced of some of the most foundational of Christian ideas, that would have otherwise identified himself as such. Overall, Jefferson was a brilliant man. Influenced by the logical thinkers of the Enlightenment, he preferred Nature’s God rather than Christ. The foundational American concept of God is inevitably wrapped up in what Jefferson and other prominent philosophers have defined as public and private religion. There is a significant distinction between the two that remains pivotal to American religion today. It is clear that, from the beginning of any society, man has desired the supernatural and has yearned deeply for knowledge that lies beyond the human experience. In other words, humanity contains an innate awareness and desire to understand the sacred. A number of scholars refer to this natural phenomenon as homo religiosus. The term perfectly encapsulates the human desire to seek meaning, understand creation, and the mystical, all into one phrase. The human inclination to understand life’s most important questions further prompts our answer to such. Thus, our personal rationalization of truth (our answers to these questions) will influence how we reason, vote, worship, and contribute to the wellbeing of our society (whether through our church, synagogue, mosque, or lack thereof). The action of the human race looking beyond their current reality to discern the monumental truths of life has proved to be no recently discovered affair, but, rather, a great reminder of the Old Testament truth that there is nothing new under the sun. In short, our own personal understanding of these questions will have a great influence on how we view God, his relationship to us, and his work in our society. Furthermore, our decision regarding how we view God, believe, worship, and practice that very worship is protected by the government and from the government under the First Amendment of the Constitution. This concept is best understood as the private sphere, or, more specifically as “private religion”. Advocates of the principal of private religion, specifically secularists, quite frequently find reassurance in Richard Hooker’s wall of separation between church and state. Hooker’s metaphorical conceptualization between these two distinct spheres of American political society takes a specific aim to diverge church from state, not religion from politics, so Jefferson once clarified. The two given spheres are uniquely distinct and both play important roles within our everyday society. The church is the vessel through which we practice our private religion. Whether we attend the Christian church or another religious institution, all religious proceedings present within our worshipful organizations exist without government injunction or funding. The government cannot ensure that one form of worship is more American, or more profitable, than another but only can ensure that each American holds the freedom of conscience to choose how exactly each individual wishes to worship. Yet, the philosophical giants of the American democracy ensured that religion would also be inevitably present within key governmental statues and the founding ideas that shaped the democracy we know today. Quite fittingly, it would be none other than Benjamin Franklin who would come to formulate and infuse his idea of “public religion” into the core concepts present in the Constitution and other notable revolutionary documents. Franklin envisioned that when his fellow citizens would gaze upon the few statements that reference the divine, within the key American documents, that the individual would be reminded of his or her personal sentiments for god, not specifically the Christ of Christianity. In that, the individual would be reminded of their personal attitude towards private religion, not someone else's. This was the genius of the founders, that if they desired to incorporate a statutory form of religion, it would have most likely caused a substantial amount of conflict, as it did in England.
In Franklin’s view, the god of public religion was wholly beneficial towards society and the implications of the concept of religion within society rendered a spirit of charity to one another, a general moral disposition, and provides an acknowledgment towards something greater than oneself. Franklin goes on to explain that religion contains a certain usefulness for culture and that we know this because of all the previously successful governments that adopted ideas associated with the divine. The idea of public religion hinges upon the simple concept that religion is good for the individual and the absence of such may contribute towards the lack of virtue within that very society. Although Franklin wrote generously about the Christian religion, he did not believe that following Jesus Christ was more beneficial for the individual, or the collective, than following any other god. The explained “great catapult” created a number of social issues that, previously, as we have discussed, fell under the responsibility of the Catholic Church. Giving alms to the poor, providing last rites, running local orphanages, and providing educational services were just a few tasks that fell into the hands of the Catholic Church prior to the Reformation. These responsibilities would have become especially rampant and challenging amidst Calvin’s era, as many European states were still dealing with the ongoing impacts of the Black Death. Suffice to say, because of Calvin’s intermixed sentiments regarding the spheres of church and state, a large number of these challenging social concerns fell into the hands of the Genevan Church, even under the pastorate of Calvin specifically. Calvin’s ecclesiastical responsibilities most definitely vexed him, especially when it came to dealing with those who found themselves in a great deal of sin and were unrepentant of that very sin. Such philanthropic tasks, Calvin understood, both biblically and emotionally, he ought to face with virtue but we may assert that his susceptibility to impatience could have most certainly played a factor within his ministry. It so happens, that Hicks’s quite dogmatic characterization of the temperament of the French Reformer seems as if it supersedes any general understanding of human nature. In that, Hicks’s description does indeed accurately hint that Calvin had a natural propensity to brashness but fails to give any reasonable historical proof to why this may have been so. While failing to provide any substantial historical proof to understand Calvin’s irritability, the critic seems to suggest that Calvin’s dispositional shortcomings are even more out of the ordinary than compared with the remainder of general humanity. Furthermore, Hicks’s portrayal provides a suitable effect (his vulnerability to impatience, irritability, and brashness) of Calvin’s disposition but no suitable cause (why he was vulnerable to such). Which inversely suggests that the very effect outweighs the cause. To the uninformed reader, one may be thoroughly convinced of Calvin’s “anger-consumed” temperament just by the author's passion alone, but, the truth remains, that the reader will still remain uninformed because they lack the true cause behind the effect. A mutual understanding of both of these terms remains pivotal in any historical situation, even down to some of the most rudimentary of historical concepts. Although Horton seems to align more ideologically with Calvin’s theological sentiments, his entire perspective is fairly neutral. In fact, Horton goes a lot deeper into his temperament while Hicks gives his strongly assertive argument without much defense. Overall, the conventional belief in Calvin’s frailty to anger, irritability, and impatience is rooted in his absolute seriousness for the gospel. To many of his Calvin’s theological adversaries, his seriousness and passion may have quite possibly intimidated those who did not fall into the same ideological spectrum as him. His seriousness did not render passiveness, in fact, despite the stress of “the great catapult”, our French Reformer was notoriously known for calling out those whose ideas did not fall in line with what he believed the scriptures claimed. Overall, Calvin was quite the serious figure and his seriousness most definitely contributed to his success, and his shortcomings, in reforming the city-state of Geneva.
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