More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 22 - February 13, 2025
He regularly reiterated this conviction, noting in 1811, for instance, that “religion and virtue are the only Foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments
moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”41 Among other benefits,
Similarly, Jedidiah Morse, a Congregationalist minister, figurative “father of American geography,” and actual father of Samuel F. B. Morse (inventor of the telegraph), preached an election sermon in 1799 where he observed that it is to the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. . . . All efforts to destroy the Foundation of our holy
Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican form of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.
Few founders were more insistent on the importance of religion and morality than George Washington. For instance, in his 1783 “Circular Letter to the States,” written upon his resignation as commander-in-chief
would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.53 (emphasis original)
Like many founders, he thought that belief in God and an afterlife, where one’s deeds would be punished or rewarded, was necessary to ensure that people tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God
This includes engaging in political debate with civility, treating one’s opponents with dignity, telling the truth, and the like. More important, religion is a source of internal control, restraining and disciplining each citizen, and thus limiting the need for external control by civil government.
A religious and, therefore, a moral citizenry is necessary before statesmen can even begin to think about constitutional systems.
This is particularly relevant in America, because Calvinism was “the religious heritage of three-fourths of the American people in 1776.”
When Witherspoon was president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), the school produced “five delegates to the Constitutional Convention, one US President (Madison), a vice president (the notorious Aaron Burr), forty-nine US representatives, twenty-eight US senators, three Supreme Court justices, eight US district judges, one secretary of state, three attorneys general, and two foreign ministers.”
The founders thought that limiting the power of the national government was necessary but not sufficient to prevent corruption and tyranny.
They believed as well that each branch must have the ability to check the other. For instance, a president may veto legislation he considers to be unconstitutional or imprudent, or that infringes upon his authority.
Although Montesquieu is fairly characterized as an Enlightenment thinker, the founders were drawn to him because he addressed a dilemma that all Christian statesmen must face: government is a necessary, God-ordained institution (Rom. 13), but even the best rulers are sinful.
In the words of Louis Hartz, America’s founders “refused to join in the great Enlightenment enterprise of shattering the Christian concept of sin, replacing it with an unlimited humanism,
Practically, this led him (and all but one Supreme Court justice prior to John Marshall) to publicly assert that the Supreme Court could strike down an act of Congress if it violated natural law.
One does not need to be a Christian to appreciate the value of natural rights or limited government. But in the American context, it is clear that the founders valued them, at least in part, for theological reasons.
America’s founders did not have a utopian view of human nature, but they did have a high view of it. This is because they were committed to the core Christian idea that all humans are created in the imago
Dei
Critics of the proposition that America had a Christian founding like to point out that the religious and civic leaders who appealed to verses such as these sometimes took them out of context.101 These criticisms are not unreasonable, but at a deeper level, it is clear that America’s founders understood civic liberty in a thoroughly Christian context.
America’s founders, even those most influenced by the Enlightenment, would have disagreed.
An originalist understanding of the First Amendment does not require states or the national government to protect licentiousness.
In fact, he was not even in the United States when it was drafted by the First Federal Congress; he was ably serving his nation as ambassador to France. Jefferson returned to America while some state legislatures were debating whether to approve the amendment, but there are no records of him participating in any of these debates or attempting to influence them.
The Virginia Statute was approved before the First Amendment, but to assert that for this reason the former influenced the latter is to commit any number of historical fallacies—most clearly that of post hoc ergo propter hoc
The point here is not that Swanwick was correct, but simply that the Virginia Statute was not met with universal approval.
His motto for the new nation would have been: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
Federal funds to support a Catholic priest and to build a church! So much for a high and impregnable wall of separation between church and state.
If we take an originalist approach to the First Amendment, it is constitutionally permissible for governments to continue to encourage religion today.
For example, when delegates met in Philadelphia to draft a new constitution, Georgia, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Vermont, and even Rhode Island required civic officials to be Protestants, whereas Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania insisted that they must “merely” be Christians.
Moreover, it was the state legislatures that ratified the First Amendment, and many originalists insist that the amendment should be interpreted in how it was originally understood, not by the original intent of its drafters.
South Carolina creatively established in its place the “Protestant Christian religion” as the state’s official faith in 1778,
To the distinguished character of a Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian.
Two years later, Congress observed that it is the “indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty
God,” and encouraged citizens to “join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance.”
Particularly relevant for interpreting the First Amendment are the actions of the First Congress, the body that drafted and
proposed this constitutional provision.
One of Congress’s first acts was to appoint congres...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
It is ironic that when justices heard oral arguments in this case, the day’s session opened with the prayer, “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
Congress’s action had absolutely nothing to do with religion; it simply made it clear that an archaic legal practice had no place in federal criminal law.
Clergy should be supported by the government, the committee averred, because “the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices, and preserve the peace of society.”
An originalist understanding of the First Amendment permits the national and state governments to promote religion, and even to specifically encourage and support Christianity.
but in this chapter I contend that an important reason Americans embraced religious liberty was because of their Christian convictions.
These Christian leaders advocated religious liberty for a variety of reasons, including the conviction that persecution does not work, that liberty of conscience causes true religion to flourish, and that the Bible and Christian theology require religious freedom.
