The idea that Judeo-Christian religious morality is the basis of a just society is a foundational concept in the creation of the United States. This once pervasive concept has now fallen from favor within certain loud segments of society regardless of the high esteem in which it was held by the universality of our Founders. Rejection of the religion-based worldview of the Founders is the core around which liberal anger is constructed.
Where matters of morality, religion, history, and ethics are concerned in the United States today, there is now no “middle.” Among people of good will and reasonable intellect there is a fundamental disagreement not about the nature of morality and ethics, but rather about their value and provenance. One side defends the importance of morality and its origins in religion; the other takes an evangelical, rejectionist position.
Our Founders credited the future success of the United States on God’s guidance, adherence to Judeo-Christian religion, and to Christian religion-based morality. The historical record of our foundational documents and the private papers of our Revolutionary leaders show this to be true.
John Adams (above left), New England Puritan, 2nd President, co-author and signer of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Suffolk Resolves, Ambassador, etc., wrote the following:
It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.
And
[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (source)
John Adams’ cousin, Samuel Adams (above right), patriot and signer of the Declaration of Independence, founding member of the Committees of Correspondence, and one of the leading independence agitators responsible for the radicalization of the Massachusetts Colony against British rule went much further.
For Samuel Adams the Revolution was not only about “independency” – he had even loftier goals. Adams hoped for the return of Puritanism and the creation of a nation founded on Christian principles.
In Sam Adams’s eyes, the American Revolution was to do far more than establish an independent state; it was to purify society, revolutionize manners and morals, and pave the way for another Puritan age.
(Miller, Sam Adams, pp. 359-360; as quoted in John Eidmore, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, p. 255.)
There are few now who know much of Samuel Adams but what they see on a beer label.
There are fewer still who would suggest that the return of Puritanism is now a desirable outcome.
Far fewer suggest (as many Progressives do) that religion, and a desire to fulfill/implement God’s concept of justice and goodness on earth (as they were understood by the Founders and their generation and delineated in Jewish and Christian doctrine), were not fundamental to those who created the United States. Such an overtly inaccurate position surpasses simple denial, though without the usual blather of convolutions and bloviating – it’s merely a lie.
While this revisionist position is difficult to defend – mainly because it is false – there are many who promulgate this counter-historical view.
Even Jefferson, the noted populist and “Deist”, credited God for the wisdom that guided the Founders during the American Revolution. Jefferson concluded his first inaugural address with the following request to the American people and to God.
Relying then on the patronage of your good will (ed. the people), I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choices it is in your power to make: and may that infinite power which rules the destinies of the universe, lead our councils to what is best, & give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.
(Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801)
Jefferson concluded his second inaugural address with similar themes:
I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with his providence, and our riper years with his wisdom and power; and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications, that he will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do, shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.
(Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, March 5, 1805)
A cursory review of the lives of the Founders, their public utterances, and personal and private papers shows a deep link between them, their belief in God and the divine source of morality and its derivation from Judeo-Christian religious principles, doctrine, and tradition. Few public officials today outside of the religious sphere (almost all on the right) discuss morality, its roots in religion, and the importance of Christian and Jewish thought to the foundations of the country. When they do speak in public of such things, they are excoriated for doing so by those on the Progressive Left and also by many others who ought to know better.
A case in point is the vitriol directed at former Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. Both are conservative politicians who speak about morality and link Bible-based morality with public policy.
The rejection of morality in politics by the American Left is nothing less than an ongoing denial of the religious origins of our country and our national character. Many on the Progressive Left have embraced a post-modernist worldview.
Post-modernism posits a radical equivalence that views all religions and all cultures as equal. This concept of radical equivalence is also the foundation of multiculturalism. The deconstruction then of the Founders’ faith, its importance in the development of the country and of its continued value is necessary to support post-modernism and multiculturalism’s worldview and utopian goals.
A central problem to the advancement of the post-modernist view is the origin of American law and morality in Judeo-Christian religion, and our understanding of the central dichotomies around which such laws are built: good/evil, right/wrong, just/unjust, etc. The rejection of the morality of the Founders and the support today for Islam (our Founders did not at all support it ) among American leftists is illustrative.
Islam does not view these essential dichotomies upon which our laws are based in the same way that Americans do. Regardless, the Left views Islam as a fellow-traveler in the deconstruction of American institutions and has therefore allied itself with Islam and Islamists.
The same approach was taken by Iranian leftists prior to the 1979 Islamist Revolution. After the Shah was overthrown leftists there unpleasantly discovered that their views were not at all compatible with totalitarian Islam.
It is difficult to comprehend the cooperative relationship between far left (American Progressives) and extremist totalitarian forces (Islamists) especially when history shows that such relationships can only be temporary. Alliances of convenience between political opposites are usually short-lived and end …poorly. The Iranian leftists learned this lesson. American Progressives seem determined to repeat this costly mistake. (Please see Persepolis.)
[See Part 2 tomorrow.]