Published in The Founding

David Bobb has a sound and perceptive commentary on President Obama's refounding of the nation's political principles.  Whether it be health care or eroticism for autos, Obama's refrain has been for a "new foundation."  Bobb, Director of Hillsdale College's Washington, DC Kirby Center, documents this reckless audacity and commends the real founding and the discipline it demands and the freedom it protects.

Do we recognize the threat and have the resources and spirit to resist it?  Do we know what we will have lost?

Obama might believe rather more than they. There's nothing wrong with that, but the contrast is interesting. Obama's religion also has rather more of the social gospel than did theirs.

Washington always both reminds us of our limitations and our virtues, and any conversation about Washington teaches us something about the virtues necessary for self-government. You Americans do well to remind yourselves of this great man, this peak of human excellence, and you have reason to be proud of your country, both for its Constitution and its Father.

Today we are launching a new web site on the ratification of the Constitution. This great site is the result of the work of Professor Gordon Lloyd of Pepperdine University and of Roger Beckett. The site is by far the best Internet resource on the ratification of the Constitution.

This new site tells the story of the out of doors debates over the Constitution in pamphlets and in newspapers by the Federalists and Antifederalists. It is the story of the indoors debates in the thirteen state ratifying conventions and the formal struggle over whether the proposed Constitution should be approved.

The site contains an extensive timeline of the events related to the ratification of the Constitution and a map showing the Federalist/Antifederalist vote across the thirteen states. There are introductions and day-by-day summaries of the state ratifying conventions in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York. Also available is the full five-volumes of Jonathan Elliot's Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution. There are biographies of the leading founders in each state involved in ratification, and in case you ever get lost, there is an overview table with links to every major part of the site.

This is not only the most comprehensive site on the ratification, it is also the clearest, with wonderful introductions and explanations provided by Gordon Lloyd.

Like everything we do, it is useful for teachers, students, and citizens alike. I encourage you to visit the site at: http://www.TeachingAmericanHistory.org/ratification.

"What a strange distinction! It certainly would have been foreign to the Founders, who thought the moral precepts of Christian faith indispensable to the survival of the infant republic. And it's a distinction that remains foreign to the vast majority of Americans today."

This claim is insupportable. Most of the founders believed that a reasonable or civil religion was necessary for good government but this was not revealed religion and certainly not "the moral precepts of Christian Faith." The civil religion most Founders thought important for politics did without the first four of the ten commandments.

Toward the end of their article, Novak and Levenick return to this point:

"Every single one of the Founders believed that, at the level of both individual morality and public policy, the demands of reason and of revelation powerfully reinforce one another. They understood that with respect to the ultimate questions -- the creation of the universe, the purpose of human existence, and the hope of life after death -- faith and philosophy might differ. In the practical world they inhabited, however, the Founders believed that both Socrates and Jesus enjoined their followers to accord all persons truth, justice, and charity."

It is true that on the surface some of the dictates of reason and some of the dictates of revealed religion overlap but this does not mean that the United States was founded on the dictates of revealed religion or Christianity. On the contrary, Washington appears to have been indifferent to revealed religion and Jefferson and Franklin were hostile to it. But we can look beyond the Founders to judge the religious character of the founding. At the time of the Founding perhaps no more than 20% of Americans belonged to a Church. America became a Christian nation and religious after the Founding. Church membership increased throughout the nineteenth-century. The figure for Church membership today is several times higher than it was at the Founding.

This last point is worth pondering. It leads one to suspect that, precisely because America is now more Christian and religious than it was at its founding, some people feel the need to make the Founding appear more Christian and religious than it was.

Finally, I would like to note that on the profound difference between reason and revelation with regard to questions of morality and the foundations of politics, a wonderful guide is Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics by Harry Jaffa. The epigraph of the book is a quote from Winston Churchill: "It is baffling to reflect that what men call honour does not correspond always to Christian ethics."

Hat tip: The Conservative Philosopher, who also call our attention to this post on secular universities and the secular Left. It is a sad state of affairs when anyone actually has to say things like this:

University dialogue and debate on ethical and political issues in and out of classrooms should include faculty members who proceed from theistic and non-theistic perspectives. For example, theologians have thought deeply about issues of war and peace. Some are pacifists; other believe in the just war doctrine (with varying views about the conditions for a just war). In the Christian tradition, such theologians would point to scripture, but scripture is only the beginning of the inquiry for most of them. Moreover, to the extent, the debate is confined to scripture, it would be helpful for the secular left (or any informed citizen) to understand the nature of the debate. Obviously, the war and peace example could be multiplied across a broad range of issues. It is hard to imagine why university dialogue would not be enhanced by discussion from theistic and non-theistic perspectives.

But clearly, as the example of Brooke Allen indicates, even simple truths need to be reiterated from time to time.

Update: For a "balanced" view of religion and the founding, see this NYT article.