The Religion of Free Men: Why the Founding Fathers Would Appal MAGA
https://www.manasjournal.org/index.php
In browsing through it this morning, I came across a piece from 1955 titled ‘The Religion of Free Men’. Having just finished it, it strikes me that I really must reproduce it here on my own blog. The reasons are manifold.
First, its subject obviously overlaps with my own passion for free-religion. Second, it contains many Unitarian-related references. Third, it mentions several thinkers who have been influential in my own religious and philosophical development. But it is the fourth reason that most powerfully prompts me to post it here.
The thing is, since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term, we have all witnessed the disturbing rise of an explicit form of warmongering, anti-Islamic, Christian ethno-nationalism—a shift cheerled by the grotesque figure of Pete Hegseth. He, Trump, and their cronies are pushing this line under the banner of ‘making America great again’ (MAGA), claiming to return America to what they imagine the Founding Fathers of the United States were all about. But, of course, this is complete and utter bollocks; it is as much a deranged, violence-inducing fantasy as Vladimir Putin’s fever dreams of ‘Greater Russia’ (Великая Россия).
So, here is the remarkable paragraph from the MANAS essay that leapt out at me in connection with the point I have just made. It is a quotation from Harry Elmer Barnes (himself, alas, also a controversial and deeply problematic figure, particularly in his later years), recounting an incident from the early diplomatic history of the United States:
‘In negotiating a treaty with Tripoli regarding the settlement of the piracy nuisance late in his second administration, Washington’s representative hastened to reassure the Mohammedans by declaring that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.” The treaty was sent to the Senate with the approval of John Adams. In 1896 an effort was made to insert in the Constitution a “Christian Amendment,” which would specifically mention the name of Jesus. A speaker for the amendment deplored Washington’s “atheistic” proclivities and pointed to the desperate condition of his army in the Jerseys, when the great commander, instead of ordering the Bible to be read to his regiments, ordered Tom Paine’s Crises read aloud to his hungry and barefoot soldiers.’
This passage would have struck me at any time, but right now it fairly leapt from the page and shook me about! If only it had the power to stop Trump, Hegseth, and company in their tracks and shake them up. Of course, it will not; but it might just serve to encourage us to remind others that the MAGA crowd are just about as wrong can be concerning the beliefs of Founding Fathers and the early history of the USA . . .
THE RELIGION OF FREE MEN (1955)
Author unattributed, but almost certainly Henry Geiger (1908–1989)
DESPITE the natural difficulties which surround any attempt to arrive at the convictions of men who may be said to have been “free,” one thing is certain: Their ideas are likely to be those which may prosper in an atmosphere of unrestricted reason. No one can quarrel with the claim that a free man is a man who is determined to think for himself. This freedom of mind, moreover, is of greater importance than political freedom, in making a definition. It will be conceded, for example, that Socrates, whose liberty was curtailed by his Athenian judges, and whose life was ended by their decree, was nevertheless a freer man than those who condemned him.
There is a natural tendency on the part of Americans to think of themselves as “free,” and, politically speaking, little doubt but that the institutions of the United States afford explicit recognition of the right of human beings to be free. An inquiry of this sort, then, may well begin with an examination of the “religion” of the men who shaped those institutions. Even if the religion or religions of the Founding Fathers suffer from obscurity, this obscurity may itself be of considerable significance, since the most easily defined religions are not necessarily the best. On the contrary, if true religion is an inward thing, the reverse may be true.
One clear contrast between the political leaders of the present and those of the period of the American Revolution lies in their respective relations to the religious orthodoxy of their times. Our present leaders seem to seek orthodoxy with eagerness as an obligation, perhaps, of sound politics. The revolutionary leaders, despite political hazards, chose an opposite course. In History and Social Intelligence, published in 1926, Harry Elmer Barnes collected evidence to show that “the majority of distinguished Americans in the generation of the Fathers were not even professing Christians.”
Students of intellectual history have observed that the best single example of the ideas of the Founding Fathers is found in Robert Ingersoll, the great free-thinker who came a century later. In a sermon on Ingersoll, a Unitarian clergyman, Minot J. Savage, said: “His [Ingersoll’s] ideas were very largely those of Voltaire, of Gibbon, of Hume, of Thomas Paine, of Thomas Jefferson, of Benjamin Franklin, and of a good many other of our prominent Revolutionary heroes.” Back in 1831, a perturbed minister declared with dismay that most of the founders of our country were “infidels” and that “of the first seven presidents not one of them had professed his belief in Christianity.”
“Christianity,” of course, was much more rigorously defined in those days. A researcher might easily dig up quotations tending to reveal Christian sentiments among the Founding Fathers, but in the eighteenth century something more than a Christian sentiment was needed to indicate genuine “profession of faith.” It almost seemed to this minister, whose sermon on the subject was published in the Albany Daily Advertiser, that God had been deliberately left out of the picture by the authors of the Constitution. He wrote:
When the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it. There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of God’s laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity. Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man but he was not a professing Christian.
George Washington is sometimes represented as having been a pious Episcopalian, since he attended an Episcopal church. His pastor, however, the Rev. James Abercrombie, is witness to the fact that Washington never received communion. Abercrombie frowned on this abstinence and preached a sermon to Washington, urging the danger of persons in high places setting a bad example. The result was that Washington stopped coming to church at all on Communion Sunday. Barnes cites from the early diplomatic history of the United States an interesting incident:
In negotiating a treaty with Tripoli regarding the settlement of the piracy nuisance late in his second administration, Washington’s representative hastened to reassure the Mohammedans by declaring that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.” The treaty was sent to the Senate with the approval of John Adams. In 1896 an effort was made to insert in the Constitution a “Christian Amendment,” which would specifically mention the name of Jesus. A speaker for the amendment deplored Washington’s “atheistic” proclivities and pointed to the desperate condition of his army in the Jerseys, when the great commander, instead of ordering the Bible to be read to his regiments, ordered Tom Paine’s Crises read aloud to his hungry and barefoot soldiers.
Jefferson, outspoken on the subject of religion, counseled his nephew: “Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blindfolded fear.” Adams candidly admitted his guilt of the “Arminian heresy,” asking, “where do we find a precept in the gospel requiring ecclesiastical synods? convocations? councils? decrees? creeds? confessions? oaths? subscriptions? and a whole cartload of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?)’ Madison and Monroe shared Jefferson’s views, on the whole, and Madison was responsible for a historic statement opposing any connection between church and state. Barnes concludes his discussion of the subject by remarking that “the three outstanding Fathers who were not presidents, namely, Hamilton, Marshall and Gouverneur Morris, were notable free-thinkers.”
In general, the Founding Fathers have been termed “Deists.” While difficult to define, since all Deists have been individualists in religious thought—and there could not possibly have been a Deist “church”—Deism accepts the idea of Deity as a general Providence, but denies the superiority of any miraculous revelation over what may be learned by natural means. Something approaching an account of Deism was composed by John Toland toward the end of the seventeenth century, in the form of a book entitled, Christianity Not Mysterious. Toland held that what was true in Christianity was not mysterious, since it could be grasped by reason, and that what could not be grasped by reason was not true. Toland also argued that the New Testament usage of “mystery” meant not something incomprehensible, but, as with the ancients, a secret revealed to the initiated. The later meaning of mystery, as something beyond the reach of understanding, was, he argued, a corruption introduced by an unscrupulous priesthood.
Toland, it is worth noting, coined the term “pantheist” and wrote a book, Pantheistikon, in which he held that wise men had always taught both an inner and an outer doctrine. In another of his books, Clidophorus, meaning the “key-bearer,” he speaks of this idea, adding an anecdote which illustrates his position:
An anecdote is related of a Lady, who had been heavily persecuted on account of her Religion. When in a time of great Freedom, being invited to church by a friend, she reply’d: “Every person of sense is of some Religion; but what Religion it is, a sensible person never tells.”
While approving this response to the Lady, Toland believed that there was a way to make possible free communication by wise men of their convictions. He proposed:
Let all men freely speak what they think, without being ever branded or punished but for wicked practices, and leaving their speculative opinions to be confuted or approv’d by whoever pleases; then you are sure to hear the whole truth, and till then but very scantily, or obscurely, if at all.
Frederick Lange gives a further account of Toland’s views in his History of Materialism:
He [Toland] demands in this treatise [Partheistikon] the entire laying aside of revelations and of popular beliefs, and the construction of a religion which agrees with philosophy. His God is the universe; from which everything is born, into which everything returns. His cultus is that of truth, liberty, and health, the three things most highly prized by the wise man. His saints and fathers are the master-spirits and most excellent authors of all times, especially of classical antiquity; but even they form no authority to chain “the free spirit of mankind.” The president cries in the Sokratic liturgy, “Swear by no master’s word!” and the answer comes back to him from the congregation, “Not even by the word of Sokrates!”
Toland’s mood was prophetic. Pantheistikon appeared in 1720, and seventy-seven years later, in Paris, after the full triumph of the French Revolution, the Society of Theophilanthropists pursued activities very like that described by Toland. At their meetings the Theophilanthropists sang humanitarian hymns and read from the ethical teachings of the Bible and from Chinese, Greek, and Hindu authors. The members gathered for these meetings in parish churches assigned to them by the Directory. They began by invoking the “Father of Nature” and “searched their consciences in Quaker-like silence.” Thomas Paine addressed one of their meetings, seeing in the society “the seed out of which the natural religion of the future might grow.”
In the United States, the Deist reverence for nature appeared in the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence, in the reference to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” There was, however, opposition. In the presidential campaign of 1800, much capital was made by the Federalists out of Jefferson’s “notorious” free-thinking. Although Jefferson was so great an admirer of Jesus that he edited for his own use a version of the New Testament which left out all but the moral teachings of Jesus, he was nonetheless attacked by his political opponents as one who “hated Christ and his Church” and whose “daily speech is that of an infidel.” A pamphleteer offering “Warning to Christians in the Ensuing Election” accused Jefferson of denying that “shells found on mountain-tops are proofs of the great flood,” and predicted that “immorality” would flourish if Jefferson were elected. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale University, publicly anticipated the nationalization of Women under a Godless Jeffersonian regime, and so persuasive were these several warnings that, after Jefferson took office, “certain pious women in New England buried their Bibles in their gardens, for fear that he would at once send out janizaries to confiscate them.”
But Jefferson did become president, the “freedom” of his religion notwithstanding. This was one of the greatest of the achievements of eighteenth-century liberalism and the American Revolution. Men of his views a few hundred years before were hunted, persecuted, and burned at the stake for their beliefs. One of these, Michael Servetus, suffered attack, imprisonment, and finally death over a slow fire of green boughs at the hands of John Calvin for daring to believe, with ancient pantheists, that “God is eternal, one and indivisible, and in Himself inscrutable, but making His being known in and through creation, so that not only is every living but every lifeless thing an aspect of Deity.” An aspect of Servetus’ heresy was the honor he did to Man. In the course of a theological correspondence with Calvin, he wrote to the Genevan reformer:
All that men do, you say is done in sin, and is mixed with dregs that stink before God, and merit nothing but eternal death. But therein you blaspheme. Stripping us of all possible goodness, you do violence to the teaching of Christ and his Apostles, who ascribe perfection or the power of being perfect to us: “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt, v.48). You scout this celestial perfection, because you have never tested perfection of the kind yourself. Thou reprobate and blasphemer, who calumniates” the works of the Spirit!
Servetus was a martyr to Protestant fury. He died at the stake on October 27, 1553. A bare half-century later, on February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher and pantheist, was led into a public square in Rome and burned to death for similar errors. Bruno had declared:
The universe, then, is one, infinite, immovable. One, I say, is the absolute possibility, one the act, one the form or soul, one the matter or body, one the being....Every production, of whatever sort it be, is an alteration, the substance ever remaining the same, for that is only one one being, divine, immortal. Pythagoras was able to understand that, instead of fearing death, he need only contemplate change. All philosophers, commonly called physical, have perceived the same truth when they say that in respect of substance there is neither generation nor corruption, unless under these names we mean to signify alteration. Solomon understood this when he said that there was no new thing under the sun, but that which has been already. Understand, then, that all things are in the universe, and the universe in all things; we in that, that in us; and so all meet in one perfect unity. See, then, how vain a thing it is to torment the spirit with anxieties; see how impossible it is that there should be anything about us of which we ought to be fearful. For this unity is alone and stable, and ever remaineth. This One is eternal. Every appearance, every other thing is vanity, is as it were nothing; yea, all that is nothing which is outside of this One. Those philosophers who have found again their mistress Sophia, or Wisdom, have found this Unity. Verily and indeed wisdom, truth, and unity is the same.
Spinoza, before another century had passed, was to suffer, if not death, complete ostracism, by the Jewish community in Holland, again for the pantheistic heresy. “I hold,” he said, “that God is the immanent not the extraneous cause of all things. I say, all is in God; all lives and moves in God. And this I maintain with the Apostle Paul, and perhaps with every one of the philosophers of antiquity, although in a way other than theirs. I might even venture to say that my view is the same as that entertained by the Hebrews of old, if so may be inferred from certain traditions, greatly altered and falsified though they be.”
Why should we say that these have been free men? Largely because they stood for the highest sort of freedom in human life, sometimes dying for it as well. By thinking for themselves, they enriched themselves, and the world, which is greatly in their debt. The important thing about their religion is that it gave them the integrity of conviction which made their own independent conclusions of greater importance than anything else, and so gave an example of lives of principle to all who came after. We can hardly avoid the conclusion that the living quality of their pantheist thought was the source of this integrity and courage. They would submit to no insistent conformity, no outside ruler of mind or conscience. They were not criminals, yet they were treated far worse than common breakers of the law. They were gentle men, teachers, philosophers, devoted to their fellow men. But their religion had one common principle of self-reliance in thought and belief. They, more than any others—they, and the few who were like them—are the true authors of human freedom, wherever it is found.
From the ancient Stoics to the modern Einsteins and Schweitzers is a long course of two thousand years and more. There have been a few bright interludes of civilization and learning, and much longer periods of darkness along this path. But, throughout, the religion of free men changes very little, if at all, in its fundamental expression. It is the religion of men who cherish a secret divinity within, however they name it, and who live in the world, whatever it is like, without fear.
Comments