just as they opposed economic forces from taking control of the government and thus excluded the word "corporation" from the Constitution so companies could be closely watched by the states and wouldn't be able to corrupt national officials;
so, too, they opposed religious leaders from gaining any unelected access to the levers of political power or intermingling in any way with state business.
For example, on February 21, 1811, President James Madison (also "the father of the Constitution") vetoed a bill passed by Congress that authorized government payments to a church in Washington, DC, to help the poor. Faith-based initiatives were a clear violation, in Madison's mind, of the doctrine of separation of church and state, and could lead to a dangerous transfer of political power to religious leaders.
In Madison's mind, caring for the poor was a public and civic duty -- a function of government -- and must not be allowed to become a hole through which churches could reach and seize political power or the taxpayer's purse. Funding a church to provide for the poor would establish a "legal agency," a legal precedent that would break down the wall of separation the founders had put between church and states to protect Americans from religious zealots gaining political power.
Thus, Madison said in his veto message to Congress, he was striking down the proposed law:
"Because the bill vests and said incorporated church an also authority to provide for the support of the poor, and the education of poor children of the same..." which, Madison said, "would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty."
Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most outspoken of the Founders who saw religious leaders seizing political power as a naked threat to American democracy.
One of his most well-known quotes is carved into the stone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC:
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man."
Modern religious leaders who aspire to political power often cite it as proof that Jefferson was a Bible-thumping Christian.
What's missing from the Jefferson memorial (and almost all who cite the quote), however, is the context of that statement, the letter and circumstance from which it came.
When Jefferson was vice president, just two months before the election of 1800 in which he would become president, he wrote to his good friend, the physician Benjamin Rush, who started out as an orthodox Christian and ended up, later in his life, a Deist and Unitarian. Here, in a most surprising context, we find the true basis of one of Jefferson's most famous quotes:
"Dear Sir... I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten," Jefferson wrote, noting that he knew to discuss the topic would add fuel to the fires of electoral politics swirling all around him. "I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum [the angry poets] who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened.
"The delusion ...on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.
"The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [the preachers] believe that any portion of power confided to me [such as his being elected president], will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion."
Thus began a long and thoughtful correspondence, mostly about religion, between Jefferson and Dr. Rush. In later years, Jefferson would put together what is now called "The Jefferson Bible," in which he deleted all the miracles from the New Testament and presented Jesus to readers as an inspired philosopher. His Jefferson Bible is still in print, and well received, if amazon.com sales and readers' comments are any indication.
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