Church, State and the National Day of Prayer: What would our Founders think?

Recent articles published at the Patriot Post by Mark Alexander and Rebecca Hagelin put in clear perspective one of the most fundamental issues plaguing our nation.While we have plenty of challenges, many of the most serious ones can be traced back to one basic shortcoming – we have not adequately remembered and revered God as the Source of our life and liberty. The ruling yesterday by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional only confirms this secular trend. It also highlights a grossly distorted perspective of the Founders’ views on the relationship between Church and State.

Our Founding Fathers made it very clear that the Constitution they labored to create was only fit to govern a people who took religion and morality seriously. John Adams expressed this quite forcefully. Said he “We have no government capable of contending with human passions unbridled by religion and morality”. The great English philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, whom Adams, Madison and their colleagues looked to as a teacher described this relationship perhaps most clearly:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.”

Faithful adherence to religious beliefs leads to self-restraint, personal responsibility and charity for others. Consequently, such people need less government because they govern themselves and their communities well. The farther we slip from the moorings which religion has so long provided, the more government must be created to fill the void.

It is often argued that many of the Founders were not Christian, because they did not regularly attend public worship services or because some embraced Deism. While the Founders may not all have been personally attached to any particular denomination, that fact is not necessarily an indication of lack of Christian faith. Many were devoted churchmen and participated actively in their local congregations.  Some did not.  But there is ample historical evidence that Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson and the rest had a strong belief in God.  Washington was so aware of his influence in the young nation, and so sensitive to the need to prevent religious strife, that he chose not to participate in any particular denomination so as not to create grounds for religious bigotry. While their personal religious practices were diverse, and their beliefs complex, the Founders were uniformly and enthusiastically supportive of the role of religion in maintaining a stable, harmonious and prosperous nation. In his farewell address to his cabinet George Washington said:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest prop of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge in the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. 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... Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?"

Over and over again the men who forged this nation from a conglomerate of separate colonial societies recognized the hand of God in their unlikely success – in the war for Independence against Britain, in the proceedings which gave birth to the Constitution and in the lengthy process of ratifying it, state by state.

In the Federalist #20 James Madison wrote: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the Revolution.”

While enthusiastic about the role of religion in the public sphere, the Founders were equally devoted to protecting the religious liberties of individual religious societies from undue governmental influence. They knew only too well the tyranny which a state-sponsored church could inflict. In response to a letter from the United Baptist Churches in the State of Virginia expressing concerns over the level of protection for religious freedom assured in the proposed Constitution, Washington wrote:

"....If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly, I should never have placed my signature to it"

Given the Founders clear support for the role of religion in public life it is impossible to take seriously the idea that their desire to prohibit a state-sponsored church meant that they were advocating an absolute separation of Church and State. Those who advocate such an idea today (mostly so-called “progressives” and supporters of central government power) clearly have their own anti-religious agenda. Their fear of religion blinds them to the genuine strength religion brings to a society.

Or perhaps they simply prefer the levers of government, which they as civic priests can use to exert control over the people, to the levers of personal control exercised by a people who act according to the dictates of their own consciences, and who direct their lives through honoring faith in and personal commitments to a God whom they love and revere. Undermining the religious foundation of those liberties which have made us who we are is both incredibly naïve and dangerously shortsighted – although that seems to be the path which the atheists and secular religionists among us have been pushing for decades – and which sympathetic elements in our judicial system have supported. We can only hope that we as a nation can reverse this trend before it is too late.

Why does liberty mean so much to me? A slice of family history

I get very agitated when I see politicians – Republicans, Democrats or those of any other stripe – enacting legislation which tears down the fundamental principles upon which this country was founded.  Why does it bother me so much?  Many of the reasons I could cite are reasons I share with most other conservatives in this country, but some of the reasons are much more personal.

My ancestors were some of the earliest European émigrés to America.  They helped to settle the New York colony, and fought actively for America’s independence.

Michael Weigand, along with others of his religious community, came to the New World to escape the political tyranny and religious persecution of 18^th century Europe.  With his family, he left his homeland in the Rhine river area (modern Germany) after being burned out three times in ten years by the armies of Louis XIV.  As refugees they fled through Holland to England.

Queen Ann took pity on them and granted the group a tract of land along the Hudson River where they settled in 1708.  The settlement they helped to develop eventually became Newburgh, New York.

Map of land granted by Queen Anne - divided by family

Later, several of Michael’s descendants fought against the British in the War of Independence.  John, Martin, Matthew, Michael (a grandson) and Tobias Wygant all served as enlisted men in the New York militia.  Their unit was called out many times over the course of the War to defend their homes and families.

Martin owned a tavern in Newburgh
which served as a rendezvous point for the Fourth Regiment, and for a time allowed General Anthony Wayne to headquarter in his home.  George Washington himself set up a headquarters in Newburgh at the Hasbrouck House during the last year and a half of the war.
While this might seem like distant history, it has great meaning for me because these are my people.  My ancestors endured great tribulation leaving their homeland and helping to settle this country.  And they went to war to maintain the right to govern themselves.

Now our Congress, and a President who seems to care nothing for the history and traditions of this country and its people, want to undermine that right to self-governance.  As a nation founded on the ideals of self-government we cannot allow this to stand.  As John Adams reminds us, once freedom is surrendered it is very difficult to regain.

Many other families in this country have ancestral stories similar to mine.  Share your stories.  Share them with your representative in Congress.  Send them to the President.  Remind our leaders that they serve us, and that we (and our ancestors) are not amused.

Underlying issues in the health-care debate

There are two fundamentally different views on the nature of human rights at the heart of the current health care debate.  The “positive rights” or “natural rights” tradition holds that basic human rights are inherent in our being.  They are seen as gifts from Nature or Nature’s God, and therefore exist prior to government.  Since government does not grant them it does not control, direct or guarantee them.  In this view, people make choices for themselves as they exercise personal liberty to direct their own lives, and create governments as necessary to help referee conflicts which inevitably arise between individuals exercising those rights.
In the “negative rights” tradition, rights are granted by government.  People are only allowed to do what a sovereign government allows permission for them to do.  Because rights are granted by the government, the government also controls their exercise.

Our Founders advocated a positive rights view.  Jefferson enumerated “the pursuit of happiness” not “the guarantee of happiness” among those rights he said were unalienable.  He had good reason for this.  If government is held to be the source or guarantor of happiness it can also take that happiness away.

Advocating for health care guaranteed as a “right”, paid for and delivered by the federal government is advocating at the same time for government to control the exercise of that right, including when and where care will be given.  If the government is paying for care, the government will naturally determine which tests are allowed to diagnose a problem, how many can be given, which procedures are allowed, etc. If you think insurance companies are intrusive and obstructionist, just wait until a federal agency dictates how health care is run.

While inconvenience, longer wait time and rationed care seem to be inevitable outcomes of the federal takeover of health care, the most damning outcome is likely to be surrendering more of our personal liberty – turning more and more control over to a federal master.  Benjamin Franklin said it this way:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Like many other conservatives have said before me, the more fundamental issue here is about much more than health care – it is about the proper role of government.  We want government to do less to us and for us -- and leave us alone to direct our own lives.  They want it to do more, and seem willing to accept the chains that are eventually forged in the process.

Getting in the game

(Posted originally on March 24 at stevew.blogivists.com)

Enough. When I started this blog in November I intended to write often. Then I got a case of the guilts --  “Why should anyone care what I think?”, “There are enough people sharing opinions out there already – what good could one more voice be?”

Well, America is less free now that it was before Sunday March 21st because 3 more congressmen voted for a bill that tramples on Constitutional principles than voted against it. The debate and vote on “health care” was a travesty. So perhaps we do need more voices advocating the “First Principles” of government embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Founders knew what they were doing. They wrote these documents after careful study of the successes and failures of governments throughout history. The principles upon which they built our government were designed to protect us from the abuses of a tyrannical government – even one which starts with “good intentions’. As Alexander Hamilton put it:

a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

Several things seem very clear after Sunday’s vote. Here are a few:

1) People are confused about “rights”. Where the writers of the Declaration mention “unalienable rights” they did not mean that the government could or should guarantee its people prosperity, health, or any other personal good – only that we should be free to pursue them. No government can guarantee those ends. It can only get in the way of its people achieving them by attempting to. Even a causal reading of history makes this clear. As Congressman Paul Ryan said Sunday night “We’ve seen this movie before. It doesn’t end well.”

2) Because people are confused about rights and the proper role of government, our federal government is out of control. It is headed by men and women who either do not understood or do not value the principles embodied in the Constitution. Republican or Democrat - they need to be educated or replaced. More importantly, we as a people need to educate ourselves about the ideals established in the Declaration and the Constitution. They need to be taught in our homes, our churches and our schools.

3) (Most importantly) Too many in our country have abandoned God, and we are suffering for that. Despite what the non-believers say, we are (or were at least) a Christian nation. While the Founders did not want a state religion (they had seen enough abuses of power stemming from that nightmare wedding to avoid it) they believed strongly in the value of religion in the public square, and in the lives of the people. They clearly believed that a Constitutional government could only work with a people who were basically moral and virtuous, who could and would govern themselves largely without having to depend on laws to determine what they should and should not do. Those are the outcomes of honest and sincere devotion to Christian discipleship. This is not to say that non-Christians cannot be virtuous, only that a truly Christian walk puts people on the path to sound self-government. Unfortunately when people (or corporations) do not govern themselves in a way that generates respect for others, ethical conduct and charity for the poor, there is vacuum which invites more government regulation.

I don’t believe that I have any special insight into everything the Founders meant, and certainly no authority to interpret their meaning. There is plenty of debate on that among people who are more knowledgeable than I am – but some things that they meant are pretty clear. I don’t pretend to be a “final word” on any of this but to contribute to the conversation about where we are headed as a country, to encourage that conversation to include those principles that the Founders clearly intended our government to be based on, and to keep that conversation going.