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By Frank Joseph
Political activists of the so-called “religious Right” in the United States never tire of preaching that their country was founded as “a Christian democracy.” But they are wrong on both counts.
When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the first Continental Congress, he was asked by one of many anxious patriots waiting outside the courthouse, “What have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The difference might seem trivial or even non-existent to narrow-minded persons for whom democracy and dictatorship are the only conceivable forms of government. Yet, the very word, “democracy,” does not occur once in the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, or any state constitution. It was mentioned often by America’s Founding Fathers, but invariably as a synonym for “mob rule,” and, along with obsolescent monarchy, an evil to be avoided.
Thomas Paine, the American Revolution’s most eloquent voice, summed up his colleagues’ view of democracy when he described it in his world-famous “Rights of Man” as “a species of demagoguery, wherein clever charlatans, making promises as enticing as they are impossible to fulfil, win for themselves unwarranted power and wealth, persuading gullible people to discard their liberties for a secret tyranny masquerading as public freedom.”
Particularly in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the historic models held up for emulation did not include Greek democracy, but the Venetian and Roman republics. The difference between these examples most important to men like Paine and Jefferson was the concept of citizenship. Anyone born in a democratic state automatically becomes a citizen with all the privileges that entails, including the right to vote. In a republic, one is not born a citizen, but may only become one when he or she reaches adulthood; can demonstrate at least a fundamental grasp of the workings of their government, and is either going to school or gainfully employed.
In modern America, all that remains of these basic requirements is a restriction against voting until one’s eighteenth year. Foreigners must, in fact, pass tests proving their basic comprehension of the Constitution before becoming US citizens, which makes them more knowledgeable, discerning voters than native-born Americans, who are supposed to receive the same kind of rigorous Constitutional education, but rarely, if ever, do. In demanding at least some qualifications for citizenship, America’s Founding Fathers believed that responsible leaders could only by chosen by a competent electorate. Today, however, such notions are shunned as “elitist” in most countries described as “democratic.”
Yet more shocking to bible-beating conservatives, if they were to learn the awful truth, is that the United States was not founded by Christians, at least of the kind they would approve. Instead, that country’s constitutional republic was conceived, fought for and built almost entirely by deists. While the majority of Americans, then as now, were at least nominally Christian, most of their leaders were not. George Washington, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere and virtually all of their intellectual compatriots were deists. The term is not generally familiar today, but signifies a person who believes in a universal, compassionate Intelligence that made and orders Creation, manifests its will through natural law, but requires no religious dogma to be understood, only the faculty of reason with which every human is endowed.
Referring to the church of his day, Paine wrote, “The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue... My own mind is my own church.” Like his fellow deists, who made a clear distinction between church and state, he was convinced that freedom meant being able to speak one’s mind on all subjects, religious as well as political. He did not “condemn those who believe otherwise. They have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.”
Nor were the deists anti-Christian. They concluded that Christianity had at its theological core the same mystical truth found in every genuine spiritual conception; namely, the perennial philosophy of compassion for all sentient beings as the means by which the human soul develops. This recognition, however, deeply offended mainstream Christians, who insisted their brand of faith alone was correct, all others being heretical at best or demonic at worst.
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i have been reading Treelizard and Mike brewer discuss christian founding father issues and if your beliefs effect patriotism etc.
I have read everything i could find on history and war and the founding of our country. Many of the most interesting and controversial topics are covered in this one article. I know to expect the normal childish flaming, but if anyone can actually present any evidence to discredit these topics i would be very appreciative......also there is MUCH more to the article, click on it
some of the more "interesting" topics are yet to be explored.
in fact in 1880 the christian union complained we were YET to have a christian president
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