I can already guess where the article heads; Novak is most famous for his arguments about the Founders' religious beliefs, and has argued before in defense of Evangelical-inspired "Christian Nation"-type views. For example, this is highlighted in a recent exchange where Joseph Ellis argues that Washington can more accurately be labeled a pantheist than a Deist, and Novak recently responds with random assertions of the church-state role that he is in favor of -- here is a snippet of that response:
Jefferson thought it his duty to support the Sunday religious service convened in the Capitol building, the largest church service in the nation each Sunday, and to send the Marine Band to provide the music. The second largest service, a little later, was in the Supreme Court Building. From Washington to Lincoln, Thanksgiving Day proclamations included the conviction that “It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,” and also “humbly to implore his protection and favor,” and to “beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions.” Such a god is neither the god of pantheism nor of deism.has a good response to this, referring to the views of the FF regarding church-state separation as being equivalent to those of Diderot:Article III of the Massachusetts Constitution, whose chief author was John Adams, obliged each local jurisdiction to pay for schooling in the Protestant religion. When opponents called this an infringement of conscience, Adams replied, in effect, you don’t have to believe in that religion, but if you want the law-abidingness that that religion inculcates, you have to pay for it.
Since the Constitutional Convention left to individuals and the states all rights except those expressly conceded to the federal government, it said nothing about family, or education, or science, or the arts, or religion. It did not include the First Amendment, which was added some years later. Then, far from forbidding the establishment of religion in individual states (at least six had established churches for another generation), the phrasing of the First Amendment was carefully construed: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion…” that is, neither for it nor against it; that choice was left to the individual states. Nor could Congress establish any one religion for the federal nation as a whole. Some were Anglicans, some Congregationalists, some Baptist, some Presbyterians; there were at least five synagogues spread through the states, and some thirty thousand Catholics. Some, at least among the men (seldom the women), were deists. Tom Paine, the most anti-biblical, tried to warn the French in 1789 against trying to build a republic on atheism, lest it lose any ground for the rights it declared and was thrown in jail for the trouble.
As products of the Enlightenment, they shared Diderot’s vision of a heavenly city on earth where the last priest would be strangled with the entrails of the last king. This was a radical doctrine at the time, and even now in Iraq we can see that it is an idea yet to be regarded as, shall we say, self-evident. [green text original]I left the following comment on Novak's post responding to Ellis:
What would you say about Gregg Frazer's characterization of the "popular" FF, esp Washington, Adams and Madison, as "theistic rationalists"? His thesis can be found in summary here.As I said, I look forward to reading the article and responding to it. (HT: Jon Rowe)
I am not aware if you have already addressed this view elsewhere or not.
Frazer's work has been weighed in on by Jon Rowe (and others, of course): June 06, Oct 06.
________________
Technorati tags: Church-state, Politics
