Well said!

Excellent analysis of the issues, Eric. I think one of the worst decisions the Church made in the 20th century was to keep out of the political and social arenas - they effectively ceded the battlefield to humanism, and we continue to reap the effects of their inaction.

I agree that churches are first and foremost places for worship and fellowship among believers, and not sites for political activism or rallies, but I also believe that the church has an obligation to take a stand on moral issues where the Bible is clear, even if those issues are political hot potatoes.

Faith is an integral part of life, and it is absurd to treat it as something capable of being separated and compartmentalized from the rest of a person's life. Good job!!

A quibble:
"Instead, it often used to insist (among other things) that citizens must keep their religiously-formed moral views out of the political sphere."

I believe that the insistence is that religion be kept out of the government sphere. Governing is a bit different than politicking. Also, the moral views spawned by religion, philosophy, or any other method are entirely appropriate; it's the religion itself that can't (or at least shouldn't) be endorsed by the government. (Politicians and citizens are free to endorse away, they just aren't free to use the government as a conduit for their endorsements.)

This is a sore spot for me, because I don't know how to talk about it without going too far in one direction or the other. Moderation is key here. But the statement that usually upsets me the most is when people arrogantly say, "Christians can not and should not use the government to legislate their morality on everyone else!" This statement is full of flaws because EVERY GOVERNMENT legislates SOME form of morality. It just depends on WHO'S morality is being legislated.

Well, the Bible is about 70% politics and governance, as far as I can tell (I Samuel 8 is particularly libertarian). And it's a shame most Christians so badly mis-read the tribute penny stories to mean that God doesn't own everything.
It was foolish for USA churches to abandon their roles in the free market departments of Health, Education and Welfare, because their socialist equivalents are worse than nothing.
So I think that churches should exert as much power as they're able to in every sphere of human life, as that is their mission.
The first amendment certainly allows for this by prohibiting any federal authority in the matters of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.
Let's not forget that first amendment!
The operative phrase is "Congress shall make no law respecting..." and five freedoms are then listed separated only by the word "or" or "and."
The freedoms of press and speech are identical to the freedom of religion, though most would have you believe otherwise.
And the construction of the amendment in the context of the constitution means that if Congress shall make no law, then nobody under the federal contract can make a law (article I of the Constitution). If there can be no law, then there can be no execution of it, thus wiping out the Presidents' authority to limit these freedoms (article II). And, of course, there can be no judgment of a law that can't legally exist, right?
So, this is a total ban on federal authority in the matter of religion...not just a limit on power assumed to exist.

Given that the Constitution set out to grant only specific and limited powers to government, the very absence of religion is itself significant. It meant that government should have no power at all in the religious sphere.

When we consider that the only two mentions of religion are specific prohibitions on religious interference in government, that silence is all the more revealing. The two prohibitions are extra warnings against intrusions that the founders thought particularly dangerous; they are by no means invitations to do everything short of these two things.

I think it's a serious mistake to conflate morality with religion. A moral system is simply a system that is capable of identifying that which is "good" vs. that which is "bad."

There's no inherent equation between morality and religion. A religious system typically includes a moral calculus -- a way of differentiating between "good" and "bad" but that's not the same thing as saying that all moral calculations are inherently religious.

For example, I could organize a society that held as "good" the ratio of cedar-sided homes to vinyl-sided. "Good" is what increases the percentage of cedar-sided homes, "bad" is its opposite. No faith involved (only an aesthetic judgement), thus no religion. But certainly a morality.

All social orderings, whether religious in nature or secular, have moral codes. Socialism has a morality, Communism has a morality, secular humanism has a morality, utilitarianism has a morality, atheism has a morality, even science is moral. None of those are religious, however.

It may be an inconvienient truth, but so be it.

Thus the premise that the Constitution, because it is a moral document that expresses moral precepts, is therefore inherently an expression of religiosity, is false.

Again, all that's required of a moral system is that it have tests to determine what is "good" and what is "bad." Faith, on the other hand, is not a requirement of a moral system.

greg

On the other hand, during the early Republican era, states were given free reign to establish official religions, and many did.

Anyone here ever read Niebuhr's Christ and Culture? I believe this is considered the seminal text examining the question of how the church and the world around it interact, as addressed by Boyd and others. Niebuhr lays out five different paradigms for how Christians have traditionally interacted with the world --"Christ against culture" (fundamentalist/Mennonite rejection of worldly authority), "Christ of culture" (reconciling the world and the church, seen in liberal Protestantism), "Christ above culture" (the church is both in and beyond the world), "Christ and culture in paradox" (Luther's Two Kingdoms theology), and "Christ transforming culture" (the good old Protestant reformist impluse).

I'll let anyone who has actually read the book elaborate. It seems to me most traditional seminarians probably have, but perhaps not the Bible College educated folk currently leading mainstream evangelicalism.

greg,

I don't see anyone here saying the Constitution is an expression of religiosity. I agree with you that morality, though it is often derived from religion, is not religious in and of itself. So why is it that when conservative Christians support policies that conform with their moral code (e.g. opposition to abortion, federal funds for stem cell research, gay marriage, etc.), people pull out the "separation of church and state" complaint?

"Given that the Constitution set out to grant only specific and limited powers to government, the very absence of religion is itself significant. It meant that government should have no power at all in the religious sphere."

"When we consider that the only two mentions of religion are specific prohibitions on religious interference in government, that silence is all the more revealing. The two prohibitions are extra warnings against intrusions that the founders thought particularly dangerous; they are by no means invitations to do everything short of these two things."

I think you're engaging in a post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis of what you've termed "the very absence of religion." Remember, the Constitution was drafted by people who thought certain things were "self-evident."

Religious belief was such an integral part of people's lives that it wouldn't have made sense to include it unless the purpose of the Constitution was to establish a national religion.

Whether people agreed denominationally or doctrinally or not, the overwhelming majority at least recognized the existence of God, the validity of the Scripture as a guidebook for their lives, and the need to allow people to practice their religious beliefs without censure or punishment.

"A moral system is simply a system that is capable of identifying that which is "good" vs. that which is "bad.""

Except who determines what is "good"?

So why is it that when conservative Christians support policies that conform with their moral code (e.g. opposition to abortion, federal funds for stem cell research, gay marriage, etc.), people pull out the "separation of church and state" complaint?

Well I don't think that they really do -- perhaps there are some, but I think it's a lot more rare than some would have us believe.

I don't have a problem with a Congressperson saying "I oppose stem-cell research because I believe in a fundamental moral code that says life begins at conception and that it is never 'good' to terminate that life, no matter what the hoped-for outcome. I believe others feel the same way and I believe that the moral basis of our society, as codified in its laws, should reflect that."

I don't see a Church/State issue there at all.

On the other hand, I have no tolerance whatsoever for individuals or groups who would use public facilities, public venues, or public soapboxes to prostheletize for a specific religion. In the example above, were the Congressperson to say "In accordance with the will of our Lord, Jesus Christ, stem-cell research shall be forbidden, as he has clearly decreed." Especially if that was the language actually used in the bill. Then we start getting into a Church/State separation issue.

Same for using chambers for public prayers, etc.

Except who determines what is "good"?

The moral system. That's what moral systems do and why they exist.

The determination of what is good and what is evil is always set out in the tomes of the particular moral system, be they Mein Kampf, the Koran, the Old Testament, or The Wealth of Nations.

greg

Remember, the Constitution was drafted by people who thought certain things were "self-evident."

Indeed, but what was self-evident to them was utterly revolutionary to most of the governments and societies elsewhere. England was remarkable for its liberalism at the time, and the colonies went even further in that direction. Given how the Constitution surely contains no textual mandate for, say, the modern regulatory state, it would seem that the same applies to state sponsorship or advocacy of religion, even if it is in a fuzzy, inclusive, feel-good kind of way.

I think the Declaration's use of the phrase "self-evident" translates roughly to "this is what we think, but we don't really have any historical or other authority for our assertion."

Don't get me wrong, I think the values espoused in the Declaration were good ideas, but they were hardly "self-evident" at the time.

"Indeed, but what was self-evident to them was utterly revolutionary to most of the governments and societies elsewhere."

But what was almost universal over a great portion of the British Empire was a basic knowledge and recognition of God's existence and the authority of the Bible. People disagreed on what it meant, just as they do now, but they at least acknowledged God and recognized Biblical authority.

I think Doug is spot-on. If you really think something is self-evident, then you don't usually even bother saying it at all. (How often do you bother asserting to your fellows that 2 + 2 = 4?) And so to declare, in a momentous tone, "We hold these truths to be self-evident...", is to do performing a much more radical speech-act than merely to be, in fact, holding those truths to be self-evident. You're making, well, a _declaration_ out of it. (Somewhat analogously with the way in which reciting a credo is a very different speech-act than merely reporting what happen to be one's beliefs.)

Fwiw, Jefferson had it as "sacred and undeniable" instead of "self-evident" in a very early draft.

"If you really think something is self-evident, then you don't usually even bother saying it at all."

Which leads right back to the point I was making, namely that people believed in God and the authority of the Bible, so it would have been pointless to specifically mention it.

Since most religion seeks to postulate ethical philosophy, and since politics is a subset of said philosophy (what government is morally obligated to do and to refrain from doing), religion and politics are not hermetically sealed from one another.

I Samuel 8 is particularly libertarian

Chapter summary: the king will be a fink.

Samuel warned that the king would assume powers not given to him by the written law. Libertarians are indeed against that sort of thing; government rightfully has only the powers enumerated in law, and assuming unenumerated powers steals someone else's authority and sets the precedent for more of such thefts.

Which leads right back to the point I was making, namely that people believed in God and the authority of the Bible, so it would have been pointless to specifically mention it.

That and a nickel is worth five cents. What the founders personally believed about God was quite different from what they thought about government, and it is clear from the overall structure of the constitution that this was not to be a Christian government. The document made specific grants of power, with the default assumption being that, failing a specific grant, there would be no power. This is true of the institution of religion just as it is true of the welfare state.

The Founders' political beliefs were influenced by what they believed about God. They believed Him to be the definitor of what is moral, after all. The Declaration of Independence specifically mentions that God granted citizens "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," followed by certain examples of such rights which the British Crown had violated.

The First Amendment testifies that they agreed with Locke's assessment of God's expectations regarding the relationship between church and state:

[T]he care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate...it appears not that God has ever given any such authority to one man over another as to compel anyone to his religion...Whatever profession we make, to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind that the one is true and the other well pleasing unto God, such profession and such practice, far from being any furtherance, are indeed great obstacles to our salvation. For in this manner, instead of expiating other sins by the exercise of religion, I say, in offering thus unto God Almighty such a worship as we esteem to be displeasing unto Him, we add unto the number of our other sins those also of hypocrisy and contempt of His Divine Majesty.

I'm not sure what Jason means by "Christian government." I do know that religion influences what people think of God's expectations from human society, that Christians and Deists were in general agreement on that issue (Deism sprang from Christianity, after all), and that Christian (and Deist) philosophy has a little that's relevant to politics and a lot that isn't.

Alan's point sails right past Jason's argument without touching it. That the founders were "influenced" by their religious background does approximately zero work in figuring out what the actual content of the Constitution is. Influence is cheap, and ubiquitous -- they were also influenced by their class status, by their different regional backgrounds, by being men, and so on. These are all influences, and knowing that they are influences doesn't help us answer the questions that are at issue here. It would be easy to argue that their grounding in classical authors (especially, I would guess, Cicero and Aristotle) influenced their political thinking much, much more than their religious backgrounds did. So no one here would disagree with the claim that "The Founders' political beliefs were influenced by what they believed about God", because it's too boring a claim to worry about denying.

I notice that lc has produced a lovely in situ instance of the fallact of affirming the consequent. She takes as her major premise the conditional I had asserted earlier:

If someone thinks that something is really self-evident, then they won't bother to say it explicitly.

And adds to that the minor premise:

The authors of the Constitution do not explicitly state that they endorse their belief in God & the authority of the Bible.

Apparently meaning to draw as a conclusion:

The authors of the Constitution took belief in God & the authority of the Bible to be self-evident.

An almost textbook instance of "If p then q; q; therefore p."

The point, phil, is that people in the 18th century had a different view of the world, God, the authority of the Bible and what was considered truth than we have today.

Just as you cannot conceive that any rational/thinking person still believes in God or the Bible as being useful, let alone authoritative for life choices, people born and educated in the 17th and 18th centuries had exactly the opposite view. They would have considered someone with your belief system to be heretical, irrational and/or lunatic.

Huh? You obviously have no idea what my personal belief system is. Other than the part where I hate it when people are utterly incapable of presenting a cogent thought (e.g., when it has been pointed out that they have argued in a bald fallacy, and they respond by saying 'the point is...' in a way that completely fails to address the fact that they have, in fact, argued in a bald fallacy). But I think that the founders of our nation would have been on my wavelength, with that one.

I was musing over the "Christian government" statement and how "Christian" our government is. As I stated, there's overlap between the concerns of church and state, but not as much as some would have. Christianity says some things relevant to general civil order. It also says stuff about church governance and charity, which, per Jason's disestablishment remark, were not placed under the purvey of the State. (And it ain't charity if it ain't voluntary.)

What does "Christian government" mean, anyway? Theocracy, Christian-influenced, or something else?

Now let's muse over an earlier statement in that comment:

What the founders personally believed about God was quite different from what they thought about government

The most significant difference between the two is that God is absolute authority and the State is not. Monarchists, theocrats, and totalitarians don't buy that; to them, the State functions as a prophet of God (metaphorically speaking, in the case of Commies and other secularists). Those worldviews dont' exactly inspire limited government.

Well, I hate it when people are utterly incapable of presenting a cogent thought (e.g., when it has been pointed out that they have argued in a bald fallacy, and they respond by saying "If you really think something is self-evident, then you don't usually even bother saying it at all"), and then they respond with personal attacks, but that's just me.

Aside from which, if you'd done any reading at all in 18th century literature or philosophy, you'd know why what you just said was horse manure.

(Going against my own advice here, but we've clearly reached the humor part of the proceedings.)

Please, lc, edify us by explaining which of the following claims I made was "horse manure":
(i) that you committed the fallacy of affirming the consequent;
(ii) that your nonsequitur response to (i) failed any minimal standard of cogency;
(iii) that the persons who founded our country were proponents of rational, cogent thought.

Bonus points for actually connecting your response in some meaningful way up to the writings of Wolff, Hume, Kant, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Franklin, Smith, Burke, and/or Paine.

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin offered a motion in favor of holding daily prayers before the deliberations of the assembly because: “the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men.”

Jonathan Mayhew thought the God of the Bible was best represented as “under the characters of a father and a king, the wisest and best father, the wisest and best king.” From two Thanksgiving sermons On the Nature, Extent and Perfection of the Divine Goodness.

John Locke noted, “the real existences to which knowledge extends are self, God, and the world of nature. Of the first we have an intuitive knowledge, of the second a demonstrative knowledge, of the third a sensitive knowledge.” He also believed that the existence of the state depends upon a contract, and the obligation of the contract, as of all moral law, depends upon the Divine will. The state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God.

Samuel Clarke said, “The will of God always determines itself to act according to the eternal reason of things. ….[A]ll rational creatures are obliged to govern themselves in all their actions by the same eternal rule of reason.”

Matthew Tindal, author of “Christianity as Old as Creation” wrote: “Reason convinces us of the being and attributes of God, and of the truths of morality; the goodness of God makes it impossible that He should have concealed from any of His creatures what was necessary to their well-being.”

The U.S. Supreme Court noted, as late as 1844:

The question, what [*198] is the public policy of a state, and what is contrary to it, if inquired into beyond these limits, will be found to be one of great vagueness and uncertainty, and to involve discussions which scarcely come within the range of judicial duty and functions, and upon which men may and will complexionally differ; above all, when that topic is connected with religious polity, in a country composed of such a variety of religious sects as our country, it is impossible not to feel that it would be attended with almost insuperable difficulties, and involve differences of opinion almost endless in their variety. We disclaim any right to enter upon such examinations, beyond what the state constitutions, and laws, and decisions necessarily bring before us.

It if also said, and truly, that the Christian religion is a part of the common law of Pennsylvania. But this proposition is to be received with its appropriate qualifications, and in connection with the bill of rights of that state, as found in its constitution of government. The constitution of 1790, (and the like provision will, [**188] in substance, be found in the constitution of 1776, and in the existing constitution of 1838,) expressly declares, "That all men have a natural and indefasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience; and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship." Language more comprehensive for the complete protection of every variety of religious opinion could scarcely be used; and it must have been intended to extend equally to all sects, whether they believed in Christianity or not, and whether they were Jews or infidels. So that we are compelled to admit that although Christianity be a part of the common law of the state, yet it is so in this qualified sense, that its divine origin and truth are admitted, and therefore it is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public. Such was the doctrine of the [**189] Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Updegraff v. The Commonwealth, 11 Serg. and Rawle, 394.

“Now, it may well be asked, what is there in all this, which is positively [**193] enjoined, inconsistent with the spirit or truths of Christianity? Are not these truths all taught by Christianity, although it teaches much more? Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament? Where are benevolence, the love of truth, sobriety, and industry, so powerfully and irresistibly inculcated as in the sacred volume?” Vidal v Gerard’s Executors, 43 U.S. 127 (1844).

Hume wrote, in Dialogues: “No philosophical Dogmatist denies, that there are difficulties both with regard to the senses and to all science; and that these difficulties are in a regular, logical method, absolutely insolvable. No Sceptic denies, that we lie under an absolute necessity, notwithstanding these difficulties, of thinking, and believing, and reasoning with regard to all kind of subjects, and even of frequently assenting with confidence and security.” However, he also distinguished between theism and religion, and he was noted for not supporting his conclusions with anything more than his own opinion, a trait adopted by philosopher quite admirably.

And that bears on which of the statements at issue...? None of them shows, or even has the faintest relevane to showing, what it was that you were obligated to show: that you weren't committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent; and/or that your earlier response wasn't an irrelevant, incoherent nonsequitur (just as this more recent response of yours is proving to be); and/or that the founders of our nation were fond of incoherent thinking (of the sort you are continuing to demonstrate).

You don't have even the slightest idea what you're doing, do you?

To recap:

"Religious belief was such an integral part of people's lives that it wouldn't have made sense to include it unless the purpose of the Constitution was to establish a national religion.

Whether people agreed denominationally or doctrinally or not, the overwhelming majority at least recognized the existence of God, the validity of the Scripture as a guidebook for their lives, and the need to allow people to practice their religious beliefs without censure or punishment."

And again: "But what was almost universal over a great portion of the British Empire was a basic knowledge and recognition of God's existence and the authority of the Bible. People disagreed on what it meant, just as they do now, but they at least acknowledged God and recognized Biblical authority."

The quotes I provided addressed exactly those points.

If you're not going to keep up, keep quiet.

For starters, you've completely lost the thread of the conversation. I charged you of making a fallacious argument; you failed to respond to that charge in any meaningful way, and you have continued to do so; you accused me of having made an assertion of stercus equorum, and of not knowing anything about 18th century intellectual history; to which I did respond, by articulating the only three statements I had made that your accusation could have been relevant to, and challenging you to show how anything from 18th century intellectual history would raise difficulties for any of those three assertions.

In response, then, you seem to have jumped all the way back to a pair of earlier posts -- indeed, earlier than the one that I asserted was affirming the consequent -- and have listed a motley hodge-podge of quotes from different centuries that you think have something to do with that earlier post. But none of it has even the slightest bearing on the instance of incontinent reasoning on your part that we've been discussing. You did, in fact, commit a gross fallacy, and nothing you've said since then has lessened that fact, but have indeed only compounded it by arguing in what one might call "free-association la-la-la" mode.

But even suppose that we decided to forget the fact (as you apparently have) that we were arguing over your fallacy, and just consider whether the quotes you listed support the claims you just requoted. On inspection, not even all of your cherrypicked textual snippets do so. The Franklin quote reveals that he thought that it would make sense to talk about what evidence there is or isn't for an active God intervening in human affairs; it was not something that he & the people he was speaking to thought could just be taken automatically for granted. I don't know what you had in mind with the Hume quote, which is from a patently anti-religious text (and your claim about Hume just basing things on "his own opinion" is scurrilous). And the Updegraph case shows what a diversity of opinion there was on these questions at the time in question (a bit later than the 18th century, but whatever): Updegraph and his friends clearly thought that Christianity was something that merited debating, and the court at that time disagreed. If someone were to assert that no one at the time believed in the way that you indicated, I would agree with you that they would be wrong -- just as wrong as you are in asserting that the overwhelming majority of people at the time believed that way, especially from among the class of persons that founded the nation.

Please stop digging yourself even deeper like this; I'm almost getting embarrassed for you.