Get the difference?

https://www.salon.com/2019/05/18/demolishing-the-rights-founding-myth-america-was-never-a-christian-nation/

Christian nationalism is basically the idea that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, built on Judeo-Christian principles, but somehow we have sort of strayed away from this religious founding, and that we need to get back to it. It's not an idea that is based on facts or history or reality. It is revisionist, and it is, I think, one of the greatest threats our country faces right now.

Your book is divided into four parts. The first concerns the founding era itself, and you first take up George Washington, who was very private and circumspect with respect to religion, and never took communion. But a very contrary image of his has been popularized, most notably around the myth of his prayer at Valley Forge. What should people know about the reality of Washington and how that contrary image came to be so widely believed?

The Valley Forge prayer didn't happen — we're pretty certain about that. We know where that story originated. It originated from a religious writer, a guy named Mason Weems, who really set out to sell books. He wasn't trying to tell historical truths or record history as it happened. He wanted to sell books and didn’t care about the truth. He's the same writer who gave us the myth about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, and ironically not being able to tell a lie about it. That was also fabrication. . I think that's one of the reasons you see this deliberate attempt to repaint him as this pious man.


So we know that the source is suspect. We also know that it didn't show up until pretty late in the publication of his book. The book had gone through more than 20 editions before that story was added to it. So there's really no evidence that it happened at all. But, by portraying Washington as this pious figure, modern politicians are able to imitate him in a very easy way. So instead of doing the hard things that Washington did — being quiet and reticent about your power, about your personal religion — all they have to do to be like the father of our country, is get down and act pious, get on one knee and pray. It brings the father of our country down to this imitable level, instead of the inimitable man he was. I think that's one of the reasons you see this deliberate attempt to repaint him as this pious man.


More broadly, you address the distinction between individual religious views — which varied among the founders — and what went into America’s founding documents, including but not limited to the Constitution. You discuss how religion and morality were not seen as synonymous by the founders. Could you give the illustration of each of these points and explain why they’re so important?

First, going to the religion of the founders, the central point I try to make in this book is that this is a fascinating debate — and there have been tons of books written on what exactly the founders believed — but really it is not central or even relevant to the debate that the Christian nationalists want to have, the argument they are trying to make.

What’s far more relevant is whether or not the founders chose to separate state and church — which we know they did, and almost all of them agreed on that point. Even if the Christian nationalists could prove that all the founders were Jesus-rose-from-the-dead, Bible-beating Christians, the way many evangelicals are today, even if they could prove that, that doesn't get them anywhere. They still have to show that those beliefs influenced the founding of this country and what I'm trying to show in the book is that they absolutely did not.


Religious beliefs don't claim ownership of any of the ideas that your mind generates. One of the examples I used in the book was vaccines and blue jeans. They were developed by Jewish individuals, but we don't call them Jewish blue jeans. It wouldn't make any sense. The same thing holds for the idea that we're a Christian nation. Even if you could prove that the founders were Christian, it wouldn’t make any sense to call ourselves a Christian nation. So that's the first one.

The second one is really important because the fallback to that is, "Well they wouldn't have been these moral individuals if they weren’t believers. And they knew that religion and morality were important for a democratic republic." That second part is true. They did think that religion and morality were important for a democratic republic, but they thought of those as two very separate things.

For these educated upper-class men, who have the time and energy and education — and libraries, for that matter — to think about moral questions, and investigate moral questions, they didn’t need religion. But for most of the people who didn't have the time, didn't have the education, didn't have the libraries, they needed simple rules that they could apply to their own everyday life, which shook out for the founders as religion being important. So actually, if the Christian nationalists are right, that argument cuts against their position. Because it shows that the founders didn't need religion to be moral, meaning they were not likely religious, meaning they didn't use those religious principles to found our country.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2021 12:17AM by anybody.

The “god of nature” referred to by the founding fathers is a deist concept, so I had to look up Deism on Wikipedia. The following section suggests that Mormonism is an offshoot of Deism.

“A central premise of deism was that the religions of their day were corruptions of an original religion that was pure, natural, simple, and rational. Humanity lost this original religion when it was subsequently corrupted by "priests" who manipulated it for personal gain and for the class interests of the priesthood,[21] and encrusted it with superstitions and "mysteries" – irrational theological doctrines. Deists referred to this manipulation of religious doctrine as "priestcraft," an intensely derogatory term. In the eyes of deists, this corruption of natural religion was designed to keep laymen baffled by "mysteries" and dependent on the priesthood for information about the requirements for salvation– this gave the priesthood a great deal of power, which the priesthood naturally worked to maintain and increase. Deists saw it as their mission to strip away "priestcraft" and "mysteries". Tindal, perhaps the most prominent deist writer, claimed that this was the proper original role of the Christian Church.”

That all sounds very Mormony. The Rigdon/Smith conspiracy made up its own restored doctrine and passed it off as revealed by the power of God along with American folk magic. They handled the deist rejection of revelation by going all in. It worked.

Bradley, the central thesis of Deism is the notion that while God exists s/he doesn't care enough about this world to intervene. Most of the Founders were Deists, including prominently Jefferson who created his own Bible by cutting out all of the miracles and leaving only the secular narrative and Jesus's moral teachings. God was accordingly a metaphor, like Providence, which those men also used to indicate the direction humankind should decide to move through their own efforts.

Aside from atheism, it is difficult to imagine a philosophy more antithetical to Mormonism. A deistic God would never even consider visiting a boy in a grove let alone try to restore an ancient religion. There would never have been a miracle, a revelation, or even an answered prayer.

Then Joseph Smith had access to deistic literature from which to rip off a conceptual framework. You could say that there were no samurai in Star Wars but Lucas used “Seven Samurai” as the framework. Mormonism is a re-imagining of both deism and Christianity. Or a perversion of those, depending on how you feel about the originals.

The Newtonian revolution and its rationalist counterpart were in swing at that time, which played a much bigger part in popular culture than it does now. Nature’s god may have been Newton’s god. Nowadays, much to the chagrin of actual physicists, quantum physics is the new fad in spirituality. Nature’s god actually does play dice.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/06/2021 07:35AM by babyloncansuckit.

I disagree.

The themes you attribute to Deism--an original true faith, the destruction of that faith through corrupt priests and their priestcraft, and the need for a restoration--were present in virtually all of Protestantism in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. In the Smith region alone there were several religious movements that set about the "restoration" process. Joseph need never have heard of Deism to imbibe that doctrine.

In his day American Deism was an intellectual movement whose most important principle was that God had not and would not intervene in human affairs. God had set up the universe like a mechanical clock and then let it run, never rewinding or otherwise touching it. Hence there could be no "restoration" through heavenly messengers, visions, revelations, etc.

Here are some examples of what Deism meant in the late 18th and early 19th century:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Deism

Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and the others at that point in history were not restorationists; they believed that humans had to fix and run society because God couldn't care less. A couple of them reckoned that Deism and Atheism were functionally identical.

This is an unusually good article, especially because it prompts [specifically American] readers to THINK...and to think with more depth and breadth than we usually do.

I learned some fairly important facts I didn't previously know or understand, and I am better for it.

Thank you for posting this, anybody.

Muchly appreciated!

I totally agree!
I have delivered my 20 minute lecture on faith many times. Basically it endorses the belief that things will happen.
Organized religion, on the other hand, is only interested in power and money.

The myth does not require a basis in reality

From midlife on, my mother maintained her faith but almost never went to church. She liked to say grace at holiday meals, and she prayed every night before bedtime. She just never felt the need to go to church.

I also maintained a "spiritual but not religious" stance for many years. Now, I am mostly agnostic. If I need help from above, I don't ask some distant god, but instead my loved ones who have passed on (if they can help if they are able to do so.)

The first thing a religious nut will tell you is that he/she is spiritual but not religious.