Our ‘Christian’ Nation?

a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton, April 13, 2008

In this interminably elongated election season, there are few signs of hope as hopeful as the news that the Religious Right may just sit this one out.  Having found no one (yet) to their liking (at least not since Rev. Mike Huckabee dropped out of the Republican race), our religiously conservative neighbors in this country are said by commentators to be considering staying home on election day to show their distaste for the lack of religiously appropriate candidates - which is a huge (and perhaps welcome in some quarters) change from the last few cycles in which a candidate had to pledge allegiance to one expression of dogma or another to court the votes of millions of evangelical Christian Americans.

Of course, the words ‘religiously appropriate’ in the America of today mean ‘Christian.’  We are repeatedly told we live in a Christian nation, one nation UNDER GOD (the Christian One), In God (the Christian One) We Trust, God (the Christian One) Help Us as the lone superpower left standing after a long Cold War that we won because we believe in God (the Christian one).  We are told by strict constructionists and social conservatives alike that we live in a Christian nation not least of all because the founders of this country as we all know were Christian, they wrote Christianity into the Declaration and the Constitution, they based all their revolutionary fervor on Christian ideals.

Bunk.  Bunk, says a new book, So Help Me God:  The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State, written by Forrest Church, Minister of Public Theology at All Souls Church of New York City.  In the book, the Rev. Dr. Church explores in depth the religious leanings of five founders:  Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.  The only true Unitarian among them - John Adams - is also apparently the only true Christian of the bunch, and Forrest Church fills in the interactions among them and the religious authorities of the time, explaining how the language of piety and the sacred was commandeered for use by civil authorities wishing to lend weight and credence to this experiment of the newly formed government and its officers.

 

The regal George Washington set the tone for all to come by his actions in the first inauguration, the first presidency, and then the first peaceful exchange of power.  At 6’4”, with a commanding presence and a strong sense of his place in history, Washington’s words, sensitivities, and actions left an indelible impression on his colleagues in revolution and on all subsequent expressions of governmental power in these United States.  Never himself a regular church-goer, he might best be pronounced a “warm Deist” (Forrest’s phrase):  a man who ceremonially gave thanks to Providence and who believed that without religion, everybody else would turn to poor behavior and immorality.  He himself needed no such structure, of course, only those who were prone already to drink, gambling, and vice of all sorts.

Washington’s brand of deism was not simply a belief in a divine watchmaker who set things up and then absented himself.  He felt, like some of the other founders, that a nod in the direction of a more-or-less distant presence was necessary for the moral life of the individual as well as the proper functioning of a good government.  But he was theologically ‘warmer’ than that, too, acknowledging the protection that he felt had been afforded by the ‘Source of All Things’ to those under his command and to the young country itself - a true Deist might not have spoken this way. 

But Christian?  It’s doubtful.  Even in his correspondence to Christian ecclesiastics, he mentions the word ‘Christian’ only three times in sixteen letters.  Besides which, the word ‘God’ was not among his favorites, either;  he preferred the terms Providence or Grand Architect to more traditional Christian epithets for the divine.

And did he or did he not say, as he completed the oath of office on that first inauguration day in 1789, “So help me God” as he bent to kiss the open Bible before him?  The Rev. Dr. Church is non-committal.  Not many were in a position to actually hear the new president:  the crush of a tumultuous crowd, the excitement of the moment, no amplification or recording devices - all conspired to leave it to the few standing close to let all the rest of us know what had actually transpired.  As with all written history, the willingness of on-the-scene reporters to spin the story their own way changes not only the fact but the meaning of the moment.  We can believe he didn’t say, “So help me God,” because that was not in his usual repertoire.  Others can believe he did say it, but to make the leap from that uncertainty to this being a Christian nation is wrong:  with this as the only proof, we may call ourselves a Deist nation if nothing else.

 

Our second President, John Adams, was not shy of religion or religious language, and wished to adopt more of the language of ‘monarchy’ and ‘kingdom’ and the rule of God into the language of government and civic life.  An early, ardent, and vocal proponent of independence from Britain, Adams swung from a belief in revolution and republic to a belief in public order and private piety.  After independence, he advocated a strong Federalism over and against a fully democratic republic. 

Following in Washington’s immense shadow would not have been easy,  In response to this, perhaps, he sought a governmental language that acknowledged the hierarchies of Creation and existence and that lifted earthly leaders through the application of exalted titles - perhaps such language applied to himself would have helped him feel more visible, more esteemed by his colleagues and his countrymen.  But America was not a place for title - a war had been fought to throw off those shackles as well as the shackles of the established churches and their powerful clergy. 

We like to claim Adams as a Unitarian, and that he surely was.  What many of us in our churches these days don’t like to consider is that as a Unitarian at the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th century, Adams was a Unitarian Christian, the only sort of Unitarian there was at the time.  The irony, of course, is that Adams’ very Unitarian-ness - his Christianity - makes him the sole best argument for those who’d like to say that since our founders were Christian, this must be a Christian nation.  Ironic, but true.

 

Thomas Jefferson was rarely called a Christian.  His was an Enlightenment faith, in liberté, egalité, fraternité, in the Rights of Man.  He distrusted religious authority of all varieties and they him.  The election of 1800 called out the robed brigades of clergy both North and South to preach from pulpits far and wide against his candidacy and about the impending degradation of the country if the godless Republicans were to be elected.

At least Adams and the Federalists could be counted on to believe in a God of some sort.  The Republicans believed only in revolution.  Jefferson said a good revolution should come around every twenty years so that succeeding generations could throw off the mistakes and calcifications of the previous generations’ leadership.  Many an American, including Jefferson, must have watched in horror as the French Revolution of 1789 turned into an animal that ate its young at an alarming rate.

We like to claim Jefferson as one of our own, a Unitarian in the broadest sense.  We like to do so because he called himself a Unitarian, though we don’t know if he ever graced a Unitarian church with his presence.  Further confusing matters, he also referred to himself from time to time as a theist, a deist, and a rational Christian.  He even claimed to be an epicurean, which would be a materialist with no use for superstition or divine intervention (note this in opposition to Washington’s “warm deism” - the belief that Providence was watching out for him).

Like his friend, then foe, then friend again John Adams before him, Jefferson’s claim to Unitarianism - and our claim on him - turns him into one of those the Christian Right needs to hold up as the founder of a Christian Nation.  Ironic, then, that the candidate whose election at the time foretold the doom of a godless new nation might now be honored as a Christian.  Do they not remember Jefferson taking the scissors to his Bible and leaving only the words of Jesus as those worthy of the term ‘scripture’?

 

In So Help Me God, Forrest Church examines two more founders: James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” who presided over the War of 1812, and James Monroe, known for the Monroe Doctrine (partially authored by Jefferson) that aimed on moral grounds to stop European intervention in the Americas.  Neither man spent great time in the pews nor expressed unbending devotion to any particular Christian dogma. 

This does not mean religion played no role in their lives and times:  from Washington’s election in 1789 to Monroe’s in 1817 and far beyond, clergy of various hews continued to preach for and against individuals, parties, ideas, and ideals.  We tend to think the recent electoral power of the Religious Right is an innovation in American politics.  Au contraire, cautions the Rev. Dr. Church.  Religion has ever been a battleground that has affected - and has been affected by - politics. 

Religion and politics were not and cannot be simply divorced from each other, even with the wall of separation between the two erected by the experiment which is the first clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  One can appreciate the public effect of this wall:  we do not have to - nor should we - call ourselves a Christian nation because the civil covenant we have made with one another that constitutes us as a nation denies the purveyors of ANY particular religion the ability to establish it over the rest of us.  Thus do the self-appointed deciders of public and political piety howl in a blind alley.  And thank goodness!

But my final question this morning is not about them so much as it is about myself, about ourselves, about our practice together:  If I do not appreciate some of my neighbors wearing their religion on their sleeves and do not want them taking their religion with them into the voting booth, what do I intend to do with my own values, my own ideals, and my own religious sensitivities, especially as I enter the realm of politics?

I am as unwilling as any Christian conservative to check my most deeply-held values at the door as I walk out of church on Sundays;  I intend to take those values into the world with me as I go.  I believe I should make my religious values just as apparent when I gather with my family or when I greet people on the street or when I speak in a public forum as when I speak from this pulpit or sit in church committee meetings or meet with my ministerial colleagues from other sects and denominations and religions.  How else does one have values?  How else does one practice religion?  Why bother on a Sunday morning if it does not affect the rest of the week, the rest of our lives, the rest of the world?

I can, like Washington, believe that I need a moral compass like that offered by religion and that when that moral compass ceases to be operative in my life, I have and surely will slide off the path. 

I can, like Adams, believe that order in civil society is sometimes of higher value than complete and utter freedom lacking its crucial link to responsibility, and that the words we use in politics and public discourse are important to keeping the level of interaction on an appropriately high plane. 

I can, like Jefferson, believe in the potential goodness of the human spirit, and in the need for reform as one new generation takes over from the previous one. 

I can and do believe these things.  But none of this makes me Christian; and to that I do not aspire.

What I do aspire to, rather, is the vision cast by our first minister, the Rev. Charles Andrew Farley.  The Rev. Farley, as we heard in a reading a few minutes ago, proposed a vision of the true church which includes the good of all sects and all denominations;  and a vision of the family of humanity which includes all people - all people - as (what he calls) children of God.  This is admittedly an extremely difficult proposition to maintain when Protestant denominations are falling apart, when Catholics are excommunicating each other, when Sunni blow up Shia and vice versa, when we in this community healthily disagree but then forget to remain civil to one another.

The only way through that I can imagine is for me to hold fast to my values, to stop worrying over what others call me or call my nation, and to practice my religion and my faith as best I can every day of the week and with everyone I meet.  Thus far having no other answer, I’m ready to begin.  And I invite you to join me in the experiment and wish you Godspeed on your path.

So may it be.