Update: For anyone who checks back --my letter was too late to be published this week but may run next week.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been following a discussion in the letters to the editor section of the
South Philadelphia Review that centers around the religiosity of the Founding Fathers. This Thursday's edition of the
Review contained a new
letter (sorry, no perma-link) claiming that James Madison said the following:
Religion is the basis and foundation of government. We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
More below the fold...
Having studied James Madison a bit, the above quote seemed contradictory to anything I thought I knew about the man. So, I did a little research. I summarized my findings in a reply LTE as follows:
To the Editor:
In a letter to the editor this week, Mr. Essex conveys a quote that he attributes to James Madison, our fourth President and Father of the U.S. Constitution. This quote seems to reinforce the belief that our Constitution was based on the Ten Commandments. There is a problem, however: the quote does not appear in any of James Madison's known writings or speeches. Further, it is contrary to everything Madison actually did say about the separation of church and state. When Dr. David Mattern, a University of Virginia Professor and editor of The Papers of James Madison, was asked to validate the purported Madison quote, he replied:
We did not find anything in our files remotely like the sentiment expressed in the extract you sent us. In addition, the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government, views which he expressed time and time again in public and in private.
The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not founded on the Ten Commandments. The Founding Fathers made very clear that religion should be separate from government, and they crafted the establishment documents in such a way as to preserve that separation. This was not an anti-religious act; in fact, it was the best way to ensure that one of our basic freedoms, the freedom of religion, would be preserved and not subjugated by the ideology in power. God bless them.
Comments? Any further references? (I'm sure this will start a Battle Royale in the Review LTEs).