Earlier today I read [? a diary entry, perhaps? -- I cannot now find it) a posting which included the text of an interview with a guy at Yale from the HNN. My wife, also saw it.
It was about the "Christianity" of the Founders. My wife, who is an historian, for whom the period is in her area of specialization, sent me an email, which I asked permission to share with this board I think it may be of interest, given some of our recent discussions.
I have repeated the
link in case anyone wants to read the original
The rest of this message are my wife's words. Hence I will not post a mojo mug for this diary. Recommend if you think it is worth reading.
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A couple of emendations I would make:
(1) Nominal Anglicanism--which in the 18th c., I'm tempted to say cynically, was sometimes hard to tell from the real thing, because Anglican spirituality was itself so tepid in this era outside of the Methodist ferment--was an essential part of the fabric of elite life in
18th-c. Virginia, providing one of the colony's foundational structures of social organization. That's why Washington was an Anglican Parish
Vestryman--as was Jefferson at one point as a young man (Butler is wrong to say TJ was never a member of an establish church, thus: he was
baptized Anglican in infancy and never officially turned his back on the church, though he made it clear in private from young manhood on that he didn't accept its doctrines; he did continue to attend Anglican/Episcopal services periodically throughout his life).
(2) However unorthodox (e.g., Jefferson or Adams) or lukewarm (e.g., Washington) most of the major Founders were, it would be a great mistake to underestimate how important they considered religion to be as an ethical force in society. Important recent scholarship including by James Hutson, chief of the Manuscript Division at Library of Congress) has shown clearly that the Founders considered religion vital to the success of the Republic for just that reason. That, and the encouragement of
diversity, is why (for instance) Jefferson regularly attended religious services in the Capitol while president and why he contributed money privately to the establishment of congregations of many different denominations.
(3) Finally, it is important to recognize that the major Founders were to some degree exceptional in their own class and generation for their religious eccentricity: many of their peers were indeed conventionally devout. John Witherspoon, a Signer of the Declaration, was a
Presbyterian minister, for instance--and near the end of his life, as he struggled with his sense of personal alienation from trends in American political life, Alexander Hamilton began to take his Episcopalian faith very seriously and founded a society that was intended to ensure the election of Christian politicians to public office (early shades of the
Christian Coalition, perhaps?).