Is America a Christian nation? A proof

I am teaching a course for elementary education majors on United States history. It is a broad course that deals with the politics of the classroom as well as the content these future teachers will need. We dealt with the idea of religion and the American constitution recently, discussing James Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" as a way to defuse the emotionally charged contemporary issue of America as a Christian Nation.

So here is my question: can we write a proof that provides students with a way to deal with the logic of that statement? Here is my attempt.

If America is a Christian nation then it does not possess a civil government. Because if it had a civil government whose existence depended on Christianity then it would no longer be civil.

If this is true then its opposite true, that if American is a Christian nation, then Christianity in America depends on the government's support of it and without such support Christianity would not survive.

But since we know that Christianity would exist without government support, then America's government can neither be a support for it nor exist because of it. Thus American is not a Christian nation.

The Dilemma that is Stanley Hauerwas

I recently finished Stanley Hauerwas’s memoir entitled Hannah’s Child that appeared in 2010. I like reading Hauerwas and have enjoyed hearing his lectures and, on a rare occasion, seeing him speak. He is witty, sharp, and, it seems to me, forces his listeners—whatever their relationship to religion—to consider what faith is for. He has been at Duke University’s Divinity School for nearly twenty years holding an endowed professorship. As befits his lofty academic position, Hauerwas has been incredibly productive and his scholarship is admirably diverse.

There are many fascinating parts to Hauerwas’s story, among those that are of particular interest to me and my working through of U.S. intellectual history is his recounting of why he came to write on such an array topics, from medical ethics and care for the disabled, to pacifism, the academy, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Even though he is a polymath, he has been tagged by his peers/critics as a particular kind of theologian. In her profile of Hauerwas for Time Magazine, Jean Bethke Elshtain described him as a Christian contrarian who speaks “pacifism” to power in order to remind Americans that they have churches that can stand apart from their frequent worship of the state. Ironically, this profile appeared in the issue that came out a few days after 9/11, a moment that was auspicious for both Hauerwas and Elshtain for the wars that followed hastened an end to their friendship as they took up opposite sides in debates over patriotism and the violence perpetrated in name of the nation.

Hauerwas’s relationship to the state often gets him associated with the Anabaptist tradition in American Protestantism—a critique most recently developed by James Davison Hunter in To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Through this lens, Hauerwas becomes not merely a critic of actions taken by governments but a theologian who steps outside of politics itself. Hauerwas has certainly contributed to this perception through such works as Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony in which he and his co-author Will Willimon argued that the Christian church imposed obligations and responsibilities on Christians that forced them to consider who or what they worshiped. Of course, Hauerwas seems stubborn in his insistence that Americans do not need to privilege their obligations and responsibilities to their nation above those to their God. A tough challenge for any person who claims dual or dueling allegiances, and one at least worth considering.

In one of Hauerwas’s clearest articulations of this idea he writes: “Theology is the ongoing and never ending attempt to learn this story [of how to worship God] and to locate the contexts that make speech about God work. How theology can at once be about God and about the complexities of human life is never easily rendered. Some theologians in modernity have tried to split the difference between speech about God and the complexities of human life [read: Reinhold Niebuhr], with the result that their theology is more about ‘us’ than about God. When that happens, it is not at all clear that you need the word ‘God’ at all. If my work has seemed to be ‘in your face,’ I think it has been so because I have tried to show that ‘God’ is a necessary word.”

In considering the public role Hauerwas has played over the last three decades, he clearly has not remained (if he ever was) a resident alien. His work has been, as he would be the first to claim, overtly political in the sense that being Christian and considering ethics is nothing if not about power and how we exercise and critique it.

However, I have been teaching about James Madison’s challenge to the way religion became enshrined politically in the founding the American government. I wondered with my students the other day what kind of career someone like Hauerwas would have had if Madison’s recommendation of a strong statement regarding religion had found its way into the Constitution. Instead of Madison’s argument that civil government cannot need religion in order to survive and operate and Americans should have acknowledges that fact clearly, we have a Constitution that promises no state interference in religious worship and that’s about it.

David Sehat in The Myth of American Religious Freedom, a book that I find to be one of the most important to appear in 2011, has made me consider a way to conceive of what Madison wanted: the test for religious freedom is not whether churches flourish, they will or will not based on the people who worship in them, but whether a society supports (not merely tolerates) those who reject religion and, most especially, mainstream religion. In short, religion didn’t need the state and the state didn’t need religion. But that’s not we got. And Tocqueville was perceptive enough to recognize that within a few decades after the ratification of the Constitution, American society had developed a co-dependent relationship with the idea of religion.

Stanley Hauerwas has, in a way, benefited from that relationship, in that his work constantly seems relevant because he challenges the way we speak about God. But at the same time, I read his memoir as recovery of sorts of the dream Madison had of a society in which religions rose and fell without any consequential connection to the health of the state. In the end, there is an irony to Hauerwas’s prominence—like his foil, Reinhold Niebuhr, his fame is based on the way his theology plays a role in the politics of the nation and not in the creation and understanding of Christian ethics. Madison’s warning continues to haunt the religious.

What Would Madison Do?

Billboards will soon go up around Indianapolis, along the highway that circles the city, expressing a message the video above also attempts to make: "you don't need God--to hope, to care, to love, to live." The campaign is part of the Center for Inquiry's struggle to make a case for "living without religion." The organization wants to address and presumably undue "common myths about the unreligious." Among the most popular (and damaging) according to the group is that "the nonreligious are immoral--or at least they can't be relied upon to be as good as those with religious beliefs."

This campaign is the latest in a centuries long struggle in this country over the role religion plays in American life--remember George H.W. Bush's view in the 1988 campaign that atheists were really not citizens. Our colleague David Sehat has contributed mightily to the analysis of this story with The Myth of American Religious Freedom, a book a great historical sweep and rigorous thought. It was in light of reading David's book along side another that I assigned for a class that I struck up a conversation with my students. After I showed them the video above, I asked, what would James Madison make of this campaign?

The course that they are taking with me is called "The Long Revolution," and it looks at how ideas that led to the American Revolution of the mid-18th century were addressed over time and in some very distinct ways set on a new course by the mid-19th century. Among those ideas is religious freedom--or, more precisely, the role that religion played in the framing of American ideas about the nation. To understand how Americans came to view their new nation through the lens of religion, I contrasted two interpretations of Madison's view on religious freedom: one from David's book and the other from Thomas S. Kidd's God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution.

Kidd asked a question that my students ask me every semester: "If the Constitution...included no overtly Christian language and banned religious tests, and if the delegates declined to hire a chaplain to mark the proceedings with Christian piety, is the Constitution a secular document?" To this, Kidd explained: "Some of its framers said no." And the person he points to is none other than James Madison who as "the Constitution's chief architect, believed that God had helped the convention achieve unanimity. He thought it was 'impossible, for the man of pious reflection, not to perceive in [the outcome of the convention] a finger of that almighty hand, which had so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.'" Kidd concluded from this passage that "to Madison and the Federalists, the Constitution represented America's greatest providential deliverance since the military victory over Britain."

The citation for Madison's passage come from Federalist #37. I copied the paragraph for my students and had them read it:

Would it be wonderful if, under the pressure of all these difficulties, the convention should have been forced into some deviations from that artificial structure and regular symmetry which an abstract view of the subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on a Constitution planned in his closet or in his imagination? The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

I asked if they would conclude from this passage that "to Madison and the Federalists, the Constitution represented America's greatest providential deliverance since the military victory over Britain." Or did it misrepresent what we had read earlier is Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" from 1785 in which Madison made the following argument:

We remonstrate against the Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion because the establishment in question is not necessary for the support of Civil Government. If it be urged as necessary for the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose, it cannot be necessary for the former. If Religion be not within the cognizance of Civil Government how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?

With Kidd's interpretation of Madison from Federalist #37 alongside excerpts from Federalist #37 and Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, I then gave the students David Sehat's assessment of Madison's view of the religion clause in the First Amendment. David concluded that far from a consensus among Madison and the Federalists over religion and the Constitution, "the lack of definition in its essential terms reflected a deep conflict among the legislators. The result was confusion about the amendment's basic purpose. What was the point of protecting religious liberty, however understood? Was it that it formed an individual and essential right, as Madison would have it? Or was it that such protection was a means of encouraging religious expression to shore up social morality and thereby strengthen the state, as others suggested?"

My students especially liked David's final point in this section: "Rather than providing a clear institutionalized form of religious liberty, the First Amendment created an ambiguous legal framework in which religious partisans could use the levers of law and politics to create a moral establishment while claiming religious freedom. It was exactly the result that Madison had feared."

It was fairly easy for my students to see where Kidd had offered misguidance, to put it mildly, on where Madison stood. But the larger point of Kidd's argument went directly to the campaign by the Center for Inquiry--if the Founders saw providential influence in the passage of the Constitution, then we indeed live in a society that does not allow freedom of conscience. In other words, to my students, David and Madison won the debate, but Kidd carried the day. And thus the billboards.

My students understood why the Center for Inquiry would find it necessary to make the claim that those who are unreligious can be good, moral people too. That might sound like a mundane realization, but for the most part, my students came into the class with views on the role of religion in American history that accorded with Kidd's reading of Madison. So now, maybe, they'll drive by those billboards and say to the person next to them, well if Madison has his way, that wouldn't be necessary. Yes, my students will engage freely in Madisonian debate!

What Would Madison Do?

Billboards will soon go up around Indianapolis, along the highway that circles the city, expressing a message the video above also attempts to make: "you don't need God--to hope, to care, to love, to live." The campaign is part of the Center for Inquiry's struggle to make a case for "living without religion." The organization wants to address and presumably undue "common myths about the unreligious." Among the most popular (and damaging) according to the group is that "the nonreligious are immoral--or at least they can't be relied upon to be as good as those with religious beliefs."

This campaign is the latest in a centuries long struggle in this country over the role religion plays in American life--remember George H.W. Bush's view in the 1988 campaign that atheists were really not citizens. Our colleague David Sehat has contributed mightily to the analysis of this story with The Myth of American Religious Freedom, a book a great historical sweep and rigorous thought. It was in light of reading David's book along side another that I assigned for a class that I struck up a conversation with my students. After I showed them the video above, I asked, what would James Madison make of this campaign?

The course that they are taking with me is called "The Long Revolution," and it looks at how ideas that led to the American Revolution of the mid-18th century were addressed over time and in some very distinct ways set on a new course by the mid-19th century. Among those ideas is religious freedom--or, more precisely, the role that religion played in the framing of American ideas about the nation. To understand how Americans came to view their new nation through the lens of religion, I contrasted two interpretations of Madison's view on religious freedom: one from David's book and the other from Thomas S. Kidd's God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution.

Kidd asked a question that my students ask me every semester: "If the Constitution...included no overtly Christian language and banned religious tests, and if the delegates declined to hire a chaplain to mark the proceedings with Christian piety, is the Constitution a secular document?" To this, Kidd explained: "Some of its framers said no." And the person he points to is none other than James Madison who as "the Constitution's chief architect, believed that God had helped the convention achieve unanimity. He thought it was 'impossible, for the man of pious reflection, not to perceive in [the outcome of the convention] a finger of that almighty hand, which had so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.'" Kidd concluded from this passage that "to Madison and the Federalists, the Constitution represented America's greatest providential deliverance since the military victory over Britain."

The citation for Madison's passage come from Federalist #37. I copied the paragraph for my students and had them read it:

Would it be wonderful if, under the pressure of all these difficulties, the convention should have been forced into some deviations from that artificial structure and regular symmetry which an abstract view of the subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on a Constitution planned in his closet or in his imagination? The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

I asked if they would conclude from this passage that "to Madison and the Federalists, the Constitution represented America's greatest providential deliverance since the military victory over Britain." Or did it misrepresent what we had read earlier is Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" from 1785 in which Madison made the following argument:

We remonstrate against the Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion because the establishment in question is not necessary for the support of Civil Government. If it be urged as necessary for the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose, it cannot be necessary for the former. If Religion be not within the cognizance of Civil Government how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?

With Kidd's interpretation of Madison from Federalist #37 alongside excerpts from Federalist #37 and Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, I then gave the students David Sehat's assessment of Madison's view of the religion clause in the First Amendment. David concluded that far from a consensus among Madison and the Federalists over religion and the Constitution, "the lack of definition in its essential terms reflected a deep conflict among the legislators. The result was confusion about the amendment's basic purpose. What was the point of protecting religious liberty, however understood? Was it that it formed an individual and essential right, as Madison would have it? Or was it that such protection was a means of encouraging religious expression to shore up social morality and thereby strengthen the state, as others suggested?"

My students especially liked David's final point in this section: "Rather than providing a clear institutionalized form of religious liberty, the First Amendment created an ambiguous legal framework in which religious partisans could use the levers of law and politics to create a moral establishment while claiming religious freedom. It was exactly the result that Madison had feared."

It was fairly easy for my students to see where Kidd had offered misguidance, to put it mildly, on where Madison stood. But the larger point of Kidd's argument went directly to the campaign by the Center for Inquiry--if the Founders saw providential influence in the passage of the Constitution, then we indeed live in a society that does not allow freedom of conscience. In other words, to my students, David and Madison won the debate, but Kidd carried the day. And thus the billboards.

My students understood why the Center for Inquiry would find it necessary to make the claim that those who are unreligious can be good, moral people too. That might sound like a mundane realization, but for the most part, my students came into the class with views on the role of religion in American history that accorded with Kidd's reading of Madison. So now, maybe, they'll drive by those billboards and say to the person next to them, well if Madison has his way, that wouldn't be necessary. Yes, my students will engage freely in Madisonian debate!