[Vision2020] Prayer and Politics in the Early American Republic

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Dear Visionaries:

There has been a big debate about prayer at Pocatello City Council meetings and another one down in Texas.  This radio commentary/column is my contribution to the debate.  Read my article "The Founding Fathers and Religious Liberalism" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/foundfathers.htm

I dedicate the column to the late Forrest Church, son of the late Sen. Frank Church.  He received a Ph.D. in church history from Harvard and became one of the nation's foremost experts on the Founding Fathers and their religious beliefs.  He was also head minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in NYC.

Happy Epiphany on Jan. 6,

Nick

PRAYER AND POLITICS IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC

When you pray, go into your room and shut the door.
--Jesus, Matthew 6:6

When the church and state tucked into bed together, it was the church that ended up asking: “Will you respect me in the morning,” and the answer was almost always “No.”

--Forrest Church, So Help Me God

In 1774 Thomas Jefferson proposed a resolution before the Virginia House of Burgesses for a day of “fasting, humiliation, and 
prayer” so that God would “turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to moderation and justice.”  It passed unanimously and the British governor immediately fired the legislators as traitors to the Crown.

It is clear from Jefferson’s own comments on his prayer resolution that it was purely political and not a principled endorsement of state sponsored prayer. Religious historian Forrest Church explains Jefferson’s ploy: “Because the most conservative delegate was reluctant to vote against God and the most radical was delighted to press Him into service, the motion passed without dissent.”

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787 a proposal to open its sessions with prayer did not even come to a vote. The record shows that “the Convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary” (The Records of the Federal Convention, vol. 1, p. 452, fn. 15). 

Under political pressure from Alexander Hamilton, who said that “we should make the most of the religious prepossessions of our people,” George Washington declared a day of thanksgiving on November, 26, 1789.  Forrest Church submits that “it met a polite yet cool reception.” As Washington called God simply “a great and glorious Being,” the Presbyterians complained that the text lacked “a decidedly Christian spirit.”  

National religious days continued to be controversial, and Church relates that John Adams’ national “fasts divided the electorate. He later claimed that they cost him the election of 1800.” This is exactly the problem with state sanctioned religious ceremonies: they are diluted to accommodate everyone but it end up pleasing no one. It is perhaps for this reason that in 1792 Congress refused to support a national fast, “explicitly because,” according to Church, “it recalled royal presumptions to sacral authority.”

Even though he was under much pressure to do so during his two terms as president, Jefferson refused to declare days of national prayer or thanksgiving. In his famous 1801 letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, Jefferson introduced the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state.” 

Jefferson was advised by his Attorney General Levi Lincoln to delete his intention to dispense with government sanctioned prayers, even though the Baptists requested them in the aftermath of the bitterly fought election. Jefferson agreed with Lincoln that leaving the language in would not only alienate the Baptists as potential allies, but also unnecessarily provoke his Christian Federalist enemies in New England.

The Connecticut Baptists were well acquainted with Jefferson’s unorthodox religious views, but they trusted him far more than the Federalist Congregationalists in their state. They had established a Christian Commonwealth which levied taxes on and generally suppressed all other sects. 

Both Federalists and Republicans politicized religious issues, and it is good for us that the Republicans won because minority religions flourished in the aftermath of Jefferson’s savvy politics. Jefferson was playing both sides of the Wall of Separation: insuring religious freedom for minorities and keeping the state as secular as possible.

Early Republicans had a great motto: “Religion: We love it in its purity, but not as an engine of political delusion.”  The belief that Americans can have non-denominational prayers that include all of us in this multicultural nation is indeed a delusion.  

For the first time in American history President Obama mentioned non-believers in his inaugural address, and in declaring a national day of prayer he allowed them an alternative with “pray or otherwise give thanks.” (He also did not hold any services at the White House.) This does not, however, make up for his decision to invite evangelical Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, praying in Jesus’ name and concluding with the Lord’s Prayer. 

Today’s conservative Republicans have essentially betrayed two of the greatest achievements of their forbearers:  Jefferson’s and Madison’s strict view of the separation of church and state and post-Lincoln views on civil rights. As Democrats finally turned away from playing the race card, conservative Republicans have started playing it to their advantage. 

Nick Gier taught philosophy and religion at the University of Idaho for 31 years.