Establishing Religious Freedom by Thomas E. Buckley

Author:Thomas E. Buckley [Buckley, Thomas E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)
ISBN: 9780813935041
Google: tdV6AAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2014-01-13T03:09:22+00:00

Evangelical Issues in Politics

Yet practically from the beginning of the Republic, a symbiotic relationship existed between religion and politics. Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic comments are well known, but he was not the only European observer impressed by the voluntary character of religion in America. The Bavarian émigré Francis Grund commented on the same phenomenon in the 1830s. He singled out the abundance of ministers, their energy in preaching Christianity in a variety of denominations, and most remarkable, the laity’s willingness “to pay for it.”31 From his perspective “religion has been the basis of the most important American settlements; religion kept their little community together, religion assisted them in their revolutionary struggle; it was religion to which they appealed in defending their rights, and it was religion, in fine, which taught them to prize their liberties.” “The Americans look upon religion as a promoter of civil and political liberty,” he wrote, and they “have, therefore, transferred to it a large portion of the affection which they cherish for the institutions of their country.”

Grund drew the inevitable contrast with Europe, where “liberal” forces strove to weaken religion’s influence. In the United States, however, the government depended upon religion: “Its promotion is essential to the constitution. . . . Whatever is calculated to diminish its influence and practice has a tendency to weaken the government, and is consequently opposed to the peace and welfare of the United States.” Morality rested upon religion; and by morality, Grund meant a person’s “moral conduct,” which he equated with “private virtue.” On the whole he thought that Europeans were much more forgiving of the private peccadilloes of their artists, politicians, soldiers, and even clergy because of the overall good they bestowed upon society. The same was not true in America, where “private virtue overtops the highest qualification of the mind, and is indispensable to the progress even of the most acknowledged talents.”32 By religion he meant Christianity, a religion of “the heart” that focused on “Love and charity” and emphasized Christ’s redemptive sacrifice “in dying for the sins of this world”; in short, evangelical religion and its concern for the kind of Christian lifestyle and behavior that would merit admission to the communion table.33

By the first decades of the nineteenth century, Virginians were well aware of these evangelical concerns and the pressure that churches and religious groups could bring to bear on legislation. Evangelicals had recognized that civil authorities could serve as a major support for their version of Christian morality, and they did not hesitate to seek assistance from state and local governments. Indeed, these expectations represented continuity with the church-state relationship under the colonial establishment. Thus in 1784 Hanover Presbytery requested legislative support for “preserving . . . the public Worship of the Deity,” and the next year the Baptists petitioned the assembly to support Christianity by passing “those laws of Morality, which are necessary for Private and Public happiness.”34 Virginia’s evangelicals saw no contradiction between these requests and Jefferson’s statute. Nor did the lawmakers.

Other petitions urged the enforcement of laws against “Vice and Immorality.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.