The New Republic

Mr. Peretz, you're kind of correct about the Christian influences. But much of what was part of "christianity" at the time would not be recognizable as such by the evangelical theocrats today. "nature's god" was specifically a deist phrase. Whether you can call deists Christian is a matter of debate, but deists would have more in common with Dennis Kucinich than they would with Sam Brownback. They believed in God the father and specifically denied the divinity of Christ. Conservative Christians consider such denial heresy, along with a tying of God to nature.

- miceelf

October 9, 2007 at 4:41pm

107? Good God that is a good run. One quibble though, unless she were hit by a bus she didn't actually die healthy. Another thing, why is it not Israeli Nationalist instead of Jewish Nationalist, inasmuch as you are an ardent defender of the state of Israel, including its non-Jewish elements, who are also Israeli citizens. (if not, alas, as much Israeli patriots as I would like)

- blackton

October 9, 2007 at 5:10pm

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration, came pretty close to despising all religion. While his own beliefs are a matter of some dispute, whatever belief in a creator he held was barely Christian in the usual sense, and his many writings are peppered with the sort of statements you would expect from a smart, ornery atheist. In any event, to say that our nation was founded as a Christian one is almost exactly backwards, even putting aside the clear and deliberate choice to found the nation under *no* religious banner and indeed to forbid it. (See the First Amendment.) It's backwards, too, because the the Founding Fathers were influenced by enlightenment-era philosophy which can be generalized as elevating reason *at the expense* of religion. Perhaps at no point in American history has its leaders been less religious than at the founding. Religion, under the enlightenment view shared by the upper-middle-class professional and business types who actually made all these decisions, was relegated to deism or something close to it -- which rejects almost all superstition and is pretty hard-nosed, even by the standards of today's "spritirual" types and certainly by the standard of today's Christian fundamentalists. Knowing or understanding the mind of God was *not* what they were concerned with, and their view of human rights (a recent invention) was not that it was commanded by God but rather that it was commanded by reason -- the non-faith-based part of the brain. To refer to "Creator-endowed" traits is, given Jefferson's views, not a strong statement of any kind but more like a figure of speech. You could substitute "natural" or make do with "self-evident." Meanwhile, "divine Providence" doesn't mean much either. It's just a fancy way of saying fate or luck -- words we use without necessarily beleiving that it exists in any objective form.

- jhildner

October 9, 2007 at 6:37pm

...nature's God: via Spinoza. Maybe universal reference on Spinoza's part, but how much of Jefferson's thought and ideas in the Declaration derived from Spinoza via Locke and via the Spinoza volumes in his own library...and how much of Spinoza in some way still derived from his Judaism...??? Am just raising the question. Either way, McCain's statement was pretty appalling, and even a bit surprising -- don't generally agree with him on most things, but didn't expect that.

- LISAH

October 9, 2007 at 6:33pm

What a wonderful post! One of your best.

Arguing over whether we're technically or formally a Christian nation stikes me as a bit vain. (Americans, vain? I'm shocked, shocked!)

I like to call us a Judeo-Christian nation, because the Calvinists who seeded our society, were deeply informed by the Old Testament.

No, we're not an offically Christian nation, but as much as we fall short of practicing what we preach, having it as a foundation, Mr. Hitchens notwithstanding, is fortunate indeed.

- jm_rice

October 9, 2007 at 7:30pm

to Yitzhak Leibush Peretz, the writer? He lived 1851- 1915, most of his adult life in Warsaw. (Yod Lamed Peretz, as he's known here). I'm almost sure that the whole Peretz clan was originally from Spain, or another Sephardi center.

- babigail

October 9, 2007 at 7:49pm

You're right, dying is never healthy. It's the ultimate ripoff.

"Do not go gently into that good night."

- jm_rice

October 9, 2007 at 7:50pm

How can one write so much on the "Christian nation" comment and ignore the rest -- i.e., when McCain said he "votes Christian"?

- Lymon1

October 9, 2007 at 8:55pm

Characterizing our nation, which is founded not on any religious doctrine or conviction but rather upon a secular view of universal human rights, as a Christian or Judeo-Christian one, is gratuitously exclusionary. There is zero to be gained by it, especially in the political context where it's code for conveying to a certain constituency one's sympathy with imposing peculiarly religious viewpoints on those who don't necessarily share them. The main take-away from the American story -- what made America revolutionary -- is not its religion but its liberalism, including a conscious refusal to establish any religion, even a vague one. Individuals and groups stand for God or Christ or whoever. *America* stands for freedom of conscience. *That's* what made America unique at the time and what inspired the world. There's a reason "Under God" and "In God We Trust" didn't appear until long after the founding -- because the impulse responsible for such (minor) lapses wasn't shared by the founders. The real motto -- before it was sadly changed -- was "From many, one" -- from many states, one nation; from many people, one nation; from many peoples, one nation. A true American is someone who was born in America or obtained citizenship, end of story, and it's this revolutionary concept which our politicians should continue to celebrate -- not it's supposed "Christian" heritage. Because, like Jesus's message of love, for many, it's still a tough pill to swallow. And, by the way, Thomas Jefferson, who actaully did write the Declaration of Independence, sounded a lot more like "Mr. Hitchens" in his various writings than any enthusiastic Christian today.

- jhildner

October 9, 2007 at 9:26pm

is to endorse the political agenda of the Christian Right, who claim that they have the right (if not the moral duty) to bend the law and government of this country to their religious beliefs. If you like the teaching of Creationism, among other things these nutjobs endorse, then you should be as happy as Mr Peretz with John McCain. If on the other hand you see in McCain's flattery of Dobson et al the same kind of moral courage he exercised on the Confederate flag issue in the 2000 campaign (a trivial error, by comparison), then you might have a more serious issue with the Senator from Arizona.

- purcellneil

October 10, 2007 at 12:03am

- moz

October 10, 2007 at 9:22am

You speak in the tired cliches of two-bit journalists. The "justification," as Peretz says, of our radical political experiment was indeed religious as there is no evidence that men are created equal. A theological belief underpins our political ideals. By the way, the history of American liberalism and religion is often intertwined. It's quite difficult to parse the two sometimes.

- moz

October 10, 2007 at 9:47am

"A theological belief underpins our political ideals." "The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on nothing; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing and admits of no conclusion." --Thomas Paine. Paine *hated* Christianity, and frankly proclaimed his "disbelief" in it along with his disbelief and strong distaste for all organized religions. He ridiculed every major tenet of Christianity, viewing them as silly and pernicious superstitions. Theodore Roosevelt called him a "filthy, little atheist." Paine's Rights of Man mirrors the Declaration of Independence in its claim of universal, natural, self-evident rights. Both were strongly influenced by John Locke and other enlightenment philosophers. None of these people are very religious. Whatever beliefs they held, they viewed as the outcome of reason, and they distrusted, or in the case of Paine anyway, absolutely hated unreasoned, irrational belief -- what we might call faith. You can argue with them, and many have. The "positivist" legal tradition argues that enlightenment era philosophers proceeded from mere assertions about what rights were self-evident, and that these rights were not in fact commanded by nature in any objective sense. Jeremy Benetham famously said the concept was "nonsense on stilts." That doesn't change the fact that Paine, Jefferson, Locke, et al did not proceed from religious or theological understandings. They viewed the rights of man as "self-evident" -- and not commanded by any particular religious doctrine to which they subscribed. Indeed, Paine spent much of his time railing against the Bible, which he viewed as one of the sickest, cruelest, most absurd things he had ever read.

- jhildner

October 10, 2007 at 11:37am

"A theological belief underpins our political ideals." "The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on nothing; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing and admits of no conclusion." --Thomas Paine. Paine *hated* Christianity, and frankly proclaimed his "disbelief" in it along with his disbelief and strong distaste for all organized religions. He ridiculed every major tenet of Christianity, viewing them as silly and pernicious superstitions. Theodore Roosevelt called him a "filthy, little atheist." Paine's Rights of Man mirrors the Declaration of Independence in its claim of universal, natural, self-evident rights. Both were strongly influenced by John Locke and other enlightenment philosophers. None of these people are very religious. Whatever beliefs they held, they viewed as the outcome of reason, and they distrusted, or in the case of Paine anyway, absolutely hated unreasoned, irrational belief -- what we might call faith. You can argue with them, and many have. The "positivist" legal tradition argues that enlightenment era philosophers proceeded from mere assertions about what rights were self-evident, and that these rights were not in fact commanded by nature in any objective sense. Jeremy Benetham famously said the concept was "nonsense on stilts." That doesn't change the fact that Paine, Jefferson, Locke, et al did not proceed from religious or theological understandings. They viewed the rights of man as "self-evident" -- and not commanded by any particular religious doctrine to which they subscribed. Indeed, Paine spent much of his time railing against the Bible, which he viewed as one of the sickest, cruelest, most absurd things he had ever read.

- jhildner

October 10, 2007 at 11:38am

My man Mr. Hildner. Back after the blasphemers, eh?

- boxofrox

October 10, 2007 at 12:52pm

Wherever they strike!

- jhildner

October 10, 2007 at 12:59pm

IMHO the truly distinctive feature of America and American society is the one Tocqueville identified: individualism. There are plenty of deeply Christian nations on the planet: Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, and until about 10 years ago, anyway, Ireland Italy and Spain. But the US has little in common with these deeply traditional societies that are hostile to capitalism and to the kind of individual self-seeking that relentlessly erodes family and communal bonds. We have far more in common with the rootless cosmopolitanism one associates with the imperial seat of a cosmopolitan trading empire.

- teplukhin2you

October 10, 2007 at 1:33pm

All well considered and well regarded. I wonder if it might be useful to explore a little further....just for kicks. It seems to me that although the Constitution proper makes no references to a creator as such it may well flow from the Declaration a suitably inclusive extension of as much by virtue of 'more perfect union' of which I argue can eloquently elaborate the central tenents of Judeo/Christian thrust and inquiry. A more perfect union, is after all said and done, a synopsis of God seekers from the time of a first inkling. Individually and collectively. Needless to say there has been much contention about the definitions and filling in the blanks. Those choices are what give us our various flavors of worship or not. Inquiry and exclamation. Our Constitution...a practical roadmap and chance at a peacable attempt at individuals living together and at least working toward truth. If not; What's all the fuss about?

- boxofrox

October 10, 2007 at 4:05pm

It's telling that you would call those who disagree with your reading of history "blasphemers." You make an astonishing claim about John Locke not being very religious. Have you read John Locke? Please do. He wrote a book called "The Reasonableness of Chrisitianity." He and many other enlightenment thinkers did not assume that faith and reason were necessarily incompatible. But this is not the point. The idea that the Creator has endowed us with certain inalienable rights provided and (hopefully still) provides the metaphysical justification for a political ideal. To say these thinkers considered this "self-evident" does not diminish that fact that is indeed a metaphysical belief.

- moz

October 10, 2007 at 8:31pm

Regarding "blasphemers," I didn't use that word. Boxo did, and I was just kidding in response. Yes, Locke was a Christian, but, as I said, and as your citation demonstrates, he believed that belief must be based on reason. He was one of those many figures throughout history who thought that he could justify his religious belief using logic. I don't think he succeeds, but here's the real point: Compare Locke's thinking on religion with that of even moderately religious people today. Press most people regarding their religious convictions, and it will eventually emerge that they are relying to a large extent on faith -- belief without reason, i.e, without the sort of reasonable basis they would normally require in every-day life to know whether something is true or not. This confession is often followed by the assertion that faith and reason can co-exist -- one sphere for reasoned belief and another for unreasoned belief. This sort of accommodation, common today, would trouble Locke. There aren't two kinds of truth or two ways of knowing what it is. I think Locke would agree with that. That's why he wrote about the "reasonableness of Christianity." The whole point is that you don't *need* leaps of faith to be a Christian. You just need reason. I disagree with him about where reason takes you (he relies on some very weak logical "proofs" for the existence of God, for example), but the whole endeavor -- testing religious truth-claims against standards of rationality doesn't strike me as a particularly religious thing to do. It doesn't feel like "faith" nearly so much as "doubt." Thomas Jefferson once advised a young man as follows: "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you." "If there be one"? These are not the words of a man who believed that his most cherished principles relied on a a metaphysical belief. Indeed, he said pretty much the opposite: "Our principles are founded upon the immovable basis of equal right and reason." He argued that goodness and virtue did not come from a love a God exclusively, because "whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists." He goes on to note that it is usual in Protestent countries for religious dissenters to defect to deism and for those of a similar bent in Catholic countries to defect to atheism, and that some of those atheists -- using the term as it is used today and not to mean someone without morals as it was more typically used at the time -- were prominent figures of great virtue. He viewed the arc of human thought not only bending toward justice but "from credulity to skepticism." Do these sound like the words of someone we would describe today as "religious"? You mention Locke, but you don't discuss Jefferson -- the guy who wrote the words -- nor do you deal with Paine -- whose thought was very much in line with Jefferson's. To say that one is endowed by a creator with anything is, if understood literally, a metaphysical belief. That much is true. What those rights are -- the actual content of what Locke, Jefferson, Paine and their contemporaries were saying -- was *not* a metaphysical belief, at least not according to them. It was an ethical assertion. They did not -- especially the Americans -- locate this assertion in theology. Indeed, they strove not to, because theology is parochial, divisive, and does not admit rational discussion. They wanted to make a *universal* appeal. They basically said, this is right and you know it, and dared anyone to argue with them. They used words and phrases like "self-evident" and "irrefutable" in decrying government tyranny. They tapped into a recent tradition that viewed such tyranny as unnatural and corrupt, and they viewed powerful religious institutions as part of the problem. If you can point me to an argument that the author of the Declaration believed that he was engaged primarily in a Christian project, or that he viewed his the principles of that document as stemming primarily from religious convictions, then I'd be interested to read it. I'm sure someone has tried, but I doubt it's very convincing.

- jhildner

October 10, 2007 at 11:04pm

"I don't think he succeeds, but here's the real point: Compare Locke's thinking on religion with that of even moderately religious people today." No, this is not the real point. This point has nothing to do with Mr. Peretz post, my comments, and more importantly, this point is irrelevant to any discussion of the enlightenment thinkers, or early American Christianity. I find your comments to be reactionary. Sorry.

- moz

October 11, 2007 at 6:32pm

"Yes, Locke was a Christian, but, as I said, and as your citation demonstrates, he believed that belief must be based on reason." He didn't. For him to base Christianity or belief on "unassisted reason" (a move similar to the one that was made by Feuerbach in the 19th century, substituting the classic Christian logos for a new "pure logos") would be the same thing as giving man the status of God. Something he would be horrified with. Locke's "reasonable Christianity" must be understood in Spinozian terms (the terms Locke based himself in) and means an hermeneutical exercise meant to release belief from superstitions invoked by those that wanted to push for their own earthly authority based on God. And presupposes an access to the heteronomous Christian logos.

- luispc

October 12, 2007 at 2:50am

"But it is something one cannot say of the Declaration of Independence which three times in the text avers to Christian faith, and to Christian faith for there was no other." It's not just a matter of not existing any other faith back then. The point is quite different. If not based on that "faith" the Declaration of Independence would have been simply impossible. The word "faith" is not also entirely accurate. The founders did not think themselves as based on "faith", but on "knowledge".

- luispc

October 12, 2007 at 2:55am