Oh, how far we have fallen...
In the summer of 1787, representatives met in Philadelphia to write the Constitution of the United States. After they had struggled for several weeks and had made little or no progress, eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin rose and addressed the troubled and disagreeing convention that was about to adjourn in confusion.
"In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a super-intending Providence in our favor... Have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?
"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this...
"I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning."
The very purpose of the Pilgrims in 1620 was to establish a government based on the Bible. The New England Charter, signed by King James I, confirmed the goal: "...to advance the enlargement of Christian religion, to the glory of God Almighty..."
Governor Bradford [1588-1657], in writing of the Pilgrims' landing, describes their first act: "being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven."
--From "The Rebirth of America"
Published by The Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986
A quick look around today's America, and the one described above seems a fairy tale:
Homosexuality is become an acceptable, alternate lifestyle. Few are aware of, or shed even a single tear for the modern holocaust that is abortion. God's name as a curse daily assaults every ear. Children witness incredible amounts of violence daily, so much so, that murder elicits not even so much as a flinch. Our society foments greed while chastising avarice. Sloth is rewarded, and hard work punished. And every man does that which is right in his own eyes.
Oh, how far we have fallen.
from the mind of... Eric | 11:36 PM
5 Comments:
I find much to disagree with in this post, and offer in response a review of an excellent book on Franklin that begins by addressing the main issue ELAshley posted about. It goes on to demonstrate that Franklin, while believing in a creator, was quite critical of dogmatic religious belief, and favored good works over words. Please read it carefully. I've added some emphasis in a few parts:
When Reason Energized a Nation
The concept of degeneration in American political history is so broadly accepted as to be almost unchallengeable. In the days of the Founding, giants walked the earth; Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and the others seized independence from Britain and placed the new nation on its republican path. Since then it's all been downhill; no subsequent generation, and certainly not ours, could have accomplished what those demigods wrought.
This conclusion is correct, but the cause typically adduced is wrong. What separates us from the Founders is not a talent gap but a temperament gap; what we lack is not intellectual power but collective confidence. Philip Dray's succinct recounting of the role of science in Franklin's life and thought affords a useful reminder of how thoroughly America's republican experiment was a product of the mindset of the Enlightenment: a belief that all things are possible to self-confident human reason.
Dray, the author of the prize-winning At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, points out that while later generations looked on Franklin as a statesman and diplomat who dabbled in science, his own generation deemed him a scientist who moonlighted in politics. Dray covers all the high points of Franklin's scientific career: his apprenticeship as a journalist during a violent debate over inoculation for smallpox (literally violent: Cotton Mather escaped death when a homemade bomb tossed by an opponent in the debate failed to explode); his observations of the Gulf Stream and other marine and atmospheric currents (which finally convinced stubborn British sea captains to heed the advice American whalers had been giving them for decades); his prescient studies of demography (which forecast with uncanny accuracy the growth of the American population); and, of course, his investigations into electricity (which won him world fame and might have brought him a fortune had he not eschewed a patent on the lightning rod). Dray relates these parts of the Franklin story with energy and economy. His treatment of the electrical investigations, especially of the development of the lightning rod, is the fullest currently available. Other authors have noted the skepticism that naturally greeted the concept of the lightning rod -- who of sound mind would want to crown his house with something that seemed to attract lightning? -- but none has pursued the battle over lightning rod design -- one point or several? sharp or blunt? -- with such thoroughness.
Dray devotes less attention to the subject of the second half of his subtitle: the "invention of America." He walks Franklin through the seminal political events of the Revolutionary era -- the Declaration of Independence, which Franklin helped draft; the Revolutionary War, which Franklin helped win by his diplomacy in France; the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which Franklin helped guide to its successful conclusion. But Dray's real interest lies elsewhere, and his preference shows.
Yet what he does say about the intersection of Franklin's science and politics is, if not original, timely. Dray makes clear that Franklin brought to his political work the same rationalism that informed his science. Franklin wasn't irreligious; he believed in a Creator who paid some attention to what His creatures were up to. But he had no patience with theology; he considered sectarianism a blight and judged reason the appropriate measure of faith rather than vice versa. His parents, solid Puritans, lamented his lapse from orthodoxy; he responded with his own statement of faith: "At the last Day, we shall not be examined [by] what we thought but what we did; and our recommendation will not be that we said Lord, Lord , but that we did GOOD to our Fellow Creatures." One of Franklin's revisions to Jefferson's draft Declaration replaced "sacred and undeniable," in reference to the truths the Americans were defending, with "self-evident." The difference was crucial: "sacred" summoned the authority of God, "self-evident" the authority of human reason.
At a critical moment of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin uncharacteristically -- or so it seemed to most of those present -- moved that each morning's session begin with a prayer to the Almighty for guidance. Dray reads this as suggesting an eleventh-hour reversion to Franklin's parents' belief in divine intervention; more likely Franklin simply wished to remind his opinionated colleagues that they didn't have all the answers. Significantly, the convention rejected the motion; Alexander Hamilton reportedly declared that this was no time to seek "foreign aid." Franklin would no more have looked to Heaven for political guidance than he would have consulted the Bible in fashioning his lightning rod. God gave man reason, he believed, and expected man to use it. Franklin did so with confidence, as did his colleagues.
That was their genius, and it's what separates Franklin's generation from ours. Religion hasn't driven reason from the public square, but it has gained political leverage it never enjoyed in the days of the Founding. Biblical literalism (currently cloaked as "intelligent design") has fought the science of evolution to a standstill in many schools. The very idea of the Enlightenment evokes derisive sneers. Orthodoxy of some Judeo-Christian sort has become a de facto requirement for American elective office; deists in the mold of Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson need not apply. Franklin's partners weren't all as scientifically minded as Dray reveals Franklin to be, but they all believed that reason was a surer guide to political progress than religion. And in this belief they accomplished the great things they did.
As Franklin left the Constitutional Convention in September 1787, he was asked what he and his colleagues had produced. "A republic," he replied, "if you can keep it." We've kept it, after our fashion. But we couldn't reproduce it. Franklin would be disappointed.
Do you therefore suggest that people were no more religious at the beginning of this nation than today?
Do you then believe that belief in God requires one to throw out science?
I don't buy it.
Well, it depends on what you define as religious. We are a very religious country today, judged by how many people believe in God (95%? And aren't we something like 85% Christian?). I do not know what these statistics looked like in the late 1700's.
I do believe we are more Christian today than were the founding fathers, who were more likely to be Deists.
No, I certainly don't believe religion and science are incompatible. However, I do believe that certain fundamentalist and conservative sects have been attacking science that they find threatening.
A return to a dual embrace of faith and rationalism like Franklin's would do our country much good.
Yet more reasons not to conclude that Franklin's words to justify concluding this was founded as a Christian nation:
First, it is rarely mentioned that Franklin's motion for prayer was voted down. Fine Christians, these founding fathers.
Second, about March 1, 1790, Franklin wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, who had asked him his views on religion. His answer would indicate that he remained a Deist, not a Christian, to the end:
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...." (Carl Van Doren. Benjamin Franklin. New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 777.)
He died just over a month later on April 17.
Like me, Franklin believed Jesus to be a great teacher, but doubted his divinity.
To say our nation was not founded as a Christian nation, on Christian beliefs, simply because you can find fault with the Franklin quote, is to completely disregard a whole host of other evidences.
I merely submitted one quote. You found fault with it. Fine. I disagree with your premise, but fine. Your rebuttal of one quote is hardly proof that this nation was not founded on Christian principles.
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