Old Time Religion

Chautauqua Meeting

One of the big stories flashing across the TV news stations here in Texas is the push by state Republicans to include religion into the curriculum for public schools. And not just any religion but the Christian religion including posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms and Bible readings. This is so momentous it has actually pushed homelessness off the front page – at least temporarily.

The Texas Democrats have reacted as expected, denouncing the Republican attempts to implant the Christian religion into the minds of students in a state “home to millions of people from countless faiths and beliefs.” They say that this effort violates the principle of the separation of church and state even though Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick pointed out in an Oval Office ceremony that such a concept does not appear anywhere in the Constitution.

But let’s back up a minute from this contemporary controversy. While exclusion of religion from public affairs might seem reasonable in a secular state such as the Soviet Union or Communist China, religion, and specifically the Christian religion, has played an important role in the development of the United States. We  must remember that many of the early colonists coming to North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were fleeing religious oppression (and devastating religious wars) in Europe. Many of the Pilgrims coming to North America were Calvinist Puritans joined by Calvinist Huguenots that had fled persecution in France. Other separatists such as the Quakers fled England only to be given rough treatment by the Puritans of Massachusetts until they found sanctuary in Pennsylvania. Roman Catholics, also persecuted in England, fled to Maryland under the protection of Lord Baltimore. Many of the American colonies had official religions that punished non-believers (my own ancestors were persecuted in Connecticut  because they belonged to a group outside the established Puritan religion). But because established religions caused so many conflicts between the colonies and their residents, the Framers drafted the first amendment to the US Constitution that prohibited the federal government from establishing religion and they also included Article VI that prohibits religious tests.

So, religion was an important reason for the settling of the colonies and was a major considerations when drafting the Constitution. But religion to the colonists was not just a Sunday thing. It was a very important factor in everyday life. All of the nine colleges and universities in the colonies were founded based on religion. Harvard (the first in 1636) was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and endowed by John Harvard, a Puritan clergyman, with the goal to "advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." William and Mary was founded in 1693 by the Church of England, Yale in 1701 by Congregationalists, and Princeton in 1746 by Presbyterians. And these schools trained all our Founding Fathers except Washington who did not attend college. Although the goal of these colleges was to train clergyman for their respective denominations the politicians and warriors that formed our Revolutionary Founders were well educated in Christian principles at these schools.

The Great Awakening in the early 1800s represented a popularization of Christian religion getting it out of the universities and pulpits and down to the common folk in a series of revivals, lyceums and Chautauquas across the country. The Great Awakening  gave rise to important popular reform movements meant to improve the life and moral fiber of the people such as the temperance movement, abolitionism and women’s suffrage. Americans today would be a lot less free if it had not been for these Christian religious movements

Some critics have noted that that Enlightenment beliefs as espoused by Rousseau and Locke were in opposition to religion and that the Great Awakening was a reaction to the individualistic society envisioned by Locke. Although Rousseau was more rabid in his anticlericalism, the opposition of Locke and Rousseau was more directed to organized religion especially when that religion was aligned with the power of the state and even more so when religion used state-like powers on matters of faith that should be left to the individual. But that is very different from the experience in the United States where a multitude of faiths and denominations prevent a monopolistic hold on free people.

I don’t know what the motives of the left are on the matters of religion. People of many religions have come to our country hoping to be able to participate in the benefits of our freedom and democracy. They are, in many cases, fleeing countries where their traditional religions have not protected their lives or freedom. When coming here and hoping to become American citizens, they need to acknowledge the role that the Christian religion has played in making us who we are. They do not need to become Christians but they need to understand the basic tenets of that religion and how they helped develop America. But the left in America needs to better understand history and how the Jacobins of Revolutionary France were consumed by their own radicals just like Mamdani’s socialists are consuming the modern Jacobins of the Democratic Party in recent primary elections. And for what just cause are these Jacobins being sacrificed? Not for freedom and democracy. For Hamas.

All the hubbub about religion in public schools came to mind while I was preparing my annual series of patriotic songs for the Fourth of July. I do this every year because the celebrations on TV seem devoid of patriotism and seem to be devoted to up and coming performers showcasing their latest hit records which usually have nothing to do with patriotism, the Fourth of July or America. But as I was preparing my playlist I noticed that almost all the songs prominently featured references to God. Some are calls for God’s blessings on our country (God Bless America) others are a clarion call to align our actions with Christian principles (quoting the Battle Hymn of the Republic “as he died to make men holy let us live to make men free”).

You cannot understand America if you do not understand the role that religion played in the formation of America, and that religion was the Christian religion. The Republicans here in Texas have probably gone a bit overboard in this movement to reinsert religion into public education but it is important (more than important – vital) that today’s students understand the importance of religion and how it shaped America. As the Texas Democratic Party Chair stated, Texas is “home to millions of people from countless faiths and beliefs.” But they came to Texas because they wanted to be part of what Texas (and America) is. And after, war, and slavery, and corruption and all sorts of adversities, Texas is what it is, in part, because of the Christian religion. You don’t have to be a Christian to be an American, but you do need to understand how America became the bright “city on a hill,” an exceptional nation that anyone can join. If they believe in America.