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October 2009 
Deism and America's Founding Fathers
Posted on Aug 19th, 2007
by 
Earon
Earon
Continuing our inquiry into the nature of the human species, let's move over to find world views that are more consistent with solid human values as well as a generalized kind of spirituality that doesn't fuel the competitive, absolutist, egotism that has led to religious differences and wars. It may be instructive to look at the faith of a number of America's "Founding Fathers."
While one may expect to find only bible thumping evangelicals, our founding fathers were more diverse and intellectual. Many of them had a world view that accepts god but rejects religion. It is called Deism and you can read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deist.
Basically, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen and other major figures of the time were very much influenced by a world view that focused on rational inquiry and rejected belief in revealed truths and miracles of the bible and other religious texts. They may have been nominally "Christian" to avoid accusations of being atheist, but religious dogma is not a significant feature of these founding fathers. It was explicitly left out of the American Constitution, Bill of Rights and entire governmental system.
Were these beliefs the reason for the separation of church and state? Deism was a world view that made it easy to accept all religions as equals with a right to co-exist but not dominate America by becoming "established" as state religions. It is universalist in nature and rejects the notion that there is any "one true way" to god.
Deism is part of the Genius of American Democracy. And yet, many Americans do not know about it. Many of us just assume that America was founded as a "Christian Nation." Just one more example of the ability of an obsessed contingent in an undiscerning majority to obscure history and human nature. The truth is there, but is hidden in plain view, where the majority can't see it. The minorities often see the truth, but until the majority takes responsibility for curbing zealots, the juggernaut continues on and minorities feel disrespected and vulnerable.
While one may expect to find only bible thumping evangelicals, our founding fathers were more diverse and intellectual. Many of them had a world view that accepts god but rejects religion. It is called Deism and you can read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deist.
Basically, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen and other major figures of the time were very much influenced by a world view that focused on rational inquiry and rejected belief in revealed truths and miracles of the bible and other religious texts. They may have been nominally "Christian" to avoid accusations of being atheist, but religious dogma is not a significant feature of these founding fathers. It was explicitly left out of the American Constitution, Bill of Rights and entire governmental system.
Were these beliefs the reason for the separation of church and state? Deism was a world view that made it easy to accept all religions as equals with a right to co-exist but not dominate America by becoming "established" as state religions. It is universalist in nature and rejects the notion that there is any "one true way" to god.
Deism is part of the Genius of American Democracy. And yet, many Americans do not know about it. Many of us just assume that America was founded as a "Christian Nation." Just one more example of the ability of an obsessed contingent in an undiscerning majority to obscure history and human nature. The truth is there, but is hidden in plain view, where the majority can't see it. The minorities often see the truth, but until the majority takes responsibility for curbing zealots, the juggernaut continues on and minorities feel disrespected and vulnerable.
Access: Public
So much of Deism was found in the growing confidence that humans were finding in their emerging knowledge, and the receding of the spiritual in its wake. God Created the Unviverse and left it ticking like a watch piece. It speaks volumes of religion devoid of actual spiritual experience outside of the theatre of the liturgy.
Deism is an expression of the confidence of civilized man. It is the recognition of the state of hierarchical existence created by civilization 12,000 years ago, away from the village where wisdom ruled, instead of knowledge.
So it is truly a triumph of civilization. Finally it was creating structures to equalize the balance of power, so that civilization did not afflict the masses. It was rubbing away the confusions that religions, enmeshed in Established Religion, were lacking clarity on.
The great impulse in the American soul is that anything, including religion, that smacks of tyranny, will meet with the revile of the whole population that is used to the individual human being free within themselves, despite their economic condition.
After all, true Christianity threatens the most powerful individuals in America, the entity known as the corporation.
Blessings,
Sun Warrior
Sun Warrior, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I'm trying to tease apart whether it was spirituality or religion that dropped off in the “age of reason”. Do you think that Deism may have been a way to separate spirituality (and hope) from religion (and conflict)? If so, it was perceived as a major threat to religions, which may have escalated their rhetoric and evangelism (and exported it throughout Africa, Asia and the Americas), in order to maintain their power and memberships rather than wither away.
The difference I am postulating between spirituality and religion is that spirituality is more focused on the experience of mystical faith and hope - while religion is focused on the rational nuts and bolts of how to practice a particular brand of faith that is different from all the others. Was the “great revival,” or today's evangelism, a quest for meaning that united everyone, or that found only one true way to live - and thus divided us more deeply? Was it a request for peaceful unity among all peoples or was it a demand for the Roman vision of unity - conquest and eventual assimilation - with empire-building wars, inquisitions and assaults on all infidels?
My hypothesis, then, is that Descartes and mechanistic thinking may not be the source of the rise of greed and corporatism and loss of meaning in our culture. The age of reason presented great curiousity about nature and the human body, rather than any aversion. But the Church saw the body as suspect and potentially evil. The Church saw shamanism, female priests and nature religions as powerful competitors that needed to be stamped out, often with horrifying violence.
Thus, perhaps the instigation of fundamentalist religions with “original sin” and the intense desire to separate humans from nature (and from our human nature as primates) was the source of vulnerability to the loss of meaning and the replacing of spirituality with materialism. Religions, including Fundamentalist Christianity, have claimed to own spirituality and have attacked any other practitioners or belief systems as evil, heathen and/or atheist, forcing intelligent people to choose between science and religion.
This is not an appropriate choice, according to the Deists who founded America. Religions were to be protected as spiritual paths as long as they all honored the other spiritual paths. Religions were not supposed to become powerful competing institutions in American life, but rather our source of spiritual meaning, comfort and unity.
Where things went terribly wrong was in the resurgence of fundamentalist brands of Christianity and Islam which essentially reject pluralism and democracy. “Morality” becomes law - not because it is reaonsable and works to maintain consensus, justice and the greater good - but because it is the revealed vision of reality determined by some group or groups of charismatic leaders and institutions to be demanded by their angry God.
This resurgence of religion has been at the expense of spirituality and has tended to force us to choose between faith and science, which is an absurd choice. As a result, ethical and moral turmoil and confusion have prevailed, undermining our society's values and causing deep conflicts and competition for our hearts and minds. This turmoil, generated by fundamentalist interpretations of various scriptures, is what opened the door for unckecked consumerism and materialism. Stressed-out, confused people seek safety and security in material goods, especially when their religious institutions have failed them. As ethereal and “pie in the sky” as religion may seem, the dogmatism of fundamentalism directly impacts human culture and law in highly destructive, very practical ways.
As for what is “true” christianity, this is an inquiry made difficult when the most powerful institutions owning the “Christianity” brand and trademark are aggressively marketing their brand as absolutely “the only path to salvation.” Many Christian people see this approach as blashphemy, a corrupt mockery of the life and teachings of Jesus. Many Christian congregations, movements and leaders are working to bring spirituality and consensus back to center stage, but change comes slowly and can be a very stressful process.
Sun Warrior, I'd appreciate your thoughts on the question of whether all of this is the result of a “mistake” made when humans developed agrarian settlements and cities. Some of us tend to blame the creation of cities, or adoption of farming, or cartesian thinking for all of our current problems, which can lead to very interesting discussions. Does the hypothesis stated above provide a helpful alternative?
Earon,
Religions have always warped civilizations' views of reality. But conversely, civilization has warped the spiritual in religion.
The unique thing I find with Christianity, is that it enabled the rise of rationalism over the spiritual. The success of the Christian style of spirituality eliminated all spiritual knowledge in its path. What was left was a worldview of reality as simply God, humans and inert matter (the dust of Genesis, we treat animals and plants today the same as rocks). We lost as a society all the knowledge of spiritual reality outside of human consciousness and God reflected as a human in Jesus.
Now we're struggling to get it back, but have a hard time since Christianity left the cupboard so bare. And other religions are not any better, but at least they are an alternative to help compare. Religion is human focused. We are civilized, which makes us human-centered. And we have lost the language of experiencing reality beyond this.
Christianity absorbed all of classical civilization within it, using the Greek to promote rationalism and the human, Jewish religion, and Roman government. When it eliminated the spirituality of its rivals over the first thousand years, society was still living with the Earth. But with such a limited, human-centered spirituality, that demoted the integration of the Earth and spiritual reality outside of human consciousness, it made it easy to regard the Earth as an object. Science and the Renaissance merely filled the void left by the new definition of reality created by the Church.
Public debate about spiritual reality today is between Christianity and science. So it is very narrow, and doesn't let any other spiritual reality enter into legitimacy. For those tired of the debate, they are on their own to explore what is left.
But all religions are human-centered. Only the Hindus retain a sense of spiritual reality outside of humans and God-on-human-terms. Buddhism may sound like a good alternative to many in the West. But we like it because we are so focused on 'the mind,' which is how Buddhism describes ultimate reality, without the dictatorship of human government through a Church.
To describe civilization as a 'mistake,' depends upon your point of view. Whether we're Christian or not, that question is merely reiterating the Genesis story. Adam chose to live by knowledge over wisdom, so God granted his wish. Civilization is the growth of mind and knowledge over wisdom and the heart. Today the former are so powerful, we take it for granted, and don't understand how the very structure of our thoughts prevent us from breaking out of our human-centeredness, experience, and way we think. We don't really know ourselves, because we have not gotten out of civilization as a society to compare.
The legacy of religion, as a department of civilization which controls and organizes spirituality, has framed much of the spirituality that people seek. Spiritual experiences are vast and varied, but nothing ties them together into a whole.
The problem with civilization is that we are all dealing from a limited cosmology. To be civilized means that the mind dominates the heart, the body, will and emotions, and all else outside of it. A natural human is heart-centered, with the mind, body, will and emotions deferring to its wisdom. We already know this, but cannot break out of our way of thinking as a society. The only people who retain the original whole cosmology of God, Earth, spirit world, and human, are the Native Peoples. Our minds can perceive this, but letting go of the dominant mind is serious business, not for the faint of heart.
The growth of knowledge and its control made us organize society differently. No longer based on wisdom and the family, everyone became objects in contracts of behaviors toward each other. Today, we have mastered the down-side to that kind of dominance. The mind figured it out, using the social ideals of Christ, the democracy and rationalism of the Greeks, and treating reality as object as science has conditioned us. Unfortunately it leaves out spiritual reality, and we suffer for it. And religion cannot help. It is part of the problem. So many are aware of it, or parts of it, but nothing is tying it all together as an alternative.
Deism was critical as an expression of the Founding Fathers desire to do two things: keep Church and State separate to reduce oppression by society's organizers, but also to reconcile the existence of God, even though science was giving man incredible power over its 'reality.'
Political Christianity is a mockery of the spiritual, because it is compromised by the inherent faults of civilization. It is based on false assumptions about reality. But no one has taken the stage yet to basically say there is more to reality than just God, humans and inert matter, that it only acknowledges four spirits: God, Jesus, souls and the devil; and that it has more in common with science's view of reality than it does with true reality.
Civilization was not a 'mistake.' It is based on false assumptions about reality. But this is part of a bigger cosmological reality established by the Creator that society is barely aware of. In the future, the Native and the civilized with merge, and the true benefits of what the dominant mind has discovered will help All.
But right now, your analysis of the situation is quite correct. It is nice to find someone who sees it so clearly.
Thanks,
Sun Warrior
Sun Warrior, thanks for your wonderful overview on the functional history of civilization and religion, and for responding to my question. I agree that religion evaporated as a counterbalance to “civilization” and instead became a driving force towards distorted world views. In a way, what else could have happened after the Romans appropriated and coopted the teachings of Jesus, and proceeded to wipe out competitors? Faith was replaced with authoritarian rules and violence.
I also agree about the universality of Hinduism as well as native and animist spiritualities. In 1893, Swami Vivekananda came to the US and spoke at the first Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Chicago at the World's Columbian Exposition. He expressed the idea that all religions are related paths to God, and that there was no justification to attempt to move people from one religion to another. He made an impact upon spirituality in the US, but no impact upon fundamentalist religions.
Since that time, other teachers from various Hindu traditions have found great interest and support in the US and the West in general. There remain, however, strong spiritual, mystical traditions (e.g, Sufi, Contemplative Christianity, kabbalah) within each of the religions which are largely suppressed or marginalized. As long as these threads exist within main stream religions, and others masterfully manipulate their minions through television and print media, many will feel comfortable seeing religions as spiritual in nature. There are monumental efforts being made to keep the Catholic Church from becoming irrelevant to American Catholics, although the current Pope and Mel Gibson seem to work valiantly in the other direction.
Regarding Buddhism, I agree with you about Zen and American Buddhism. I believe that Tibetan Buddhism is far more shamanic and mystical in practice - although they also have the no-god, no-mind-nothingness aspects - they nonetheless meditate and pray to deities such as the Green Tara, Quan Yin, etc. The intellectual traditions of Hindu/Buddhist world views appear offset by deep, complex imagery with many gods playing various roles, and powerful mysticism associated with earth and nature. The imagery of fundamentalist Christianity appears rigid and associated with literal perfectionism demanded by an angry God who provided a Devil to undermine humans.
I also share your vision of hope for the future. It feels like our culture has fallen into a large hole and we're seeking a way out. Religion and materialism appear to dig ourselves deeper. We're looking for a ladder, or tools, or steps, or a rope or vine hanging from above. We need to gain skills of observation, calmness and cooperation - and it is quite a gift to be able to have this discussion with you to help understand what type of hole we're in - and what has already been attempted. Thanks for your kindness and encouragement as we move forward with finding or creating solutions.
I make no promise that my arguments are accurate and true; just that I'm trying my best and am open to other views.
Peace,
Earon
Earon,
I believe there is a powder keg of this kind of recognition out there. Each religion, despite its entrenched institutionalism, have vast and parallel spiritual understandings that they are incapable of communicating to a larger audience. And Christianity seems to be the most obstinate and aggressive (though Islam is close, but just not as successful) in being able to see the box that their dogma is in.
It is easy to make generalizations about motivations and pitfalls of the smogasbord of spiritualities available. I make them myself. But I believe that those who are seeking outside of the mainstream are very open, and not defending an agenda. Most people want what they know acknowledged and appreciated, and once they know that there is no authoritarian agenda, want to explore themselves and what holds them back from what they seek.
Your observations are very spot-on. I agree with them. It goes a long way in helping others thread together what could not before the advent of the global village.
Blessings,
Sun Warrior