The Corpus Callosum

The CSM article starts with this:

This year, lots of fireworks over the Founders' faith

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

America's Founding Fathers often kept their religious beliefs close to the vest, historians say, but that just won't cut it anymore.

That's because, 230 years after the first Independence Day, Americans of varied political and religious stripes are determined to prove that the Founders' beliefs are similar to their own. Helped by a spate of new books this year, skeptics and believers alike have fresh intellectual gunpowder this July 4 for claiming the framers as members of their respective camps.

For a nation torn over what role religion should have in the public square, the stakes are high. Both religionists and secularists say they're under attack in the public domain and want America's first patriots on their side to maintain legitimacy...

MacDonald goes on to detail the arguments used by both sides to support their claims.  Personally, I think the whole argument is mildly interesting, the way it is a little bit interesting to know about George Washington's false teeth; however, I do not see any reason to use the personal beliefs of the founding fathers as a guide for modern-day policy.


In the case of Washington's teeth, we have objective evidence that they existed, and what they were made of.  However, we do not have such conclusive evidence about what the founding fathers really believed, with regard to their personal spirituality.  We know some of what they wrote, and what some of their public statements were, but that only tells us what they wanted others to think.  Furthermore, from what evidence we have, it is apparent that not all of the founding fathers had exactly the same ideas about religion.  More to the point, not all of them had exactly the same ideas about the ideal relationship between church and state.  

Besides, I am not sure that it matters what their personal religious beliefs were, any more than it matters what Washington's teeth were made of.  With regard to the separation of church and state, we have to assume that they meant exactly what they put in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  That is what we need to focus on.  Nothing else has any legal weight.  

So when authorities on United States History argue that we ought to have a religious country, because the founding fathers were religious, I would have to question that (hence the motto: Question Authority).  Likewise, when skeptics argue that the deistic tendencies of the founding fathers should be taken into account, I would have to question that (hence the motto: Question Skepticism).  

Consider the following excerpt from the CSM article:

Some on the political left say the Founders' devotion to reason first and foremost is crucial to remember in a time when religiously inspired activists try to require critiques of evolution in public schools or to restrict public funding for scientific research, as in the case of embryonic stem cells.

I agree with the conclusion, but Washington's refusal to take communion has nothing to do with it.  As an aside, I would have to object to the implication that it is particularly those on the political left who decry the teaching of creationism, etc.  There are plenty of conservatives with that view.  In the interest of clear thinking, let's keep the issues separate from the ideologies.