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Religion, The Founding Fathers and The Gulf between Scholars and Lay-people

6/15/2016

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This is a hard post to write. Suggesting any sort of 'gulf' that elevates the "scholarly" view over the "popular" smells like elitism. It conjures up images like the one above, where a semi-divine person presides over the terrestrial mess of mortals. There are things that 'they' know that mere mortals cannot know. And you know that scholars are not semi-divine. Nevertheless, a gulf exists. I write this as someone whose academic training was a blend of history, social sciences and theology, so I am not strictly "a historian," though American religious history factors heavily into my work.

The gulf I have in mind was brought to the forefront of my mind when Susan Lim, a reputable Christian historian at Biola recently wrote an article about religion and the Founding Fathers for Christianity Today. Lim wrote,

"Washington’s successor, John Adams, was born into a devout Christian family and raised to carry on Puritan traditions. The second president of the United States never wavered away from his faith, nor did he ever see any conflict in being both an independent thinker and committed Christian. As David McCullough recounts in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography
, Adams regularly boasted of his Puritan ancestry, sometimes bordered on legalism (he often refused to travel on the Sabbath), and occasionally cast stones against those he deemed less spiritual than himself. For example, Adams made it a point to highlight Jefferson’s nontraditional religious convictions when they both vied for the presidency."

This surprised me, because I believed it was fairly well established that Adams was basically a U/unitarian (did not believe in the Trinity) unlike the Puritans, though he may have remained in Puritan Congregationalist churches. I wrote the following email to Susan (actually, I emailed "Dr. Lim" who graciously told me to call her Susan):

"I have no doubt that Adams was a man of faith and may have valued his Puritan heritage, but it seems to me that we have it pretty decisively in his own words that he was a Unitarian and (perhaps a bit more ambiguously) that he also had serious reservations about the incarnation. I appreciate the fact that there is some disagreement on this, but it mostly seems to come from American Filiopietists with political agendas.  I'm not sure how you say that he
"
was born into a devout Christian family and raised to carry on Puritan traditions. The second president of the United States never wavered away from his faith, nor did he ever see any conflict in being both an independent thinker and committed Christian." I guess I can sort of spin this in a way, but I think it is liable to mislead many readers."

Susan responded: "No doubt, the term "Puritan" is a messy one.  I shy away from it in my research.  I used it here because I assume that the majority of the readers aren't academics, and the term "Congregational" won't resonate with as many readers.  Puritanism has come to mean so many things to so many people; and as I'm sure you know, many of the social constructs of Puritanism were made in the 19th C (largely through fiction) to comment on Victorian society (by using Puritans as actors).  Or, as Mencken wrote, that Puritanism is thought of as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.  Of course we know that this obviously doesn't do the Puritans justice.  What I meant was that John Adams hailed from a Puritan/Congregational family, and remained committed to his Congregational church.  Yes, that church (along with many other  Congregationalist churches) moved towards Unitarianism by the mid-18th C, but I didn't want to go into the development of Congregationalism (or Puritanism, if you will) here."

Note that if this is true, Adams was in the advance guard of a group of Puritan Congregationalists who rejected the the doctrine of the Trinity that had defined Christian Orthodoxy for around 1400 years. At the time, many/most U/unitarians did consider themselves Christians and their services of worship would have resembled Trinitarian Puritans' services a great deal. Susan Lim is a knowledgeable scholar. She also possesses the virtue of inclusion in her approach to John Adams and Christianity (something many contemporary Christians could learn from). I don't believe she was trying to fool anyone. However, I still think this way of writing about things plays into the hands of those who have a political agenda and are also much sloppier in their characterizations of the faith of the founders. 

The point is that in the "translation" process that most historians use when writing for a popular audience (and, keep in mind that many popular writers are also writing history without the benefit of education in the discipline), a great deal of the nuances are left out. 

​To review some of the complications about this, check out this post from the American Creation blog, and then read this one. It might be worthwhile looking at some of the comments as well.
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The "Real" War on Christmas

12/14/2015

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Christmas Day, 1914 is celebrated every year as a testimony to many things. You will see inspiring posts about it on social media, and you will be moved, as I am every year. Christians like to think that on this day, the Prince of Peace conquered, because on this day, at several points along the Western Front, British and French troops on one side and German troops on the other, stopped shooting at each other, came out of the trenches and shared food, soccer, cigarettes and the "Christmas spirit." And the war was over! No. They went back to killing each other. It almost makes me want to become a Puritan, because in banning the celebration of Christmas (and other holy-days, since no day was really more holy than any other, they reasoned), the Puritans might have avoided this particular hypocrisy. But maybe we should celebrate it. When one's home is the battlefield, a day of fellowship between enemy soldiers is really incredible. When your world is relatively stable and tranquil (like many Americans, as long as they avoid cable-news), an act of violence on Christmas seems the worst of atrocities. So, I'm posting this early; you might forget about it by the 25th...
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Forget about it by the 25th so you can enjoy a nice Christmas with your family, but read on for now. Another Christmas event that Americans like to celebrate is Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776. David Hackett Fischer wrote a great big book about it that is quite acclaimed. Did you remember that it was a Christmas event? There's a great (if inaccurate) painting of it that you might have seen. Below is a partial view from pbs.org.
Why did Washington cross the Delaware on Christmas? It sounds like the beginning of a joke. It is not.
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 In Joseph Buffington's 1936 biography, The Soul of Washington, Buffington praised Washington’s wisdom in making the “Christmas Day” (actually December 26, 1776) attack on Trenton, NJ.  Buffington wrote that Washington devised the attack because he was “filled with the Christmas spirit himself… [and] knowing the German and British love of Christmas and their joy of Christmas cheer… [they] would, of all nights in the year, be off guard (53f).” Perhaps Washington (the schismatic Anglican?) was strangely Puritan about holidays? Not likely. Buffington went to great lengths to establish Washington’s special love of Christmas. He might overplay Washington’s “Christmas spirit” but surely the General was capitalizing on the British and German celebrations. Reportedly, when Washington was informed by General Sullivan that the weather inhibited the army’s weapons from firing, Washington retorted “Tell General Sullivan to use the bayonet. I am resolved to take Trenton."[i] Apparently the British/German forces suffered 'only' 23-26 casualties to the Americans 4 or 5. Still, this is not what most Americans think of as “the Christmas spirit” in either the religious or secular sense. In 1779, publisher John Bell wrote that Washington was “a total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another.”[ii] And yet, when caught up in a political conflict against other Christians it was, “use the bayonet.” I know some of my fellow American-Christians are equally inspired by this event and by the Christmas Day truce of 1914, but I that is too much cognitive dissonance for me. For me, December 25, 1776 remains the “Real” War on Christmas. With this kind of historical example, I can’t be too irate over “Happy Holidays.” Now, forget about this and enjoy the Holidays. I intend to have a joyous celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ (that’s basically what ‘Merry Christmas’ means right?).

References:
Howard Peckham, ed.  The Toll of Independence: Engagements and Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 27.
[i] Wright, Kevin. “The Crossing and Battle at Trenton – 1776” An article for Bergen County Historical Society. http://www.bergencountyhistory.org/Pages/crossingatdtrenton.html
[ii] Boller, George Washington and Religion, 118.
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5000 Years of Religion in 90 Seconds

3/6/2011

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For a slightly clearer version of this, go HERE.  Thanks to Len Swidler of the Dialogue Institute (who first introduced me to interfaith dialogue when I was his TA at Temple 8 years ago) for sending this out.
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    Matt Hunter, Ph.D

    Multidisciplinary religious scholar and practitioner

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