Dimensions: 9'' x 6'' 266 pages Encounter Books Publication Date: January 2001 Paperback ISBN: 1893554686 Hardcover ISBN: 1893554341

The United States took flight on two wings--common sense and humble faith. Both were essential to those who bore the long trial of the nation's birth against all odds with resolute endurance and unwavering trust. This book defines reason as the founders saw it and describes the integral part religious faith played in America's beginnings.

Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at AEI. His previous books include God's Country: Taking the Declaration Seriously (2000) and On Cultivating Liberty: Reflections on Moral Ecology (1999).

Contrary to conventional histories, the American Republic took flight on two wings: not only on the Enlightenment, but also on faith in the God of the ancient Hebrews, the God of liberty. In the first chapter of this book, "Jewish Metaphysics at the Founding," the author shows that the God of the founders was not the God of Deism. The public acts of the Continental Congress employ the Hebrew names of God and their implied metaphysics of open history, contingency, individuality, and liberty. Of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence and thirty-eight signers of the Constitution, all but one or two were deeply influenced by the Hebrew Bible.

Seven events show the power of the "second wing" that propelled the founding:

• The first act of the First Continental Congress was a resolution on September 7, 1774, calling for a public prayer, and the next day the Congress listened with palpable emotion as a white-stoled clergyman read the Thirty-fifth Psalm.
• The fires of the revolution were lit predominantly by sermons, such as the one preached by John Witherspoon, the president of Princeton University, on May 17, 1776.
• The Declaration of Independence was amended by the Congress to include four Hebrew names for God: Lawgiver (as in "Laws of Nature and Nature's God"); Creator ("endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"); Judge ("appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our Intentions"); and Providence ("with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence").
• By official decree, Congress set aside December 11, 1776, as a Day of Fasting and Repentance, begging God's favor on the struggle for liberty.
• Commander-in-Chief George Washington gave orders that each day begin with formal prayer, that each regiment procure as chaplains persons of good character and exemplary lives, and that each chaplain see to it that all officers and soldiers "attend carefully upon religious exercises."
• In official statements, the founders cited the actions of Providence at critical junctures of the war, as when a thick fog rolled in to cover Washington's narrow escape from a British assault on Long Island.
• Congress decreed national Days of Thanksgiving for the "signal interventions" of Providence, beseeching God to establish the "independence of these United States upon the basis of religion and virtue," for example, on October 20, 1779, October 26, 1781, and October 11, 1782.

These events cannot be explained on the basis of the Enlightenment alone.

The Faith of the Founders

Chapter two, "Plain Reason and Humble Faith," shows that by "reason" the founders meant the qualities of mind to which The Federalist addressed its arguments: sober reflection and calm deliberation, an ability to overcome passion and self-interest, a capacity to consider the larger picture, and a due regard for the long experience of mankind. Faith is the habit of seeing things through the eyes of the Creator, as discerned in the Bible. James Wilson said, "The law of nature and the law of revelation are both divine; they flow, though through different channels, from the same adorable source." Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the least religious founder, often stated his belief in a Creator, Governor, Providence, and Judge to Whom all will answer after death. As in classical Christian writing, the founders placed Lockean terms such as "state of nature" and "nature's law" in a biblical context.

To the benefit of republican institutions, faith adds several worldly strengths to reason: a cosmic stage for the drama of liberty; instruction in a watchful conscience; restraint of vice and gains in social peace; fixed, stable, and general ideas on the meaning of life; a check on the downward bias of material interests; a conception of morality as a personal relation with the Creator; a motive for acting well even in secret; and the quiet regulation of mores in marriage, to undergird social trust in the larger polity.

Chapter three weaves together separate strands of American experience: the inalienable loneliness of individual conscience before the face of God, a new type of moral community, and a new religious architectonic. Because human beings in pursuit of their own happiness have a propensity to trample on the rights of others, religious liberty is fragile. To block this abuse, the founders provided public pillars of moral strength in many religions, rather than one national establishment of one religion. Three stories bring these strands together: how the young James Madison reacted to a posse that rode up on horseback, halted the sermon of a Baptist minister, and gave him a public whipping for not having license to preach; why the new constitution of Massachusetts moved to provide universal religious education; and how the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights carefully refrained both from establishing a national church and from disestablishing the existing state churches. These stories illustrate the new order of the ages: a community of free consciences, anchored in moral and religious seriousness.

James Madison had opposed a Bill of Rights, for fear such a bill would weaken any rights left unexpressed. Under pressure from the Baptists, who wanted their religious rights written down (they did not trust the Virginia Anglicans), he masterfully guided the Bill of Rights through Congress. The Congress designed the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law") not to indicate hostility or opposition to religion, but rather approval of it as indispensable to the well-being of a free republic. The six different versions of the First Amendment serially put forward the will of Congress:

(1) The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience in any manner or on any pretext be infringed. (2) No religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed. (3) Congress shall make no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience. (4) Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience. (5) Congress shall make no laws establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. . . . (6) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .

John Adams of Massachusetts observed that religious liberty is threatened by human sloth; people are inclined to take the easiest and most self-indulgent path. Against this downward drift, Adams reasoned thus: A Republic lives by liberty, not license. Liberty cannot be exercised without an honor guard of virtues, such as temperance, self-control, fair-mindedness, courage, and sound practical judgment. That honor guard of virtues is highly unlikely to remain vigilant from one generation to another without religious awakenings. Religious awakening depends on an experimental, self-critical, and lively religious education. The Massachusetts Constitution, therefore, mandated public funding for religious education.

Throughout the new nation, the sense of community was more powerful than individualism, as was expressed in the patriotic slogan, "United we stand, divided we fall." The Union, born in the blood of patriots in 1776 and forged in the communal process of ratification by every participating state after 1787, was not formed by a mere legal contract, but by a covenant that inspired men to give their lives for it. (One of the striking ironies of American history is that many today think of America as a nation of individuals, whereas our ancestors fought and died for Union.) The founders understood solitary individuals to be morally untrustworthy, in need of the support of strong moral communities. On the other hand, republican virtue rests on more than one religious tradition. A pluralistic grounding is truer to the genius of Christianity than the establishment of one national religion.

Religion and Liberty

Chapter four, "A Religious Theory of Rights," highlights the founders' deep sense of personal responsibility before the Divine Judge. No human agency can interfere with that responsibility. Each man and woman has been created by God, is called to be a friend of God, and will be held responsible for a personal response. In this inalienable responsibility lies the ground of human dignity. Natural rights are grounded in faith in a Divine Judge. (See "Madison's ‘Remonstrance'" and Jefferson's draft for the Virginia "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom.")

Some philosophers today argue that the philosophical basis of "natural right" is incompatible with Christian faith. The founders, they purport, intended to subordinate religion to politics, in the hope that religion would be driven into the private realm and ultimately wither as a public reality. Yet the founding documents show that the inalienable liberty of every individual comes directly from the Creator and Judge. The founders wanted religion to prosper--as the bodyguard of liberty.

While standing solidly in the tradition of natural and civic virtue launched by Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and others, the logic of the founding has been enlarged by biblical perspectives. This new logic moves through these steps: The engines of liberty are acts of reflection and choice. These acts imply responsibility and give rise to a highly moral concept of the natural right to liberty. On the centrality of liberty, revelation and reason seem to reach mutually supporting conclusions. Without certain kinds of habits (such as calm equanimity, honesty, and balanced judgment), liberty cannot be sustained. "Confirm thy soul in self-control" is an imperative to practice self-government. Given the tendency of human morals to decline over time, a free society is inherently precarious. Only a source stronger than moral reflection can arrest this remorseless entropy, and that source is a constantly self-reforming religion. Trial and error teach that the advantages of liberty and the virtues it inculcates are better secured when religion is not established.

From the beginning, Catholic travelers who came to America--Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Philip Mazzei, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Casimir Pulaski, Le Marquis de Lafayette, and Alexis de Tocqueville--expressed a powerful affinity for the American experiment and found America closer to the Catholic vision of the good City than any previous regime in history, for four reasons:

• In its very founding, as manifested in the ratification debates, this Republic rests upon the classical activities of reflection and choice.
• The American synthesis of faith and reason rests comfortably with the Catholic tradition (more so than in the evangelical Protestant tradition).
• America is publicly open to the transcendent God, in the sense that the power of Congress cannot seal off the sphere of the Almighty: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
• In honoring the natural and civic virtues without ceasing to give thanks to God, American political culture honors both nature and grace.

In chapter five, the author replies to ten questions, including: You would not pray to "nature's God," would you? Why does the Enlightenment receive exclusive attention in the formation of the U.S. Republic? Does faith mean religious conviction in general, or a commitment to a specific creed and community? Has the Bill of Rights led inadvertently to relativism? Does the American system de facto subordinate the church to the civil order, and thus create a system to which no true Christian can give allegiance?

The answers given to these questions are often surprising.

The appendix, "The Forgotten Founders," selects nineteen vignettes from the lives of the top 100 leaders of the founding generation, especially the lesser-known figures who signed the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, plus a few other opinion leaders. Tom Paine, who rejected the Bible, believed in God so strongly that he rushed to France after 1789 to campaign vigorously against atheism. One cannot deny the existence of God, he said, without taking away the foundation of human rights. Alexander Hamilton made tender requests that the Holy Eucharist be brought to him on his deathbed. Other stories shed light on the faith of the three Carrolls (Charles, Daniel, and John), John Witherspoon, Gouverneur Morris, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Rush, William Paca, John Dickinson, James Wilson, Roger Sherman, and George Mason.