When I read this letter in the Day this morning, I knew I just had to respond. The letter is full of distortions and historical inaccuracies, but I decided to go after the low hanging fruit. And, since I’m lazy, I decided to make my response do double duty as a blog post. Readers here get the added bonus of links, to they don’t even have to spend the five minutes on Google. My letter to the Day follows:
It is odd that those who insist on imposing their religions on the rest of us so often do so by bearing false witness. In this morning’s Day (November 17th) a reader states “the Founding Fathers had organized prayer daily at the constitutional convention asking God to guide their efforts”.
In fact, the opposite is true. The old deist, Benjamin Franklin, perhaps for propagandistic reasons, suggested daily prayer. Alexander Hamilton rose to protest. Out of respect for the aged Franklin, the motion was allowed to die without a vote. As Franklin himself said, “The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayer unnecessary.” The convention continued as it started, without prayers, and produced a document that never mentioned God. The story is well known among those inclined to get their history from sources, rather than faith.
Nor should it be surprising that the founders found no need to pray to the Christian God. Many of them, after all, went on to serve in the early Congress, where they passed a treaty (1797) with the Muslim Bey of Tripoli. That treaty, negotiated by Connecticut’s own (somewhat sadly forgotten) Joel Barlow, provides at Article 11: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion… it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries”. The treaty passed. Article 11 provoked no controversy. If only our present Senate was as exempt from phony religious controversy.
I don’t expect these facts, which can be confirmed in 5 minutes using Google, will change the mind of your letter writer. What, after all, have facts to do with it when one has faith? I do hope, however, that they will have some impact on those who agree with the founders that reason, not faith, should guide our actions.
I must admit that it gets me steaming when religious zealots try to enlist the Founders into their cause. No doubt a few of the lesser lights were religious zealots, but most of them, and pretty much all of the biggies, had little use for religion. That includes George Washington, by the way, despite later efforts to make him into a religiously motivated icon. While formally an Episcopalian, he would not take communion, and would not even kneel in church.
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