Catholics on the Courthouse Lawn

Charles Carroll
only Catholic signer
of the Declaration
of Independence

Well, as to our being a “Christian Nation” we have looked at a New England Congregationalist and a Unitarian, a Pennsylvania Deist usually mistaken for a Quaker, a Virginia Episcopalian (one of them; there are more and we will look at them), and a Virginia Deist.  What’s the tally?  John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington would probably not support the idea of an officially religious society.  Sam Adams, the only evangelical in the group we have looked at, well might have.  Now on to our fellow Catholics.  There were few Catholic in the New Republic at the time of our Independence and they were centered primarily in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  Maryland had been founded as a colony where Catholics could openly practice their faith, but in 1655, during Cromwell’s Puritan interregnum in England, a Puritan Army defeated Governor William Stone at the Battle of the Severn, and ended the control of the Lords Baltimore over the colony.  With the Puritans in charge, Catholicism was outlawed and the Catholic churches were burned.  In 1658 the 2^nd Lord Baltimore regained control and re-enacted the Toleration Act guaranteeing religious freedom in the colony.  Peace was somewhat short lived, however.  In 1689, after the defeat of Catholic King James II by his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange (the “better-half” of William and Mary), Maryland Puritans again rebelled against proprietary Government in Maryland and the Calvert family (the Lords Baltimore) lost power. With their fall Catholicism was again outlawed.  In 1704 the legislature passed “An Act to prevent the growth of Popery in this Province” which barred Catholics from public office.  It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, however, and Catholics (including the clergy who were all Jesuits) were tacitly permitted private chapels on their estates where they could worship discreetly.  In 1776 Charles Carroll, the patriarch of the vastly networked Carroll Family, was a Maryland Delegate to the Continental Congress and has the distinction of being the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Catholics understood from their experience in Britain, Ireland, and the colonies, how important it was for there to be religious freedom.  After 1689 Pennsylvania was the only colony where Catholics were given freedom to worship openly and Catholicism was actually illegal in most colonies including Virginia (where being a priest was a capital crime), New York, and Massachusetts.  In signing the Declaration of Independence, Carroll claimed that he was seeking: “not only our independence of England but the toleration of all sects professing the Christian religion and communicating to them all equal rights.”   Carroll, in the Recusant Tradition of English Catholicism, was not a man given to external pieties however.  In speaking of religion he also said: “I detest screwed up devotion, distorted faces, and grimace.”  But he added: “I equally abhor those, who laugh at all devotion, look upon our religion as a fiction, and its holy mysteries as the greatest absurdities.”  How would he feel about the brouhaha on the Leesburg Courthouse Lawn?   I think that final statement would be a strong indication that he would not support displays that attack religion but at the same time as a Marylander he would have seen no purpose in a public display of religious symbols either.  In colonial and Revolutionary War days in America, Catholics would have been the only religious groups displaying something such as a crèche or nativity scene.  We have seen in our earlier blogs about Anglicans that eighteenth-century Anglicans (and their American branch, Episcopalians) did not so much as display a cross on the communion table much less statutes on the lawn. Congregationalists (who once had made Christmas illegal), Reformed, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Baptists, and those new-fangled Methodists (who were just coming on the scene) would be even more appalled at such “popish” displays.  Lutherans had known some such customs in Germany and Scandinavia—though I don’t think crèches were common—but the trip across the Atlantic had pretty much purified them of what Catholic heritage had survived among European Lutherans.  Maryland Catholics, with their recusant traditions, were used to keeping religious practice out of the public square and confining it to chapel and home.  Personally, I would be pretty much in that Maryland Catholic tradition.  In the Church, in the home (and on their lawns)—let there be nativity scenes.  In the public square—well, I think trees and other symbols of the Winter Solstice festival are fine, but not religious symbols. 

America: Undisputedely a Christian Nation?

Jefferson's home at Monticello

In my previous entry I spoke about the Christian roots of our American nation.  I mentioned that there were three colonial foundations on which the United States is built—the English, the Spanish, and the French and all three represented Christian monarchies.  Two of these colonial societies were Catholic, one was Protestant.  While all three have contributed to our culture, our political identity as a nation is taken only from the English/Protestant heritage and that heritage represented both an Anglican (Virginia, New York, Georgia, and the Carolinas) and a Reformed (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut (Congregationalist), Rhode Island (Baptist), Delaware and New Jersey (Presbyterian).  Pennsylvania (Quaker) and Maryland (Catholic) were anomalies, though Remember that Maryland had strong Anglican and Reformed contingents and Catholics were not only a minority but after 1688 were excluded from political life.  Nevertheless, given the wealth of the Catholic gentry they were certainly not without influence in the life of the colony.    Now despite the religious ties of the colonies—several with “Established Churches” (Anglican in the South and in New York, Congregationalists in New England)—we also saw that in only three—Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—did religion play a significant role in their foundation.  Reconsidering, I suppose we should include Rhode Island in that number as Roger Williams and his friends left Massachusetts over theological disputes that led to their excommunication from the Congregationalist Church.  Only one of these four, however, was founded with the explicit intention of being a Christian society and that was Massachusetts.  So on to the time of our Revolution and the “Founding Fathers.” 
      Well, what were the religions of our Founding Fathers?   Were they Christians and what were their intentions regarding the religious identity of our nation?  Did they intend to establish a Christian Nation? 
      Almost all of the Founders of the American Republic were Christians, of a sort.  I say “of a sort” because the understanding of what it meant to be a Christian differed in the mid- and late-seventeenth century than what we hold to and we would not recognize all of them as Christians today. Indeed in today’s world several, and several of the more important founders of our nation, would probably not identify themselves as Christians if they had access to our understanding of the term. 
       Almost all delegates to the Continental Congress who approved and signed the Declaration of Independence were affiliated with one religious group or another.  More than half of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence were Church of England, now Episcopalian.  Others were Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Unitarian, and Quaker.  One, Chalres Carroll of Carrollton, was a Catholic.  Several signers identify themselves with double affiliations.  John Adams, for example, was a Unitarian but also Congregationalist.  Unitarianism was at the time a faction within Congregationalism.  Thomas Jefferson is usually identified as Episcopalian and Benjamin Franklin as a Quaker when in fact both were Deists and not Christian at all. This is particularly important to note given that Jefferson and Franklin played an especially key role—along with John Adams—in the development of the Declaration of Independence.  They would go on to be among the principal shapers of our American Republic.  Franklin was the dean of the Founding Fathers, the oldest and most distinguished to whom the others deferred and he took an active role in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that gave us our Constitution.   
      Jefferson was baptized an Episcopalian and when he died his grandson read the Episcopal burial service at his grave but in between Jefferson was what today would call an agnostic. He acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being and indeed wrote eloquently of the Supreme Being.  I particularly like his quote inscribed on the architrave of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  Great Quote.  Of course, one of the forms of tyranny over the minds of man for Jefferson was organized religion, particularly hierarchical denominations such as the Anglican and the Catholic.  When Jefferson writes of “God” it is important to keep in mind that he did not believe in the God of the Judeo-Christian revelation but rather the Rationalist Deity of the Enlightenment, an impersonal “clockmaker-god” who set up the universe with its laws of nature and then let it wind its mechanical way unguided by a divine hand.  Jefferson regarded Jesus as a great moral teacher but did not think him more divine than any other human person. Jefferson created his Life and Morals of Jesus of  Nazareth by cutting (literally cutting with a razor from his King James) and pasting selections from the canonical gospels in a chronological order and eliminating anything of the supernatural—the virgin birth, miracles, angels, the Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, and his resurrection.  Jefferson’s exegetical skill had convinced him that these were accretions added by the evangelists to the original message of Jesus.  With a bible like that, Jefferson couldn’t be elected nothin’ in Virginia today—though he would be a strong Democratic candidate in Massachusetts.  Jefferson’s agnosticism did not make him opposed to Christianity, however, and he made contributions in his old age to various churches—Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist—as he felt that religion was a good vehicle to train the common folk (he also was a elitist) in good morals.  During his time as ambassador to France he had extensive contact with Catholicism at the court of Louis XVI.  He felt that Catholicism was identified with the ancien regime and humanity would be better with Catholicism passing into the historical oblivion that Enlightenment figures were confident was its destiny.  (My favorite Enlightenment quote—which which Jefferson was familiar—is Diderot’s: Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest.  I don’t share the sentiment, I just love how outrageous the quote is.) With his every day relationships with Catholics Jefferson was a gentleman and wrote a cordial letter to Bishop John Carroll in 1801 supporting Carroll’s effort to purchase land in the district of Columbia for the building of a Catholic church. Jefferson, for his part, could not have but noticed that the Catholics in the colonies were ardent supporters of Independence from Britain and though few in number were enthusiastic supporters of the Republic.   Once America split into parties in the mid 1790’s Catholics tended to side with the Federalists rather than we Jefferson’s Republicans—the ancestors of today’s Democrats, but unlike the more virulent Federalists, the Catholics were strongly committed to republican rather than monarchical government.  Catholic thought favored a stronger central government at the expense of the States while Jefferson and his Republicans (now Democrats) were for a weak Federal government and stronger powers to the States.  See how things change, Kundun?  Most important to understand Jefferson’s ideas regarding the place of religion in public life is to remember that Jefferson had authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty.  I will post it in a future posting, but suffice it to say here that it makes religious belief or disbelief irrelevant to public and political life.  Given Jefferson’s own disbelief in traditional Christianity it is clear to the reader that Jefferson was not only concerned about strife between Anglicans and Baptists—the immediate area of strife in newly independent Virginia, but also to protect his own position as a post-Christian rationalist who was also governor of Virginia.  I will post that in my next posting and then we will go on to Adams, Franklin, and other Founders of our Christian Nation.  Or not.