Of Wendy Wagner, Barack Obama, and Paula Deen

St Patrick's Church of Irleand (Anglican)

Cathedral, Dublin

I am anxious to get back to the issue of Anglican history but history happens faster than one can chronicle it and there are several items in the past week that I want to address before we go back to what I think will be the most fascinating chapter of Anglican history—the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Communion.  As we have seen the Church of England does not begin with Henry VIII but is an ancient institution going back to the Roman occupation of Britain, perhaps as early as the end of the first century in the common era.  And we have seen that the term “Anglican Church”—Ecclesia Anglicana in Latin—was used for at least three centuries before  Henry VIII ascended the throne.  But I digress.  I want to bring up the fabled bugaboo of the wing-nuts, the right wing wing nuts that is, President Obama.  The crazies are after him for “decrying” Catholic Schools in Ireland and calling for them to be abolished.  Of course, this has nothing to do with the facts, but then the crazies don’t need facts when they have opinions.  Just ask Wendy Wagner of Leesburg Virginia who says that she doesn’t hesitate to tell people how they need to think.  Ah yes—“don’t think for yourself—we’ll do your thinking for you.”  Whether is a dyspeptic matron from Loudon County or a corpulent Cardinal from Rome, no thank you.  God gave me a brain and I will think for myself.  It is I who will stand before the Judge of the Universe some day and be quizzed on my record; it is I who must make the decisions since it will be I who bear the responsibility.  But I digress.
When the President spoke in Belfast last Sunday, June 17^th, he said:

“There are still wounds [in Northern Ireland] that haven’t healed, and communities where tensions and mistrust hangs in the air.” … “If towns remain divided – if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs – if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.”

Northern Ireland has come a long way since President Clinton mediated the “Good Friday Peace Accords” of 1998.  Sectarian violence has receded and Catholics have been given a more proportionate share in the economy as well as government and social services.  But prejudice, anger, and hatred still simmer below the surface.  And the separate schools do not help but provide reinforcement for the stereotypes and intolerance that still run through Northern Ireland society. 

You will notice that the President challenged not Catholic Schools but sectarian schools—Catholic or Protestant—in Northern Ireland.  Don’t compare the situation in Ireland—North or South—to the American experience of Catholic Education.  The Republic of Ireland, which does not include the six counties of “Northern Ireland,” has an excellent system of public schools.  It does not have “parish schools” as we have had in the United States and what Catholic Schools there are, are what we would call “private schools”—rather upper crust and select—and inclusive of students from a variety of religious backgrounds.  Unlike American public schools, there is room for religion in the public school curriculum.  The vast majority of citizens in the Republic are Catholic.  Until the recent scandals the vast majority were devout Catholics.  But the Catholic Priest, Church of Ireland (Anglican) Minister, Methodist and Presbyterian Parson all have access to the school where their congregants study to teach religion to their respective students.  Such public schools put Catholic and Protestant youth on the same teams rather than pitting them against one another.  Friendships are formed across denominational lines.   And the political, social, and economic tensions that continue to divide the Catholic and Protectant communities in the North have long vanished in the South. 

It is a bit of a canard to go after President Obama for “attacking” Catholic Education when he did nothing of the kind.  But then the voices raised against him are the same voices that decry his administration’s lead on health care , immigration reform,  same-sex marriage,  and other contemporary issues. And the dissatisfaction with these policies more often than not is, like this flap over Northern Ireland, based on faulty facts and distorted simplifications.  It becomes obvious over a period of time that the problem is not the issues, but the man.  And what is there about the man that excites such anger?  Hmmm.  The answer is too obvious to name, is it not, Paula Deen?

Wondering Where Miss Hilly Done Moved To?

One of my regular readers sent in this photo of a poster he made for the pro-life Rally at Leesburg VA organized by the local parish.  He said that the reception was “muted” among the Jackson Junior League ladies who claim to be pro-life but are only anti-abortion.  (which is good but not good enough if you are faithful the magisterium.)  One of the local Hilly Holbrooks said “Well, what didn’t you put on there?”  Ms Jolene just said “Hmmm.”  Some people just don’t get what pro-life means.  And they totally miss the dilemma Catholics are in this year trying to choose a candidate for whom to vote.    

Of Leesburg Lawns, Gorgeous Prelates, and Minnie Jackson's Pie

 The Loudon County Courthouse in

Leesburg Virginia where the controversy

began between a Knights of Columbus’

sponsored crèche and several atheist

sponsored displays that spoofed religion

leading to an examination of whether

or not the American Tradition has

stamped us as a Christian Nation.   

We all know Patrick Henry for his famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech given to the Virginia Convention in 1775 which swung Virginia into the independence camp of the burgeoning American revolution.  What many people don’t know about Henry is that he was a devout Christian.  Like other Virginia planters he was an Episcopalian but seems later in life to have preferred Presbyterianism which was closer to his Scots roots and evangelical soul.  He was strongly evangelical and while supporting religious tolerance (at least for Protestants) had little tolerance for those of no religious stripe.  (I have not been able to find any evidence of anti-Catholicism but there is something in the back of my memory that associates him with the level of anti-popery common among the Virginia frontier folk who were embracing the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodists revivals of the last decade of the eighteenth century.  I could be wrong on this point.)   He supported legislation that would have required each citizen to pay taxes for the support of the Church of his choice and he also supported legislation that would have paid teachers of religion from the public purse.  This seems to us today to suggest a political conservative but in fact until he saw the excesses of the French Revolution he was pretty radical politically—an extreme democrat who opposed the Constitution for being a threat to personal liberty.  He turned down Washington’s 1795 offer of being Secretary of State because the Federalist Government of Washington and Adams was too powerful for his vigilant concern over individual freedoms. I suppose today he would be a libertarian which makes his evangelical views appear all the more idiosyncratic.  Libertarianism ultimately leaves the door open for there to be no societal brakes on individual moral behavior and that is at odds with the evangelical agenda that believes that moral questions such as premarital and extramarital sex, homosexuality, use of recreational drugs, sale and use of alcohol, etc. need to be regulated if not criminalized.  Of course most of these current issues were not in Patrick Henry’s purview as the social parameters of the eighteenth century were far more restricted than ours but then, like now, there are always those who think that they government should stay out of their business but not necessarily yours or mine. While we cannot know for sure what Patrick Henry’s thoughts would be on the Christmas display on the Loudon County Courthouse lawn, his strong evangelical faith and his minimalist approach to government interference might indicate that he, probably like Sam Adams and Charles Carroll would be likely to support a Christian display on government property without endorsing any right for atheist groups to put up a display disparaging religion.  Again one cannot second guess in history so this is only a likely conjecture given his strong endorsement for government support of religious practice.  It is, I think, a reasonable surmise that John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and James Madison would oppose the idea that we are a “Christian Nation” while Patrick Henry, Charles Carroll, and Sam Adams may well have endorsed that position.  But we will never know, not at least this side of eternity.  Ms. Curtis’ claim that “there is no disputing” that we are a “Judeo-Christian Nation” is far from accurate.  It reflects the smug comforts of a Loudon County housewife whose Hilly Holbrook lifestyle affords her the time to blahg blahg blahg Junior League nonsense.  Go have a slice or two of Minnie Jackson’s pie, Hilly, and leave history to those whose profession it is.      
     And this brings me back to why I write this blog.  For one thing I hate to see our Catholic heritage—our real heritage, especially as American Catholics—dressed up in the rags of nineteenth century neo-Baroque ultramontanism and paraded out as if it was somehow or other the answer to the world’s hunger for The Way, The Truth, and the Life.  Frankly I think Cardinals in cappis magnis (that’s not a mistake, “in” takes the ablative case) and priests in pompomed caps make a travesty of authentic Catholicism.  The antiquarian liturgies sponsored in various Cathedrals by the Latin Mass Society reduce the Eucharistic Sacrifice to a pious Aida. The “canons” of Gricigliano in their self-aggrandizing pomposity are nothing less than an Alice-in-Wonderland charade.  And the whole clutch of retro Catholic zombies parade Mother Church like the naked emperor through the modern world.  Avery Dulles wrote that power was characteristic of the Church in the second millennium and service would be the distinguishing mark in the third. It is time that we make the paradigm shift that will conform us to the One who came not to be served but to serve.  Only a Church of service, scrubbed of the trappings of monarchy and aristocracy, can bear the witness of the new evangelization.

And For What Has Christ Come and for What Has He Died?

Is this why Christ died hanging on the cross or is this
about an ego having lost all touch with reality?

 We have been talking about the Founding Fathers and if their support could be invoked for the United States being a “Christian Nation” or as Virginia Blogger Barbara Curtis of Mommy Life put it: a “Judeo Christian Nation.”  Ms. Curtis writes her blog on a variety of topics, some of which she actually seems to know something about.  American History, however, is a field in which she could afford to take a course or two at her local community college.  We have looked at founding fathers Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, and George Washington whose public stances would not lend credence to her claims for our being a Christian Nation, or even a Judeo-Christian one.  On the other hand, Sam Adams—ironically one of the most radical of the Founding Fathers—and Catholic Charles Carroll, one of the most conservative, would probably support her claim.  Carroll’s cousin John, the first Catholic Bishop in the new American Republic, and the larger Maryland Catholic tradition is harder to read.  Maryland Catholics had a conservative view of society.  They were, for the most part, monied and landed people.  They belonged to the Federalist Party, suspicious of Jefferson’s Republicans—who, despite their name, are the forerunners of today’s Democrats.  They were not given to the religious skepticism of Franklin or Jefferson or even the discreet unorthodoxy of Washington.  Yet, having been a disadvantaged minority, they strongly favored religious liberty for all of whatever belief.  They did not agitate for Catholicism to be given a privileged position and no writing survives that would suggest that they saw Maryland or the new Republic as officially “Christian.”  On the other hand, there were in those days few who were not, at least in the broadest of the word “Christians.”  A synagogue for Baltimore would only be organized in the 1830’s.  Whatever their vision of the place of religion in society, Maryland Catholics probably would have held aloof from the Christmas crèche on the Loudon County Courthouse lawn that triggered Ms. Curtis’s pompous pronouncement.  Religion was not a public affair in the recusant tradition.  So we will go on to other founding fathers.  We still need to look at James Madison who is particularly key as he is the basic architect of the Constitution and we also want to look at his fellow Virginian, Patrick Henry who will round out the cast of characters.  But that is for tomorrow—or the next day or whenever I get around to it.   Today I want to share some reflections that the first reading at Mass this morning raised for me. 
     It was the story of Samuel and the Israelites squabbling over a monarchy. You know the story.  (Or, if you don’t, you can find it in 1 Samuel, chapter 8.)  The people of Israel decide that they want a king like other nations.  The people had decided that God wasn’t quite cutting it as king.  He isn’t visible enough in times of war.  They want the trappings of an earthly king.  Samuel warns them of the price: Kings require taxes and they live in palaces with servants.  Daughters will have to become ointment makers and cooks; sons will have to be footmen and soldiers.  The people are going to have to shell out to keep a king in style—you know: palaces, crowns, liveried servants, etc. 
      What struck me was—and this is one of the reasons that I write this blog—why isn’t Christ enough for us?  Why do we need Swiss Guards and Nuncios and Vatican dicasteries?  Why do we need monsignors in their purples and bishops with their miters, and Eminences and Excelencies, and the kissing of rings and the bending of knees?  Now I am not saying that we don’t need the Petrine Ministry and a worthy Servus Servorum Dei to fill it, or that we don’t need Pastors who have the heart of the Good Shepherd to lead the Church.  (And by Pastors here I mean bishops.)  I believe Christ established a community of his followers and that he commissioned the Twelve (or at least the Eleven who remained faithful) to guide it in faithfulness to the Good News of God’s Kingdom as he preached it.  And I am not a strict constructionist of the New Testament.  I am amused with some of my Campbellite friends who insist that if there is not an explicit warrant for something in the New Testament you can’t do it. (One friend of mine who is a Church of Christ Pastor makes me laugh when he says that his deacons won’t allow lighted candles on the communion table as there is no warrant for them in the New Testament but that they have no problem flipping on the light switch.)  But I do think at times, indeed often, that we Catholics have allowed the human trappings to overshadow and even usurp the precedence of the Divinely ordered mission of the Church.  I’m sorry but the preaching of Good News to the Poor, of granting sight to the blind, freedom to captives, and announcing a time of God’s Favor is why we are here not to conduct self-aggrandizing ceremonies that exalt one or another of us over others.  Now I know that I have said that I don’t intend to get into theology and that I want to stick right to history and that when you start talking about Christ and his intentions for his disciples you cross the line from history into theology and I know I have crossed that line, but don’t even tell me theologically that the Grace of God is given us for pompous ceremonial that may have been fitting for medieval princes but is totally out of place in a world where more than half the population has no or insufficient access to safe water, where millions of children have been orphaned by AIDS, where famine is rampant, and where 5% of the population controls 90% of the resources.  Far from being the light of the world, we run the risk of being a scandal when we are more concerned about the trappings of office than the mission given us by our Savior.  So history and theology meet where justice and peace kiss and history can help theology sort out what is essential and what is charade.

The Maryland Catholic Tradition: Ahead of its Time

Bishop John Carroll

I have made several entries on the style of Catholicism in colonial and early Republican Maryland and how much it has in common with modern Catholic practice.  Churches were plain and without much decoration—the Cathedral in Baltimore not even having statues.  While the Mass was in Latin (despite Bishop Carroll’s desire for it to be in the vernacular), Carroll and other clergy had translated much of the sacramental ritual from Latin into English.  Despite Roman prohibitions on ecumenism, American Catholics were used to cooperating with their Protestant countrymen and even worshipping with them on occasion. Churches usually had lay trustees—something that would cause Carroll and other bishops enough headaches that they would eventually do away with them.  (Bishop John England of Charleston, on the other hand, wrote a Constitution for his diocese and had an annual convention of lay and clergy to help in the decision making.)  Carroll had been elected bishop by the clergy and he hoped that Rome would permit future bishops to be elected as well.  (Rome did not permit.)  Carroll and other clergy routinely wore lay clothing, albeit in dark colors, while on the street.  When Carroll brought the first religious women to the United States—four Carmelite cloistered nuns from the Netherlands (three of whom were Maryland natives) they arrived in secular dress and resumed their habit only when they were ensconced in their monastery at Port Tobacco.  Several years later when he asked Elizabeth Ann Seton, a widowed convert from Episcopalianism, to organize an American religious sisterhood based on Vincent dePaul’s Daughters of Charity, it was decided that they would wear the plain black dress and bonnet of widows rather than the cornettes of their French counterparts or the more traditional wimple and veil of nuns.    Carroll, his priests, and the American faithful had no qualms of “fitting in”—indeed that was their goal.  They saw no reason why they had to stand aside from their countrymen believing that Americanism and Catholicism were perfectly compatible. The Catholic faith was to be packaged in American homespun rather than European brocade. 
     Maryland Catholics would never have worked their way into the untenable position of the Leesburg Knights of Columbus who insisted on a religious display on the Courthouse lawn only to find that their campaign opened the door to atheist displays that mocked not only Catholicism but faith itself.  In Carroll’s day Catholicism was known for what it stood for; today Catholicism is too often better known for what it is against.  Evangelism doesn’t work when the message is what we are against.  

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. 

Two Remarks on George Washington

Emanuel Leutze's 1851 painting of Washington

Crossing the Delaware--the surprise attack on British

forces at the Battle of Trenton, Christmas night 1776.

Permit me just two more remarks about George Washington before we move on.  George Washington wore  his Masonic Apron and other lodge insignia for the laying of the cornerstone of the United States Capitol in 1793.  If an American President today appeared in Masonic insignia there would be a huge outcry from Catholics on the right and secularists on the left.  I think we need to pay attention however to the significance of his wearing these symbols of a private affiliation for the performance of a public act.  While I don’t think one could say—given the earlier entries in this series of blogs—that Washington conceived of this Republic as a “Christian Nation” or a “Judeo-Christian Nation” as some of the advocates of keeping atheistic displays off the Leesburg Courthouse Lawn, Washington certainly did not believe that one’s religious biases should be kept out of public life.   Freemasonry is not a religion but its insignia, rituals, and symbols stand for a belief system and Washington himself displayed those symbols of the Masonic belief system at one of the most important events in the history of the Republic. 
     Now, on for another remark about Washington though having nothing apropos of the religious debate.  We all have in our mind the image of Washington crossing the Delaware, standing in the prow of a boat and looking noble.  According to one of his chief officers, General Henry Knox—who weighted over 300 lbs—Washington was seated in the boat and wanted to make sure that Knox was seated too, declaring:  "Shift your fat ass, Henry, but slowly, or you'll swamp the damn boat!"  Sort of makes us shift our image of ol'George, doesn't it?

The Christian Faith of George Washington III

Pohick Church, one of the churches that Washington

attended regularly.  This picture is taken from the

website.  Notice the centrality of the pulpit and how

the commuion table is placed in a more subordinate

position.  This arrangement was not unusual in 

Episcopalian Churches before the Oxford Movement

of the nineteenth century 

  So what about George Washington and his religious beliefs?  Was he a Christian?  Did he believe that this new Republic which he was so instrumental in creating was to be a Christian nation?  Remember we are looking at this in the context of the controversy of atheist displays on the Courthouse lawn at beautiful Virginia Horse Country Leesburg (the Home Town of Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum) Virginia and the claims of Loudon County Maven Barbara Curtis whose Blog Mommy Life is filled with information (and misinformation) of all sorts.  In the debate over the Leesburg Courthouse lawn Ms. Curtis asserted that “There is also the fact that our nation is indeed a Judeo-Christian nation - there's no disputing that.”  Is there no disputing that?  I am not so sure.  We have been looking at American History, first in the colonial period and then in the time of the creation of the American Republic, to see whether or not the United States was meant to be a Christian, or a Judeo-Christian, nation.  Massachusetts history would support Ms. Curtis’ claim, but the Founding Fathers of the Republic are not so univocal.  We have looked at the religious opinions of Jefferson, Franklin, and the Adams cousins and it would appear that the three responsible for the Declaration of Independence would not support the claim that we should be “A Christian Nation,” at least not as that claim is put forth by modern political “conservatives.”  (I put “conservatives” in quotation marks because I think they deviate from our American political heritage in any number of matters.)  Sam Adams who was somewhat of what we might call today an “evangelical” may have supported the Christian Nation idea.  So now we have moved on to George Washington—the single most significant—though not the most influential—of the Founding Fathers.  I make that distinction because Washington was extremely proactive in the practical matters of establishing the new nation  but not in shaping the political theory behind it.  He was a member of the Continental Congress and an advocate for Independence.  He was given command of the American forces fighting for Independence.  I chaired the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  And he served as the First President under the Constitution.  Yet other than being an advocate for Independence in the Continental Congress and an advocate for a (relatively) strong Federal Government in the Constitutional Convention he was not given to participating in the debates that shaped the new nation.  Washington was never much of a talker but more of a doer.  And it is precisely for that reason that the religious opinions of George Washington comprise a tricky subject.  Our last two entries painted a picture of eighteenth century Anglicanism (and its American expression, The Episcopal Church), the denomination to which Washington was formally affiliated. We have seen that Episcopalianism in the eighteenth century was not easily or narrowly defined and that an Episcopalian might be anything from an agnostic to an evangelical.  So what about George?  
      Well, in the first place George was an Anglican/Episcopalian not just in name but in practice.  He was affiliated to several Episcopalian parishes relatively near to Mount Vernon, most especially Pohick Church and Christ Church, Alexandria.  He worshipped at each of these Churches though with some irregularity.  Washington kept a meticulous journal of his daily activities and they indicate that he went to church about one Sunday in four while at Mount Vernon.  This is not a bad record for eighteenth-century Virginia gentry; after all it was not easy going to Church in eighteenth-century Virginia plantation society.  New England townsfolk could be religious without much inconvenience.  Pohick Church was about seven miles distant and would have been about an hour and a half by horseback or two hours by carriage each way from Mount Vernon. Given that George invariably went to Church in Martha’s company he probably went by carriage but, usually leaving church after first service (Morning Prayer) while Martha remained for Holy Communion at the second service, he may have returned by horseback.  Such a schedule probably meant leaving Mount Vernon before six a.m. and returning between eleven and noon.  Christ Church was three miles further from Mount Vernon than Pohick Church and in another direction, making the round trip perhaps an hour longer each way.  Weather would be one deterrent to Church attendance with rain making the roads difficult and snow making them impassable. However, Washington’s diary mentions Sundays where he went Fox-hunting rather than to Church so it was not always a weather related skip.  Sometimes too he stayed home to catch up on correspondence or to meet with his farm manager. 

Pohick Church where Washington most frequently attended was the seat of Truro Parish which had been divided from Hamilton Parish by the Virginia General Assembly in 1732.  Pohick Church itself, originally known as the Occoquan Church (because of a local creek), had been founded in 1695 when it still was part of Hamilton Parish.   Washington served on the vestry of Truro parish from 1762 until 1774 and several times was one of the two Wardens.  It was during his time on the Truro Vestry that the Falls Church was built and Washington briefly served on the vestry at the Falls Church as well.  However as it was contrary to law for one to sit on two vestries simultaneously he did not stay with the Falls Church. (Before the Revolution when the Church of England was the Established Church, civil law governed matters spiritual as well as civic.)   Given the distance from Mount Vernon to the Falls Church it is unlikely that he attended services there with any regularity.  Modern day The Falls Church and also Truro Church have separated themselves from the Episcopal Church while Pohick Church is still Episcopalian.  We might talk about that in some upcoming blogs. 

     Before the American Revolution public office in Virginia was restricted to members of the Established Church, i.e. the Anglican Church and Washington’s dedication to public life would have required of him membership in the Established Church. He could not have served either in  the militia or held any public office unless he were a member of the Anglican Church.   

Ironically Washington’s church attendance was better when he was away from Mount Vernon than when he was there.  Stories that he only attended divine service when Martha was with him seem not to bear out the facts and all those Sundays at Mount Vernon when he skipped church indicate that Martha probably played little influence on his worship patterns.  During the periods of time that he lived in Philadelphia and New York attendance at church services was much more convenient as the churches were right in town—a walk from where he lived.  In Philadelphia he worshipped at Saint Peter’s Church; in New York at Saint Paul’s Chapel.  During his time in Philadelphia he also attended a Quaker service and, on one occasion, a service (I believe it was a Te Deum, not a Mass) at Saint Joseph’s, the Jesuit Church, which is Pennsylvania’s oldest Catholic Church.   

      While George was a Church-goer there is a dispute about whether or not Washington received Holy Communion at Anglican or Episcopal services.  This would be a significant indication as to what his faith—and the Christian religion—meant to him.  In Washington’s time, as mentioned in the previous blog, Anglican theology held for a Calvinistic approach to the Eucharist that Christ was truly present but in a spiritual (as opposed to physical) manner.  Some Anglicans/Episcopalians would have emphasized the idea that Christ was Truly present and considered the difference between spiritual and physical presence to be inconsequential.  Others would have gone for a more Zwinglian understanding that Christ’s presence was purely by “remembrance”—a sort of “present in my heart” approach.  The Anglican liturgy itself was (and to some extent still is) ambiguous so as to be as inclusive as possible.  Washington never commented on Eucharistic theology so we do not know what he believed.  Various family remembrances, primarily from a generation or two after Washington’s death, claim that he frequently attended Holy Communion.  Several of the rectors of the Episcopal Churches which Washington attended claimed, however, that he never took the Sacrament and one of them, the Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie of Saint Peter’s—the Philadelphia Church Washington attended during the Continental Congress—explicitly said that Washington was a Deist.   Abercrombie had, in a Sunday Sermon, criticized Washington and other public figures who refrained from receiving communion for setting a bad example by not remaining in church for the Sacrament.  Historians generally concur that the clergy records are more reliable than the family stories in this matter and take it that Washington attended Morning Prayer—a service  of psalms, prayers, and a sermon, but not Holy Communion. 

Washington’s devotional practices reflect his moral integrity.  If there is one thing one can say about Washington is that, despite Parson Weems’ story of the cherry tree being a fabrication, he was a man of superior integrity.  He was certainly a gentleman and respectful of the opinions of others but he was extremely discreet regarding his own religious beliefs.  Martha, his wife, was a very devout Episcopalian who received the Sacrament often.  Washington normally accompanied her to church, both attending the Morning Prayer.   George would usually then leave while Martha remained for the second service of Holy Communion.  Washington never said why, but obviously the Holy Communion was not important to him.  Or perhaps it was too important to him to participate in a rite whose basic significance differed from his personal “faith.”  Perhaps when we look at the various other rituals which Washington did practice we can understand his rather unique Christianity. 

Jesus, the Reason for the Season? Or Not?

There is more to Christmas than Christ, and for some
there's less to Christmas than Christ, much less than
Christ, but that's just fine.

A friend of mine recently told me a story about Christmas and grinches. My friend teaches at a private school somewhere in the Northeast.  The school has adopted a strong secular identity and few of the students come from Christian homes.  There is a policy forbidding so much as a poinsettia plant in the faculty lunch-room or a jolly elf in the library.  Even reading The Polar Express is verboten and a teacher was reprimanded for wearing a green sweater with a red and green plaid skirt.  Boy, anybody who thinks only conservatives are rigid needs to visit this school!!!  Well, my friend told me, one parent was upset because—horror of horrors—there was a Christmas tree near the entrance to the parking lot.  You see, this school rents its property from a Christian Church to whom the parking lot belongs but this particular parent obviously thought that the landlords should refrain from decorating their property because she did not want her child to be exposed to Christmas.  A Christmas tree has no religious significance.   And so let’s take a break from this Founding Father and Christian Nation thing and indulge ourselves a bit in a look at the history of Christmas.  After all Jesus “is the reason for the season.’  Or not.  Now when I say that, I am not being anti-Christian or on the “Take Christ out of Christmas” bandwagon.  I am a devout Roman Catholic—more devout than most I would suggest—but we need to look at Christmas in its wider picture context if we want to consider intelligently the issue of the crèche on courthouse lawns that we have been looking at. 

      While Christians began celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25^th in the fourth century they built their celebration on already existing “pagan” festivals.  History does not know the actual date of Christ’s birth.  Some argue that the story’s relating to us that “shepherds were keeping watch in the fields by night over their sheep” argues against a December date as in the winter the sheep would be kept in barns through the cold nights.  I am not familiar with sheepherding protocols in first century Palestine but I do know that December in Israel/Palestine has long nights with low temperatures—not as low as Idaho or Colorado and American sheep, but regularly in the 40’s and occasionally below freezing.  And, in any case, contemporary biblical scholarship would not consider night-time temperatures of Bethlehem fields relevant to whatever historical/biographical shreds might be recoverable from the gospel texts.   Suffice it to say that we don’t know the actual date of the birth of Jesus.  Nor do we need to. The Queen’s Birthday is a Saturday in June—any Saturday her government might choose for the festivities—though she was born on April 21^st.  But it rains a lot in London in April (April showers,May flowers, and all that) so it is celebrated another day.  Same with Jesus.  Who knows when he was born, but December 25^th works well as everybody needs a lift from the dark days and longer darker nights of midwinter.  And long before Jesus was even a twinkle in some celestial star (I am speaking here of the man born, not the Word who became incarnate in that birth) people were reveling at midwinter.  According to the historian the Venerable Bede (8^th century) the ancient Anglo-Saxon peoples celebrated Modranecht (Mother’s Night) on December 25^th.   The Celts had Meán Geimhridh—the festival of the winter solstice.  Germanic and Nordic folk had Yule.  Baltic peoples had Ziemassvētki.  The Slavs had Rozhanista.  The Roman/Graeco culture had a variety of feasts in honor of the god Bacchus, the god Saturn, or the Sol Invictus: the unconquered Sun.  Customs varied from culture to culture but certain common features included gift-giving, revelry (usually to excess), hospitality, and the use of light.  The further north, the darker and longer the nights, the more ardent were the celebrations.  Greens were often brought indoors to decorate the home (and probably to freshen the air of the houses closed tight against winter cold) and to keep the awareness of nature when all outside seemed dead and awaiting the rebirth spring would provide. 

     Initially there seems to have been some resistance among Christian theologians to the idea of celebrating the Birth of Jesus as it was too close in concept to the pagan celebrations honoring the birth of various deities.  Of course Kings, Pharaohs, and Emperors regularly had their birthdays celebrated but primitive Christianity distanced itself from such royal celebrations as well because the implication was attributing divinity to the monarch being celebrated.  It does seem by the middle of the fourth century however that the feast was being celebrated at Rome from where it spread eastwards to Constantinople and the Churches of the East.  This makes it somewhat of the exception as most of the ancient feasts began in the Eastern Church(es) and spread westward to Rome.  The Church in the West was always inclined to a more Spartan liturgical style than the more exotic East.  By the end of the fourth century Christmas had achieved great popularity as it was used to combat the Arian heresy that denied Jesus full divinity, equal to the Father.  Christmas became an affirmation of the idea that in the birth of Jesus, God (the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity) became human, uniting in one person the human and divine natures. 

     The name Christmas derives from the Old English Christemaesse—Christ’s Mass—even as other feasts were called after the Mass celebrated on that day—Michaelmas  (St. Michael’s Day, September 11^th ) or Martinmas (St. Martin’s Day, November 11^th). 

     It’s clear that our contemporary Christmas is an amalgamation of Christian and Pagan elements.  Christianity has often adopted and then adapted indigenous customs, “baptizing” them as it were with Christian meaning.  The Chinese Rites controversy of the seventeenth century is one of the more interesting examples of this practice and the rejection by Rome of the use of Chinese practices by the Jesuit missionaries was a huge mistake from an evangelizing point of view.  Pius XII, in one of the first acts of his papacy, admitted the mistake and to remedy it repealed much of the legislation of Clement XI that had outlawed the incorporation of Chinese practices into Catholic liturgy and devotions.  We will have to do a study of the Chinese Rites issue in the future but before we blame Clement XI for his narrow mindedness we need to locate him in the ambiance of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.  This was the same time, incidentally, that Puritans in Boston were outlawing Christmas because of its pagan roots.  And so we should distinguish between the Christian meaning of Christmas (the liturgical celebration of Christ’s birth with its worship services, scripture readings, and sacred songs) and the cultural survivals of pre-Christian practices with evergreens, blazing lights and fires, revelry and (not so sacred)songs.   They both have their place but a Festooned and light-bedecked tree is no more a Christian symbol than is a Halloween Jack-o-lantern or a Fourth-of July firecracker.  So get over the Christmas tree in the Park or the wreath of lights on the lamppost.  And while you’re at it, let Ms. Paula wear that red sweater and plaid skirt: she looks real cute in it. 

Of Tim Tebow and Christmas Trees in the Park

The Christmas Tree in the Place

Notre Dame--just because it is in front

of the Cathedral doesn't make it a

symbol of Christian faith

I am not keen on this Tebow thing.  I don’t mean Tim—he’s fine, seems not only to play good ball but to be a very good man—but this prayer thing.  I don’t go for it.  The bible verse in eye black or whatever is fine.  Talking about Jesus is fine.  It is just that I think Jesus had a point when he said
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward  But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.  And your Father, who sees in secret will repay you.   (Matt 6:5-6)
     It is like those people who in a communion line need to drop to their knees just to show the world that they take Jesus more seriously than the rest of us luke-warm believers who follow the established procedure and remain standing to receive.  Nevertheless, even though I think the public displays of piety are indicative of a psycho-spiritual immaturity I want to defend Tim Tebow’s choice to publicly demonstrate his faith.  Rabbi Joshua Hammerman recently attacked Tebow’s public religiosity making the ridiculous claim that it can lead to “insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants.”  Rabbi Hammerman retracted his statement and his column was pulled from the internet but the point had been made.  There are a lot of people in our society that want to see religion banished from the “public square.”  And this brings us back into the conversation about the crèche on the Courthouse lawn in Leesburg VA.   By the way,lil’ ol’ country town Leesburg isn’t the only place having this dispute.  Big ol’ California Gay Town Santa Monica is embroiled in it as well, but we will save that for future entries. 
     In looking at our Founding Fathers and the “Christian Nation” issue we need to differentiate between the “Public Square” and “The State,” or as we should call it for clarity—government.  A County Courthouse lawn is not only public space, it is government space.  A Courthouse lawn represents, symbolizes, like the Courthouse itself, the institution of government.  The same can be said for a State Capitol (or the U.S. Capitol),  government office buildings, the public lawns and chambers of official residences, embassies or other space where government functions.  This can be differentiated from publically owned (but governmentally administered) spaces such as streets or  public parks.  Government space, I think, should be free of religious (or anti-religion) symbols.  Public space, on the other hand, should be open to the public with equal access to all.  I don’t think that a crèche or a Menorah or an atheist slogan belongs in government space but I also think it is wrong to bar Muslims or atheists or Buddhists from erecting displays where Christians or Jews are so permitted to place their symbols.  There are those in our society who want religion to be restricted to the private sphere.  They would maintain that there should be no public displays of any religious symbols.  That is a restriction upon religious freedom.  While there are some religious groups who themselves see religion as a private matter—Quakers, for example—and while there are religions such as Judaism whose rites are traditionally practiced in the privacy of home and synagogue, there are other religions, Christianity being one, whose rites are meant to be public and to attempt to restrict their practice to behind closed doors is to inhibit their religious freedoms.  So Tim—I think you need to give Matthew 6:5-7 some thought, but if you want to showboat your religious faith I will defend your right to do so. 
     And before we move on from the subject of religious displays, there is need for one more clarification and that is between religious symbols and societal symbols.  A crèche is a religious symbol, a “Christmas Tree” has nothing to do with Christian faith.  “Christmas” is actually an amalgamation of two celebrations.  There is a Christian holyday.  A wreath with four candles, a crèche, a star, wisemen on camels, shepherds, Silent Night, a Saintly Bishop Nicholas,  or a good king Wenceslaus—all these symbolize the Christian feast.  There is also what anthropologists might call a “solstice celebration.”  The days are getting longer; the spell of winter is broken.  Christmas trees, candy canes, a fat man in a red suit with presents, strings of lights—these are about the solstice celebration.  Now not everybody chooses to celebrate the solstice.  That is a choice they make. They have no right to begrudge others having a glass of eggnog (or even getting snockered) while toasting the earth’s change of tilt.  But celebrating or not celebrating the solstice is not the same as celebrating or not celebrating the birth of Jesus.  There are plenty of people who don’t regard Jesus as anything more than pious fiction but who are into celebrating the solstice.  Personally, I would like to find a way about celebrating the birth of Jesus without having to get trapped in the solstice thing.  But don’t denigrate my religious faith by saying that a light-covered tree or an overweight elf represents my religious convictions.  I don’t need to see the baby Jesus at the Mall but don’t scream because there is a Christmas Tree in the town square.                 

  

Of Courthouses, Christian Nations, and That Damn Drinking Water in Loudon County

Saint Mary's Chapel, Saint Mary City,

Maryland--the first Catholic Church in

English North America

I had an email from one of my regular readers who has been what we might call an active bystander to the Leesburg Courthouse Lawn Debacle that we spoke of the other day.  A spokesperson for the Knights sent the board of supervisors an email saying:
The many Loudoun County citizens who place their belief in God and try to live a faith based life are being continually subjected to policy statements placed on our County Courthouse grounds by a myriad of atheistic organizations. Citizens of faith are infuriated by these policy laden signs, such as the one below, that have been erected at very regular intervals on the Loudoun County Courthouse grounds. These signs, for the most part, refer to God's non-existence, and denigrate those, who believe in God.  So although, some would claim these signs profess our freedom of speech, the very regular and continued placement of them on the courthouse grounds are neither fair, nor civil to citizens of faith. We hope that our Loudoun County Supervisors takes this issue to heart, and more closely monitors its policy for permits to use the courthouse grounds for displays. 
     Now, remember the Knights started this situation when they organized a protest against a county policy that would have prohibited any displays on the Courthouse lawn.  The Board of Supervisors backed down and agreed to allow ten displays allotted on a first come first serve basis.  That was a huge mistake.  The Knights’ protest backfired because the policy that would permit Christians to put up their annual Christmas displays also permitted people of other faiths and no faith to erect displays as well.  Several Knights realized this fight was a mistake from the get-go and want to back-off from supporting displays on County property while others, like the gentleman who sent the above email, want religious displays to be allowed but not displays that advocate rationalism, agnosticism, or atheism.  They are probably right that some of the displays that have been put on the public lawn make light of—if not mock—believers.  That is not civil behavior but then civil behavior has never been part of Loudon culture where polemic has long outshouted reason, goin' back at least to the War Between the States.  What they do not seem to realize is that you cannot allow one opinion access to the public space and bar others.  And this is where I found a historical conundrum come to the fore.  In the string of emails my correspondent forwarded to me a Loudon maven of some journalistic renown got into the fray  insisting that the United States is a Judeo-Christian nation, and not only insisting but leaving no room for dissent. Barbara Curtis inserted herself into the conversation writing: There is also the fact that our nation is indeed a Judeo-Christian nation - there's no disputing that. 
      Are we a Judeo-Christian nation?  I think that can well be disputed.  There are various strands that go to make up our national identity.  The three main colonial pillars on which today’s United States is built are the English, the Spanish, and the French.  The English colonized the eastern seaboard from Georgia to what is now New Hampshire extending westward to the Appalachians; the Spanish colonized Florida and from what is now Texas north to Kansas and west to include California and everything in between.  The French colonized Maine, Vermont and the Mississippi Valley from what is now Wisconsin down to New Orleans and including the Ohio Valley up to the Great Lakes including western Pennsylvania and upstate New York.  The Spanish influence in Florida was neither pervasive nor long-lasting and the French influence faded except in Louisiana.  However, the Spanish influence in the Southwest is stronger today than what remains of English influence along the Eastern seaboard.  All three of these colonial powers were Christian nations though the Catholic Spaniards and French would not have accorded that honor to the Protestant English and the Protestant English would not have considered the papist French and Spaniards to be true Christians. 
     Other than in Louisiana where French influence is still strong on the law, our American legal system is borrowed and adapted from the English.   Our Constitutional heritage, while it has developed differently—and significantly so—from the British, is shaped by Enlightenment Rationalism that was all the rage in English Coffee houses and French salons of the eighteenth century.  It was also influenced, especially as regards the Bill of Rights, in Magna Carta and the consequent English understanding of the relationship of public government and private rights.   (While we all talk about rights, no one speaks of corresponding duties which is a tragic flaw of our republican tradition.)   So basically we need to focus on the English heritage more than the French and Spanish to determine the nature of our nation if we want to talk about “nation” in the political sense.  And in this whole dispute about access to public space on a Courthouse lawn, we are speaking in a political sense.  
      Are we a Judeo-Christian nation?  Well again, we need to look at the various strands of English tradition out of which the political structure of the United States was formed.  When one reads Jonathan Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” speech (actually a sermon entitled A Modell of Christian Charity (“Modell” being his spelling, not mine) we can see that the Puritans came to Massachusetts Bay explicitly to establish a Christian Commonwealth.  Of course, there would be no Courthouse crèche issue with them as they banned Christmas altogether.  It was a “papist” holiday. Initially the Governor, William Bradford, instructed non-Puritan members of the colony that any celebration had to be confined to the privacy of their homes.  In 1647, during the Puritan Government of Oliver Cromwell in England, New England Puritans passed a law criminalizing celebrating the day in the colony.  In 1669 a five shilling fine was imposed on anyone in Massachusetts celebrating the day. So the Massachusetts heritage would say: Christian yes; Christmas no.  Rhode Island was an escape colony for Massachusetts residents who found Puritanism not to their taste.  Roger Williams and the other founders of the Rhode Island colony rejected Puritanism to become Baptists.  In the Baptist tradition they favored individual conscience over law and thus declared freedom of religion for Rhode Island.  I am not sure whether this freedom of conscience extended to Catholics or not but America’s first synagogue is Touro Synagogue in Newport, built in 1763.  Now that date is fairly late for what we are talking about but it is a sign of authentic religious freedom that Jews as well as Christians were granted freedom of worship.  There is no record of Catholic Worship in Rhode Island until the time of the American Revolution.  Rhode Island Baptists were strict on the separation of Church and State as the Baptist tradition has been in general up until the last thirty years when increasingly, like Evangelicals and some Catholics, more and more Baptists, especially Southern Baptists, want Christian practices enshrined in civil law. 
       Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers who did practice religious tolerance for all, including Catholics. There was no “Established Church” in Pennsylvania which functioned with separation of Church and government. New York and Virginia were Anglican colonies where the Church of England was established by law and the clergy were salaried by the government.  Catholicism was illegal in both colonies, but Christmas was not.  In the Anglican tradition, Christmas was a big thing: Church in the morning and dead drunk in the afternoon. That, incidentally, explains why Puritans made Christmas illegal.  This was a time when Anglicanism was still a Protestant religion and while it maintained a recognizably Catholic Liturgy and certain holydays such as Christmas, it eschewed such popish foppery as crosses on the altar much less a crèche on the lawn.   Maryland was the sole Catholic colony and religious freedom was guaranteed by the Lord Proprietor to all Christians of whatever denomination. Catholicism was legal in Maryland—until the Cromwellian Interregnum in England when the Lord Proprietor was deprived of his authority—and then from the Restoration until the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  After that Catholicism was, in practice though not in law, tolerated if practiced discreetly.  During the Proprietorship of the Lords Baltimore, Catholicism was never an established Church.  As for Maryland Christmases,  Christmas was celebrated by the Anglicans and Catholics in their various houses of worship and together the rest of the day in manor houses and taverns as they both had a taste for the grog.  While the Lord Proprietor was Catholic himself, there was no established Church in Maryland and the Jesuit priests who labored there supported themselves as other wealthy Marylanders by their plantations.  The Carolinas and Georgia were nominally Anglican in their Royal Charters but religion didn’t catch on their much in colonial America.  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached in Georgia as a young Anglican priest but it was only with the residue of the First Great Awakening that the colonists took to religion—mostly Methodist and Baptist preachers at the time of the American Revolution and subsequent decades.  Perhaps it is wrong to say “the residue of the First Great Awakening” but it was several decades after the great preaching of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and it was just before the Second Great Awakening took off with the Cane Ridge Revival in Bourbon County (isn’t that ironic) Kentucky in 1801.  Thus I think we can say that while each of the colonies had religious roots, only three: Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were founded for religious purposes and of these only one, Massachusetts, was founded to be a Christian society.   We will have to look at our Founding Fathers and their religious practices and views in a future entry.