Recently, I received this in email:
The founding documents make a point of noting that the moral legitimacy of the government is expressly derived from religious principles. The entire justification of the government is to represent rights that were "endowed to men by their creator."
This is a common but ahistorical interpretation which seems to have relevance only because it has become a sound-bite of the religious right. In fact, what this phrase really does in the Deist sense in which Jefferson and his home-boys undoubtedly intended is to assert that the rights in question are self-evident. And, whaddya know, when you look at the whole sentence, it actually does say exactly that. Seems unlikely to be a coincidence. Did some folks who signed the document misunderstand it? Maybe. But Deism was politically correct in those circles at the time, and it's likely most other signatories correctly understood what Jefferson wrote.
Now, if you want to insist that Deism is a religion, then in some technical or academic sense you would be right. But I think Deism is more a bundle of philosophy than a religion; it essentially seeks to observe the world and believes the existence of a creator (little C) is implied rather than revealed. It doesn't even care much about the nature of this creator; the creator is more of a stand-in for the fact that the problem of first cause had not been solved. If that's a religion, then call me a fanatic, because I am likewise unfamiliar with a solution to that problem. (Perhaps I need to get around to reading more physics.)
And what's incontrovertible is that Deism is not similar to or even compatible with Christianity of any stripe, much less the tribal consumerist flavors popular today.
2 comments:
The seperation of church and state protects the church from the state as much as the other way round.
Church doctrine, when it must conform to the practical needs of state institution is a tremendously strong corrupting influence which has produced volumes of very poor theology throughout history whenever these realms have fused.
That the churches of America have avoided this fusion is one of the reasons for their strength today. If they persist in their attempt at fusion, they risk the inevitably corrupting influence such fusion has incurred every time it has been engaged. The wise among them ought desist for the good of the purity of their own beliefs. As a seperate realm it holds suasive power, when fused, it sometimes becomes a mere mouthpiece of the state with diminishes its authority among its adherants.
Further, I'd contend that "Christian" ought not be an adjective at all. It ought be a noun only.
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