Something I have a hard time with when it comes to claims about the Founding Fathers and religion (like Judge Ho’s dissent) is that they had some pretty nasty views of Catholicism, which never really get talked about. The Declaration of Independence’s illiberalism just gets overlooked.
Yet George Washington took the early arrivers to the Constitutional Convention to a Catholic Mass just to impress on them how important the work was to be. None of them were Catholic.
It took only 50 years before Catholics in New York had to sue the city school system for its egregious use of anti-Catholic grade school grammar books. They appealed to the First Amendment and those opposed to them tried to argue that it didn’t apply to them, but only to Protestants.
This and the fact that the anti-Catholic views persisted where JFK was questioned about his loyalties to the country or the Pope. It really puts into perspective that Catholics were largely disfavored when utilizing any history and traditions analysis
I just read Brad Meltzer’s newest book on JFK. He goes into the Catholic issue in politics as history. Leading up to Kennedy’s election. It’s not a super deep dive but it is eye opening as you see what’s happening today. I recommend it.
The founders were deists, which at the time was like being an atheist
The Founding generation though is much more complex. We generally just get a rosy depiction of something with many layers.
Sure. I was thinking of the leading lights. The best thinkers.
Like John Witherspoon?
Jefferson released his own edit of the New Testament with all the magic stripped out
Just following good old J Locke!
My understanding greatly benefitted from Andrew Seidel's "the Founding Myth- why Christian nationalists are unAmerican'" It is a readable, but fact-dense work. One key--- neither the Declaration nor the Constitution mentions 'god'. not one time.
it is mention in the first paragraph of the declaration- " equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."
Nature's god, in use in the declaration references NATURE! this was wonderfully laid out by Andrew Seidel in 'the Founding Myth'... the contemporaneous theological scholars 'raged' at the atheism!!! The declaration is NOT a judeo- christian doc. Interesting, eh?
I agree with you- it's very, very deistic. But it's defintiely a reference to God, even if it's not the traditional one.
Still NOT judeo -christian, though. Generic at best. Quite nonspecific....and leaning on the Enlightenment philosophers, the intent throughout was purposefully not judeo-christian
Don't get me wrong- there is a notable absense of religion in both documents, and the phrase "Nature's God"is definitely a deistic version of God. It's in line with a lot of Jefferson's religious thought.
Been getting into Civil War history lately, and what’s interesting is how the Republican Party is a weird Northern alliance of racist + anti-Catholic but also anti-slavery former Know Nothings, Whigs, and Abolitionists
I guess the decentralization of Protestantism made it seem a lesser threat than the Catholic Church. Times have changed quite a bit.
Does that explain why JD Couchshagger started out as a reasonably intelligent, if creepy, conventional Republican, until he converted to Catholicism and became an raving anti-constitutional facist Trumpsucker? Or is it just that waxwork Thiel told him to?
I agree they were anti-Catholic, and anti-organized religion in general, but if you think the Declaration was illiberal, I'm curious what you think "liberal" means?
It’s also the exclusion of women for be!
Me, too. How is he defining 'illiberal'?
I think "liberal" includes religious equality. Selectively opposing Catholicism is not liberal. I don't think DEI was "anti-organized religion" as such. Organized religion today regularly doesn't think so.
I remember reading about the ratification debates and seeing someone argue that a ban on religious tests for public office was fine, because you only had to care about Catholics and they were obviously ineligible for public office anyway.
I have zero subject matter knowledge here: But I’ve always wondered how much the Founders differentiated between personal religious commitments and the kind of political religious commitments that fueled the Wars of Religion/English Reformation, etc. Jefferson seemed to care about that distinction.
But I just don’t know enough about how the Founders viewed religious factionalism to understand what they meant when they were *really* anti-Catholic.
I think “founders” flattens things too much. Sam Adams loved to burn effigies of the pope in the streets, Madison kept a bust of the first catholic bishop in the US in his office in retirement as a conversation piece to discuss the importance of toleration.
Oh, for sure, I was trying to use my character count to pry apart the religion/politics dimension a bit…
Maybe Founding generation is more so what I was going for. Not that there isn’t a lot of layers to it all, which there certainly is, but the Founder worship never engages with it.
Yeah - on the racism, anti-Indigenous, and anti-Catholic angle, I still think Parkinson’s book The Common Cause does an exceptional job at prying apart the social and political meaning and uses of a document from the political ideals of its individual authors.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the lone Catholic singer !
Coastal Georgian. Raised Catholic. The charter King George II granted to General Oglethorpe (GA Trustees) for the 13th Original Colony, denied papists (Catholics) the right to worship. We were a “barricade” against the very Catholic Spaniards in Florida. www.georgiahistory.com/resource/jam...
Also, all nonwhite and non male people. And probably Jews too. They’d never heard of Orthodox Christians or Muslims, I suppose.
And Irish weren’t white. And don’t get started on them Italians. And there’s a reason there were no founding mothers.
American Catholic leadership has joined hips with the Christian Nationalist Right (even in opposing the Pope) so the GQP is now happy to have them. The US Bishops oughta look behind themselves though, as MANY followers have had enough and are deserting the church..
Catholicism, like all religions, deserves many nasty views. Religion has never helped humanity, it has only held it back.
It mostly didn't carry forward into many specific anti-catholic policies though, right? They just jumped 50 years ahead of Britain on Catholic toleration all at once.
Absolutely.
it's pretty obvious why
Thought about this a lot after Dobbs. There, Alito embraced 18th C misogyny as tradition (Scalia did this too in his US v. VA dissent). In Est Clause cases, however, he rejects anti-Catholic laws (eg, Blaine amendments, which were post-14A) as prejudice. Pure hypocrisy.
Quebec Act controversy is one factor here.
I have some memory of Jacob Henry staying in the NC House of Commons coming down to something like: Jews are okay; the constitutional language about protestants only is just to keep Catholics out.
Yep. They were less than a century after the Glorious Revolution. Sort of the same amount of time as we are post WWII.
Most of the Heritage Foundation bought SCOTUS justices are Catholic!
Cult of Mary, right? 🤷♀️
Catholics rightfully earned all the hatred sent their way. They are no fucking victims that’s for sure.
Leroy Jenkins has entered the Anti-Catholicism History chat
???
it's possible this was the ghost of John Jay rising up through the ether.
eff the Originators spiritual practices. Democracy is for all, regardless of their failed beliefs.
I think illiberalism is innately overlooked. There’s a reflexiveness to it that, perhaps more so than many ideological patterns, shields it from view from all but those most distant from it. I’m still mulling this one, not sure I’m articulating a coherent thought yet. Nevertheless, it’s on the rise.
