I must express my approval of the “WWJD?” (“What Would Jesus Do?”) fad. I find it inquisitive, searching for those basic principles of Christianity that are so positive. “What would Jesus do?” is a simple way of getting to the core of Christian beliefs, placing their messiah back in the center of their religion as a role model to emulate.
There are many spin-offs of the WWJD? phenomenon, and I’m going to throw my own bootleg into the ring with this essay. In the realm of Democracy, American Democracy, we have our own core principles, defined more than two centuries ago by a group of individuals the average American citizen knows little about. These are the Founding Fathers, and despite our ignorance of who they truly were, we bring them up in debate to support our various stances on issues, just as disputing Christians use Jesus to defend their competing beliefs.
So let’s bring the spirit of inquiry into our disputations and look to the Founding Fathers as the role models they are. Let’s ask ourselves, “What Would the Founding Fathers Do?”
This is a difficult can of worms. Religious and Humanists each believe the FF support their stance on the separation of Church and state. Conservatives and Liberals each claim them for their own. The FF established many of the Governmental services we take for granted today and at the same time warned strongly against a consolidated Government that was too authoritarian. They rejected political parties, but later joined them as a necessary evil in order to get things done.
When people look to the Founding Fathers and the way they resolved their disputes, the endless labor they poured into establishing this country, is it any wonder so many of us look at our modern political system, with its lowest-common-denominator approach to disputation, and wonder how our country could have fallen so far?
Of course, I personally disagree with the whole premise of the above question. We still have great politicians in our government, who are true of heart, academic in their approach to governance, and respectful in disputation. Remembering the FF and what they really stood for, what America really stands for, is an exercise that will help us to respect the right politicians once again, and let the mighty rhetorical blow-hards fall out of the spotlight again.
Who Were the Founding Fathers?
The most well known Founding Fathers are James Madison, George Washington, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Wilson, Governor Morris, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Patrick Henry, and John Hancock, but there are 54 signatures on the Declaration of Independence and 39 for the Constitution. All of these signers are part of the Founding Fathers, and they do not include such important contributors such as Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Paul Revere–also part of the FF.
Most of the FF were deists, heavily influenced by the enlightenment, and all were revolutionaries. A few of the FF were traditional religionists, Christians, but their influence on the establishment of the American government was minimalized by the strong secular nature of the FF’s intellectual powerhouses, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
European Enlightenment
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” – Thomas Paine
The Enlightenment was responsible for the emergence of both capitalism and socialism. “Sapere aude!” or “Dare to Know!” was its motto, questioning all established dogmas, political and religious. It took “common sense” to task, demanding justifications for then established paradigms we find irrational today.
Revolutionaries
All of the FF were rebels. Philosophically, they rebelled against the notion of the divinely-granted authority of the monarchy. Politically, they rebelled against the totalitarian British rule. Militarily, they directed armies to maintain possession of the colonies.
Thomas Paine was nearly executed for his revolutionary writings. George Washington took daring measures against British forces. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson shirked the conventional religiosity of their day to produce a secular governance.
Intellectuals
Most of all the FF were well read, well educated people. They were hard working, free-thinkers. Their political world was one of academics within their ranks, and one of persuasive rhetoric when dealing with the masses. They rejected inflammatory emotive appeals and debated from a common foundation of Enlightenment Philosophy.
Although they engaged many schools of thought, this is not the same as accepting them. Benjamin Franklin appreciated and cooperated with religionists, although he was not one. Thomas Jefferson appreciated the teachings of Jesus, although he disregarded the rest of the Bible, including the miracles. They were able to entertain ideas and appreciate differences, but maintain a strong ideological foundation.
Religious?
The Federalist Papers are often cited as evidence of the FF’s Christian origins, but the Federalist Papers contain no references to the Bible and almost 30 references to the governments of pagan Greece and Rome. Then there are the Anti-Federalist Papers, which complicate matters. None of these documents were ever themselves ratified, because they were part of a much larger scheme of disputation over America’s ultimate design.
The phrasing on The Declaration of Independence is used by both sides of the debate over the separation of church and state to make their case. Advocates of religion in government point to the reference to “God” and “Creator” as proof that America was founded on religious principles. Secularists point to the qualifiers used with these words, in context “Nature’s God” and each man endowed by “their Creator,” as implying an each unto their own approach to religion. Benjamin Franklin convinced Thomas Jefferson to modify the text, “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.” from the original draft, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.”
This secularist line of reasoning follows into the American Constitution, which invokes no power higher than “We the People.” While many state constitutions at the time required obedience to Jesus Christ for citizens to hold public office, the United States Constitution did not. Beyond the one vague mention of God in the Declaration, we see no more references to God in American politics until President Eisenhower replaced the national motto “E Plurbus Unum” (“Out of Many, One”), with “In God We Trust” in 1955.
Near the end of George Washington’s second term in 1796, the United States signed a treaty with “Bey and the People of Tripoli.” Article XI of this treaty contains the sentence, “As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion…”
The fact that several of the FF, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were Free Masons lends some contradiction to their non-Religious stance mentioned above, as Masons do believe in a Supreme Being (not the Christian one), but the FF were primarily deists. They believed a god created the Universe, but was not an intercessionary part of it. They came from a country that believed in a god that served as an active guide in human dealings and even anointed a leader to them, the king. The FF believed that human beings were responsible for their own destinies and this motivated them to establish a free democracy for governance.
Additional Quotes:
“It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [formation of the American governments] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven…”
– John Adams
“If by religion, we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your [John Adams’] exclamation on that hypothesis is just, ‘that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it’.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their [not our?] religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society.” – George Washington (Letter to Sir Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792)
“I detest it [the Bible] as I detest everything that is cruel.” – Thomas Paine
Representative of the FF?
Here are my four favorite Founding Fathers. I have already mentioned the importance of going eclectic in surveying the worlds of ideas in these individual’s heads. Perhaps readers will find some bias in this selection then?
Thomas Jefferson
In an attempt to get at what was real in the gospels, TJ created his own version of them, leaving out the miracles, in what became The Jefferson Bible. What greater act of humanism than this?
George Washington
In his Farwell Address GW warns against the emergence of political parties for their factional results. He also warned against geographic identification, foreshadowing the civil war and the red/blue state factionalism we see today. He also warned against the disillusionment of the separation of powers, which would consolidate federal power and lead to despotism.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin
This scientist, inventor, journalist, politician, and diplomat helped establish America’s first lending-library, non-religious college, and postal system. Franklin’s writings range in diversity from the secularism in the Constitution to essays like “Fart Proudly.” There is no human being I can think of being more deserving of the descriptor “polymath.”
Thomas Paine
Perhaps no other member of the FF embodied the ideals of the Enlightnment more than this author of Common Sense and The Age of Reason, both texts which were highly influential in the emerging American revolution. An anarchist, Paine detested both government and religion, questioning the “common sense” of his own age through his many philosophical works.
In Conclusion
We have found the FF to be a complex and diverse group. They are contradictory as both a whole and as individuals. Their intentions are obfuscated in the centuries of time that separate us from them, and we cannot predict with any degree of certainty how they would react to our modern day ethical and constitutional dilemmas.
Which raises the question: Why should we? Why should we look to a group of people who valued meritocracy, but not enough to include African Americans and Women in the system? What wisdom could this group of people have that we lack, who established slaves as counting for 3/5ths of a person in the Electoral College?
I am not saying we burn away our history, throw the baby out with the bathwater. We certainly must value those who came before us. We must show gratitude to these great men and women who framed our Country’s values, but we must also accept that we have elaborated on their concepts. It was those who came after the FF that abolished slavery, established women’s suffrage, and promoted civil rights. The FF’s concept of equality was too narrow and we have expanded it appropriately.
The FF were a group of fantastic minds for their time, and it is only nostalgia for the non-existent “Golden Age” that keeps us bringing their intentions up in debate. It does not matter what the FF meant when they set the second amendment down over 200 years ago. What matters is the ideal mean we reach today that best suits all American citizens.
How much better, and easier, it is to try and emulate the principles the FF advocated. It does not matter that their actions often failed to grok with equality, meritocracy, democracy, and freedom. What matters is that they started the dialogue about these concepts for us to uphold and refine through open discourse. These were people who believed in the primacy of education, human improvability, and egalitarianism. They were on the right track. What does it matter their means of implementing them?