A "Deist" Defends His Faith:

AND the Founders as "Deists" and especially Thomas Paine. However, you need to listen carefully to how he defines and understands "Deism":

Wow David Barton Actually Debates:

Barton is known for NOT debating critics. After watching this you'll probably see why. I think this is the only time I've ever seen him debate. I don't like the way Lee Strobel initially poses the debate by setting up a false dichotomy (the truth of the Founding is actually somewhere in between the two either or poles that Strobel announces). Other than that, Strobel did a good job at giving both sides equal time.

After setting up what sounds like a reasonable definition of a "Christian Nation," Barton steps in it a few times. He puts forth a number of points to challenge the "Godless Constitution" thesis.

Point one: The Constitution ties itself back to the DOI which is a "God oriented document." True enough. But 1) the DOI is not a "Christian" document per se (no references to Jesus). And 2) it's an indirect way of getting to God -- it hardly makes the Constitution a "Godly" document.

Point two: Sunday excepted clause. A nominal indirect reference to Christianity. Which again hits at the truth: The US Constitution is secular and godless, but not in the way the French Revolution was, but in a softer way and one that more accommodates religious customs.

Point three: Barton cites the Donald S. Lutz, et al. study in a misleading way. What that study actually says is that the Bible had little if ANY impact on the US Constitution.

Point four: Barton LIES about Washington and Hamilton citing verses and chapters of scripture for separation of powers. Sorry that's just not in the historical record. You can try to go back and throw spaghetti against the wall and see what parts of the Bible seem to match with what parts of the Constitution; but you don't see the FFs (at least none of the men at the Constitutional Convention or in the Federalist Papers) quoting verses and chapters for the principles and provisions in the Constitution.



In part two he gets confronted on his "unconfirmed quotations" and responds that they were all "footnoted," not necessarily to the original record, but footnoted to somewhere (in other words he kicks the can to the original fabricators).

Barton then tries to explain away the Treaty of Tripoli which states, "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;..."

Barton's critic makes a good point about the bogus quotes that Barton originally passed on: These bogus quotes, though Barton wrote an article saying "don't pass them anymore," have taken on a life of their own.

The critic also brings up Barton's shilling for the GOP.

George Willis Cooke on Charles Chauncy (and Samuel West):

Two more "key" patriotic preachers of the Founding era. Read it here.

A Pronounced Universalist.

Another preacher on the liberal side was Dr. Charles Chauncy of the First Church in Boston, whose ministry lasted from 1727 to 1787. He was the most vigorous of the opponents of the great awakening, both in his pulpit and through the press. He wrote a book on certain French fanatics, with the purpose of showing what would be the natural results of the excesses of the revival; he preached a powerful sermon on enthusiasm, to indicate the dangers of religious excitement, when not controlled by common sense and reason; and he travelled throughout New England to gain all the information possible about the revival, its methods and results, and published his Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England in 1743. He had been influenced by the reading of Taylor, Tillotson, Clarke, and the other latitudinarian and rationalistic writers of England; and he found the revival in its excesses repugnant to his every thought of what was true and devout in religion.

Dr. Chauncy was not an eloquent preacher; but he was clear, earnest, and honest. Many of his sermons were published, and his books numbered nearly a dozen. As early as 1739 he preached a sermon in favor of religious toleration. At a later period he said, "It is with me past all doubt that the religion of Jesus will never be restored to its primitive purity, simplicity, and glory, until religious establishments are so brought down as to be no more."[24] It was this conviction which made him oppose in his pulpit and in two or three books the effort that was made just before the Revolution to establish the English Church as the state form of religion in the colonies. He said, in 1767, that the American people would hazard everything dear to them--their estates, their lives--rather than suffer their necks to be put under the yoke of bondage to any foreign power in state or church.[25]

In his early life Dr. Chauncy was an Arminian, but slowly he grew to the acceptance of distinctly Unitarian and Universalist doctrines. Near the end of his life he Published four or five books in which he advanced very liberal opinions. One of these, published in Boston in 1784, was on The Benevolence of the Deity fairly and impartially Considered. This book followed the same method and purpose as Butler's Analogy, and aimed to show that God has manifested his goodness in creation and in the life of man. He said that our moral self-determination, or free will, is our one great gift from God. He discussed the moral problems of life in order to prove the benevolence of God, maintaining that the goodness we see in him is of the same nature with goodness in ourselves. The year following he published a book on the Scriptural account of the Fall and its Consequences, in which he rejected the doctrine of total depravity, and interpreted the new birth as a result of education rather than of supernatural change. Thus he brought to full statement the logical result of the half-way covenant and the teachings of Solomon Stoddard, as well as of the connection of church and state in New England. He saw that the method of education is the only one that can justly be followed in the preparation of the young for admission to a church that is sustained in any direct way by the state.

Dr. Chauncy's great work as a preacher and author[26] was brought to its close by his books in favor of universal salvation. In 1783-84 he published in Boston two anonymous pamphlets advocating the salvation of all men, and these pamphlets made no little stir. In 1784 he published in London a work which he called The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, made manifest by the Gospel Revelation; or, The Salvation of All Men the Grand Thing aimed at in the Scheme of God: By One who wishes well to the whole Human Race. In this book Dr. Chauncy made an elaborate study of the New Testament, in order to prove that salvation is to be universal. Christ died for all, therefore all will be saved; because all have sinned in Adam, therefore all will be made alive in Christ. He looked to a future probation, to a long period after death, when the opportunity of salvation will be open to all. He maintained that the misery threatened against the wicked in Scripture is that of this intermediate state between the earthly life and the time when God shall be all in all. He held that sin will be punished hereafter in proportion to depravity, and that none will be saved until they come into willing harmony with Christ, who will finally be able to win all men to himself, otherwise the power of God will be set at naught and his good will towards men frustrated of its purpose. In the future state of discipline, punishment will be inflicted with salutary effect, and thus the moral recovery of mankind will be accomplished.

Other Men of Mark.

Another leader was Dr. Samuel West, of Dartmouth, now New Bedford, where he was settled in 1760, and where he preached for more than forty years.[27] He rejected the doctrines of fore-ordination, election, total depravity, and the Trinity. In preaching the election sermon of 1776, he took the ground of an undisguised rationalism. "A revelation," he said, "pretending to be from God, that contradicts any part of natural laws ought immediately to be rejected as imposture; for the deity cannot make a law contrary to the law of nature without acting contrary to himself,--a thing in the strictest sense impossible, for that which implies contradiction is not an object of Divine Power." The cardinal idea of West's; position, as of that of most of the liberal men of his time, was stated by him in one sentence, when he said, "To preach Christ is to preach the whole system of divinity, as it consists of both natural and revealed religion."[28]

George Willis Cooke on Jonathan Mayhew (and Simeon Howard):

Two "key" Patriotic Preachers of the Founding era. Read it here:

The First Unitarian.

Dr. Mayhew accepted without equivocation the right of private judgment in religion, and he practised it judicially and with wise insight. He unhesitatingly applied the rational method to all theological problems, and to him reason was the final court of appeal for everything connected with religion. His love of freedom was enthusiastic and persistent, and he was zealously committed to the principle of individuality. He believed in the essential goodness of human nature, and in the doctrine of the Divine Unity. He was the first outspoken Unitarian in New England, not merely because he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, but because he accepted all the cardinal principles developed by that movement since his day. He was a rationalist, an individualist, a defender of personal freedom, and tested religious practices by the standard of common sense. His sermons were plain, direct, vigorous, and modern. A truly religious man, Mayhew taught a practical and humanitarian religion, genuinely ethical, and faithful in inculcating the motive of civic duty.

Dr. Mayhew's words may be quoted in regard to some of the religious beliefs commonly accepted in his day. "The doctrine of a total ignorance and incapacity to judge of moral and religious truths brought upon mankind by the disobedience of our first parents," he wrote, "is without foundation."[11] "I hope it appears," he says, "that the love of God and of our neighbor, that sincere piety of heart, and a righteous, holy and charitable life, are the weightier matters of the gospel, as well as of the law."[12] "Although Christianity cannot," he asserts, "with any propriety or justice be said to be the same with natural religion, or merely a republication of the laws of nature, yet the principal, the most important and fundamental duties required by Christianity are, nevertheless, the same which were enjoined under the legal dispensation of Moses, and the same which are dictated by the light of nature."[13] His great love of intellectual and spiritual freedom finds utterance in such a statement as this: "Nor has any order or body of men authority to enjoin any particular article of faith, nor the use of any modes of worship not expressly pointed out in the Scriptures; nor has the enjoining of such articles a tendency to preserve the peace and harmony of the church, but directly the contrary."[14] Such sentences as the following are frequent on Mayhew's pages, and they show clearly the trend of his mind: "Free examination, weighing arguments for and against with care and impartiality, is the way to find truth." "True religion flourishes the more, the more people exercise their right of private judgment."[15] "There is nothing more foolish and superstitious than a veneration for ancient creeds and doctrines as such, and nothing is more unworthy a reasonable creature than to value principles by their age, as some men do their wines."[16]

Mayhew insisted upon the strict unity of God, "who is without rival or competitor." "The dominion and sovereignty of the universe is necessarily one and in one, the only living and true God, who delegates such measures of power and authority to other beings as seemeth good in his sight." He declared that the not preserving of such unity and supremacy of God on the part of Christians "has long been just matter of reproach to them"; and he said the authority of Christ is always "exercised in subordination to God's will."[17] His position was that "the faith of Christians does not terminate in Christ as the ultimate object of it, but it is extended through him to the one God."[18] The very idea of a mediator implies subordination as essential to it.[19] His biographer says he did not accept the notion of vicarious suffering, and, that he was an Arian in his views of the nature of Christ. "He was the first clergyman in New England who expressly and openly opposed the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity. Several others declined pressing the Athanasian Creed, and believed strictly in the unity of God. They also probably found it difficult to explain their views on the subject, and the great danger of losing their good name served to prevent their speaking out. But Dr. Mayhew did not conceal or disguise his sentiments on this point any more than on others, such as the peculiar tenets of Calvinism. He explicitly and boldly declared the doctrine irrational, unscriptural, and directly contradictory."[20] He taught the strict unity of God as early as 1753, "in the most unequivocal and plain manner, in his sermons of that year."[21] What most excited comment and objection was that, in a foot-note to the volume of his sermons published in 1755, Mayhew said that a Catholic Council had elevated the Virgin Mary to the position of a fourth person in the Godhead, and added, by way of comment: "Neither Papists nor Protestants should imagine that they will be understood by others if they do not understand themselves. Nor should they think that nonsense and contradictions can ever be too sacred to be ridiculous." The ridicule here was not directed against the doctrine of the Trinity, as has been maintained, but the foolish defences of it made by men who accepted its "mysteries" as too wonderful for reason to deal with in a serious manner. This boldness of comment on the part of Mayhew was in harmony with his strong disapproval of creed-making in all its forms. He condemned creeds because they set up "human tests of orthodoxy instead of the infallible word of God, and make other terms of Christian communion than those explicitly pointed out by the Gospel."[22]

Dr. Mayhew was succeeded in the West Church by Rev. Simeon Howard in 1767, who, though he was received in a more friendly spirit by the ministers of the town, was not less radical in his theology than his predecessor. Dr. Howard was both an Arminian and an Arian, and he was "a believer neither in the Trinity, nor in the divine predestination of total depravity, and necessary ruin to any human soul."[23] He was of a gentle and conciliatory temper, but his preaching was quite as thorough-going in its intellectual earnestness as was Dr. Mayhew's.

Anti-Calvinistic Preachers in Revolutionary New England:

As I have noted before, George Willis Cooke's classic "Unitarianism in America" is available free online.

I was looking for more conclusive evidence to connect Rev. Samuel Cooper to unitarianism. While the following isn't conclusive I did find it very interesting:

Alden Bradford, in his Memoir of the Life and Writings of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, D.D., gives a list of "the clergymen who openly opposed or did not teach and advocate the Calvinistic doctrines" at the time of Mayhew's ordination, in 1747. These were: Dr. Appleton, Cambridge; Dr. Gay, Hingham; Dr. Chauncy, Boston; William Rand, Kingston; Nathaniel Eelles, Scituate; Edward Barnard, Haverhill; Samuel Cooke, West Cambridge (now Arlington); Jeremiah Fogg, Kensington, N.H.; Dr. A. Eliot, Boston; Dr. Samuel Webster, Salisbury; Lemuel Briant, Braintree; Dr. Stevens, Kittery, Me.; Dr. Tucker, Newbury; Timothy Harrington, Lancaster; Dr. Gad Hitchcock, Pembroke; Josiah Smith, Pembroke; William Smith, Weymouth; Dr. Daniel Shute, Hingham; Dr. Samuel Cooper, Boston; Dr. Mayhew, Boston; Abraham Williams, Sandwich; Anthony Wibird, Braintree (now Quincy); Dr. Cushing, Waltham; Professor Wigglesworth, Harvard College; Dr. Symmes, Andover; Dr. John Willard, Connecticut; Amos Adams, Roxbury; Dr. Barnes, Scituate; Charles Turner, Duxbury; Dr. Dana Wallingford, Conn.; Ebenezer Thayer, Hampton, N.H.; Dr. Fiske, Brookfield; Dr. Samuel West, Dartmouth (now New Bedford); Dr. Hemenway, Wells. Among those who took part in the ordination of Jonathan Mayhew, and therefore presumably of the same theological opinions, were Hancock, Lexington; Cotton, Newton; Cooke, Sudbury; Prescott, Danvers (now Salem). To these may be added, says Bradford, though of a somewhat later date: Dr. Coffin, Buxton; Drs. Howard, West, Lathrop, and Belknap, Boston; Dr. Henry Cummings, Billerica; Dr. Deane, Portland; Thomas Cary, Newburyport; Dr. Fobes, Raynham; Timothy Hilliard, Cambridge; Thomas Haven, Reading; Dr. Willard, Beverly. Dr. Ezra Ripley added the names of Hedge, of Warwick, and Foster, of Stafford. This makes fifty-two in all, but probably as many more could be added by careful search.

There's lots of other great stuff in Cooke's book. Check it out.

Testing the "Christian Nation" Thesis:

Debating the "Was America Founded to be a Christian Nation" thesis, some of my most useful conversations occurred between me and my American Creation co-blogger, the very learned, Lt. Col. Kristo Miettinen. Though a conservative evangelical, he did not accept the simple "Christianity" = orthodox Trinitarianism, the Bible, the infallible Word of God, reduction for the definition of how Christianity ought universally to define. For personal reasons, maybe. But for historical reasons, no.

As I understand it, Kristo's historical definition of Christianity differs not much from Paul Sigmund's, professor of politics at Princeton, whom I've met personally and briefly discussed this issue (I work near Princeton and attend Prof. Robert George's James Madison Program lectures when time permits; though I disagree with Dr. George on social issues, his program does outstanding research on America's Founding).

Dr. Sigmund, as far as I know, a political and liberal Christian, defines a "Christian" (reasonably, I think) as someone who believes Jesus a "Savior" or Messiah in some kind of divinely special way. As such, along with Trinitarians, Socinians (who believe Jesus 100% man, not God at all, but who saved man through his perfect moral example) and Arians (who believe Jesus a divine savior, but created by and subordinate to God the Father) qualify as "Christians" as do Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others. As such, one arguably could term Jefferson, Franklin, J. Adams and almost all of the "key Founders" and ministers and philosophers they followed as "Christians" regardless of their particular beliefs on matters such as original sin, trinity, incarnation, atonement, eternal damnation, and infallibility of the Bible. (That is, this definition of Christianity excludes Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, Elihu Palmer, but not Jefferson, Franklin, J. Adams, Madison, Washington etc.)

The day I questioned Dr. Sigmund at Princeton, I also spoke to Dr. Jeffry Morrison of Regent University who presented on his book on George Washington's political philosophy and Morrison made clear he thought one must be an orthodox Trinitarian to qualify as a "Christian." (Hence his book concludes that though GW was influenced by "Christianity" he could not conclude that GW was a "Christian").

My biggest issue with Kristo is that he doesn't see (as I do) that when David Barton lectures mainly to evangelical audiences and promotes the "Christianity" of America's Founders and how it helped shape America's political institutions, they (Barton's audience) hear orthodox Trinitarianism, the Bible as the inerrant infallible Word of God, and who knows what else (being born again?), when Barton uses terms like "Christian" or "Christianity."

So I was happy to dialog, via email, with an evangelical minister, smart, prominent, sympathetic to David Barton and the "reclaiming" of America on behalf of "Christianity" cause, to "test" the Christian Nation thesis, as it were. This is what I asked him:

[W]hat do you call someone who calls himself a "Christian," but disbelieves in original sin, trinity, incarnation, atonement, eternal damnation? Someone who may even believe Jesus a "Savior" of mankind (thru his perfect moral example) perhaps even a divine Savior created by but subordinate to God the Father (not 2nd person in the Trinity). Someone who believes in an active Providence and that parts, perhaps the majority of the Bible are revealed by God, but that the Bible is not inerrant or infallible.

And what follows is his answer (which he gave me permission to reproduce):

I do not believe you can truly be a Christian and hold several of the positions you state below.

1. The Bible clearly teaches ‘original sin’ as you call it, and that it was passed on to all mankind; that we are all sinners and in need of salvation, and that it is through the shedding of Christ’s blood that our sins are atoned for and forgiven. It is when a person personally and honestly acknowledges that he has a sin problem and is therefore a sinner, and sincerely, truly, and humbly places his faith in Christ as Who He claimed to be, The Son of God, and asks forgiveness of his sins, is he saved, or, born again. It is not merely ‘intellectual assent’ to the ‘possibility’ that He was God, or might be, or was the greatest human being that ever lived. It is a recognition, from the heart and in your spirit, that you are a sinner, no matter how much you want to rationalize it, or get around it, or kid yourself. It is coming honestly and openly before God, and your inner man, not your public man, and yielding, surrendering to God Who was in Christ, that you become a Christian, and that what the Bible says about Christ, sin, and man, is true and that he therefore is LORD of all.

2. You cannot, if you are a student of the Word, and believe what Christ said, and said about the Scriptures, ‘disbelieve in original sin, the trinity, incarnation, atonement, and eternal damnation,’ and still call yourself a Christian because a sincere and true Christian knows that all those things are part and parcel of what Christ taught. You would be denying the very teaching of Christ, and …therefore…you are your own god, and not a true believer, and…are probably more than just confused. You are most likely not even a Christian because you do not honor Him or His Word.

3. “Someone who may even believe Jesus a "Savior" of mankind (thru his perfect moral example – which is impossible) perhaps even a divine Savior created by but subordinate to God the Father (not 2nd person in the Trinity)” is not a Christian, because that is not what Christ taught nor does the O.T. support. [Emphasis in the original.]

4. “Someone who believes in an active Providence and that parts, perhaps the majority of the Bible are revealed by God, but that the Bible is not inerrant or infallible” may call themselves a Christian, but they are certainly not a skilled student of the Bible. Sounds like Jefferson to me.

In my opinion, the Rev.'s answer illustrates the mindset, not necessarily of the ordinary people in evangelical churches who hear Barton's message, who are not as intelligent and spiritually discerned, but of the learned, ministerial types.

But it's clear that according to the understanding of "Christianity" of the churches to whom Barton sells his message, he tries to pass off Founders and ministers from that era as "Christian" who flunk the test of said churches.

Here is exhibit A against Barton in this regard. He rattles off names -- John Adams' list of those most responsible for American Independence: Samuel Cooper, Jonathan Mayhew, Charles Chauncy, and George Whitefield. He calls them all ministers of the gospel and all Christians.



In reality ONLY WHITEFIELD was a "Christian" as evangelicals define and understand the term. The others, including J. Adams were Trinity deniers. But when evangelicals and other "orthodox Christians" hear David Barton rattle off these names and term them "Christians," what do they think?!?

Finally let me note that one could lower the "test" for Christianity one or a few steps than the tight evangelical test (that might include things such as salvation thru grace alone, being "born again") as Dr. Gregg Frazer does in his 10 point test which takes a lowest common denominator among creeds of the largest churches in late 18th Century America (that includes Roman Catholicism). But America's key Founders and the notable patriotic preachers they followed (Revs. Mayhew, Chauncy, Cooper and others) disbelieved in central Christian tenets like original sin, trinity, incarnation, and atonement, such that they are disqualified as "Christians" in the eyes of large sectors of believers in historic traditional Christianity.

America & Modernity:

I hope to make a few useful observations about Cato-Unbound's latest symposium on modernity.

The seeds of modernity trace to the beginning of Western Civilization, particularly to Greco-Romanism. The Greeks invented or discovered science. And Rome, at its peak, invented things like the aqueducts, so advanced for their time, that the world would not again see until close to the modern era. (This clip from "The Life of Brian" brilliantly pokes fun at pagan achievements at the expense of the early Judeo-Christians living in Rome.)

Still, when Rome went Christian, it was mainly the bright minds within the Roman Catholic Church who preserved the great knowledge of Greco-Roman antiquity and incorporated such into Christendom. One thinks of Aquinas' affinity for Aristotle.

But those seeds still didn't begin to grow into the tree of modernity until around 1800. For instance, as Cato's Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, in their chapter of "Material Progress," notes, if you compare the life of George Washington to Julius Caesar's in 44BC, you'd see that though Washington could take advantage of some notable material advances that didn't exist in Caeser's day, their material worlds were far closer to one another's than either are to today's modern technological world.

In other words, there was a watershed in technological progress. It began in the late 18th Century.

So what caused it? That's what Cato's Symposium debates.

My studies conclude it wasn't God, the Bible, Christianity or Thomism (after all, these had been around for a long time before the watershed, but may in fact have contributed to the information contained in the seeds). Rather it was a form of Enlightenment humanism that put the focus of socio-politics on man, his material (as opposed to spiritual) needs, and the "progress of the human mind," as Jefferson once termed it.

This isn't to say the Founders and the philosophers they followed, as scientifically minded, materialistically concerned people, were secret atheists or hostile to religion, as some have supposed. To the contrary, they tended to appreciate the way religion civilized man and made him self-governable which was indispensable to modern republican government. (America's Founders also believed that the states, and voluntary local institutions, should bear the primary if not sole responsibility for promoting the kind of religion useful to modern republican government.)

But, as America's Founders intended it, God and religion would not be the chief focus of the Novus Ordo Seclorum. Man's material needs would. One need look to the United States' original Constitution for evidence. Such is a document of limited, enumerated powers. And, whereas it endowes those things that relate to man's material concerns, the Constitution left religion unendowned. As Walter Berns put it:

[W]hereas…[the Constitution] grants Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” (see Article I, section 8[8]), it nowhere gives it the power to promote religious belief. Rather, the First Amendment seems to deny it such a power. — “Making Patriots,” p. 43.

Also striking is how many key American Founders and the philosophers they followed were scientists, usually natural, in some formal or serious armchair way. For instance, Benjamin Rush was a medical doctor. Benjamin Franklin invented bi-focals and the lighting rod. Thomas Jefferson invented "the swivel chair, a pedometer, a machine to make fiber from hemp, a letter-copying machine, and the lazy susan." The Founders idolized such British figures as Isaac Newton (discoverer of gravity), John Locke (a medical doctor), Joseph Priestley (the co-discoverer of oxygen), all natural scientists, in addition to being other things. They also idolized men like Adam Smith (the father of the modern science of economics), and Richard Price (the father of the modern science of finance). Indeed morals, law and politics were all viewed as "sciences" of some sort -- part of the "the new science of man." Principles thereto were "discovered," not posited. And they believed sound governments could be built according to almost (if not literal) geometric principles.

Religion too, they believed, could be reduced to a rational science. They did not yet discover that God didn't exist (as some scientists have claimed to have discovered today). All of the above mentioned figures, I sincerely believe, devoutly believed in God's existence. However, their scientific rationalistic approach to religion (as to all other things) led most of them to doubt or deny the Trinity (1+1+1 = 3 not 1) and the infallibility of the Bible (those parts of the text that seemed most unbelievable according to a scientific perspective).

As it were, following the advice of scientifically minded Enlightenment philosophers, America was founded to be a scientific, commercial republic, one whose chief focus would be meeting man's material needs and wants. Such a system has been termed "liberal democracy."

Whatever one thinks of it, liberal democracy, in putting the focus of socio-politics on science and man's material needs, proved quite effective. It led to the astounding technological advances seen in the last two hundred years. And because those technological advances applied to military and economic power, liberal democracy in general, America in particular, came to dominate world geo-politics.

Such, as I understand it, is the story of modernity.

Moses and the "Key Founders":

The reason why I titled this post that is because, as you will see, Bruce Feiler has a book out entitled America's Prophet, Where God Was Born that stresses Moses as a central figure of inspiration to America, and Feiler argues the central historical fact that buttresses his thesis is when Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Ben Franklin were asked to design a Great Seal, Franklin and Jefferson both proposed:

“Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

If you haven't yet gotten his book (it's on my reading list) you can watch this extremely enlightening blogging head conversation between Feiler and Robert Wright here.

Now, there's certainly a strong kernel of truth to Feiler's claim. Moses did indeed inspire America. My concern is clarity and the potential misuse of Feiler's thesis. I worry that Christian Nationalists will misuse Feller's argument in the same way they've misused the Donald S. Lutz et al. study. They've commonly noted the Moses/Great Seal/Liberty Bell Leviticus quote to prove America's "biblical" foundations.

Interestingly, Feiler's thesis seems to be not "Christian Nation," but "Mosaic Nation," that Moses in fact was a more important political-theological figure than Jesus, something that might tick off "Christian Nationalists." But such an idea could also be shoehorned into a "Judeo-Christian Nationalist" thesis.

Feiler, seems to be if not a liberal, some kind of moderate who doesn't have an axe to grind (other than the thesis he's trying to defend). He's written op-eds on the matter in places like the Washington Post, making him a potentially attractive resource for Christian Nation types (i.e., "even this liberal guy agrees with us").

Feiler probably wouldn't appreciate (if he noticed it) such a potential use or misuse of his thesis. His thesis, as I understand it, is a broad, ecumenical, dare I say "liberal" and "enlightened" tale of Moses' influence of America. And, of course, that is exactly how Moses influenced America. For instance, in his Time Magazine op-ed, Feiler begins:

"We are in the presence of a lot of Moseses," Barack Obama said on March 4, 2007, three weeks after announcing his candidacy for President. He was speaking in Selma, Ala., surrounded by civil rights pioneers. Obama cast his run for the White House as a fulfillment of the Moses tradition of leading people out of bondage into freedom. "I thank the Moses generation, but we've got to remember that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was ... he didn't cross over the river to see the promised land."

"Eight months into his presidency, Obama might want to give Moses a second look. On issues from health care to Afghanistan, the President faces doubts and rebellions, from an entrenched pharaonic establishment on one hand and restless, stiff-necked followers on the other. There's good reason, then, for Obama to heed the leadership lessons of history's greatest leader. Like presidential predecessors from Washington to Reagan, Obama can use the Moses story to help guide Americans in troubled times. From the Pilgrims to the Founding Fathers, the Civil War to the civil rights movement, Americans have turned to Moses in periods of crisis because his narrative offers a road map of peril and promise.

A Philly Inquirer article about his thesis is entitled, "Author promotes Moses as a model for getting along," and Feiler's site promotes it as "Can Moses Unite Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore?"

Again, this is to stress that Feiler's thesis is Moses as a broad metaphorical inspiration, exactly as the "key Founders" -- Jefferson, J. Adams, and Franklin --understood Moses. Not as the strict, orthodox, the Bible as the inerrant, infallible Word of God understanding of Moses. But a looser, more political understanding. In short, an Enlightenment rationalist understanding of Moses. One that could look at many of the world's historical figures and "find" in there what supports one's political narrative, which is exactly what Jefferson, J. Adams and Franklin did with Moses and America's non-Judeo-Christian heritage sources. Examining the other proposed narratives for the "Great Seal," we see from Jefferson (quoting the Great Seal site, not Jefferson or Adams):

For the front of the seal: children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. For the reverse: Hengist and Horsa, the two brothers who were the legendary leaders of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain.

And J. Adams:

...the allegorical painting known as the "Judgment of Hercules" where the young Hercules must choose to travel either on the flowery path of self-indulgence or ascend the rugged, uphill way of duty to others and honor to himself.

Synthesizing Greco-Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Judeo-Christian and picking and choosing what one thinks "rational" from those sources; that was the Enlightenment method of Jefferson, J. Adams and Franklin. And that, as far as I see it, is the method of Moses' political inspiration of America.

In a later post, I might reiterate why the enlightened Americanist invocation of Moses arguably conflicts with the orthodox Christian/evangelical/fundamentalist narrative of Moses.

In other words, those who should proceed with the most caution when invoking Moses' influence on America are those who don't take the narrative with a metaphorical grain of salt.