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God Bless Texas?

All sides of a recent textbook battle are right, and wrong, about religion in American history.

by Elesha Coffman | February 23, 2010

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I think five different people mentioned the same article to me earlier this month: “How Christian Were the Founders?” from The New York Times Magazine. Russell Shorto’s long and generally balanced piece examines how one institution, the Texas State Board of Education, exerts tremendous power over the interpretation of such contentious issues as creation/evolution and the role of Christianity in the founding of the United States. It is a story full of ironies, not unlike American history itself.

Texas is a big state, and it orders a lot of textbooks. Textbook publishers cannot afford to tailor their products to every potential audience, so they often aim at the large target under the Lone Star. As a result, 15 people in Texas help determine the curriculum for much of the country. Who knew that an elected body including high school teachers, administrators, real estate agents, lawyers, and a dentist has more direct influence over public schools in this country than do the presidents of Ivy League universities?

Reality as the opposite of what you would expect is one kind of irony. Irony as unintended consequences, and irony as the juxtaposition of contradictory impulses, are also on display in Shorto’s piece. Both appear in his discussion of the fabled wall of separation between church and state.

First, the unintended consequences. In 1801, a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, wrote to newly elected President Thomas Jefferson for some help on a church-state matter. Jefferson was no orthodox Christian—he famously excised everything he didn’t like from his Bible—but all the Danbury Baptists cared about was that he was no friend of the established (state-supported) Congregationalist churches in New England. What the letter-writers wanted was the protection of the state from other Christians. This Jefferson assured them, based on his reading of the First Amendment, in which he saw provision for “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Short-term, the Baptists got what they wanted. The wall would become less comforting, though, as Baptists grew in number and stature over the next two centuries.

For the juxtaposition of contradictory impulses, I refer to some of the quotations Shorto gathered from people who write on American religious history. According to David Barton, the leader of the WallBuilders ministry who was called in by the Texas board as a consultant, “ ‘Separation of church and state’ currently means almost exactly the opposite of what it originally meant.” He’s right. The First Amendment has two clauses related to religious freedom, the establishment clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …”) and the free exercise clause (“… or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). As both the Danbury Baptists and Jefferson understood, the two clauses aimed primarily at allowing Americans to pursue their religion without interference. People were afraid of too much control over religion. Now, many Americans fear that religious forces are too strong, so it’s the state’s job to protect a neutral public sphere from being overrun by the faithful. Agree or disagree with either fear, they are decidedly different.

In opposition, Barnard College historian Randall Balmer dismissed the idea “that the founders intended America to be a Christian nation.” He’s right, too. A nation where the free exercise of religion is protected is not necessarily a “Christian nation,” even if the religion being practiced is overwhelmingly some form of Christianity, as it was in the early American republic. The framers emphatically did not want to copy the “Christian nations” of Western Europe, with their numerous formal connections between political and ecclesial authority. On the other hand, the framers approached Christianity with reverential deference in comparison to French revolutionaries, who waged all-out war on the church. So the framers did not intend America to be a Christian nation, as they understood that category, but they didn’t intend it to be an un-Christian nation, either. Probably, the latter notion would have horrified and baffled more of them than the former would have.

Finally, a quote from University of Chicago historian emeritus Martin Marty: “I think ‘wall’ is too heavy a metaphor. There’s a trend now away from it. … In textbooks, we’re moving away from an unthinking secularity.” Note that—textbooks are already moving, even without the firm guiding hands of the Texas State Board of Education. As an example, the U.S. History survey text I use, published by W.W. Norton, just added more religion coverage in the eighth edition. A collegiate text, it is not subject to the state-level adoption process. Instead, this update reflects shifts in the discipline of history, where religious history recently overtook cultural history as scholars’ top specialty. And so the battle of religious activists versus the godless educational establishment turns out to be deeply complicated. No wonder Reinhold Niebuhr’s 1952 masterpiece The Irony of American History remains a classic.

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Posted by Elesha Coffman on February 23, 2010 10:07 PM

Comments

David Barton, mentioned in the post, should be taken with a grain of salt. As revealed by Chris Rodda's meticulous analysis, zealotry more than fact shapes his work, which is riddled with shoddy scholarship and downright dishonesty. See Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History (2006) and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/glenn-becks-new-bff----da_b_458515.html She presents Barton's claims, reviews the evidence and explanations he offers, and then shines a bright light on the evidence omitted, misinterpreted, or even made up by Barton with documentation and references so complete one can readily assess the facts for one's self without the need to take either Barton's or Rodda's word for it.

Posted By: Doug Indeap | February 23, 2010 11:26 PM

Both David Barton (on the right) and Randall Balmer (on the left) have much valuable insight to give, but they also reveal the perils in doing historiography. I remember Ken Curtis, the original founder of Christian History magazine, tell us in a class for Fuller Seminary that we should have a cautious appreciation for Barton and Balmer, being wary of the agendas they tend to promote. Having seen Balmer's specials on PBS (how come Barton never gets an equal shot of airtime on PBS??) and Barton's talk a few years ago at our church, I can say that both approaches have a seductive logic to them, which partly does educate but also partly misleads (Chris Rodda's critical analysis of Barton is indeed invaluable, as Doug mentions above). We need a more nuanced appreciation of the complexities of American history of the type that Ken Curtis gives --and that Elesha Coffman gives here.


I would nevertheless argue that the Founding Fathers had a much more limited view of government than what we have now. So it isn't so much that "religious forces" have grown too strong in our day. Rather it is that government has grown so large that it makes conflict with those "religious forces" that have always existed in our country inevitable.

Posted By: Clarke Morledge | February 27, 2010 3:47 PM

I would guess that more than we think the Holocaust affects our thoughts on this issue. In Nazi Germany, treating one group of people differently and negatively because of their faith became government policy. As a result, many have become more suspicious of any connection between religious issues and government.

Posted By: Hermann Weinlick | March 2, 2010 12:21 PM

true- when' the last time religion - even Christianity - did well with power?

Posted By: stan | March 6, 2010 9:50 AM

I find myself in general agreement with the original article, and the comments above. I think it is most valuable for Christians who read and study American history that we get this issue right (or at least recognize that ambiguities and subtleties exist). And, that we somehow get our smaller voices heard among all the shouting.

The larger issue for me is the effects of one's ideology on the evidence. Doug remembers Ken Curtis at Fuller. I remember Jack Rogers at Fuller (in years much farther back) and his critique of Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer was sure that the modern era had it slew of problems because it had abandoned God. His historical “research” all showed how correct he was. But, evidence for contrary interpretations were ignored, passed over, or reinterpreted. This is not research in its most important sense. It is the way a lawyer approaches a case. Present your view in the most forceful way possible and only deal with contradictions as irrelevant. This may work in a court of law where both sides are heard with the same intensity. But, I don’t think it works in the court of public opinion when people only hear one side—and that side is the one they agree with in the first place. This just hardens opinions and separates people into enemy camps. What ever happened to the historian’s ethic of addressing his or her own ideology, preferences, and biases as a part of doing history?

I received a call from a Christian publisher asking me to adopt a Christian American history text written by Peter Marshall. I was assured that my students would get the real story of how the origins of America were wholly Christian. Doesn’t that bias color the interpretation of events? Does Marshall admit to it?

I teach in a Christian high school. Most of our students believe that our country was founded by Christians just like them and that evil secularists have moved in and changed our history. They also believe that honest scientists do not believe in evolution or climate change. I’ve been around long enough to know that the truth seekers and academic minded of them will run into some awful stumbling blocks that we have set in their path in the name of keeping them in the faith.

Posted By: Ron Schooler | March 6, 2010 1:02 PM

I agree with Doug's statement: "would nevertheless argue that the Founding Fathers had a much more limited view of government than what we have now. So it isn't so much that "religious forces" have grown too strong in our day. Rather it is that government has grown so large that it makes conflict with those "religious forces" that have always existed in our country inevitable".
However here's a thought......how much has the "religious forces" contributed to the larger government? How much has the organized church done to fulfill the directives of Christ by taking care of the poor and needy, the widows and orphans, the oppressed, etc? Perhaps the church has focused more on church "numbers",humongous budgets to support costly worship castles and religious empires. While some do focus on foreign missions, how about here at home. Perhaps religious forces (us) are loving the world and the things in the world more than eternal things and loving and serving the lost and needy. Appear: the big government: stepping in to do what the church should have been doing all the time.
I pray the Lord helps me (and other "religious forces" to focus more on the mission Christ set forth in the scripture and get our priorities off of ourselves, political agendas,"pet" sins, and focus on spreading (and modeling) the good news of the Gospel of Christ. If we are not servants, the government becomes our master. Government will and does continue to step in and get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Posted By: larry c | March 7, 2010 3:12 PM

separation of church and state is not a fable

Posted By: Bob | June 2, 2010 9:22 PM

And i think church was not a part of that.

Posted By: Helena | August 12, 2010 2:46 AM

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