Church and State
Rahe, Paul A.
truth, and to search for evidence to rehabilitate his star witness. Despite assiduous efforts, which included hiring an investigator in Hong Kong, he managed to detect only one outright lie told by...
...Many of Jefferson's contemporaries thought religion necessary to offset the influence of commerce: Only faith could stop the citizens from losing themselves in present pleasure, focus their attention on the future, and render them open to the counsels of prudence and duty, Among those espousing such opinions was an anonymous church-goer who wrote an extraordinary essay for the Virginia In-dependent Chronicle not long after the adoption of Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom: Though the different states into which mankind are formed, have, generally speaking, enacted laws to restrain and punish enormities, to countenance virtue and discourage vice...
...HL0223(hardcover) $22.50 THE AMERICAN SCENE: A Reader edited by Huntington Cairns This rich selection made by Mencken's longtime friend covers American life, letters, politics, religion, morals, and more...
...Mencken's little treatise should be required reading for everyone who signs up to vote...
...Furthermore, the discovery does not appreciably enhance the credibility of Miss So...
...We establish no religion in this country nor will we ever...
...Perhaps in no other sphere has their abuse of office had a more profound and damaging effect than in the field of religion...
...In accounting for his grant expenditures, Mosher submitted a sales receipt for a Nikon camera and related equipment costing about $2,000 and purchased in Hong Kong in April 1980 with funds authorized for the purpose...
...Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief...
...It was this virtue that Torquemada and the other officials of the Inquisition were practicing when they executed heretics and employed torture in order to enforce the true faith...
...Mencken today...
...Justice Brennan's repudiation of the very notion of attempting to interpret the Constitution in light of the intentions of those who framed its preamble, articles, and amendments is a tacit acknowledgment that he and at least some of his colleagues have consciously and deliberately substituted their own preferences and prejudices "as twentieth-century Americans" for the fundamental law of the land...
...0...
...In separating church and state, the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom was far more vigorous than the First Amendment...
...Similarly, Jefferson and Madison were both prepared to set aside an hour in the day when each of the students at the University of Virginia would be free to attend services at the chapel of his own denomination, and "expected" to do so...
...In that petition he spoke boldly of the "torrents of blood" that had been "spilt in the old world, by the vain at-tempts of the secular arm, to extinguish religious discords, by proscribing all difference in religious opinion...
...In 1787, prudence dictated that Madison be more reticent than Hume, Smith, and Voltaire...
...As the long and sordid history of sectarian strife and religious persecution makes clear, the Christian faith has not always been a religion of private conscience...
...and, in 1788, he was prepared to argue that the very presence of a great "multiplicity of sects" was "the best and only security for religious liberty in any society...
...Even in its coolest state, it has been much oftener a motive to oppression than a restraint from it...
...In general, Jefferson was persuaded that "he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong," and he rejoiced in the fact that the Virginia Statute was "meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination...
...but, as there are a multitude, they all live happy and in peace...
...So much for ethics in academia...
...The camera was never the subject of any charges, so Mosher's failure to return it took on significance only when Kennedy proved, sometime in the late spring or early summer of 1985, that the receipt was false...
...As a consequence, "the progress of learning and liberty" in the first half-century following the Glorious Revolution had brought "a sudden and sensible change in the opinions of men...
...HL0220 (paper) $4.95 H.L...
...It requires but a slight degree of observation to be convinced that mankind require the awe of some power to confine them within the line of their duty...
...As he recognized, a nation of nonbelievers, contemptuous of the very notion of divine wrath, was far less likely to keep the rights of the minority in mind than men of religious faith...
...Besides," he added, "Religion itself may become a motive to persecution and oppression...
...But no one need doubt that, when the justice made the doctrinaire claim that "neither a state nor the Federal Government can" lawfully "aid all religions" or levy a "tax in any amount...
...It does not, however, prove her underlying charge that he never bought the camera and instead used the funds for illegal purposes...
...This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society...
...The letter indicates that she merely voiced the suspicion that he had submitted false receipts, rather than flatly asserting that he had done so...
...542p...
...HL0210 (paper) $3.95 PREJUDICES: A Selection edited by James T. Farrell Farrell's personal favorites from the six volume collection...
...For the Christian, outward conformity was in-sufficient...
...Though they favored the construction of "a wall of separation between church and State," they never supposed that our various governments should treat religion as a form of leprosy...
...In making his reply, he readily confessed that "the interested and active zeal of religious teachers can be dangerous and troublesome," but he argued that this condition would obtain "only where there is, either but one sect tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society is divided into two or three great sects...
...And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...
...HL0217 (paper) MENCKEN by Carl Bode This is the best biography of H.L...
...HL0211(paper) $8.95 "The aim of government is to repeal the laws of nature, and to re-enact them with moral amendments...
...Just three weeks before the Continental Congress approved Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, Madison (already an intellectual force at the age of twenty-five) had succeeded in persuading the Virginia Convention to add to its Bill of Rights a clause acknowledging that "all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience...
...The mere name of king commands little respect...
...Title Price Dept...
...In particular, Jefferson saw nothing unlawful, morally wrong, or even imprudent in having elementary students in the public schools he proposed establishing in Virginia devote a certain amount of time to religious pursuits as long as "no religious reading, instruction, or exercise shall be pre-scribed or practiced inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination...
...When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States some fifty years after the British had recognized the independence of their former colonies, he found that "religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society...
...That zeal must be altogether innocent where the society is divided into two or three hundred, or perhaps into as many [as a] thousand sects, of which no one could be considerable enough to disturb the publick tranquillity...
...we court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief...
...For example, the Virginia Declaration of Rights—the earliest of these documents—denied that "free government, or the blessings of liberty" could be "preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue...
...It is "little more than arrogance," he told a Washington audience, to believe that anyone can "gauge the intent of the Framers...
...That would be an error...
...A sampler of Mencken's wit: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard...
...While damaging, it is only tangentially related to any of the charges: Its principal importance is that it apparently lends credence to Miss So...
...The emphasis on piety in 'the latter document and its absence in the first no doubt reflect the fact that religious belief was a stronger force among the descendants of the Pt `itans in New England than among their Anglican brethren in Virginia...
...HL0209(hardcover) FORMERLY$2&00 NOW ONLY$22.50 THE VINTAGE MENCKEN edited byAlistairCooke One of the best Mencken anthologies, edited by someone who knew him personally...
...MENCKEN edited by Guy J. Forque These private letters, spanning 50 years, have all the zest and wit of Mencken's published writing...
...The divines influential in the various states would not have looked kindly on the proposed Constitution had they recognized that it embodied a strategy for reducing the various sects to a"pure and rational religion" of the sort favored by "wise men"—even in wholly pagan times...
...No smoking gun is likely to be found, but those who can remain convinced after reading Kennedy's letter that Mosher's termination was unrelated to Chinese pressure are likely purchasers for an East Coast bridge that periodically comes on the market...
...and to talk of a king as GOD's viceregent on earth, or to give him any of those magnificent titles, which formerly dazzled mankind, would but excite laughter in every one...
...This remark, though telling...
...These pronouncements are important, but it would be a serious mistake to give them excessive weight...
...and even religion can scarcely support itself in the world...
...As he put it, the best way "to attack a religion is by favor, by the commodities of life, by the hope of wealth...
...IV Reagan, Meese, and Bennett are clearly right...
...PREJUDICES SERIES These six volumes were published between 1919 and 1927, when Mencken was at the peak of his career, and had already become a legend...
...Many_ of the first American state constitutions included bills of rights, and the majority of these included a statement regarding the props necessary if republican government was to survive...
...might still lead one tounderestimate the depths of Madison's concern...
...Check or Money Order ^ MasterCard ^ Visa SUBTOTAL NYS residents add sales tax Shipping & Handling US Post $2.50...
...Just two years before the Federal Convention, Madison had circulated a petition throughout his native Virginia advocating the disestablishment of the Episcopalian Church...
...I Not long before the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption and signing of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson received an invitation, asking that he journey from Monticello to Washington, D.C...
...Salvation depended on faith...
...heresy entailed damnation...
...Indeed, no temporal concern can ever be as important as the saving of souls...
...The definitive Mencken collection...
...The teachers of each little sect, finding themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those of almost every other sect, and the concessions which they would mutually find it both convenient and agreeable to make to one another, might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established...
...The attitude that has infected the Supreme Court, most liberal opinion-makers, and many of their conservative brethren for the last thirty-eight years rests on confusion...
...Kennedy does not contend that it does, but he strongly suggests that Mosher's failure to return the camera virtually compels the inference that he never had it...
...Only where there was an official religious establishment would the zeal of the clergy be greatly reduced...
...In the First Congress, when the House Select Committee proposed that the First Amendment specify that "no religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed," Benjamin Huntington of Connecticut rose to object to language that might seem to "patronize those who professed no religion at all...
...Of all the dispositions andhabits which lead to political prosperity," he contended, religion and morality are indispensable sup-ports...
...The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them...
...In one, Madison rehearsed once again the arguments he had made in the Convention, emphasizing the weakness of religious conscience as a restraint...
...and, for its freedom from religious strife, it looks initially to the disestablishment of religion and then to the moderation of religious passion fostered by the nation's commercial ethos and encouraged by the very multiplicity of its religious sects...
...When Justice Black argued that the First Amendment precludes the federal government from passing laws giving preference to one religion over another, he was on firm ground...
...And, for its principles, it looks to a Creator, an Almighty God, capable of endowing men with inalienable rights and of creating the mind free...
...How is it possible," they led Tocqueville to ask, "that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed...
...on the other hand, his failure to bring legal action will appear to lend credence to the aspersions cast on his character by the university, which was careful to stick to innuendo, and eschew outright misrepresentation...
...Mindful of this fact, the two statesmen took it for granted that even the "Infidel" would recognize the prudence of inculcating religious belief and consentto the expenditure of taxes to that end...
...Enthusiasm" might sometimes give to conscience greater strength, he noted, but this was "only a temporary state of Religion...
...That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion...
...P9 III Unfortunately, one grave problem remained: Commerce was Janus-faced...
...Includes pieces from a wide variety of sources...
...Just under forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court took a wrong turn...
...He was sadly unable to attend...
...Despite assiduous efforts, which included hiring an investigator in Hong Kong, he managed to detect only one outright lie told by Mosher...
...HLO218(audiocassette) $12.95 * ORDER TOLL-FREE * 1-800-238-2200 EXT 500 IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S...
...This is truly a wonderful collection—the joyous companion of a lifetime...
...ii L0215 (paper) $4.95 HL0216 (hardcover) $12.95 THE BATHTUB HOAX AND OTHER BLASTS AND BRAVOS edited by Robert McHugh A selection of Mencken's essays from the Chicago Tribune, in which humor combines with penetrating analysis...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 Hl...
...Eventually, even in Puritan Massachusetts, the citizens came to realize that the establishment of religion was incompatible with the secular character of America's republican regime...
...For Madison and for Jefferson, freedom of conscience was as much a matter of policy as a matter of principle...
...Paul A. Rahe CHURCH AND STATE Jefferson, Madison, and 200 Years of Religious Freedom...
...In his magisterial History of England, the Scottish philosopher had argued that "the interested diligence of the clergy" was a condition that "every wise legislator will study to prevent...
...There was nothing peculiar about the outlook of Torquemada and his associates...
...and, in what he knew would be his last surviving letter, he wrote of the choice made on the 4th of July, 1776: May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government...
...In that happy island, Hume was pleased to report, time had all but eliminated what he called the "ecclesiastical par-ties...
...627p...
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...It is therefore our interest that the new states should be religious, in order that they may permit us to remain free.' " These early Americans saw in the virtues and moderation fostered by religion a defense against the temptations that give rise to tyranny and disorder as well as a bulwark against the inattention to long-term interests that causes men to neglect the defense of their rights...
...He already then knew perfectly well what he would later put into words: that, if the blessings of political liberty were to be bestowed on mankind, "all" would have to "bear in mind this sacred principle that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable...
...He openly asserted that "difference of opinion is advantageous in religion" and that "the way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them...
...SIGNATURE NAME STREET who looked for moral and political guidance not to the Holy Scriptures, but to the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God...
...It even stipulated "that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities...
...For instance, in defending his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, the Virginian did indeed betray a certain indifference...
...HL0208 (hardcover) PUBLISHER'S PRICE $135.00 OUR PRICE ONLY$125.00 (Note: For those customers who previously ordered the first four volumes, volumes five and six can be purchased for $45.00 for both...
...A life-long lover of the American language and a great American prose stylist writing on one of his favorite subjects...
...to join in the festivities honoring the event in which he had long before played so prominent a part...
...and in no form of government whatever has the influence of religious principles been found so requisite as in that of a republic...
...58 rains...
...In his Second Inaugural, he invoked "the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life...
...When contemplating the role played by "conscience" in restraining men from injustice, he observed that it "is known to be inadequate in individuals" and that "in large numbers little is to be expected from it...
...Kennedy's letter to Mosher advising him of the discovery is not quoted, but Mosher's September 21 response as quoted gives no hint of the realization that it might be crucial to his credibility to produce it...
...But, for its stability, that regime relies on the virtues of its citizens—on the self-discipline, the self-restraint, and the sense of public and private duty that only religious faith can ordinarily instill...
...It would, however, be a mistake to sup-pose that any of Virginia's leading men thought piety simply unnecessary and superfluous...
...Mencken in print, rich in detail, written by a devoted Mencken scholar...
...Despite its requests, and after first indicating that he would do so, Mosher has refused to turn the camera over to the university, asserting that it belongs to him, and in any event, has been in Taiwan, broken, since before the proceedings began...
...For nearly forty years, our policy has been guided by Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black's opinion that "neither a state nor the Federal Government" has the constitutional right to "pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another" and that, consequently, "no tax in any 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions...
...As Jefferson had occasion to remark, the wealth that tempted men to neglect the world to come could all too easily make them "forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money" and thereby prevent them from "uniting to effect a due respect for their rights...
...HL0219 (paper) $10.95 LETTERS OF H.L...
...Unfortunately, he and the university have been a little too obviously clever in confronting Mosher with an almost insoluble dilemma: A lawsuit that might eventually restore his good name and academic standing will also burden him with the onus of endangering others, for it will necessarily result in the charges becoming public...
...It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty Gods, or no God," he contended...
...Had men been in the same disposition at the revolution, as they are at present, monarchy would have run a great risque of being entirely lost in this island...
...and when that day came the danger posed by parties of principle would disappear altogether...
...It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg...
...HL0224 (paper) $16.95 H L0225 (hardcover) $29.95 ,aaaaaaaa..aa...
...As they recognized, to be neutral on this last question is to be indifferent to the survival of the regime...
...No one supposed that the federal government, much less the states, should be neutral between believers and nonbelievers...
...Its author can hardly have doubted that his Bill had done for his native state what, he claimed, the First Amendment had done for the federal government—but he clearly did not believe that either of the two laws designed to build "a wall of separation between church and State' precluded governmental policies encouraging religious faith...
...Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavor, by some novelty to excite the languid devotion of his audience...
...Political action required discretion...
...The forgery, however, lends credence to Miss So's expressed belief that he submitted false receipts...
...This argument Madison owed to Hume's close friend and disciple Adam Smith...
...Witherspoon, he had distrusted "encourage[r]s of free enquiry...
...In the course of the discuss n, "they will tell you that 'all the American republics are collectively involved with each other...
...The amendment, as it was worded in the end, was specifically designed not just to preclude a federal establishment...
...Throughout much of Europe, factions of this sort might still pose the gravest of difficulties...
...This month marks the bicentennial of Virginia's adoption of Thomas Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, and the problem of church and state is back in the news...
...As he put it, "Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is always founded...
...it was always first and foremost a religion of faith, and from the outset it recognized a distinction between spiritual and temporal concerns and therefore between the City of God and the city of man...
...nor subjected to any penalties or disabilities unless under colour of religion, any man disturb the peace, the happiness, or safety of society...
...212p...
...The scope of Mencken's range of interests was vast indeed, and the essays here tackle everything from literature to politics, and from sports to music...
...Neither failure to return the camera norfalsification of accounts was among the charges levied against him...
...Consider the case of George Washington...
...It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing...
...HL1004 NOTES ON DEMOCRACY There is more than just Mencken's keen wit in this lampooning of sacred cows...
...With similar concerns in mind, Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee had fought disestablishment, and Samuel Adams had expressed the hope that Boston would become "a Christian Sparta...
...He ridicules men — and then gives women equal treatment...
...to survive...
...This notwithstanding, Christianity was, in the most important respect, no less and perhaps even more political than its competitors...
...Until a handwriting expert hired by the university discovered that the receipt was in Mosher's handwriting, he had insisted, most recently at a May 1985 meeting with Kennedy, that it was the original receipt...
...In other words, Mosher was apparently required to disprove his ex-wife's allegations...
...Thomas Jefferson could justly take pride in his own contribution to the reformation that eliminated the circumstances which had "made of Christiandom a slaughterhouse...
...The most delightful writer you'll ever en-counter...
...On the question of religion, Thomas Jefferson was fully in agreement with his friend James Madison...
...If their stratagem was successful, their fellow citizens would someday be unable to distinguish the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from the God of the philosophers...
...and it specified "that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever...
...He nonetheless regarded it as the pre-eminent American political institution—!'for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it...
...All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man...
...And in any case, he concluded, such enthusiasm "will hardly be seen with pleasure at the helm...
...of religion, but also to protect the existing state establishments from federal interference: It denied Congress the right to make any law "respecting"—i.e., either for or against—"an establishment of religion...
...In his First Inaugural, he publicly celebrated the fact that his countrymen acknowledged and adored "an overruling Providence" and were "enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man...
...MENCKEN Once called "the joyous libertarian," H.L...
...The most decent and advantageous composition" that the authorities can make "with the spiritual guides is to bribe their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession...
...By that time, he had himself become an encourager "of free inquiry" and an enemy to what the majority of his contemporaries would have considered "serious religion...
...On this point, the most vigorous proponents of religious disestablishment were in agreement with their opponents...
...the question...
...we need it because we are imperfect...
...except in very recent times, Christianity has been pre-eminent as a persecuting religion...
...To be sure, Christianity was never, like traditional Judaism and Islam, a religion of ritual and law, dictating the political enforcement or encouragement of an entire way of life...
...In that work, James Madison openly acknowledges that "the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions" can generate faction, and he specifically mentions that "a zeal for different opinions concerning religion" has at times "divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to co-operate for their common good...
...His books and countless essays and letters are filled with buoyancy, wit and a masterful command of what he called "the American language...
...Two summers ago, on the morning after he had accepted the Republican nomination, Ronald Reagan delivered a controversial speech at an ecumenical prayer breakfast...
...331p...
...240p...
...It not only barred the establishment of religion and protected its free exercise: It asserted that "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical...
...Accordingly, he decided to exclude all but natural theology from the curriculum of the University of Virginia...
...And our government needs the church because those humble enough to admit they are sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order Paul A. Rahe is a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs...
...and the church had a perfectly legitimate interest in directing and controlling the minds of men...
...One might be tempted to suppose that he thought the religious issue a minor concern...
...The Northwest Ordinance was passed by the last Continental Congress...
...Even here his impish wit shines...
...II In light of the central importance of the theologico-political question for the foundations of American government, it is a bit surprising that religion and sectarian strife are hardly mentioned in The Federalist...
...218p...
...It might be tempting to cite Thomas Jefferson to the contrary...
...Madison had still other grounds for optimism of a sort that Hume might well have disputed...
...The persistence-in Virginia of slavery, a tyranny far worse than anything the Americans had suffered under British dominion, was a disturbing sign that the danger was only too real...
...There can be no more appropriate time for re-examining the words and deeds of the Founding Fathers and for determining whether the arguments made by our current President and the charges lodged by the leading figures within his Administration are just or not...
...His reticence not-withstanding, Madison's purpose and that evidenced by Hume, Smith, and Voltaire were one and the same...
...0 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 23...
...HL0296 (paper) NEW DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS Mencken's own selections of quotations throughout history, spanning nearly every subject imaginable...
...He added as an afterthought: "And I flatter myself [they] have in this Country extinguished for ever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind...
...As their actions make clear, not even James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, the two members of the founding generation most sensitive to the danger posed by religious establishments, would have accepted so broad an assertion...
...Nothing has happened since Tocqueville visited these shores to suggest that George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and their successors were wrong in sup-posing that the federal and state governments should be strictly neutral regarding the disputes between the various religious sects, but favorable in general to religious belief...
...The obvious implication is that, from the outset, the burden of proof was borne by Mosher, not by his accusers...
...In a let-ter to a close friend, he had called them destroyers of "the most essential Truths" and "Enemies to serious religion...
...HL0214(hardcover) $39.95 IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN Mencken's outrageous, backhanded defense of women as the "superior sex" is hysterically funny...
...In fact, like John Adams, he died on the day of the great celebration —and he was already quite ill when he wrote to decline the organizers' invitation...
...Charity required no less...
...Tocqueville could speak with such confidence on the matter because he had interviewed those associated with the various societies that had been organized for the propagation of the Gospel in the new territories to the West...
...For one thing, its relevance to the charges is minimal...
...and, when this stirred opposition in religious circles, he added an amendment to his original plan, inviting the various sects to establish schools of divinity on the con-fines of the university, so that the candidates for the clergy could mingle with one another and draw sustenance from an aggressively secular curriculum in-formed by the rational precepts of the Enlightenment...
...They shed light on Mencken and the galaxy of luminaries who were his friends...
...This conviction, firmly held and vigorously defended, explains why Madison expended great effort at the Virginia Convention in a futile attempt to write into that fledgling state's Declaration of Rights a clause stipulating "that no man or class of men ought, on account of religion to be invested with peculiar emoluments or privileges...
...But, in fact, the chief architect of the American Constitution does seem to have supposed that the United States would be relatively free from the peril of sectarian strife...
...It is no wonder, then, that the great statesman wanted to be remembered not just as "Author of the Declaration of Independence" and as "Father of the University of Virginia," but also as "Author of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom...
...When the Virginia Assembly passed his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, it made a decision of profound political importance: It publicly endorsed John Locke's claim that religion is essentially a private affair and that, except where religious sects preach sedition or religious disputes threaten public disorder, state interference favorable to one sect or another is contrary to natural right...
...I enjoy democracy immensely," he wrote...
...It matters a great deal whether he was right or wrong...
...Mencken's zest for life and his wonderful powers of observation make this work one-of-a-kind: buoy-ant, personal, and charming...
...On a matter this delicate, prudence generally dictated reticence in public—but not always...
...As they knew, America was destined to be a commercial republic, and Montesquieu had once intimated that such a regime had little to fear from religious zeal...
...Every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame...
...Smith's argument had a considerable effect on Madison...
...the doctrine that inspired the Inquisition was shared by the vast majority of those who had broken with Rome...
...The study of history had taught Jefferson what the success of the American experiment could easily cause us to forget: Where a particular revealed religion is firmly and legally established, it is difficult, if not impossible, to found and maintain alimited government—restricted to the end of protecting the citizens' in-alienable, natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
...Where the civil magistrate was absolutely neutral in sectarian matters, the competition of the preachers would inevitably infuse into religion "a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion...
...Most people, in this island, have divested themselves of all superstitious reverence to names and authority: The clergy have much lost their credit: Their pretensions and doctrines have been ridiculed...
...Madison disagreed...
...Like the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson's Bill took as its premise the existence of an "Almighty God" capable of endowing mankind with in-alienable rights and of creating "the mind free...
...the Catholic divines and their Protestant successors were in agreement on the essential point: Within the Christian dispensation, all temporal power is ultimately justified by the temporal ruler's support for those propagating the true faith...
...Hume had pointed out that "parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times," and he had traced that "extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon" to the peculiar character of the Christian faith: to the independent authority that it vested in the clergy, and to the systematic theology—born of the awkward marriage of revelation with philosophy—that distinTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 19 guished it from all other religions, even from Islam...
...According to his neighbor and biographer William Cabell Rives, Madison was accustomed in his later years to quote often and "with great approbation" Voltaire's claim that "if one religion only were allowed in England, the government would possibly be arbitrary...
...Upon analysis, the evidence seems a good deal less than compelling...
...If this principle was to prevail, he was persuaded, Americans would have to be constantly reminded "that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression...
...The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God...
...Mencken himself discusses his childhood, career, politicians, reporters, beer and culture...
...Jack Dempsey, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt and Beethoven are all here, but so too are essays on liberty, the nature of government, virtue, journalism, and much, much more...
...In making this assertion, Jefferson had slavery in mind...
...Discover the fascinating H.L...
...To support his argument, Smith pointed to Pennsylvania where the establishment of full religious freedom had been "productive of this philosophical good temper and moderation...
...But the letter provides an even more damaging insight into the case whose significance Kennedy seems not to appreciate...
...Within a week, Attorney General Edwin Meese III joined the assault, arguing that "strict neutrality between religion and irreligion would have struck the founding generation as somewhat bizarre...
...to support any religious activities or institutions," he had no ground to stand on at all...
...On the floor of the Constitutional Convention, where the delegates conducted their discussions in private, the Virginian could afford to be a bit more frank than in a newspaper series specifically designed to promote the Constitution's ratification in a state dominated by its opponents...
...a week after obtaining Mosher's admission he released his let-ter...
...HL0213(hardcover) FORMERLY$31.00 NOW ONLY $22.50 A CARNIVAL OF BUNCOMBE Mencken's iconoclastic views on American politics from the days of Warren Harding through FDR's re-election in 1936.370p...
...Mencken was one of the most influential writers of our time...
...Jefferson and Madison were both prepared to set aside an hour in the day when each of the students at the University of Virginia would be free to attend services at the chapel of his own denomination and "expected" to do so...
...Yet, even then, Madison had openly wondered whether the support of civil society required "an Ecclesiastical Establishment" or whether this might not, in fact, be "hurtful to a dependant State...
...HL0221 (hardcover) FORMERLY$32.50 NOW ONLY$22 50 A MENCKEN CHRESTOMATHY Choice selections edited and an-notated by Mencken himself...
...not by what drives away, but by what makes one forget...
...if the republics of the West were to fall into anarchy or to be mastered by a despot, the republican institutions which now flourish upon the shores of the Atlantic Ocean would be in great peril...
...and, within a matter of weeks, he wrote back to that same friend to suggest that if his own sect the Church of England had been the established and general Religion in all the Northern Colonies . . . slavery and Subjection might and would have been gradually insinuated among us...
...UPS $4.00 7IP CITY/STATE EX...
...MENCKEN SPEAKING What a delight...
...Yet Mosher's explanation for the duplicate receipt is credible, and Kennedy admits that some of the photo-graphs he submitted appear to have been taken with specialized equipment...
...Without question, Madison was as aware as any of his contemporaries of the wars of religion that had convulsed both England and the continent less than a century before...
...877p...
...Many of those familiar with the intricacies of constitutional law would contend that, when Black sup-posed that the Fourteenth Amendment had somehow repealed the First Amendment's denial to the federal government of the right to interfere with state establishments of religion, he stepped into quicksand...
...But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings...
...He states that the faculty committee considering the case found Miss So's evidence highly persuasive "when aggregated with" Mosher's "lack of candor" and the fact that, in the main, her evidence was controverted only by his denials...
...No one in either Congress—not even James Madison—argued that it was in any way improper for one of the new nation's organic laws to justify the establishment of "schools and the , means of education" within the North-west Territory on the ground that "religion, morality, and knowledge" are "necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind...
...Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of a peculiar structure, reason and experience forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle...
...But fortunately, in England, the force of sectarian zeal had gradually abated...
...These men were willing to advocate such policies for two reasons: They were persuaded that the multiplicity of sects in America rendered religion harmless, and they suspected that their countrymen would be quite likely to be guided in their actions by their own base desires if they were deprived of religious instruction regarding their duties to their fellow men...
...576p...
...Bennett even suggested that the court's decisions reflect "a hostility toward religion...
...In making this claim, Washington was merely stating the common sense of the matter...
...If you converse with these missionaries of Christian civilization," he reported, "you will be surprised to hear them speak so often of the goods of this world, and to meet a politician where you expected to find a priest...
...Those horrified by the sectarian strife and religious persecution so evident in India, Sri Lanka, Iran, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Third World would do well to keep Northern Ireland in mind...
...The Kennedy letter, in the end, is considerably more damaging to Stan-ford than to Mosher, because it reveals that more than two years after his termination the university was still searching for evidence against him...
...Everything from "The Nature of Liberty" to "Roosevelt: An Autopsy...
...In similar fashion, the Massachusetts Bill of Rights contended that "a constant adherence to .. piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry, and frugality are absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty and to maintain a free government...
...He has inspired and enchanted one generation after another with his style and views...
...It is to the credit of our current President that he has reminded us of what the Founding Fathers all knew: We really do risk poisoning our society when we remove its theological underpinnings, and we really do court corruption when we leave that society bereft of belief...
...And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related: We need religion as a guide...
...A601, 532 Broadway, NY, NY 10012 If you need additional ordering space, use 2nd sheet...
...not by what brings indignation, but by what makes men lukewarm—so that other passions act on our souls, and those which religion inspires are silent...
...Eventually, the nation's Christians might even come to acknowledge that sincere—as opposed to true—belief is itself sufficient for salvation...
...we command no worship, we mandate no belief...
...By then, ac-cording to Mosher's testimony at his February 1983 termination hearing, it had been in Taiwan for at least two and a half years, and, in the interim, he would have had little incentive to retrieve it...
...A little less than a year later, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett lashed out at the Supreme Court...
...The First Congress to meet under the new Constitution, the very body that drafted the First Amendment, subsequently adopted an act for the Ordinances enforcement...
...Accordingly, it makes little difference whether one consults Augustine and Aquinas or Luther and Calvin...
...If truth be told, it took a reformation far more pro-found than the one carried out by Luther, Calvin, and their many disciples to render Christians willing to accept in their midst and tolerate as equals those they deemed guilty of heretical belief...
...For another, familiarity with her ex-husband's less than meticulous accounting practices—his advisers had to remind him to submit his accounts—could have enabled her to make a shrewd guess...
...At the time when the Revolution took place in America, the citizens of the thirteen colonies were in the very disposition that Hume had mentioned, and that fact helped account for their adoption of republican government—and for Madison's sanguine outlook regarding religious convulsions as well...
...In his Farewell Address, the great man directly addressed...
...Union of Religious Sentiments begets a surprising confidence and Ecclesiastical Establishments tend to great ignorance and Corruption[—]all of which facilitate the Execution of mischievous Projects...
...We current justices read the Constitution in the only way we can: as twentieth-century Americans...
...A decade later—in January 1786 he would finally succeed in securing disestablishment, this time by steering Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom through the Virginia legislature...
...If Jefferson lent his authority as President to the cause of religious faith, it was because he had good reason to welcome the influence of religion once it was somehow deprived of theocratic ambition and rendered benign...
...As he put it in a letter to a prominent advocate of Unitarian-ism (which was, not surprisingly, the one sect he looked on with favor), "By bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality...
...Virtually no one supposed sincerity an adequate substitute for rightness of belief as a prerequisite for salvation...
...A601 532 Broadway, NY 10012 MONEY BACK GUARANTEE If for any reason you are dissatisfied with any THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE A monument to Mencken's erudition and a delight to read...
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...In The Wealth of Nations, Smith had quoted Hume's discussion of this problem at length...
...yet the most approved and wisest legislators in all ages, in order to give efficacy to their civil institutions, have found it necessary to call in the aid of religion...
...It would be excessive to attribute all our ills to the gradual erosion within our society of religious faith and to the liberal sects' subsequent mercenary abandonment of the stern moral code that even the Unitarians were once wont to preach...
...In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens...
...Given the prospect of eternal damnation, the concerns of this world can hardly be compared to those of the world to come...
...10.95 .aaaaaaaaaaar, Book No...
...No regard will be paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated...
...In usurping a legislative function inconsistent with that respect for the consent of the people that is the very foundation of our regime, these men have jettisoned the profound understanding of human nature and politics that guided this country's founding generation, and in its place they have embraced the vagaries of current intellectual fashion...
...DATE CARD NO...
...Fortunately for us, he could afford to be perfectly blunt in letters to Thomas Jefferson...
...if there were but two, the people would cut each other's throats...
...In this subject, David Hume had been among his instructors...
...With regard to sectarian conflict, he had reason for hope...
...This much he says, but he lays little stress on the point and quickly moves on...
...452p...
...Once the clergy were deprived of the artificial support provided by religious establishment, the presence of a multiplicity of sects, supplemented by trade's gentle erosion of religious enthusiasm, would be enough to reduce priestly influence and to contain clerical ambition...
...The favorable attitude evidenced by the American Founders regarding the public encouragement of religious faith persisted, and, until very recently, it prevailed even within circles widely suspected of agnosticism...
...In 1787 and for a long time thereafter, Americans considered that claim utterly uncontroversial...
...The truth is," he told the assembled multitude, politics and morality are inseparable...
...The author of the Declaration of Independence and the father of the American Constitution were Deists No one supposed that the federal government, much less the states, should be neutral between believers and nonbelievers...
...I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion—for who can search the human heart?—but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions...
...confronted with the evidence, he explained that he had lost the original receipt in the course of his travels, and without informing the university, substituted a duplicate reconstructed from memory to comply with accounting requirements...
...In any event, Kennedy gave him no opportunity to do so...
...When another Congressman argued that the wording "might be thought to have a tendency to abolish religion altogether," James Madison replied that he understood the clause to mean that "Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law...
...12.95 TREATISE ON RIGHT AND WRONG This is one of Mencken's more systematic and serious efforts: he traces the origins of our moral concepts from ancient times to his own era, in-sights abound...
...HL0222(paper) $6.95 A CHOICE OF DAYS This abridgement of Mencken's memoirs captures a bygone era in his ever-fresh and inimitable style...
...In the 1980s, perhaps even more than in the 1780s, Americans stand in danger of forgetting themselves in the pursuit of pleasure and in the "faculty of making money...
...He termed "terrible" two recent court rulings—one that barred public schools from discreetly encouraging religious belief by setting time aside for silent prayer, and another that prohibited public schoolteachers from conducting remedial classes in parochial schools...
...This fall Justice William J. Brennan replied...
...To be sure, the American regime is founded on a repudiation of divine right...
...Nor does Kennedy help matters with his concluding comment that he hopes Mosher will accept the decision as "one arrived at with concern and good faith...
...Includes his famous piece on the Scopes trial, plus comments on Woodrow Wilson, both Roosevelts, Lincoln and a host of others...
...As a young Princeton graduate, still very much under the influence of the pious Dr...
...Not many of those who denied the very existence of a divine Being could be expected to honor "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," particularly when applied to men and women of a different race...
...Mosher now lives in California...
...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1986 Jefferson was a bitterly anticlerical Deist, prepared to sniff the approach of religious tyranny on every new breeze and inclined to argue that the First Amendment had built "a wall of separation between church and State"—but he was an eloquent proponent of religion as well...
...As Jefferson's carefully contrived, final political testament indicates, the rejection of revealed religion as a standard for the conduct of political affairs was the cornerstone of the world's first modern republic...
...Prior to his presidency, in the very year in which Virginia had adopted his famous Bill, Jefferson published a book asserting that "the only rum basis" for "the liberties of a nation" is "the conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God" and "not to be violated but with his wrath...
...Massachusetts was alone in maintaining an established church until 1833, but in the eighteenth century views akin to those expressed by these stalwarts of the Revolution wereremarkably widespread...
...And yet, in isolation from these two closely related developments, it is hardto explain the collapse of the American family, the virtually universal abuse of dangerous drugs, the prevalence of violent crime, and the willingness of an increasing number of soldiers, sailors, FBI agents, and other public servants to betray their country for kicks and cash...
...Let it be simply asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice...
...1437p...
...The two great statesmen from Virginia had one additional reason for expecting that their stratagem would work...
...6v, 1764p...
...Madison spoke with considerable confidence when he reported to Jefferson in January 1786 that "the enacting clauses" of the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom had "passed without a single alteration...
...258p...
...337p...
...But, though weakened by disease, the aged statesman marshaled his meager resources...
Vol. 19 • January 1986 • No. 1
