America's Religious Journey

This isn't going to seem to be a typical "fresh start in a new year" post, but bear with me as I want to comment on a book I have recently finished reading titled, "God of Liberty - A Religious History of the American Revolution" by Thomas S. Kidd. It is a fairly thorough study of the part religion played in the formation of our country, and I would recommend it to anyone curious about the intent of our founding fathers regarding the government's role in religious matters.

Religion in America is a complicated issue; that's not news to anyone. It should also not be surprising that the current, often acrimonious religious mood, is probably a logical result of bitter disputes among our founders, both the politicians and the clergy of the day. After all, Ecclesiastes 1:9 asserts "...there is nothing new under the sun."

Some would say that our religious freedoms are under constant assault, but I suspect the state of government in religious matters may be closer to what most of the revolutionaries had in mind than we might realize, although those from both the left and the right will find supporting evidence for their views (because that's what we all tend to do).

Quoting from the book, "Of course, religious hypocrisy abounded in America then, just as it does now...But we cannot underestimate the great good that public religious values served in the revolutionary period...[helping] envision a republic where individual freedom could be guided by ancient ideals of the Scriptures: charity, justice, and protection for the weak and poor.

"Does the national significance of these precepts mean that America was founded as a Christian nation? Yes, in the sense that believers -- the majority of whom were Christians of some kind, with an important minority of Jews -- played a formative role in the creation of the American Republic. But today's advocates of a 'Christian America' tend to misunderstand or underestimate the extent to which Americans already held widely varying religious beliefs at the time of the founding. The founders' religious agreement was on public values, not private doctrines."

We are a nation founded by people who disagreed on the specifics of many important matters, but they managed to forge ahead by finding common ground on the larger issues. Cooperation, tolerance and compassion are certainly worthy goals for a new year (or any time), and I'd like to keep on trying to attain them, wouldn't you?