Miscellaneous comments and hypotheses
Quote for today:
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.Oscar Wilde
-
The Christian Right Circa 1839
Posted on September 12th, 2009 3 commentsThe Christian right is fond of associating itself with our Founding Fathers. In fact, had they lived at the time, they would have found themselves in the very opposite camp. That camp had a name that should be familiar to every American schoolchild: Tories.
Then, as now, they had a penchant for considering themselves just a little more “equal” than their fellow citizens. Then, as now, they also had a penchant for stuffing their religion down other people’s throats. They were a lot better at it then, though, because they had a lot more power. They continued to have that power for many years after our Revolution. The following excerpt from the London “Quarterly Review,” organ of the Tories in 1839, will give you an idea of the consideration they showed their fellow citizens when they had the upper hand. Referring to the perceived immorality of the lower classes in Austria at the time, it draws some “lessons” for English society:
In such a state of things, who can deny the absolute necessity for religious education? Teach the lower orders in England to read and write, and unless they are very narrowly watched, the first use they will make of their accomplishments will be to spell over the pages of a newspaper. Talk to them of the value of intellectual acquirements, and the odds are that you will only make them discontented with the lot in which Providence has placed them, and prone to listen to the first itinerant demagogue who may think fit to rail against the unequal distribution of wealth or the recognised distinctions of society. It has been said that they will learn it time to understand the advantages of these distinctions, and perceive that the welfare of the community, themselves inclusive, is bound up with the institution of property; but our firm conviction is, that the time they are able to set apart for reading is utterly inadequate to such a result, and that, whilst man is man, those who earn their bread by the sweat of ther brow must be content to take political conclusions upon trust. In the case of monarchy, for example, you may always teach them to shake off the prejudice, you will never teach them the value of the principle. It were well, therefore, if such topics of inquiry cound be altogether excluded, but they cannot: all we can do is to make moral training go hand in hand with intellectual cultivation, and give the general superintendence to the body most interested in the preservation of order and best qualified to instil a proper sense of religious duty – the Church.
Thus the genuine intellectual forebears of today’s political Christians. They were defanged in America by men like Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Paine, men who had nothing in common with them intellectually. Fortunately, they were eventually defanged in England as well. May they always remain so. It will be better for all of us, including them.
3 responses to “The Christian Right Circa 1839”
-
You’re sort of correct if the comment is used to describe the priests and bishops of the Church of England who were definitly Tories and made the catastrophic mistake of supporting the Crown during the Revolution. But the other Christian churches for example Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Roman Catholics and even Jews were almost unanimous in supporting the Revolution and I suppose would have been identified as Whig.
And to use as an example of Tory or Christian thought in America from a pamphlet written in 1839 by an Englishman completely ignores the Second Great Awakening in the US which repeated the idea that all men are equal and all could be saved. Hardly a ringing endorsement of Tory thought.
-
admin0 October 22nd, 2009 at 06:02
You’ve completely missed the point. I refer explicitly in the post to “the Christian right” and “political Christians,” not to Christians in general. In fact, taking the Bible as our guide, these people bear little resemblance to Christians. They are not meek, nor are they are not poor in spirit, nor do they pay any heed to the biblical injunction to “judge not lest ye be judged.” Rather, they claim special privileges not enjoyed by other citizens, and they insist that the state recognize and protect those privileges. Far from insisting on a wall of separation between church and state, as did, for example, the early Baptists you allude to, they deny that any such wall should exist. For example, they insist that the motto “In God We Trust” be retained on our coinage, with its implication that this “We,” meaning the citizens of the United States, does not include those, such as myself, who have no such trust. They insist on the inclusion of the phrase “under God” in the very pledge of allegiance to our country. As a result, even though I voluntarily laid my life on the line for my country in Vietnam, I am precluded from pledging my allegiance to my country using the established formula. They insist on the establishment of a privileged status by the display of Christian symbols on state property and in state buildings. The very phrase “Christian nation” is meaningless unless understood as a claim to such a special privilege. In a word, while the adherents of the Christian right may not be recognizable as Christians, they are certainly recognizable as an “in-group” of the type I have referred to in earlier posts on the Amity-Enmity Complex. In that respect, they are entirely similar to another in-group; the Tories at the time of our revolution. Both insist on special privileges, special rights, and special status, all of which should be sanctioned by state power.
-
Pat Patterson October 22nd, 2009 at 19:33
I would probably agree somewhat concerning a desire for special treatment but you still haven’t really addressed that most of the Christians, outside of the Tory Church of England, were supporters of the Revolution. Believing that all men are equal is simply incompatible with being charged with supporting divine rule. In fact Protestantism made the Revolution not only intellectually possible but most of the bitter resentment to the Crown came from those counties in the colonies that were settled by people from shires and boroughs in England where England’s parliamentary revolutions received much of its muscle. Plus they were people extremely resentful in the colonies as well as when they were in Britain of having to pay taxes that supported the Church of England.
If you want to identify the Christian right of the Revolution as Tory then fine. But the Church of England and its successors have had little sway in the US since then. In fact something like 70% of the Church of England hierarchy fled the country for Canada or England.
As to the fetishism of symbols I would like to point out that no one has forced you to become a believer or pay taxes to support one particular church.
Leave a reply
-
Pat Patterson October 22nd, 2009 at 02:06