AMERICA'S BASIC RELIGION
Ronald J. Glossop

I. Introduction
A. Do you know what is significant about tomorrow, the 18th of April? Yes, it is the 230th anniversary of Paul Revere's midnight ride, one day before "the shot heard round the world", the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in Lexington in 1775. Our thanks to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for his 1863 poem (despite a few inaccuracies about the details) whose memorable first verse goes: "Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year."

B. We are also close to the140th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which occurred on April 14, 1865. The ideas of Lincoln are important to our topic.

C. Given these historical links, and given the fact that we are meeting here in a Unitarian church, it is altogether appropriate that we direct our attention to today's topic, "America's Basic Religion."
D. This topic is also appropriate given current events in this country and the increasing influence in our national political life of religion in general and fundamentalist Christianity in particular.

II. The starting point for our discussion is a book entitled America's Real Religion authored by well-known Unitarian minister A. Powell Davies. It was first published in 1949, which you may remember was near the beginning of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (Throughout this talk all page numbers in parenthesis refer to Davies' book.)
A. The overall point of this book is stated succinctly in the heading of the second section, which asks, "Do all roads lead to Rome or Moscow?"(p. 5) The first two sentences of that section read: "The people of the United States, we are told, believe in nothing. Sooner or later, therefore, their destiny will be shaped by the beliefs of others; namely, of Stalin, Lenin, or Marx."(p. 5) A year later "Mao" could be added to the list, and ten years later "Castro."
1. Rephrasing Davies' point, we could say that some people claim that the challenge facing Americans, especially during the Cold War but even now, is to choose between casting their lot with some kind of authoritarian Christianity on the one hand or with atheistic Communism on the other.
2. This approach to the issue of where to place one's faith is really a not fully stated argument: One must choose between a commitment to some uncritical form of Christianity on the one hand and atheistic Communism on the other. Atheistic Communism is evil. Therefore one should commit oneself to some uncritical form of Christianity.
3. But this argument mistakenly assumes that there are only two possible alternatives.
B. Furthermore, Davies wants to argue, there is another traditionally American faith, what he calls "America's Real Religion." In a word, for Davies "America's real religion" is a deep faith in and a commitment to an "absolute religion" which is the basis of democracy, "the religion in which all people are of one blood, every person is a child of God, every human bears the burdens of the others." (p. 66)
1. The specific incident cited by Davies which leads to his concern with this issue occurred in September, 1948. He notes, "General Dwight D. Eisenhower was recently rebuked for holding religious beliefs similar to those of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln: beliefs which were also held, in varying measure, by Franklin, the Adamses, Madison, Mason, Monroe, and most of the Founding Fathers. They are the beliefs which have shaped American history."(p. 3)

2. It is important to see that Davies is using the word "religion" to refer to a basic commitment which guides one's life, not some kind of theoretical belief about the nature of God or whether Jesus is God incarnate or to what extent the statements in the Bible or the views of some other "religious" authority are true.

3. The statement by Eisenhower which Davies uses as the springboard for his discussion was made when Eisenhower was named President of Columbia University in New York. In answer to a reporter's question, Eisenhower said, "I am themost intensely religious man I know. Nobody goes through six years of war without faith. That doesn't mean I adhere to any sect. A democracy cannot exist without a religious base. I believe in democracy."(p. 3)
4. Davies notes that in this statement "Eisenhower says: first, that he believes intensely in religion; second, that wartime experience has reinforced his conviction that religion is an urgent need; third, that he had not looked to any religious sect to meet this need; and fourth, that there is a religion not confined to a sect but which is the spiritual basis of democracy, and it is this religion that he intensely believes."(p. 3)
5. But remember that Davies is stimulated to address this issue of religion in America not mainly by what Eisenhower said but rather by a response to it at Georgetown University in September 1948 from Father John Tracy Ellis, Professor of American Church History at Catholic University. Ellis referred to what Eisenhower said as a "shocking statement" and a potential disaster for this country if we continue to rely on the "cult of democracy" which "implies that the spiritual values of democracy are self-sufficient in education, . . . as though democracy were itself a kind of religion."(p. 4) Ellis is arguing that, on the contrary, teaching traditional Christian religious views and values should be taught in public schools.
6. Continuing with his reaction to Ellis, Davies notes that Ellis told his audience that "the 'movement' which seeks to advance the cause of 'a new religion of democracy' began about seven years ago [that is in 1941] with the publication of what he called 'a scurrilous primer,' a manifesto entitled 'The City of Man.' Davies responds that "This is quite inaccurate. The 'movement' began when the United States was founded, and its manifesto is not 'The City of Man' but the Declaration of Independence."(p. 5) And that is the thesis of Davies' book America's Real Religion.

III. Given his thesis Davies realizes that he must address the question, "What is democracy?"(p. 7)
A. "Democracy implies a system--and one suited to its aims. But democracy is not itself a system. Democracy is a level of civilization."(p. 7)
1. It is a level of civilization that does not allow political dogma to be substituted for free inquiry.(p. 8) Science cannot be put in chains. Governments and people must abjure secrecy and act openly. In this context one might reflect on what is now happening in this country where scientific information is openly denied whether it is about global warming or the past and continuing evolution of life forms or how distributing information about contraception results in a decrease in the number of abortions or how criminal behavior is linked to poverty.
2. "Because democracy exalts freedom, not dogma, it can be world-uniting."(p. 9) "Dogma divides. . . . Democracy , however, which converts the war-to-the-death of dogma into the peaceful conflict of opinion can provide the world with unity."(p. 9)
3. In spiritual terms, "democracy is the social and political _expression of the religious principle" that all people are members of a single human family, unrestricted by nation, race, or creed."(p. 9)
B. In addressing the issue of whether "whether the spiritual values of democracy conflict with those of institutional religion" (p. 9) Davies turns to Thomas Jefferson's statements in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush. "I promised you that I would one day give you my views of the Christian Religion. They are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and are very different from the Anti-Christian system attributed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, but I am a Christian in the only sense in which I believe Jesus wished anyone to be, sincerely attached to his doctrine in preference to all others; ascribing to him all human excellence, and believing that he never claimed any other. The question of his being a member of the God-head claimed by some of his followers is foreign to a view which is based on the intrinsic merits of his doctrines.

[Jesus] went beyond all other teachers in inculcating a universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, but to all humankind, uniting all in one familty in the bonds of love, peace, common wants, and common aids."(p. 10)
C. For Davies, all "religious" beliefs and claims of "religious" institutions are to be tested on the basis of whether they run counter to the priniciple of individual freedom in belief, or transgress democracy defined as brotherhood "uniting all in one family in the bonds of love, peace, common wants, and common aids."(p. 10)
D. In conclusion, Davies says, " . . . [T]he religion which is the basis of democracy is not opposed to Christianity as defined by Jesus . . . . Nor is it opposed to Judaism, or to any other religion provided the loyalty required does not transgress the principles of individual liberty and universal brotherhood which are the essentials of the democratic faith."(p. 10)
E. Davies suggests that "in spite of institutional allegiances, Americans are much more attached to the basic democratic faith than to all others" and that "in a pinch, this is the faith to which they would adhere."(p. 11)

IV. A continuing battle is conducted in this country between those who try to show that the founding fathers and other popular political leaders were "religious" in a traditional sense and those who argue that the evidence shows otherwise. This battle is still being carried out by religious fundamentalists today, and Davies' book is a valuable source for those who want facts to counter them.
A. Davies provides overwhelming evidence that "Jefferson, Franklin, [Thomas] Paine, Hopkins, Ethan Allen, John Adams, Wythe, Robert Paine, Bartlett, Rush, Thornton, Jones, Randolph, Washington, Madison, and Mason were either deists, free thinkers, or religious liberals with deistic tendencies"(p. 20) and were generally antagonistic toward traditional organized religion. Davies notes that the "The clergy attacked him [Washington] and demanded he withdraw from the Presidency."(p. 20) In the Treaty of Tripoli, initiated by Washington, proclaimed by John Adams, and ratified under Jefferson's administration, we find this explicit statement: "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian Religion." In the period of the Revolutionary War the traditional religions generally sided with the British and opposed the revolution.(p. 25)
B. At the same time, Davies notes that these heroes of the Revolution and the new nation they were founding were "religious" in the sense that they had a higher or more universal religion which focused on moral behavior and a commitment to justice and the advancement of human society. They also had a faith that they were acting in accordance with a Providence and "Nature's God," that "God was manifested in the natural working of the universe and in the life of man."(p. 33) To the extent that these free-thinkers had any connection with formal religious institutions, they pushed these institutions toward Unitarianism.(pp. 26-27)
C. The counter-attack from the more traditional "Christian" reactionary forces began even before the victory of the Revolutionary War could be fully solidified.
1. As Davies puts it:
" . . . [T]here had been at all times a considerable minority which had never conceded that a decision had been gained. It was not a unified minority. Opposition to the Revolution had stemmed from many causes. But what it came to in the end was that 'property and privilege' felt threatened by the onward march of human rights. To resist this march, and if possible reverse it, thus became the unifying purpose which drew the dissidents together.
In furthering this purpose, it was soon perceived that traditonal religion could be useful; it could cloud the issues through reviving dying loyalties; it could mask the face of tyranny and make it seem inevitable, just as it had done in the past. With the help of religion, 'property and privilege' could be restored, almost as they were before; and it would be accepted as 'in the nature of things,' just as it used to be.

The religion of fear was therefore given new encouragement; and this was all that was needed. Identity of interest was already present. Linked together, superstition and tyranny could still hope to win."(p. 38)
2. Does this sound too much like what has been happening in this country during the last 25 years, the linking of the religious right with the powerful and privileged against the "leftist internationalists" struggling for the human rights of the poor and downtrodden at home as well as in other countries?
3. "The attempt to associate the doctrine of the rights of man with irreligion had been made from the beginning. Jefferson had had to fight it almost since the ink with which the Declaration of Independence had been signed was dry."(p. 39)
4. In 1802 Alexander Hamilton founded a "Christian Constitutional Society," "by which he hoped to beguile a majority of Christian believers into allowing themselves to be manipulated for the advantage of money power in politics."(p. 40) "Then, behind this facade, reactionary forces, both religious and political, could build up their power. A nation founded upon human rights . . . could be expatriated to a basis of ecclesiastical domination in the interests of economic exploitation and political tyranny. It would then be called 'a Christian State.'"(p. 40)
5. During this post-Revolutionary period, "reaction was in the saddle. The pulpits declared democracy to be a branch of atheism, and separation of church and state the root of all evil. . . . The whole land was declared to be infected with 'the pernicious evil of infidelity,' the only cure for which was to enforce obedience to traditional religion. The country could then be turned back to the rule of the privileged classes, 'who alone were suitable to govern.'"(p. 42)
D. Things changed in a major way with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. This administration marked a major shift away from the union of political privilege and religious fervor. Though some of the people around Jackson were viewed as atheists, Jackson himself was a sincere church-goer. Nevertheless he reaffirmed the separation of church & state, fought vigorously against the privileged classes, and defended freedom of conscience for non-believers as well as believers.(pp. 42-43)
1. Davies comments as follows on this period: "Anyone who will make a detailed study of this period in American history--the much neglected first half of the nineteenth century--will doubtless be astonished at the mass of evidence for the thesis we are affirming: that America's real religion is the higher and more ethical religion represented in the nation's founding principles; that its emergence marked the end of the era of religions of fear; . . . that this religion, spiritually fervent, sincerely ethical and fully universal, has been misrepresented as 'anti-Christian and as an 'atheistic cult'; and that always it has had to struggle and is struggling still against the vested interests, both ecclesiastical and secular, which seek to reimpose their tyranny upon the life of man."(pp. 43-44)
2. At this time one meets "the special case of the revivalists, the circuit riders, and the Bible fundamentalists who went south and west with the frontier. Their influence was great, and they have left the nation a curiously mixed legacy.
On the one hand, they preached the religion of fear with a vigor seldom surpassed. . . . But on the other hand, they were nonconformists and . . . conspicuously independent-minded. . . .
It is notable, however, that almost from the first, the frontier--West if not South--was as active in debating fundamentalism as it was in preaching it. Resistance took the form of atheism and agnosticism, which were widespread by the time of Lincoln. Freedom for such debates was stubbornly insisted upon."(pp. 44-45)

V. The heyday of the "New World Faith" (as Davies calls it) in the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century includes what he calls "The Acts of the American Apostles"--Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing, Theodore Parker, Walt Whitman, Robert Ingersoll, and Clarence Darrow. To these he would add the Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horace Mann; the reformers like Dorothea Dix, Horace Greeley, Robert Owen, Henry George, Samuel Gompers, Lincoln Steffens, and John Muir; the scientists and philosophers like Charles Steinmetz, Arthur Holly Compton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Alfred North Whitehead, and John Dewey; and thepoets and writers like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Daniel Webster, Henry David Thoreau, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Stephen Vincent Binet, Edward Everett Hale, Maxwell Anderson, Carl Sandburg, and Thomas Wolfe (just to repeat some of the names Davies mentions, a substantial proportion of which are Unitarian-Universalists and none of whom are what he calls dogmatists).

VI. Abraham Lincoln , whom Davies calls "the New World's greatest son"(p. 64), warrants a whole chapter,(pp. 67-76) titled "The Religion of Abraham Lincoln."
A. Davies discusses and refutes the assertions that Lincoln was an orthodox believer. He says, "Like Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, Lincoln rejected the creeds. He belonged to no church. It is true that he once rented a pew, but it was mostly Mrs. Lincoln who sat in it. When he was invited to join her and become a church member himself, he said the he 'could not quite see it.'"(p. 67)
B. As a young man Lincoln did "come to love a theological argument. And it was easy to pick one in those days. Theology was almost as live a topic in the taverns as in the churches. . . . By this time , Lincoln had been taking a searching look at life. . . . Presently, we find him writing an essay arguing that God is not a God of wrath, as represented in the churches, but that he is above anger. God, said Lincoln, never gets mad or excited; and thus quite early, Lincoln dismissed the religion of fear.
About this time, too, he began to quote with considerable satisfaction Robert Burns' poem, 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' and especially the line, 'What! Send one to heaven and ten to hell?' The young Lincoln decisively rejected the belief in hell . . . . He loved to quote an old man in Indiana, named Glenn, who used to say, 'when I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad,' which seemd to Lincoln at the time a sufficient affirmation of religion . . . ."(p. 68)
C. After the death of his sweetheart Ann Rutledge, he turned to "theology again with deepened interest. It never failed to concern him. He even lectured briefly, in Illinois, on the Bible (though not under that title) giving heretical expositions with sly humor. He wrote a little book, tending to prove that Jesus was not God. But after a while, he began to say less on the subject. . . .
Lincoln may also have turned to silence on the subject . . . because he noticed that he was making no particular gain by such debates, and no particular contribution: it was not his chosen field: and at the same time it was making things harder for him politically. And Lincoln was at all t imes a good politician. . . ."(p. 69)
D. "There has been considerable controversy, however, as to whether, as President, Lincoln changed his mind and arrived at a more orthodox position. Those who wish to believe that he did say that Lincoln was an orthodox Christian without quite knowing it . . . . If he had become an orthodox Christian, [however] it was scarcely a matter that would have escaped his attention. Nor would he have lost the opportunity of pleasing his wife and some of his friends by declaring it. But what Mrs. Lincoln said is as follows: 'He had no faith and no hope in the usual acceptation of those words. He never joined a church but still I believe he was a religious man by nature.'
A religious man by nature!--but not a creedal Christian, not one who believed in the doctines of orthodoxy at all.
And here, we should take note that there were many who went to the opposite extreme--especially in his lifetime--and denied that he was a religious man in any sense.'"(p. 72)
E. Davies says of Lincoln: "Here was the only man in history who ever led an army into battle, loving his enemies more than he loved himself. This was more Christian than Christianity--as the churches had defined the matter. Both North and South, they had exhorted their congregations to hate their enemies. Lincoln's religion was religion at another level: Christian as Christ had defined it.
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Here was a man whose soul was rooted in the eternal as few souls are, whose living harmony with the spritiual became at last like a perfect musical instrument; whose self-renunciation was complete."(pp. 75-76)

VII. Here is Davies' conclusion in America's Real Religion: "For the pursuit of such a quest there must be freedom to seek the truth, unimpeded by barriers of authoritaian doctrine. There must also be the quality of life--life, just and good and brotherly--through which spiritual experience will deepen. Too many people are trying to find God in a world from which they have helped to shut him out. As the New Testament asks, how can a man love God, whom he has not seen, if he will not love his brother, whom he has seen? It is this that must be changed. And it can be changed: through the religion of brotherhood and democracy: America's real religion.

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