Things I formerly took for granted
1. It was something repeated often at Hillsdale, a proud mantra: This country is based on the foundation of Judeo-Christian values. That’s not correct. The Founding Fathers were, if anything, deists. Also, the Bill of Rights is found in neither the Torah nor the Bible. You might more accurately say that we arrived at our present form of representative democracy - with its guarantees of free speech, free association, suffrage, etc. - in spite of our Judeo-Christian values. (Oh, but the other half of the mantra was “Greco-Roman,” which does seem fair.)
2. The city editor for the New York Sun once said, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” The “Man Bites Dog” theory of journalism has since become enshrined in the public consciousness. Except, it’s misleading. Think about it. If you’ve lived in New York your whole life, you know that when a man bites a dog here, something is wrong. It’s news. On the other hand, if you’ve lived in New York your whole life and the only time you read about India is when a man there bites a dog, you’re going to think to yourself, “Wow. Those Indians are a culture of dog-biters,” which, as far as I know, is not true. This is why, if you depend on newspapers to tell you what to think about the world, you will always get the wrong impression.
Tom wrote:
About “Judeo-Christian” values, I’m afraid I have to disagree with you. The major founders may have been deists as a result of the overarching influence of the Enlightenment, yet a large percentage of representatives to the Continental Congress, not to mention a vast majority of the population of the colonies were exceedingly Christian, especially in the New England colonies. If you examine the form of church governance common among the Puritans especially, you will see a very strong form of democracy there. Pastors ran a church purely at the whim of his congregants, and if he ran afoul of them, he could expect to be voted out of his position. Furthermore, Americans as protestants were very accustomed to the “covenantal” form of relationship with God, which very easily translated to the contract theory of government. Out of this church environment, and from the large number of people who came to America in search of religious independence you can see the beginnings of free speech, free association, freedom of religion, and a people accustomed to living in a democratic, relatively equal society.
If you examine almost every major social movement of the first 150 years of this country, you will find that they ultimately have beginnings in Christian values: the penitentiary system, abolitionism, temperance and prohibition, even the civil rights movement.
True, the Constitution as a legal document is not derived from the Bible. Yet I do not think one can avoid the huge influence that Christian thinking had on the majority of Americans and on the formation of our government. These values still exert much influence on our society, and our government.
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 11:14 am | Permalink
pjk wrote:
which is stronger tom? a society’s influence on religion, or religion’s influence on society? you seem to be positing the latter… that democracy, good governance, rule of law, etc. all come (at least in part) out of the influence of christianity on society. however, certain parts of the world that have always been overwhelmingly christian but never particularly free or law-abiding (latin america comes immediately to mind) seem to contradict your thesis. the english colonists obviously had something that the spanish colonists didn’t, and it wasn’t christianity. it’s my contention that in any given society, other social factors bear much more weight than religion, to the point that societies remake religion in their own image. therefore, the democratic elements of christianity that you site were not organic products of christianity, rather they entered christianity from the culture around it: that stiff-upper-lip, protestant, common-law, english culture that was, at the time, enthralled with certain ideas about political organization. the spanish, meanwhile, had a catholic dictatorship that lasted up until a few decades ago.
also, the christians who first came to america were fleeing persecution by …. other christians. one could quibble about which side was “inheriting” the TRUE judeo-christian tradition of tollerance and free speech, but I would argue that it was more a matter of which side was absorbing secular liberal values faster, which has very little to do with theology.
and finally, while it’s true some christians were involved in the abolitionist movement, it’s also true that most of christianity had been working out creative ways to justify slavery for the first 150 years of this country. what you really saw was the church belatedly (with the possible exception of the Quakers) adopting a secular movement that manifest itself in wooly religious movements like the Unitarians and crazy John Brown, neither of which were even remotely mainstream. even today, how many mainstream, middleclass christian families teach their children that Martin Luther King Jr. as a great man?
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 2:00 pm | Permalink
John wrote:
Not to mention that the founders were basically implementing the ideas of European political philosophers (mostly Locke and Montesquieu). The private religious beliefs they held are basically irrelevant to the assertion that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The story of how Locke and Montesquieu and their peers built a political philosophy that included separation of powers, civil rights, etc., is a long one that has very much to do with Enlightenment philosophy, the Reformation, a rejection of Monarchical government, blah blah blah…
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 2:04 pm | Permalink
John wrote:
Peter, ugh. The Reformation figures hugely into the relationship between politics and Christianity. The Christians in Latin American are mostly Catholic, and Catholicism is not a form of Christianity that particulary lends itself to Democracy. Protestantism is, and what happened in the colonies was that a group of Montesquieu readers said, “hey, we have a chance here to put these political ideas into practice if we can get the redcoats to leave us the fuck alone.” And that’s what they did. I’d never argue for some rose-colored view of our nation’s oh-so-Christian past, but I’m also not about to dismiss the influence of Christian values on America’s founding out of hand with a skewed reading of Europe’s intellectual history. The foundation for this country’s form of government was laid in Europe, where royal families never would have allowed it to be put into practice. It took WWI for that to happen.
Posted on 19-Jan-07 at 2:16 pm | Permalink
J.A. Cook wrote:
Here’s a question I’d like to see answered–where did those “secular liberal” values come from? What is the intellectual history of the idea that one’s religion is a personal matter for which one should not be persecuted?
I have some ideas on the matter, of course, but would like to hear the perspective of the man who has strayed farther than I from the faith of his fathers.
That is to say, my answer, interesting though it is to me, isn’t going to be much of a surprise–I’m going to say that secular liberal values owe a fair bit of their genetic material to Christianity (though they may also have other parents). But you, Mr. Krupa, should have a fascinating take on this question, as an intelligent, fair-minded man with a good idea of where your adversaries are coming from on this question, considering where you have been and where you now are, intellectually speaking.
Sooo…
Given the fact that most (read “all”) cultures in antiquity were neither secular nor liberal, what were the basic reasons that such values developed as a significant and powerful force on the European continent over the last two millenia (if you agree with me that their development goes back that far, and indeed farther still).
Answer only if you have the time and inclination, of course.
I hope all is well with you and yours in this New Year.
Posted on 21-Jan-07 at 3:06 am | Permalink
pjk wrote:
Printing press.
the printing press exploited humans’ natural curiousity and ambition by allowing them to communicate with each other, share ideas, read ideas, blah blah blah. which is why you got the reformation and its whole brilliant aray of different sects, up to and including “secular liberal culture.”
Posted on 21-Jan-07 at 7:23 am | Permalink
John wrote:
Funny you mention the printing press, which Muslim rulers (the Ottomans) didn’t allow to be used for much of anything until the early 19th century even though the technology, of course, had been around for centuries.
So… the printing press does wonders for Europe, ushering in the Reformation (?), while the Muslim world basically rejects it as blasphemy. Wonder why? Oh yeah, we were just lucky.
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 3:09 pm | Permalink
pjk wrote:
John, if Christianity is what is at the root of values like free speech, etc., what the hell happened in Russia, Spain, Poland, Italy, Greece, etc. etc.?
you say the Reformation didn’t happen there, but that begs the question of WHY the Reformation happened in Western Europe but not the REST of the Christian world. Reform resulting in the Bill of Rights is obviously not the teleological destiny of Christianity. I say, therefore, that it wasn’t Christianity at the root of democracy, free speech, etc., but rather something about Western European culture. hell if I know what it was exactly, but it’s for that reason that I’m sticking by my theory that the qualities of a religion are determined by the society around it, not the other way around.
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 4:38 pm | Permalink
Dan H wrote:
In Spain the School of Salamanca (all Catholic theologians) were developing the first theory of human rights, advocating and theorizing about the advantages of international law, and formulating the laws of supply and demand.
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 6:09 pm | Permalink
Dan H wrote:
Also the Founding Father’s weren’t deists, they in fact were from a variety of religious confessions. Many like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and James Madison were. They were also Free Masons. Does that mean America is a Masonic Nation? No. A deist nation? No. A Christian Nation? No? While you’re right to denounce the simplistic “America is a Christian Nation” mantra I believe you make a similar mistake in asserting the notion the Founding Father’s were in no way was influenced by Christianity. Both readings of the American Founding seem a bit to simplistic.
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 6:59 pm | Permalink
Tom wrote:
I see your point that the Bill of Rights didn’t arise, out of necessity, from Christianity. Honestly, I think our unique system of government, and our Bill of Rights arose out of a confluence of different ideas and ideals that combined at an opportune moment. For instance, Reformation theologians, in an effort to reach back and find a more “true” and “original” Christianity adopted a methodology in vogue with humanists of the day - namely, to go back to the fountains of knowledge. In secular knowledge, this was done by popularizing and spreading classical learning. With Protestants, as we all know, this was done by examining the Bible. Yet, also inherent in the Reformation is the idea that one’s conscience must be the ultimate arbiter of one’s beliefs. This idea was not popular in any form of Christianity prior, and I think that it is precisely this focus on the individual, and also the development of a much broader church government (in particular, the priesthood of all believers), which laid some of the groundwork for our beliefs in human dignity, human rights, and human equality. Throw in a strong legal system inherited from the Romans and adjusted a bit by the Germans in Britain, add a pinch of sovereign humility in the form Magna Carta, add a dash of Enlightenment thinking, and voila, you’ve got our Bill of Rights.
It’s almost a classic “chicken and egg” problem, yet I think that religion and society were so inextricably linked at this time in European society that it is nearly impossible to determine whether religious or secular factors had a greater influence on the society. Your right in asserting that religion is often an outgrowth of the society in which it resides or from which is springs. In the case of the Reformation, it was primarily a movement of the educated middle-classes. However, you still have to account for all the social changes that the Reformation wrought on European society. Europe may have been prepared, in a way, for all those changes, yet those changes did not occur spontaneously - it was a result of a different theology and a different interpretation of Christianity.
Also, I think your assertion that human rights weren’t developed in non-Protestant countries is a false assertion if you look at the entirety of Church history. The Roman church abolished slavery, elevated the status of women, and even at one point abolished making war on Sundays. The Catholic Church is even the original arbiter of the laws of war. Yet to answer your question directly, again, I think it’s a matter of church governance. The Orthodox and Catholic churches of the time were intimately connected to European nobility, and the churches did not think it in their interest to upset the system and embrace reformation ideas. One can see this in Revolution era France, where the people hated the clergy as much as the nobility, because much of the clergy was seen as supportive of the nobility. The Calvinists of Switzerland, though, got rid of their nobles and established democratic city-states. The Puritans who came to America were also no lovers of the establishment church in England, nor of the established nobility there, and so came here with very different ideas of how a society should be organized.
So, yea, it’s all a big jumbled mess of laws, Greek and Roman learning, Renaissance and Enlightenment thought, and Reformation religion, and if you took any one of those influences out of the equation, I think we would have a very different American today. In particular, I don’t think you can underestimate the huge affect that religion had on America, or on Western thought in general.
Posted on 22-Jan-07 at 9:48 pm | Permalink
Bob wrote:
I’m pretty uncomfortable with some of Tom’s assertions, namely that protestant Christianity in particular encouraged republican/democratic government styles. The Greco-Roman part of western intellectual heritage certainly has precedent for such forms of government, but if anything the protestant Christian versions were weak watered down versions pre-American Revolution.
Specifically, I’m very uncomfortable with using Geneva under Calvin or the Puritan colonies as examples of anything particularly democratic or republican in government. Geneva already had a city council structure pre-calvin and had switched to a republican form of government in 1530 some 6 years before Calvin arrival; to be blunt, Calvin more or less overruled as a dictator from 1541 on reversing Geneva’s reforms on a variety of issues.
Within reason, the puritans do make a better example, as some areas did develop local democracy of the town meeting type. I’d argue that the puritans, left to their own devices tended more towards Cromwell/John Winthrop-style oligarchy. Hell, the ruling puritan aristocracy nearly instituted a mandatory female veiling policy. Certainly, the anteiglesia meetings of the Basque region antedate both the New England town meetings as well as Protestantism.
Generally speaking, I’d say that Christian attempts to form republic/democratic governments universally failed to amount to much more than religiously focused oligarchies . Only with the addition of church/state separation and enlightenment thought do you see the ability to develop the American Republic.
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 10:42 am | Permalink
Tom wrote:
I knew I could count on you Bob to shoot holes in the weakest part of my argument
You are right in saying that “Christian” forms of government were weakly democratic or republican before the revolution. Yet I suppose my main argument is that protestant Christianity laid a large part of the cultural groundwork in America for the revolution and the establishment of an Enlightenment form of representative government. The way I see our country, we are essentially composed of a Republican form of government with a large dose of democratic culture thrown in. One can look at the Episcopalian landed gentry culture of Virginia at the time and it is difficult to see the democratic attitudes which are now more common in America. Democratic culture had to come from someplace - yes, our economic and governmental systems encouraged a more equal society - yet I think that this culture of democracy has an earlier origin, and that is in the protestant New England churches. Of course, if one could prove that democratic cultures can be spontaneously created, then I suppose this theory would be flawed.
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 3:25 pm | Permalink
daniel silliman wrote:
All attempts to move from historical accidents to causal relationships are pretty suspect. For one thing, you have to ask the question, Why is it important for someone to prove this connection? While that may not make the connection false, it does often show all sorts of layers of ideological corruptions.
The interesting thing about the printing press (to me) is the way it allowed us to think of individuals as individuals, rather than as groups, communities, tribes, etc.
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 4:06 pm | Permalink
Dan H wrote:
Daniel makes an excellent point. Causal relationships within history are primarily hypothetical and as such much harder to prove, in any scientific sense, than to disprove.
Speaking of the printing press, why did it not have the same effect in China which had movable type technology since the early 14th century?
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 5:06 pm | Permalink
Tom wrote:
My best guess would be that that comes from the nature of the Chinese alphabet, which is so large, complex and difficult to learn that the advantages of the printing press were effectively mitigated. If it still takes years and years to simply learn how to read, the lower and middle classes never had enough leisure time to make buying books worth the money.
Posted on 23-Jan-07 at 8:54 pm | Permalink
neill wrote:
That’s the first I’ve heard of Chinese taking a perceptibly longer time to learn than Western languages.
At any rate, I only wanted to say that the press was also heavily restricted in Christian Russia, with education only being offered to the collective farms in the 1890s–and then was taken away shortly thereafter. If we’re going to have to change the argument from “Christianity begat democracy” to “A very specific type of Christianity, which happens to correlate at .99 with wealth and geography begat democracy,” then I’m not sure what the question is anymore.
Posted on 24-Jan-07 at 6:43 pm | Permalink
Tom wrote:
I said that the Chinese ALPHABET is harder to learn, not necessarily the language. When a language has thousands of characters that one has to memorize, it does not make learning that language easy. Also, from everything I’ve ever heard or read on the subject, Mandarin and Cantonese are very difficult languages for Western speakers to learn, especially with the tonal elements of the languages.
My main argument is not “Christianity begat democracy”, because obviously ancient Athens has the honor of being the first true democracy. My argument is that “Christianity helped sow the seeds for the development of a uniquely American form of government”, and in this case I’m making a distinction between our republican form of government and the democratic nature of our society.
Posted on 25-Jan-07 at 2:24 pm | Permalink
neill wrote:
“If it still takes years and years to learn how to read” isn’t an argument about the technical hurdles to putting calligraphic characters on a press, as it’s written. You’re right that they’re difficult to learn for non-native speakers, but then so is Russian.
There’s plenty of evidence, as described by others above, that Christianity isn’t logically sufficient for democratic development. I’d argue that’s it’s not logically necessary either, but the sample size there is much less robust. Essentially, then, we’re reduced to saying that American Christianity sowed the seeds for American government–but since American Christianity is endogenous to at least eleventeen other sociotropic factors, isn’t that simply saying that American-ness sowed the seeds for America?
Posted on 27-Jan-07 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
Tom wrote:
The Russian alphabet isn’t that hard to learn, really, at all - I took Russian in junior high, and Cyrillic actually made things easier because it’s an almost purely phonetic alphabet, and the number of letters is approximately the same as the Roman alphabet. Also, if you know how to pronounce Greek fraternity letters, you already know about three-quarters of the Cyrillic alphabet. The problem with Chinese “alphabets” isn’t a technical one, it’s about the number of characters, which traditionally numbers at around 13,500 characters. In fact, there really is no such thing as an “alphabet” in Chinese. That’s just too many characters for any one person to know. Even simplified Chinese keyboard layouts still have around 6000 characters. So, it naturally takes many years and lots of work to even get to a working knowledge of how to read Chinese, and I doubt your average Chinese peasant or merchant in the 15th century had much time to devote to learning all the characters of their language.
http://www.logoi.com/notes/symbols_number.html
Posted on 27-Jan-07 at 1:26 pm | Permalink