First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty Page #5
- Year:
- 2012
- 84 min
- 87 Views
left in his mouth.
He was a supremely
successful planter,
quite probably the richest man
in colonial America,
yet he was known
for his reserve,
a public figure's sense
of eternal caution.
Roberts:
George Washington wasthe most cautious man that,
I think, I have
ever read about.
He was so aware of how
everything he did was watched
and would be followed
or commented upon,
seem to have
some significance.
Mitchell:
He was reservedbut not unfeeling.
Washington hoped, as he said,
to promote
"the happiness of mankind."
Man as George Washington:
I trust the people
of every denomination
will be convinced that I shall
always strive to prove
a faithful and impartial patron
of genuine, vital religion.
No one would be
more zealous than myself
to establish effectual barriers
against the horrors
of spiritual tyranny
and every species
of religious persecution.
George Washington.
Mitchell:
Washingtoneven showed respect
toward the religious freedom
of his enemies.
In 1775, he ordered
colonel Benedict Arnold
to invade Canada, hoping
the French Canadians there
would jump into the war
on the American side
and take up arms against
their old enemies, the British,
but Washington gave
the invaders
very particular instructions.
Man as Washington:
As far as lays in your power,
you are to protect
and support
the free exercise
of the religion of the country
and the undisturbed
enjoyment of conscience
in religious matters
with your utmost
influence and authority,
so forth and so on...
Mitchell:
Washington'sorders to colonel Arnold
on the army's conduct
in the Canadian provinces
were explicit.
I would ask you to avoid
all disrespect
to or contempt
of the religion of this country
and its ceremonies.
That is clear?
Fenster:
The campaign in quebecwas a military disaster.
The American army was
turned away from Canada,
which was more than happy
to turn away
from the American rebellion.
Mitchell:
With the invasion a failure,
Canada would remain British,
but a precedent
had been set.
George Washington had made
it clear that the cause
of American liberty would
include freedom of religion.
Mitchell:
On the face of it,
the American revolution was
nothing less than blasphemy.
The king of england was
chosen by God
and aligned with God,
yet virtually every
founder felt that religion
was a keystone
of his very being.
How could the founders
rationalize their
rebellious actions?
Meacham:
What I do think religion did
for the founding generation is
it gave them a confidence
and a way of seeing the world
in which the individual became
the primary organizing element
of the society.
It was no longer
the king and the aristocracy.
It was the citizen,
and the citizen drew
its authority,
drew its being
Mitchell:
The emphasison individual rights came
directly from John Locke,
the 17th century
English philosopher.
Everyone, said Locke,
had a natural right
to defend his "life, health,
liberty, or possessions."
Meacham:
It was his thinkingthat helped them see
that we needed to move
from the divine right of kings
to the idea that
we were all created equal
and that, in fact, divinity
resided in every person.
Rights that came from a king,
or even from a mob,
were rights that could be taken
away by a king or by a mob.
Rights that came
from God were permanent.
Mitchell:
Not only didindividuals have rights,
America's founders were
willing to claim those rights
in the face of the armed might
of the English crown.
In the summer of 1776,
a committee of 5,
including Jefferson,
Adams, and Franklin,
submitted their work.
56 members of congress
then signed
the declaration of independence.
Brinkley:
You were putting yourlife on the line for liberty
by signing that document.
Mitchell:
The declarationof independence was
a secular document based
on implicit faith.
It mentioned God 4 times,
twice in the first
two sentences.
Fenster:
Even as it ticked offa list of reasons
for the rebellion,
some of which may seem
quite petty today,
it raised the dimension
of the demand
for independence and made
it a spiritual thing.
Mitchell:
Where didtheir right to rebel come from?
From God.
It was not a king, pope,
preacher, or politician
who bestowed freedom
on human beings but God.
"The laws of nature
and nature's God,"
the declaration said,
entitled the American people
to be both equal to the British
and separate from them,
and all men "are endowed
by their creator
with certain
inalienable rights,"
including "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness."
Mitchell:
The thirdreference to God was
an appeal to "the supreme judge
of the world."
The fourth acknowledged
"the protection
of divine Providence."
God was there 4 times
in just 1,337 words,
yet more important
were things that
the declaration
did not talk about.
Meacham:
Christianitywas not mentioned,
Jesus was not mentioned,
the trinity was not invoked.
The founders understood
that it was going to become
a country of many
different faiths,
of many different tongues,
and they wanted to preserve
the right of everyone
to pursue that part
of their lives in as free
a context as possible.
Mitchell:
With so manydifferent faiths,
religion could have broken
the new country apart,
but diversity could also
bind Americans together.
Difference, paradoxically
enough, was something
we all had in common.
We were all part
of a diverse whole.
As Madison would later argue,
the fact that there were
so many different groups
could act as the best guarantee
of religious freedom.
No single powerful group
could bully the rest.
Holland:
There's sucha rich legacy that comes
to us from the founding
of America,
a rich culture of faith
that other
human beings matter,
that we should
care for them,
that there is something like
transcendent truth out there.
They've held us accountable
for justice and equity.
Alexis de tocqueville in his
classic work
"democracy in America"
asked the question,
"what has been responsible
for America's
Democratic greatness?"
He argued, that the difference
was America's mores,
its character, its national
sense of values and ideals.
To be an American is to believe
in some things,
and those things are
equality, liberty,
constitutionalism.
And those founders created
this basis for nationhood.
There was no nation in 1776.
No one has ever come up
with better principles.
No one has come up
with a better principle
than the equality
of human beings,
the basic equality
of human beings
as children of God.
No one's ever come up
with a better principle
than the idea that
we are endowed
by our creator
with certain unalienable rights,
rights that
the government didn't give us
and therefore the government has
no right to take away.
Those are principles
that are perennial.
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