First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty Page #5

---

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 was

the 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 reserved

but 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:
Washington

even 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's

orders 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 quebec

was 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

from being a creature of God.

Mitchell:
The emphasis

on 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 thinking

that 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 did

individuals 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 your

life on the line for liberty

by signing that document.

Mitchell:
The declaration

of 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 off

a 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 did

their 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 third

reference 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:
Christianity

was 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 many

different 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 such

a rich legacy that comes

to us from the founding

of America,

a rich culture of faith

and morality that teaches us

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.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes