One of the primary battle grounds of the so-called “culture wars” in America is how to interpret the United States Constitution. A lot of debate over the Constitution’s meaning revolves around the “original intent” of the framers. Conservatives like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas interpret the Constitution based on what they believe the founders actually meant when they wrote the document. Others adopt the view that the Constitution is a “living” document. It must be adapted or even reinterpreted in order to speak to current issues in American life.
While Constitutional scholars will probably quibble with the simple way I have defined these different interpretive views, my point here is not to debate the meaning of the Constitution. Instead, I am wondering why we do not talk more about the “original intent” of the Declaration of Independence. This makes for an intriguing historical question.
Last month I blogged about David Armitage’s book on the Declaration. In The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, Armitage makes a compelling argument that Jefferson, his committee of writers, and the Second Continental Congress did not intend to write a document meant to proclaim human rights (the famous second paragraph). Instead, they set out to produce a document that announced American statehood to the world. It was only later, in the 19th century, that Americans turned the Declaration into a document about human rights. This was done by people like Lincoln, the abolitionists, and the women’s suffrage movement–individuals and groups who found the rights-language in the Declaration useful in their political crusades.
Armitage is not alone in making this argument about the original intent of the Declaration.
Pauline Maier, in American Scripture: The Making of the Declaration of Independence, writes: “In none of these documents is there any evidence whatsoever that the Declaration of Independence lived in men’s minds as a classic statement of American political principles.” (p.167).
Derek Davis, in Religion and the Continental Congress, 1774-1789: Contributions to Original Intent writes: “The Declaration of Independence was primarily a foreign policy document aimed at England, France, and Europe…” (p.109).
Barry Shain in The Myth of American Individualism The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought writes: ‘As Jefferson claimed in the opening paragraph, Congress’s intention in issuing the Declaration was primarily to show Americans’ ‘respect to the opinions of mankind [in that chauvinistic world, Europeans]’ by declaring and explaining to it ‘the causes which impel them to the separation.’ As such, its principal importance at the time was as a “foreign-policy statement.”
Armitage concludes:
Partisan strife at home, and debate about the nature of independence abroad, made it necessary for Americans to rehabilitate their Declaration after 1815. A document that had addressed itself to the “Opinions of Mankind” and to “a candid World” had to be recovered from its cosmopolitan contexts and made into something specifically American. This effort of domestication would have two equal and opposite effects: first, it would hide from Americans the original meaning of the Declaration as an international, and even a global, document; second, it would ensure that within the United States only proponents of slavery, supporters of Southern secession, and anti-individualist critics of rights talk would be able to recall that original meaning.
I have been thinking a lot about the Declaration of Independence because I am writing a chapter on it for my book manuscript on the place of religion in the American founding. I think some of the strongest proponents of an “original intent” view of the Constitution would probably be uncomfortable applying the same “original intent” interpretation to the Declaration. If Armitage, Maier, Davis, and Shain are correct, then the Declaration was not meant primarily to promote American rights. Thus, while the Declaration does affirm that rights come from God, the original intent of its authors was not to use this God-language to create a Christian nation. The God-language was pretty standard stuff for the eighteenth century.
Actually, it was the Declaration’s revisionists–Lincoln and others–who turned the Declaration into something meant primarily to promote American values like “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Consequently, anyone who wants to use the Declaration’s four references to God to argue that the founders wanted to create a Christian nation are engaging in revisionism as well. In other words, Lincoln, the abolitionists, the women suffragists, and the Christian America crowd have not only abandoned “original intent,” but they have also turned the Declaration into a “living document.”
I love your ending! As a Christian / Student of History, I am finding myself drawn to the Founders as Christians debate. I read Search for Christian America by Noll, Hatch, and Marsden and agree with their conclusions. Two questions for you. 1. What would you recommend reading that deals with the subject of a “Golden Age of Christianity”? 2. Why are Christians so caught up in their pursuit of linking the Founders with Christianity?
I love the article. Myself, I have problems with what the original intent of the Founders is. Dr Fea, I think you got it correct. The early states of the Union did not want to touch the issue of slavery at all. The whole issue of freedom for all men in their time seems like a paradox, with Jefferson and Washington having their own slaves.
Good luck Dr. Fea,
Colin (Visca Cataluna!)
Once again Prof. Fea you write a very thought provoking post on a touchy topic. I think you bring up some excellent points and I look forward to someday reading the chapter in your book you mentioned. I remember the Maier book quite well! I hope you and your family had a nice Thanksgiving:)
Jamie: Thanks for the post. If this is the same Jamie I met at Northwestern, thanks for writing and I hope all is well.
I am not sure what you mean by the “Golden Age of Christianity?” Can you be more specific?
Your second question is a complicated one, but I think the answer lies in our natural quest to find a past that is “useable.” Rather than exercising the discipline to search the past for its own sake, without a presentist agenda, we are wired to look for something in the past that meets our current needs. As long as the debate over religion and the founding remains so politicized I am not sure this pursuit of “linking the Founder with Christianity” will ever go away. Christians are not trained to think historically. We want to find people in the past that are just like us, even if they are not.
Colin: Thanks for the comment. I think you are correct–if you really want to get into the “original intent” of either the Declaration or the Constitution then you cannot ignore slavery.
Ironically, it was abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison who would later use the Declaration to support his anti-slavery views. In order to do this, according to Armitage and Maier, he would need to concentrate on the places in the Declaration that Jefferson and company did not intend to be the most important points in the document. He, in other words, would need to be a revisionist.
Thanks for the comment, Susanna. I forgot that I had assigned Maier in that Revolutionary America course.
I hope all is well and your library job is off to a good start.
What I meant by a “Golden Age of Christianity” is this idea that in the past, Christianity went hand in hand with our government. And by Christianity I mean the “religious right's” form of Christianity. I don't know if that makes more sense? Basically what I am looking for are books that would be similiar to Search for Christian America
And yes, this is the Jamie that you met at Northwestern
Hi Jamie: As you know from reading Noll, Hatch and Marsden, there really was no eighteenth-century “golden age” of Christianity in early America. Yet, though the Founding was certainly not “Christian,” America became a “Christian nation” in the early 19th century precisely because the Founders put freedom of religion in place. Many of the early 19th century historians of the Revolution, the promoters of the Second Great Awakening, and most of the Whigs were all in the business of trying to create an evangelical Protestant nation and they probably succeeded.
My forthcoming book (late 2010) on Christian America has two chapters tracing the idea of America as a “Christian nation” from the time of the Revolution to the present. Most of these attempts–from Mason Locke Weems to the Confederate states of America–seem to misread the founders on religion.