Over at Religion in American History, Paul Harvey has posted an informative interview with David Sehat, author of the new book The Myth of American Religious Freedom. Here is a taste:
Paul Harvey (PH): David, the central phrase in your book is “moral establishment,” and you argue that for much of American history we have had a “moral establishment that connected religion and the state.” Can you briefly define what you mean by this term for our readers, and why you have chosen to make it central to your book?
David Sehat (DS): Paul, thanks for reading the book and for interviewing me.
When I began researching this book, I was reading the letters and writings of a nineteenth-century agnostic named Robert Ingersoll. My intention was to write a book about American freethought or American agnosticism as a way of showing the informal power of Protestant Christianity. But as I read Ingersoll’s papers, I came across a case (he was a lawyer) that puzzled me. In 1886, he unsuccessfully defended a man named Charles B. Reynolds, who was being tried on two counts of blasphemy. I was stumped: How could a man be convicted of blasphemy nearly one hundred years after the passage of the First Amendment? As I went deeper into the case, my confusion grew. I discovered that blasphemy law existed for much of the nineteenth century, even if its enforcement was erratic. According to its proponents, criticizing Christianity or any elements of Christianity undermined the public foundation for morals. I also discovered that blasphemy was similar to many other kinds of law in that Protestant Christian ideas received the formal protection of law, which was a surprise to me. In other words, the judgments in this case, and many others, only made sense if Christianity was something like an official religion that relied upon the protection of the law.
To make sense of what was going on, I borrowed the idea of a “moral establishment” from the legal scholar John Witte Jr. Taking Witte’s concept further than he might have intended (and probably not in a way that he would agree with), I claim that the moral establishment involves the use of law to perpetuate Christian morals in society. The more I researched, the more I saw that this moral establishment was one of the chief mechanisms throughout American history by which Protestant Christian partisans maintained religious power over society in often illiberal ways.
Part two of this interview will appear tomorrow.
Heh heh. A “Christian nation,” and Mr. Sehat seems damn unhappy about discovering the truth, judging by his choice of words.
“Illiberal,” of course is subjective, especially when used by a 21st century liberal. One might also say instead that people were obliged to behave “decently.”
I haven't read his book, but I suspect he overreads into his evidence a bit. The nation was founded on “natural law,” and it was held—even by nonbelievers like Jefferson—that the biblical morality was not in conflict with reason.
As for blasphemy, an examination of the Western world's history [incl the Greeks] was that “blasphemy” was not theological, but a threat to peace and order. Heresy = sedition. Socrates' impiety towards the gods of the city is a threat to order, hence the hemlock. And it was well-known he had the option to flee Athens. It wasn't about theology.