The Case for Christian Nationalism

10. The Foundation of American Freedom | III. Religious Liberty in the Founding Era (Part 4)

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

Wolfe points to the 1780 Constitution of Massachusetts as an “example of both full toleration and establishment,” but as was previously shown with the arrest of Father Cheverus (the future Bishop of Boston) in 1800 for nothing more than marrying a Catholic couple¹, “toleration” was strictly limited to Protestants. This anti-Catholic attitude lasted through the first half of the 19th century in Massachusetts, and often resulted in mob violence; as late as 1854, a Catholic church in Dorchester was dynamited by Protestant nativists.² In these cases, Protestants were the ones violating what Wolfe calls “common elements” of religious law put forth by “pro-establishment voices”:

… (1) the necessity of organized religion for public happiness and civil order, (2) the effectiveness of religious establishment to provide religious instruction throughout society, (3) a provision stating that toleration is condition on peaceful assembly and support for the civil government, and (4) that civil government should suppress violation of natural religion, such as blasphemy and impiety, and prevent one sect from harming another.³

Rarely were these principles, in the law of Massachusetts or elsewhere, applied towards perpetrators of nativist violence, let alone the incendiary rhetoric that encouraged it. Often it was bombastic, anti-Catholic Protestant ministers, such as the main instigator of the Ursuline convent arson of 1834, Lymann Beecher, who violated the conditions of peaceful assembly and prevention of “one sect from harming another.”⁴ Wolfe’s statement that “inner beliefs accompany or produce outer or external expressions… As such, they can clash or conflict with others’ activities”⁵ is an easily abused principle - those who once riled mobs into action against “Papists who owe no allegiance but to Rome”, based their convictions on similar notions. Wolfe’s regular use of this premise is a reminder that non-Protestants, let alone non-Christians, would be forced to keep their heads down and their mouths shut under his government, lest they be considered a threat to “public happiness” and/or “public safety”, and face state-sponsored violent suppression. This is again made clear in his criticism of James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments.

… Madison writes that “[r]eligion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate… It is [an] unalienable [right] because the opinions of men… cannot follow the dictates of other men.”… He then says that legislatures lack “jurisdiction” over religious belief, having “limited” authority. But, without logical justification, Madison extends the restriction of civil jurisdiction over the inner man to the outward man. In so doing, he not only fails to make the crucial and classical inward/outward distinction, but he is also led into a practical absurdity: that people have a right to outwardly express all inward religious beliefs, even when they are publicly harmful.⁶

As he has done multiple times before, Wolfe very selectively quotes Madison, failing to address passages from Memorial and Remonstrance that make convincing counterarguments to his preferred form of theocratic government. Here are some of those very pertinent rebukes from Madison, which speak to the public harm of state-enforced religion:

True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority…

The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves…

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?…

Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution…

Compare the number of those who have as yet received [the light of Christianity] with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions; and how small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to the light of revelation from coming into the Region of it; and countenances by example the nations who continue in darkness, in shutting out those who might convey it to them.⁷

Wolfe’s limited defense against Madison is an appeal to tradition logical fallacy; he states that Madison does not adhere to the “classical inward/outward distinction”, as if classical is automatically better. He also writes, “Mark Hall states that he ‘could find no record of any civic leader being influenced by, or appealing to, Madison’s Memorial prior to the ratification of the Bill of Rights [in 1939].’”⁸ This argument is unbelievably fallacious, because the man who wrote most of the Bill of Rights and who is most credited with its passing is James Madison. It was written and passed by Congress four years after the Memorial and Remonstrance, and first ratified two years later; clearly Madison’s views on religious liberty played an integral role in the first ten amendments to the Constitution and, consequentially, had a significant effect on common views regarding the proper limits of government power in the new American republic.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. See chapter 1, Perfecting the Nation, section I., The Christian Nation.

2. Michael Williams, Shadow of the Pope (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1932), 84.

3. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 418.

4. Michael Williams, 65.

5. Stephen Wolfe, 421.

6. Ibid., 422-423.

7. James Madison, “Amendment I (Religion): James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” June 20, 1785, https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html.

8. Stephen Wolfe, 424.