The Religion of the Presidents
Sermon by Steve Edington
February 20, 2011
Earlier this month President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. This is an annual gathering of religious leaders and legislators, and is one indicator of the role of faith and religion in our public life--a topic which I'll expand upon a little later. The President's remarks, as I found them, were...well...remarkable. Here's part of what he said to the 4000 persons who were in attendance:
"A call rooted in faith is what led me, just a few years out of college, to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the South Side of Chicago. And it was through that experience, working with pastors and laypeople, trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods, that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace him as my Lord and Savior." The President went on to say, "My Christian faith, then, has been a sustaining force for me over these past few years, all the more so when my wife Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time."
I take these as sincere words on the part of the President. They are sentiments he's expressed before. He said pretty much the same thing back during the Presidential campaign when mega-church minister Rev. Rick Warren conducted a widely televised forum with the two presidential candidates, and - then - Senators, Barack Obama and John McCain.
The line about having his and his wife's faith questioned was a pretty obvious response to that small but persistent portion of our nation's population who insist Mr. Obama is a Muslim. I swear, Jesus could descend from the heavens, point his finger at the President and declare, "This is one of my followers," and that still wouldn't be good enough for some. As I said in a sermon last fall, I don't know what bothers me more about this particular form of craziness: Insisting that the President is an adherent of a faith to which he bears no allegiance at all; or the besmirching of the Muslim faith by using it to smear the President. But that's enough on that subject for today.
My original idea for this President's Day sermon was to look at the faith stances of the two Presidents whose birthdays we observe tomorrow - George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I will do that. It did not take me long to see, however, that I was dealing with a larger issue - which is why the religious persuasions of our Presidents get the kind of attention they do from George Washington to our current President Obama. Going even further is the question of why religion - in a wide variety of expressions - plays the role that it does in a country like ours that is governed by a purely secular Constitution in which there is no reference to a Deity at all. I'll try to touch these bases over the next several minutes.
We'll open with this: Our Constitution, in Article 6, Section 3 (for those of you who may be following along), expressly forbids what the framers called a "religious test" to hold any public office. We adhere to the letter of this law. We do not legally require that anyone standing for any office disclose their religious convictions in order to hold office. But there is a more subtle, and a kind of de-facto, religious test at work anyway. It took close to 200 years for a Catholic to be elected to the Presidency; we've yet to elect a Jewish President; the very idea of a Muslim President--as just noted--is being used as a smear in some quarters. And I doubt that an avowed atheist running for President--or any number of lesser offices--would get far. So, there are all kinds of sub-rosa ways to have a religious test for the Presidency without requiring one outright.
Even we UUs, after all, like to point with pride to "our" five Unitarian Presidents. Well, some of them, anyway. We proudly hold up Jefferson and the two Adamses, and then lower our voices to a mumble when it comes to...ah...Millard Fillmore. Perhaps it is to our ironic credit that the Unitarians have given our nation its, arguably, best and worst Presidents! But if we really didn't think the religion of our Presidents should be any kind of an issue, then why would we even bring up "our" five Unitarian Presidents at all?
This phenomenon points to a wider paradox, actually, that has been a part of our nation's story from the time of its founding and well before. That paradox is that we have a secular form of government operating in a strongly religious culture. Given this reality, there is inevitably going to be a good degree of cross-fertilization, and cross-currents, between the realms of religion and the realms of governance in our civic life. To debate whether or not this should be the case is like debating whether or not New England should have winters. Both are facts of life. The more realistic question is how we best understand, and how we best live, within such a paradox. On that note, then, let's - finally - go to George Washington.
When Washington took the oath of office for his first term as our first President, he requested a Bible for him to place his hand upon as he took the oath. Nothing in the Constitution requires this. The Constitution, in fact, offers no specifics as how the oath is to be administered at all - it only provides the language. Nearly all of our subsequent Presidents, however, have followed Washington's extra-Constitutional precedent. By extra-Constitutional I mean neither required nor forbidden by the Constitution.
Washington - need I say it - was a very smart guy. He had just presided over the Constitutional Convention which had drafted and seen ratified a completely "God free" document. But he also wanted to send a signal upon becoming President under this document - that signal being that he was a religious man who valued the role of religion in society, hence his taking the Oath of Office of President with a hand on the Christian Bible. I don't think Washington was being insincere or cynical in so doing - but he was playing it smart; he knew the cultural climate in which he would be the President, and was making an overture to that culture.
As for Washington's religious convictions - well, there's an ongoing debate about that. He's been labeled everything from a Deist and a Rationalist to a born again Christian - usually by persons who want to cast Washington in their own religious, or secular, image. The thing I discovered in researching this sermon is that if one looks far enough into words ascribed to Washington, or had said about him, when it comes to his religion most anyone can find something somewhere that will support his or her position.
It's a little like proof-texting with the Bible. If you dig far enough you can usually find a verse that will back up whatever point or position you're seeking backing for. Washington was born and baptized into the Anglican - Episcopal after the Revolution--Church; and was buried with Episcopal rites - along with those of the Freemasons; but there is, again, debate over whether he ever took Communion in the Church. He was a fairly regular church goer, but not an especially devout one. He simply was not all that given to overt expressions of his faith, which is precisely what makes him an object of projection for those who want to ascribe all manner of religious persuasions to him. (And maybe George wanted it that way; just keep 'em guessing).
My best take is that Washington was a product of the 18th century Enlightenment - which placed a very high value on the use of human reason. And he had great regard for the messages contained in the life and teachings of Jesus. Like many of his contemporaries, his faith was most likely a blend of Deism and Christianity.
To stay with Mr. Washington for just a bit longer, he did have a deep appreciation for the role of religion in both personal and civic life. As Commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War he made sure to provide for Chaplains to be available to his soldiers to attend to their spiritual needs and general morale. One of the Chaplains he appointed, in fact, was Rev. John Murray - our spiritual ancestor who brought Universalism to America from England and founded the first Universalist Church in America in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
My favorite Washington quote when it comes to matters of his religion is found in the instructions he gave to the person who was hiring workmen for repairs and renovations on his Mt. Vernon home: "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedians (Muslims), Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists." Washington was apparently far more interested in getting good help than he was in the help's religion; and I find it of interest that he went out of his way to say that the nationality or religion of those he would be hiring should not be a factor. This seems to be the larger and more general approach Washington took - he wanted good workmen, good soldiers, good legislators, and good friends; and their religion was, at best, a secondary matter.
On that note, then, let's cut to Lincoln. Unlike the refined Anglicanism, and later Episcopalianism, to which Washington was exposed from his earliest years onward, Abraham Lincoln's parents were rural Kentucky-bred, hard-shell Baptists. While Mr. Lincoln did not follow in his parents' religious footsteps, it was probably this early Baptist influence that made him very knowledgeable of the Bible. You can find numerous Biblical references, stories, and allusions throughout Lincoln's public and private discourse. He was quite Biblically literate.
But at the same time Lincoln is one of the few United States Presidents who did not ever declare a specific religious affiliation. In responding to a charge made by a leading evangelical preacher of his day that he was an "infidel" Lincoln stated, "That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures, and I have never spoken with the intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular."
Religious affiliation or not, Lincoln was clearly a believer in God. Unlike the distant and remote God of the Deists, Lincoln's God was much more up close and personal. He did turn to prayer in many of the difficult and trying and painful periods in his life, in a way that a Deist would not.
On this note, while the record is unclear as to whether or not it was Lincoln who first added the words "so help me God' upon taking the Presidential Oath of Office, he is the first to be definitely on record as doing so. So, there's that Oath of Office thing again. It was Washington who introduced the use of the Bible to the ceremony, and possibly Lincoln who first added the words "so help me God," which all subsequent Presidents have uttered when the Oath is administered. Here again, we see the bringing in of certain elements of a religious culture to what the Constitution only prescribes as a purely secular matter, by both Washington and Lincoln.
To close on "Honest Abe," Lincoln clearly believed in Divine Providence, even if he did not channel it into any one faith. In a letter written to a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in the midst of the Civil War, he said, "The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, though we erring mortals may fail accurately to perceive them...We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this, but God knows best...Surely He intends some greater good to follow this mighty convulsion which no mortal (can see)."
Lincoln believed, that is to say, that history was ultimately in the hands of some Greater Power, some Divine Agent; and that we mortals are lesser agents, as it were, of that Ultimate Agent. This idea comes through quite well in the words of his well-known and oft quoted Second Inaugural Address at the end of the Civil War: "With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us bind up our nation's wounds..."
Okay, we've had forty-four Presidents so far in our nation's history. Some have been more vocal and overt than others when it comes to expressions of religion and faith. I've come to feel that the very nature of the Office does bestow something of a spiritual role upon a President that practically compels him, in some way, to speak to matters of faith. I think this is what Teddy Roosevelt was, at least in part, getting at when he called the Presidency a "bully pulpit." Note he did not say "bully podium" or "bully lectern."
George Washington, to go back to him for a moment, was one of the major architects in determining that our nation would be a Constitutional Republic and not a Constitutional Monarchy. He would be President Washington, but not King George; a good move on his part.
Note, however, that in a democratic nation that also retains a monarch, our Mother England for example, you get two necessary roles being fulfilled by two different persons. The Prime Minister, like our President, is the head of the government, and acts accordingly; while the Monarch--Queen Elizabeth for now--represents the soul and the spirit of the nation. In the absence of even a figurehead monarch, we put both of those roles on our President--the role of the podium and the role of the pulpit.
For all the political differences I had with him, I thought Ronald Reagan's finest moment as President was in how he addressed the nation after the Challenger space shuttle disaster. He spoke in a very moving way to the wounded soul and wounded spirit of our country; he was, for those few moments, in pulpit mode.
President Obama fulfilled the same role in speaking at the Memorial Service in Tucson for those killed in the wake of the assassination attempt upon Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords a few weeks ago. Even more recently, following the Egyptian uprisings, the President said the Egyptian people had helped move the moral arc of history a few more degrees towards justice. While he was citing words often invoked by Martin Luther King, President Obama was actually referencing the 19th century Unitarian minister, Rev. Theodore Parker, who said, "The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice." Even as the President holds a secular office, he was also bestowing a kind of spiritual blessing upon the Egyptian people as he moved between podium and pulpit modes.
Okay, let's see if I can pull some of this together and wrap up. We, as a matter of necessity in this country, maintain a legal separation between our institutions of government and our institutions of religion. I stand firmly behind that separation. At the same time we've always had, and most likely always will have, an interplay between a secular form of government and the societal currents of a strong religious culture. Couple that with what I've just said about how the very nature of our Presidential office gives it a dual role that encompasses the secular and the spiritual. When you put all that together, then, whatever it is that makes up the faith stances of our individual Presidents is clearly worthy of note and of exploration.
Of course it is not just the President who lives and moves in those cross-currents between the workings of civil government and the workings of religion. Any civic minded and civically involved person also moves in that same cross-current whether he or she be of any or no religious persuasion. The question is not whether the civil and religious or spiritual realms will mix. They will--as surely as there is snow in New England in winter. The question, then, is what kind of religious or spiritual perspectives do persons of faith, persons of many faiths, bring to the public square where civil policy is made.
I was glad this past week to be one of what turned out to be over 100 members of the clergy in New Hampshire who went on record as opposed to the attempt to repeal same-sex marriage in our State. While I don't wave my "Reverend" label all that high, I was perfectly fine in having that term before my name in taking such a stand. I want to be known as a religious leader in the public arena where public policy is made. A number of you bore public witness to that opposition this past Thursday in Concord. I'm assuming you were there, in that public square, at least in part, because of your ties to this religious community. I thank you and I salute you for being there.
It was clear back in the 1830s that the French journalist and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his travels in the America of that day, that we are a "(civic) nation with the soul of a church." Not a whole lot has changed in that regard. De Tocqueville maintained that one of the roles of religion in a secular democracy was to hold up a vision of the greater, common good that transcends the nuts-and-bolts workings of the state. That role is no less upon us now than it was in his day. May we continue to be among those who fulfill it.
Stephen Edington
February 20, 2011
