With regard to J_B's post and quote about fundamentalists:
I see several problems with that. One of the tenets of the politically active right-wing christians is that the founders of this nation were christians, and intended to found a christian nation. To support this contention (which is almost painfully, obviously specious to anyone who has thoroughly studied the provenance of the concept of church-state separation--more in moment), the christian right practices "quote mining," a technique first used by those who oppose the teaching of a theory of evolution. The term "quote mining" refers to willfully taking remarks out of context in order to create an illusion about the point of view of someone with expertise, for whom the entire body of expression illustrates the contrary point of view. Therefore, for example, christian zealots ignore that Charles Darwin was trained as a member of the clergy, and that he sat on his conclusions and the theory they suggested to him for decades, until Wallace wrote to him propounding the same thesis.
Quote mining on the topic of church-state separation will lead, for example, to ludicrous contentions about the christian devotion of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was nominally a member of the vestry of an Episcopal church. Many of the political leaders of Virginia participated in what was the established church of the Commonwealth before the revolution. Once the revolution commenced, these same men moved quickly to disestablish the Episcopal church. Jefferson wrote scorching condemnations of organized religion, and "re-wrote" the four gospels to remove what he considered interpolation and Pauline heretical impositions. Look up "the Jefferson Bible" online sometime.
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The origin of the early American opposition to religious participation in the state and state imposition on religion is complex, and requires a good deal more scholarship than is exhibited in the quote J_B has provided about the evolution of the term fundamentalist. In many respects, the quote is a simple-minded approach which only looks at the rise of the term "fundamentalist," and ignores or is ignorant of the entire context of religion in American public life.
Although there were several heretical sects which were persecuted before the implosion of the Renaissance church, which survived their persecution, the first notable example of protest was that of Jan Hus, a Bohemian (i.e., a Czech) cleric in the 14th and early 15th century. He became the focus of much more militant opponents to Papal authority and corruption, and was deemed dangerous by church leaders. In 1415, he was invited to the church council sitting at Constance, and was arrested, tried and executed as a heretic. Those who considered him a martyr to christian virtue became known as Hussites, and they opposed the heavy-handed imposition of church authority by the Habsburg Archdukes of Austria. As was to prove the case throughout both the Protestant Reformation and the revolutionary movements in European society (the successful American and French revolutions, and the failed socialist uprisings of 1848), the main proponents and supporters of both religious protest for reform, and political revolution were members of the middle class, beginning with successful skilled workers. In the case of the Hussites, many were gunsmiths, as Bohemia was the industrial heartland of what would one day become the Austrian empire (the Habsburg Archduke was usually, but not always, elected the King of Bohemia). Therefore, the Hussites became nomadic craftsmen, and would literally circle their wagon trains to fight off Austrian knights and their men at arms using firearms, and using them successfully.
Although that was significant, it was not decisive. I won't go into the history of Martin Luther, but will simply note that his activities coincided with the election of the Spanish King Carlos as Holy Roman Emperor (he was descended from the Austrian Habsburgs through the marriage of the Philip the Handsome to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella). He liberally bribed the German Electors, as he was fabulously rich by the standards of the day, from the revenues of Spain's world-wide empire. The Electors unwisely made one of history's most conservative and fanatical Catholics Holy Roman Emperor just as the Germans were beginning to rebel against the impositions of the church, and, in particular, against simony (the selling of indulgences, that is, selling forgiveness for sins). This lead to horrible wars in Germany and Italy, and the Protestant Reformation was born in strife and hysterical pigheadedness. The Lutherans had not moved very far liturgically from the Roman church, and the German Reformed Church, the Anabaptists and the Calvinists further fragmented the confessions of Europe. John Calvin was the great theologian of the Reformation--far more influential in matters theological than was Martin Luther (who was a truly weird character, obsessed with Satan, farts and feces). Calvin's
The Institutes of the Christian Church was a seminal document, and he joined the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli to attempt to found a "godly republic" at Geneva. Another significant product of that attempt was the Geneva bible. Although not widely used today, it inspired a host of new translations of scripture into vernacular languages.
The Anabaptists were probably the most despised of the early Protestant reformers. Although it would make modern Americans incredulous to think of Baptists in these terms, they were accused early on of communal living, free love and sexual orgies. (We all know Baptists won't have sex standing up for fear that it will lead to dancing.) They did band together in particular neighborhoods of German cities because they were almost universally persecuted, and did so for their own protection. Although German Princes who left the Roman church to take up Lutheranism or Calvinism in response to the predilections of their people opposed the Catholics, they also fought among themselves--but none of them were Baptists.
One of the theological scholars of Henry VIII's new Episcopal church establishment in England, John Knox, was very intrigued by Calvin, and travelled to Geneva. upon his return, he was important in spreading Calvinist doctrine (election of saints, rule of the faithful by congregational elders, predestination and the superiority of faith over works were the main revolutionary tenets of Calvin's theology) in his home region of Yorkshire. Calvinism spread to the north, resulting in the establishment of the Scots Kirk. It also spread south and became extremely popular among "low church" members of the Anglican church ("low church" referred to those members who opposed ritualistic practices--which they claimed was ill-disguised "Popery"--and preferred congregational authority to episcopal authority). Their "high church" brethren (and sisterns) ridiculed them for their "purity" of doctrine, labelling them "Puritans." That tactic failed utterly, however, as they wore the title like a badge, and men and women proudly proclaimed that they were, indeed, Puritans.
When Henry VIII died, he was succeeded by his sickly, stupid and weak-willed son, Edward VI. When he died quite young, he was succeeded by his sister Mary. Mary was the daughter of Catherine of Arragon, and Mary had been betrothed to Philip, the son of Carlos (the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who had been gleefully slaughtering German "heretics"). When Edward died, Mary was immediately married to Philip by proxy (i.e., the English Minister in Spain said "I do" on her behalf), and began to slaughter those who had previously slaughtered Catholics in England--hence, "Bloody Mary." But she did not last three years, and was succeeded by her half sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Philip claimed that as he had not consummated his marriage with Mary, he should now marry Elizabeth. Elizabeth put him off until she was sure of her position as Queen, and then defied him--so, you get the Spanish Armada, 1588 and all that. Elizabeth was on the throne when John Knox spread Calvinism in Scotland and England, and she was wise enough not to disturb the Puritans so long as they expressed complete support for her throne, something they were wise enough to agree to.
Elizabeth died in 1603. She left no heir, and neither had her half-brother Edward nor her half-sister Mary. Her aunt, Margaret, the daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, had been married to King James of Scotland, a policy decision. I won't go into the tortured genealogy of the Scots royal line, which produced Mary Queen of Scots and a good deal of strife between Elizabeth and the Scots. The result was, though, that King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. He was extremely intelligent, very well-educated, very canny in the Scots sense of the term, very religious and queer as a three dollar bill. He couldn't shake the dust of Scotland off his shoes fast enough. He showed up in London with unseemly haste, and promptly installed his wife half a mile away and his homosexual lover next door. In line with the rage for new bible translations, he set up a truly star-studded commission of scholars, divided into several committees, and working diligently on the effort personally (when not buggering his buddy and fighting Parliament over funds for his gay boys), produced the King James Version. He had survived the politics of Scotland (think in terms of being the King of East L.A.), and wisely continued Elizabeth's tolerance of the Puritans. More than that, he also turned a blind eye to the continuing fragmentation of Anglican Protestantism. Many men "of the middling sort" had carried Puritanism a step further, and were establishing independent congregationalism, which appealed to the working class. A movement grew which insisted upon "mechanic preachers," which is to say, ministers of a congregation who earned their own living six days a week, and preached the gospel on Sunday. (In the seventeenth century, "mechanic" meant anyone who worked with his or her hands to get their living.)
James did his Kingly duty, and sired a son and heir on his wife. When James died in 1625, his son Charles succeeded. Charles I had been jealously supervised by a suspicious Parliament, and had been raised as a devout high church Anglican. He was everything his father was not. Although he was intelligent, he was not nearly so intelligent as James I. He was indifferently educated, because more emphasis was put on his Anglican orthodoxy than on real scholarship. His best buddy was Bishop Laud, whom he made Archbishop of Canterbury (the English "Pope," if you will) as soon as possible. Laud made it his business to force the Book of Common Prayer on everyone, and decided it was his holy mission to exterminate the Scots Kirk and Puritanism. Charles' response was, basically, "OK, how can i help?" Parliament decided that they needed to talk religion (many, perhaps most, members of the House of Commons were now Puritans or Dissenters--independent congregationalists--and there were quite a few prominent Puritans in the House of Lords). Charles took offense, and prorogued Parliament. That means he sent them home without dissolving Parliament, which would have required a new election and a new Parliament--at a time when the Puritans were growing in power and influence. He attempted to rule England without Parliament, and he attempted to prevent Puritans from leaving England, or at least to prevent their money from leaving England. (It is estimated reasonably that 12 million pounds sterling [i dont'have one of those funny little "L" thingies on this keyboard] left England in that period--an enormous sum by the standards of the day.) In 1638, he sent an Army to ram the Book of Common Prayer down the unwilling collective throat of the Scots, whose response was, basically, "Oh Boy ! ! ! Another war with the Sassenach ! ! ! " Charles had his ass handed to him, militarily. Charles cast about for more money to get another army (after all, neither he nor Bishop Laud were actually, personally bleeding), and seized "ship money." Ship money was the informal tax voluntarily paid by merchants of the City of London to support the Royal Navy, and thereby to protect their trade. One member of the old Parliament who was a City merchant, John Hampden, therefore refused to pay ship money. Hundreds of merchants followed his example, and now Charles was hard up against it.
He called a new Parliament, which would become known as the Long Parliament. They immediately got down to their favorite subject, what one member referred to as "the vexed question of religion." Charles was not amused, and--leaving out all that annoying detail--the upshot was that he went to Oxford, and raised his banner. That meant that he went to war with Parliament. He lost. First Bishop Laud lost his head, and, eventually, so did King Charles. But to win the war against the "cavaliers," Parliament found it necessary to make a devil's bargain with the dissenters, the independent congregationalists. An unprepossessing member of the Long Parliament, Oliver Cromwell, who lived in the fen country of East Anglian, raised cavalry from among the dissenters, and because they believed they were fighting for their religious and civil rights, they were highly disciplined and fought like the very devil. Although the Royalist enjoyed some early success, Lord Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell used the perfervid enthusiasm of the dissenters, to win the victories necessary for Parliament to defeat and to capture the King. Charles was executed on January 30, 1649. Colonel Pride took his troopers to Westminster, and they stood at the doors of Parliament to exclude members not deemed "politically correct" in terms of religion and politics. "Pride's Purge" assured that Presbyterianism would never prosper in England. For more details, see my biography of Oliver Cromwell.
Eventually, Cromwell sold the dissenters down the river, and made himself Lord Protector. Before the civil wars began, the Puritans had sent John Winthrop to Massachusetts Bay with the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Before they landed, in line with the vision of those whom we know of as "the Pilgrim Fathers," he articulated the Puritan plan to establish a godly republic in the wilderness--to build a "shining city on the hill" (you didn't really think that Ronnie Reagan has actually had an original thought, did you?). Our history suffers from a ridiculous New England bias--but the Massachusetts colony was important, because Winthrop took the radical measure of extending the franchise to any adult male who was recognized as a member in good standing of an established congregation. Meanwhile, in Virginia, Royalist refugees found out the hard way that discretion is the better part of valor, and in the absence of royal authority, and in despite of Parliament, the House of Burgesses took over the governance of the failed Virginia Company. Both colonies had to survive on their own during the civil wars, and both colonies developed both institutions of self-governance and particular notions of the place of religion in public life. In the case of Massachusetts, the outcome was the establishment of Congregationalism. "Heretics" like Roger Williams were driven out, and Williams established the colony of Rhode Island. Other Congregationalists, who preferred their own prejudices to those of John winthrop, established the Connecticut colony.
In Virginia, the "aristocracy" of wealthy planters took an opposite direction. The Anglican church was the official establishment, but they had learned the lesson of Bishop Laud, and tolerance was the de facto system, even if there were a state supported religious establishment. Maryland was supposedly as refuge for Catholics (Lord Baltimore and the Calvert family were English Catholics), but for pragmatic reasons, Protestants were put in most positions of authority. Admiral Penn had fought both for the King, and for Parliament (not uncommon in Europe in those days, and no one thought the less of him for it). When Cromwell died, his son Richard--"Tumbledown Dick"--proved unequal to filling his father's shoes, and finally, General George Monck marched south from Coldstream in Scotland with the Parliamentary Guard, the only military body left in England. He eventually decided that he liked the idea of the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and Charles II, after eleven years of poverty and exile, was restored to the throne in 1660. Admiral Penn leant 15,000 pounds sterling to Charles and his brother James, in addition to other loans he had made to Charles I during the early years of the civil wars. He died before Charles II could repay him, so Charles gave a ridiculously huge chunk of the North American continent to his son, William Penn, who had decided to follow George Fox, and had become a member of the Society of Friends--the Quakers. Pennsylvania theoretically ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans--they don't try to enforce the claim, though. The Quakers practiced religious toleration, and the western frontiers filled up with Scots and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, some German Baptists and fewer English Baptists (Baptist still had a mania for clumping together in cities) and members of the German Reformed church as well as quite a few German pietistic sects. The Swedes had started a colony in what became Delaware, but they weren't very good at it, so the bad old Dutch took it away from them. The Dutch, however, had established the first religiously tolerant nation in Europe (they even liked Jews, and almost liked Catholics--but not quite), so Lutheranism was the nominal established church there. The brother of Charles II, James, Duke of York, took New Holland and from the Dutch, and the city of New Amsterdam was named New York in his honor. The Dutch territory was carved up into New York, New Jersey (pay back to the nice folks on the island of Jersey who had sheltered Charles when his daddy was executed) and the old Swedish colony became Delaware (it wasn't named for the river, the river and the colony were named for the Earl de la Ware, who had leant large sums to Charles I). Charles II paid off his other debts with the two colonies which became the Carolinas (Carolina form Carolus, the Latin for Charles).
Charles II had learned a thing or two, and had inherited the tolerance and canny intelligence of his grandfather, James I. In New York and New Jersey, no religious establishment was made, and the Dutch Reformed Church was left unmolested. Baptist and Presbyterian craftsmen and merchants flocked to those colonies just because there was no establishment. Lutheranism remained the nominal establishment in Delaware, but no one paid any attention to them, which seems to have suited them just fine.
The Protestant Reformation has never really ended. New evangelical movements have continually sprung up, and this happened with particular vigor in Germany and in England. Many of the German pietists who settled Pennsylvania--Mennonites, Moravians and the people we call the Amish--came to the "new world" to establish their own little "godly republics." Scots and Scots-Irish Presbyterians took to the back country of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas (the Carolinas were nominally Anglican, but making money was the principle religion of the early planters). Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, ending religious toleration in France, and French Calvinists (Calvin a was himself French by descent) fled to Holland, and from there to Germany and England, many of them ending up in the Carolina back country. In England, the first great evangelical movement took place early in the eighteenth century, and was known as the great awakening. In line with the unrealistic emphasis on New England in our history, far too much has been made of this event as to its effect on the majority of the population. German Protestants, Dutch Protestants, Presbyterians and Huguenots (French Calvinists) were largely unimpressed--they already considered themselves evangelical. But the Congregationalists of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the Baptists and Presbyterians in the cities of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were badly riven. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, the power of government was used by "Old Light" Congregationalist to suppress the itinerant evangelical preachers and the "New Light" movement--and this was to be crucial in pre-revolutionary politics. The Presbyterians managed to eventually resolve their differences, but the Baptist were badly split, and have continued to fragment ever since.
The result, however, is not at all what modern conservative christians would have you believe. In particular, the Congregationalists (because of the government-sponsored strife) and the Baptists (because of their own, bitter, internal fights) came to abhor government establishment of religion, or anything which smelt of government involvement in any aspect of religion. That is why, While President of the United States, Jefferson wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut in 1802:
Quote:"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
He was at pains to reassure them that government would stay out of religion, just as they wished to assure that religion stayed out of government.
Writing in the late 1830s (in an undated letter), James Madison wrote:
Quote:"It was the Universal opinion of the Century preceding the last[i.e., the seventeenth century--the 1600s], that Civil Government could not stand without the prop of a Religious establishment, and that the Christian religion itself, would perish if not supported by a legal provision for its Clergy. The experience of Virginia conspicuously corroborates the disproof of both opinions. The Civil Government, tho' bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State."
It is completely unprecedented in our nation's history for government to sponsor religion in any form. The long slide downhill begins with Abraham Lincoln. He was a consummate politician, and although his pre-political career shows no devotion to any religious sect, and not even an attendance upon church services, as President, he played the religion card to the hilt. Evangelical fervor grew on both sides of the battle line in the American Civil war, and a complete turn-around was effected. Jefferson could publicly state that there must be separation of church and state, and Andrew Jackson could publicly refuse to declare a day of thanksgiving on the same principle, without political repercussion. Early Americans liked things that way, and were deeply suspicious of religion in government. But Lincoln established a Thanksgiving holiday, and "in God we trust" was put on the coinage in 1862 (the Mint eventually objected that this violated Congressional mandate, so the Congress got busy and authorized it for later coins). Subsequent evangelical movements have revealed the potential political power of manipulating the religiously convinced. The first great public demagogue of religion in broadcasting was the Catholic priest, Father Coughlin, who began broadcasting in 1926, and lasted nearly thirty years. But he was a radical social reformers, and obviously did not appeal to conservative Protestants (although he did have a large Protestant following among "liberal" Protestants). Since then, any number of preachers have taken to the airwaves for venal reasons, but jokers like Pat Robertson have seen the potential of religiously motivated rabble-rousing for political ends.
Such evangelism and such exploitation of evangelism are nothing new--but radio and television as means of propagating the evangelism for political ends have put an entirely new gloss on the practice. There have always been "fundys," whether or not they were so named. But the slick promotion of a political agenda disguised as "social values" is an entirely new aspect of the priesthood playing on the credulity of the largely uneducated believer. In the seventeenth century, middle class and well-educated Protestants prided themselves on their knowledge and education. But even then, the rejection of learning and any knowledge not from a scriptural source was starting to grow. John Bunyan was a Puritan who suffered during the Stuart restoration. Although a Puritan, his theology was more that of the independent congregationalists. The early passages of
The Pilgrim's Progress reveal a good deal of the attitude of the "mechanic preachers" toward books and learning. According to them, the bible and Calvin's
Institutes were all a man ever need read (and women had better things to do than to read or even learn to read). That attitude is serving the modern demagogic exploiters of evangelicals quite well.
