A History of the American People

established church and a head of state crowned in a sacramental ceremony and a parliament
which began its proceedings, each day, with a prayer. The American Constitution's first
susbtantial reference to religion comes only in the First Amendment, which specifically rejects a
national church and forbids Congress to make any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' How do we explain this seeming anomaly? There is no doubt that if the United States Constitution had been drawn up in 1687 it would have had a religious framework and almost certainly provided for a broad-based Protestantism to be the national religion. And if it had been drawn up in 1887 it would have contained provisions acknowledging the strong spirit of religious belief and practice in America and the need for the state to nurture and underpin it. As it happens, by a historical accident, it was actually drawn up at the high tide of 18th-century secularism, which was as yet unpolluted by the fanatical atheism and the bloody excesses of its culminating storm, the French Revolution. Within a very few years, this tide began to ebb, and the religious spirit to flood back. In France this was marked by Chateaubriand's epoch-making book Le Genie du Christianisme (1802), in Britain by the formation of the Clapham Sect in the early 1790s, and, the same decade in the United States, by the start of the Second Great Awakening. But in 1787, the new religious impulses, which were to make the 19th century into one of the great ages of religious activity and commitment, were not yet felt. Thus the actual language of the Constitution reflects the spirit of its time, which was secular. It also reflects the feelings of some of the most prominent of the Founding Fathers. Washington himself, who presided at the convention, was probably a deist, though he would have strenuously denied accusations of not being a Christian, if anyone had been foolish enough to make them. He rarely used the wordGod,' prefering Providence' or ‘the Great Ruler of Events.' He was not interested in doctrine. Sometimes he did not trouble himself to go to church on Sunday, rare in those days. He wrote of immigrants, whom he did not much like in general: If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa or Europe. They may be Mohammedans,
Jews or Christians of any sect, or they may be atheists.' He regarded religion as a civilizing force,
but not essential. Later hagiographers, such as Parson Weems and Bishop William Meade, tried
to make out Washington as more religious than lie was-Weems relates that he was found praying
in a wood near Valley Forge, by Quaker Poots, and Meade has him strongly opposed to
swearing, drinking, dancing, theater-going, and hunting-all untrue. In fact Washington's adopted
son, Parke Curtis, in his book about his father, has chapters on hunting and on balls and theater-
visits. The most notable aspect of Washington's approach to religion was his tolerance-again,
unusual for the time.
Franklin was another deist, though much more interested in religion than Washington was. His
approach to it reflected America's rising impatience with dogma and its stress on moral behavior.
He wrote to his father in 1738: I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue; and the scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall be examined not on what we thought but on what we did; and our recommendation will be that we did good to our fellow creatures." In his characteristically American desire to hustle things along, he felt that religious practices simply took up too much time. He particularly disliked long graces before meals-one should be enough for the whole winter, he felt. He took the trouble to abridge the Book of Common Prayer, producing much shorter services-the time saved on Sunday, he argued, could be then spent studying improving books. His Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (1728) contains a form of religious service he invented whose climax is the singing of Milton'sHymn
to the Creator,' followed by readings from a book `discursing on and exciting to Moral Virtue.'