I
t’s Good Friday and thoughts turn to the resurrection. But that begs some questions about Virginia, religion, bias and other oddities, not to mention myths.
A couple of months ago, I was driving and listened to a “Fresh Air” segment that actually ran on NPR a year before. The guest was Steven Waldman who had written a provocative book called “Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.”
It was a fascinating interview for me since I have long heard all the old saws here in Virginia about how our beloved state was a torch of religious freedom, that it was the bedrock of a “Christian” America and about how all over our founding fathers, such as the beloved Thomas Jefferson, rang the bell of Christian freedom.
Bunk, says Waldman (I went back and listened to his interview).
For one thing, Virginia was anything but a hotbed of religious freedom. As in most of the pre-revolutionary states, freedom involved “toleration of various Protestant sects and did not involve Jews or Catholics or atheists,” says Waldman.
Indeed, Catholics (I was raised one, by the way) were regarded as unwholesome and dangerous “papists” and their church was a “whore” for taking money offerings. Our freedom-loving colonist forefathers prohibited Catholics from holding office in 1640 unless they took an oath of allegiance to the Church of England. “Popish” priests were to be deported. Jews likewise didn’t exactly receive a welcome mat by the so-called freedom-loving “Christians.” They were kept out of Virginia for at least a couple of generations in the 1600s. Also not welcome: Quakers and Puritans.
Christian conservatives love to characterize Virginia and the U.S. as a “Christian” nation. Not exactly, says Waldman. With the revolution came the idea, albeit a somewhat limited one, of religious tolerance. George Washington, for instance, encouraged the rapid anti-Catholicism among his troops to end. Why? He realized they needed help from mostly-Catholic French Canadians against the British.
Or, take Thomas Jefferson, the demigod that everyone in the Old Dominion reveres and some have named their neo-con think tanks after, even if they have no idea of what TJ was really thinking. Although deeply religious, TJ was not exactly your faith-healing, Jesus-praising evangelical that you might see on TV all bundled up in the American flag while clutching a crucifix.
TJ had a lot of trouble with the Bible. He thought Jesus Christ was a brilliant social philosopher but he didn’t buy miracles, divinity and a lot of other stuff. Nor did he especially like Christmas or Easter.
In fact, in later life, TJ got out a pair of scissors and started cutting up the Bible to eliminate the parts he didn’t buy. Gone were a lot of miracles. Christmas? Gone. And so was Easter. He ended his TJ Bible edition with the rock moved against the tomb on Good Friday. “It never moved again,” says Waldman.”
The end. As Waldman says, “This guy would never be elected today.” Happy Easter!
Peter Galuszka