The Rev. Keri T. Aubert 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont  Psalm 48

July 5, 2009     2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Proper 9, Year B, RCL Mark 6:1-13

The story of Israel as told in the Hebrew Scriptures is often violent and sometimes shocking. Large chunks of it are a military history, a chronology of major battles against a variety of enemies—some who have been the aggressors and some who have been aggressed upon. Mixed in are tales of intrigue, corruption, betrayal, and assassination. The story of David is particularly fascinating. David was a great political leader, but he was not without faults. In a couple of weeks we’ll hear about how David impregnates the wife of one of his soldiers and then schemes to have the soldier killed in battle. God punishes David by striking dead the child. It would make a great television series—and in fact, the television program Kings, currently playing on NBC, is a modernized retelling of David’s story.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, sacred and secular interests are entwined. David is elevated by the prophet Samuel and advised by the prophet Nathan. David is anointed to God’s purposes and we are told that “The Lord is with him.” Many centuries later, Christianity assumed the practice of having religious leaders anoint political leaders, and thus in Europe bishops anointed kings. June 24 marked the 500^th anniversary of the anointing of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Henry VIII brought the Reformation to England. He separated England from the Roman Catholic Church, establishing the Church of England, of which the British monarch remains the titular head. The coronation of Britain’s current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, took place in 1953, during a service of the Holy Eucharist as part of which she was anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Americans have a different vision of how the church and the state should be in relationship. The fourth amendment to the United States constitution says this: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” For more than two hundred years, we’ve been arguing over what that first clause really means. Nonetheless, that religion is mentioned first in the first amendment is perhaps a good indication of religion’s place as an important flash point in American history. Among North America’s earliest settlers were the Puritans. Puritans felt that the Church of England retained too much from the Roman Catholic tradition and should follow more-reformed practices found in continental Europe. The king threatened imprisonment to force the Puritans to comply with the Church of England, and this led many of them to sail to America. Settled in New England, the Puritans then proceeded to practice the very sort of religious intolerance that they came to America to avoid.

For example, in the 17^th century, what was then called the Holy Commonwealth of Massachusetts “passed laws banishing all Quakers from the colony. Quakers who refused to leave could be imprisoned, whipped, dragged from town to town, branded, have their ears removed, and executed.” Among those executed was one woman, Mary Dyer, who was hanged in the Boston Common. [i] Maryland was founded by an English Roman Catholic as a safe place for Roman Catholics. Though its laws initially granted religious freedom to all, Puritans later took over, and for a time Roman Catholicism was outlawed altogether. For most of the 18^th century, and up to the time of the outbreak of the American Revolution, Maryland’s Roman Catholics could not vote and were required to pay taxes to support the Church of England.[ii] Still, because the colonies were settled by many different groups who were seeking religious freedom, America was religiously pluralistic, if not within a region, then as a whole. This initial pluralism and the eventual expansion of European settlement led to even greater religious diversity. Nonetheless, as the young republic was being founded, there was considerable tension between those who opposed and those who supported the establishment of state-sponsored religion.

The man most credited with authoring first amendment is James Madison, one of the fathers of the Constitution. Soon after the Constitutional Convention, the first congressional election took place, and Madison faced a tough race in his home state of Virginia. At that time, the Constitution had been written, but not the Bill of Rights. One of the most vibrant religious movements of the 18^th century was the Evangelical movement. Evangelicals operated outside the religious structures of their day, and government recognition of those religious structures was a threat to their existence. Evangelicals were a key constituency in Madison’s congressional district, and they did not believe that the Constitution adequately guaranteed religious freedom. James Madison had previously opposed the establishment in Virginia of state-supported churches. In that first congressional election, he promised the Evangelicals he would introduce a bill to guarantee religious freedom. He won their vote and his seat, and he went on to fulfill that promise.[iii]

All this is on my mind for a couple of reasons. First, because it’s Independence Day weekend; and second, because of an article in the May issue of Harper’s Magazine about the growth of evangelical Christian fundamentalism in the American military, particularly in the officer corps. The article tells some disturbing stories that depict an alarming pattern. For example, it quotes one general as saying that “the global war on terror” is “a spiritual battle of the highest magnitude.”[iv] It tells of another general who appeared in uniform “at a 2003 Billy Graham rally—televised around the world and on Armed Forces Network—at which he declared the baptisms of 700 soldiers under his command evidence of the Lord’s plan to “raise up a godly army.”[v] The author says that these military leaders “see themselves not as subversives but as spiritual warriors—‘ambassadors for Christ in uniform,’ according to Officers’ Christian Fellowship; ‘government paid missionaries,’ according to Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry.”[vi] More than two-thirds of current military chaplains are evangelical or Pentecostal.[vii]

This leads to the question of whether, as some would say, America was founded as a Christian nation. As part of the attempt to answer that question, there has been quite a bit of study recently about the faith of our founding fathers. What has been revealed is that things aren’t as simple as those on either the right or the left might wish to believe. Just last year, Gary Kowalski, minister at Burlington’s First Unitarian Universalist Society, published a book about the faith of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. He describes these men this way:

Dissidents by temper, they were also children of the Enlightenment, which made them as unconventional in their religious opinions as they were innovative in their politics. Many were labeled atheists or infidels by their contemporaries—an accusation that was unfair, but contained a tiny grain of truth. For in a certain sense, they were unbelievers. They questioned the accepted verities. They had little use of religion they considered closed-minded or doctrinaire. Few of them believed in the literal accuracy of the Bible or in the traditional creeds of Christendom. Most regarded dogmas like the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement as nonsensical or, at best, irrelevant to achieving a virtuous life.

But none of them were scoffers or religious skeptics. They spoke warmly of a Creator and a moral law that governed the universe. American’s founders were confident that both nature and human nature bore the signs of a divine destiny and origin.[viii]

Journalist Steven Waldman, author of another book about the founding fathers, summarizes their views this way:

Freedom of conscience means not only the freedom to believe, but also the freedom to change—not only the right to practice one faith, but also the right to a spiritual journey. The Founders didn't just champion religious freedom—they used it. Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison never stopped examining—passionately, combatively, wisely—life's deepest questions. Each journey was distinctive, but they ended up in similar places, still deeply spiritual, but with an ever-shortening list of required religious creeds . . . .[ix]

Some of these men were Deists, and some were Unitarians. Living not long after the superstition of the Dark Ages, they were convinced of the value of human reason and were personally involved in scientific inquiry. Thomas Jefferson famously created his own Gospel by cutting out all the miracle stories and including only Jesus’ good works. He felt that Jesus’ teachings had been subverted, especially by the apostle Paul.[x] George Washington was an Anglican who avoided going to church when communion was being served.[xi] But he also spoke of divine Providence in his speeches, though he referred not to God but to the Great Architect and Organizer of the World.[xii] For these founding fathers, religion is valuable because it leads to a virtuous life. As Kowalski puts it, “The founders tended to be interested in religion for the same reason they supported education, as a means toward fostering a more peaceful, prosperous, and ethically minded republic.”[xiii] This may be something for us to think about, as public virtue seems to be in short supply right now, if this week’s sentencing of financier Bernard Madoff is any indication.

In later years, James Madison criticized George Washington for putting too much religion in his speeches. The problem as Madison saw it was not that it would turn people against Washington, but that it would turn people against religion, because they would see these invocations of God as being political rather than religious. Waldman connects this to our current political climate, saying this: “. . . what we are seeing now is polling data that says that one of the effects of the dominance of religious conservatives in the last 20 years is that it’s soured a generation, not on politics, it’s soured them on Christianity. That's the big issue that religious leaders have to grapple with right now.”[xiv]

On this Independence Day weekend, I believe that it is appropriate that we celebrate the founding of our nation—and not despite the fact that we are people of faith, but because we are people of faith. But let’s be clear that we celebrate the founding of the United States not as a Christian nation, but rather as a nation in which we are free to be Christians—or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or agnostics or even atheists. It is a nation in which each person is free to follow the path that carries them toward the fulfillment that can never be forced and that, when pursued freely, leads them to loving engagement with their fellow humans at home and abroad. Thanks be to God.