Posted
by Joel Mathis
March 31, 2007 at 7:28 a.m.
The spirit of religion, the spirit of liberty
This is part 3 of my attempt to blog Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." I am not a scholar, but a regular guy reading my way through. So there's that. An online version of the book can be found [here.][1]There are two ways - more, probably, but two for our purposes today - that one can tell the story of the early days of European settlement of what is now the United States:¢ A small but hearty group of Pilgrims, tired of religious repression in their home country, crossed the sea to make a new home where they could live out their own beliefs in the manner that they chose. These are the people who gave us freedom of religion, one of our most cherished rights. This is, I think, the narrative most of us learn first.![][2]¢ A small but hearty group of Puritans left behind one religiously dominated country so that they could create their own religiously centered system elsewhere. These are the people who gave us the Salem Witch trials and, indirectly, "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Crucible." America, as we know it today, was born of a scolding and intolerant Puritanism that has defined the national character ever since.Whichever narrative makes more sense to you probably says a lot about your politics today.Given the ongoing battles still being fought today over the role of religion in public life, it's probably not surprising that de Tocqueville keeps touching on the topic as he explores the "ORIGIN OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS, AND IMPORTANCE OF THIS ORIGIN IN RELATION TO THEIR FUTURE CONDITION."His conclusion provides our starting point:I have said enough to put the character of Anglo-American civilization in its true light. It is the result ( and this should be constantly kept in mind) of two distinct elements, which in other places have been in frequent disagreement, but which the Americans have succeeded in incorporating to some extent one with the other and combining admirably. I allude to the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty._If he could see us now.He might come to the same conclusion. After all, here's a description of the laws of Connecticut in 1650: The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and, strange to say, they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ.'Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord," says the preamble of the Code, "shall surely be put to death." This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy~ Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents was to be expiated by the same penalty. The legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus applied to an enlightened and moral community. . The consequence was, that the punishment of death was never more frequently prescribed by statute, and never more rarely enforced.The chief care of the legislators in this body of penal laws was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community; thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was not subject to magisterial censure.A little bit later, the money quote:_It must not be forgotten that these fantastic and oppressive laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the customs of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws._So there you go. Democracy and theocracy (to use a term, perhaps, too broadly) are not necessarily mutually exclusive.Lest, however, that religion be seen solely as a force for repression, we should also note that, during the early days of settlement, it also gave birth to the notion that every child should receive some education._But it is by the mandates relating to public education that the original character of American civilization is at once placed in the clearest light. "Whereas," says the law, "Satan, the enemy of mankind, finds his strongest weapons in the ignorance of men, and whereas it is important that the wisdom of our fathers shall not remain buried in their tombs, and whereas the education of children is one of the prime concerns of the state, with the aid of the Lord...." Here follow clauses establishing schools in every township and obliging the inhabitants, under pain of heavy fines, to support them._That's right: Our public education system was created to keep Satan at bay. But that was before Darwin.There's much more interesting discussion to be found in this section of DIA. Some thoughts about how Americans were born of exile - and, as we know, "the happy and the powerful do not go into exile." And more about how democratic institutions were built from the ground -- meaning township -- up.But given the tenor of some of our nation's current debates, the topic of religion is the one I find most interesting.So: How well are the spirit of liberty and spirit of religion interacting in America?_The Cup O'Joel discussion of "Democracy in America" appears, hopefully, on Saturdays. [1]: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html [2]: http://cdn.channel.aol.com/amgvideo/dvd/cov150/drt100/t188/t188236wslv.jpg
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JohnB (anonymous) says…
Hmm.
I don't argue with either de Tocqueville's or your conclusions, but others from (more or less) the same era made very different arguments about the state of religion (no pun) in this country. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, in his book Letters from an American Farmer (written during the period from just before to just after the Revolution), makes the claim that diversity of (Christian) practices, which no one was very upset about, actually led to something of a reduction of religious fervor, less of an insistence on adherence to one dogma or another. While that fact certainly contributed to communal harmony, Crevecoeur seems (in my reading) to be saddened by the resulting loss of vigor in religious practice (not that he wants anyone to go all Spanish Inquisition on his neighbor's ass).
All this is a long way of saying that I wonder if Tocqueville had read Crevecoeur (whose book was very popular in England and France) and, if so, the extent to which he takes Crevecoeur into account.
Of course, it also occurs to me that Tocqueville was in this country during the Second Great Awakening, which certainly would have shaped his observations as well.
And now I realize I don't know how to post links here. No learning.
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says…
One also has to keep in mind that there are two kinds of liberty: the liberty of "me" and the liberty of "us." And they are nearly always in conflict.
The first is pretty self-explanatory, and makes up much of our "internal" political discourse. _I_ can do what I want. Keep your laws off _my_ body. _I_ should be able to keep what I earn. In many ways this is the libertarian streak of America.
The second finds its modern equivalent perhaps in the war(s) in Iraq. When people talk about freedom in Iraq (hell, they even codenamed the invasion after it:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releas... )
what they are talking about is the liberty of "us." Group-self-determination as it were, the ability to decide what "we" want to do with no outside interference. But no one in his right mind expects that the Iraqis, even if "free," are going to have anything but an Islamic-inspired legal code. There will not be a lot of freedom of me.
What we see in the Puritans is much of the latter, but what you have in the whole of colonial America (which was not just puritans, but trading companies, Catholic sanctuaries, and a whole host of other organizations) is the former: the right to live as one wishes so long as it doesn't upset the apple cart of what everyone else wishes. You are free to be X, but if you choose that, you can't live in a place where everyone else is exercising their freedom to build a society of not-X.
Joel is of course correct that the laws that people find so repressive were freely chosen: to those people they were not repressive but rather expressive of the kind of society they wished to build, peopled by the kinds of individuals they wished to be.
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
Bill: Good thoughts.
A common criticism these days, of course, is about attempts to "legislate morality." But any legislation, just about, draws moral lines for the community. In a democratic republic such as ours, though, it's possible for the lines to move, and to move back and forth- witness our own state's evolution roller coaster of the last 8 years. Or the evolution of attitudes toward gambling in the Kansas Legislature. Or, in our own town, toward smoking. Democracy, combined with the rule of law, is the community's unending process of deciding (and, occasionally, moving) those boundaries.
Which, perhaps, is obvious. de Tocqueville is useful, though, for reminding us that such questions and conflicts are not new to our age.
John: Maybe I'll tackle Crevecoeuer next!
MjA (MJ Allen) says…
You always complain that I don't comment on your blog; well, nothing has changed. I'm still not going to comment on your blog. I'm just here to say:
happy birthday!! xoxox!!
Joel (Joel Mathis) says…
Awwww. You remembered.
Wait -- how did you know?