History lesson

Martin Marty says it;
http://blog.al.com/birmingham-news-stories/2010/04/historian_martin_marty_says_sa.html

Historian Martin Marty, delivering a series of lectures at Samford University, said Tuesday that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others have oversimplified and misrepresented the religious beliefs of the nation's founding fathers.

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not want government to favor Christianity, he said.

"They did not set out to have a Christian nation," Marty said Tuesday at Reid Chapel in the first of several lectures sponsored by the Baptist Joint Committee. "It would have been very easy to set that out."

Marty will conclude the Shurden lecture series today at 10:30 a.m. in Hodges Chapel at the Beeson Divinity School at Samford.

He said Tuesday that George Washington, a churchgoing Episcopalian who never took communion, used at least 28 different terms for God in his writings. He made every effort to be inclusive and nonsectarian, referring to the deity with words such as Providence, Heaven and Benevolent One. "They were looking for a language that would enlarge the context," Marty said.

Nine of the 13 colonies had established churches, either Anglican or Congregationalist, and the founders wanted to avoid establishing religion for the nation while being tolerant of differing religious beliefs, Marty said.

Marty, author of "Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America" and numerous other books, said in an interview that the founders have been distorted for political purposes.

"It's not honest," Marty said. "They say pluralism is our problem. Pluralism is our common story."

Clearly, the founders touted a virtuous citizenry and believed religion helped serve that purpose, he said.

"They cared about virtue, and they believed religion was backing that," Marty said.

But they also feared the tyranny of a government-backed clergy class, he said. Religion in America has thrived precisely because it was not backed or funded by government, he said.

U.S. religious expression has relied on the power of persuasion and evangelism, unlike in Europe, where state churches relied on funding from government to survive. The state churches of Europe declined and are moribund because they do not appeal to or serve the public well, Marty said.

"It's harmful for churches and other religious institutions to be privileged," he told Samford students. "We're much better off with protection and freedom."