Puritan religiosity and the founding fathers' separation of church and state

American History

America's Puritan History and Today's Political Landscape

The United States is a nation whose identity is as entangled with concepts of religiosity as with concepts of Constitutionality and freedom from monarchical tyranny. The discussions of its Founding Fathers would be very much informed by the need to reconcile this ingrained faith with an ambition to create a nation informed by the ideals of natural rights. This meant a freedom of religion that seemed to contrast the Puritanical-Protestantism underlying village life for many Americans.

Indeed, in a fledgling nation with no small number of illiterate rural constituencies, the proctoring of religious piety in concert with the imposition of political ideals would be a defining characteristic in the nation's cultural development. Indeed, it would revealed to be a political device in many ways, used to manipulate a constitutional system founding on an explicitly stated separation of church and state. To this point, the founding fathers appear to have been largely driven by the desire to preserve this idea. As our text indicates, "at best, most of the revolutionary gentry only passively believed in organized Christianity and, at worst, privately scorned and ridiculed it . . . Even puritanical John Adams thought that the argument for Christ's divinity was an 'awful blasphemy' in this new enlightened age." (Wolf, 160)

And yet, Wolf goes on to discuss the manner in which religious values remain such a prominent part of the political process. In spite of the effort to which our founding fathers went to prevent such manipulation, the puritanical roots of American culture and values is now suffieiently entrenched to the point that presidential candidates must declare their faith to expect any chance of victory. To the point, Wolf recalls the manner in which recent elections, included those of Bush and Obama thereafter, have called religion into the public discourse as a way of identifying the candidates and their resonance with American culture at large.