What do we value?
Why do we value it?
I must say this, even though it will probably get both Tripp and Twinkie mad at me. I've never much cared whether the founders were deists, theists, any more than I've cared whether they were porcupine farmers. The whole debate strikes me as miscast.
The question is not whether the republic was founded on God or not; the question is whether the founders got the rules right. And whether we've followed their rules when we should and not followed them when we should.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the U.S. Constitution is set up to be vague. It's short. And its greatest pieces of genius -- its limitation of legislative power by enumeration, its first ten amendments focusing on limiting the state's power -- ensures that future generations must spend a great deal of effort in interpretation.
And, inevitably, a big part of that interpretation becomes "what did the Founders mean?"
Which naturally tempts us into thinking, "well, if we want to know what the founders meant when they said "X" in the Constitution, then we need to know what the individual founders' essential moral, religious, political beliefs were.
But that's where we go wrong. In figuring out what the Constitution says, we're not looking for what the founders as individuals believed about God. We're looking for what they decided collectively about how to constitute a nation and its government. Some of the founders were likely deists, some were likely theists, and some, like Thomas Paine, were undoubtedly atheists.
But the Constitution was decided upon at the intersection of beliefs, not as the union of beliefs. When Madison, et al, were writing the thing, they wrote not just for those who thought the same as they did about religion, politics, etc., but for those who thought differently.
The "intent of the founders" that matters in Constitutional interpretation is that intersection of beliefs. And the intersection of beliefs simply can't be reduced to this or that broad "-ism". Sorry, but the founders did not all share the same ideology, either religiously or politically.
What God wanted, what God "ordained" for them, these did enter into the calculation for some of them. But not for all, and not all in the same way.
The "religion clauses" in the Constitution were a reaction to specific historical experience (the "Established" Church of England, Test and Corporation Acts, 39 Articles, etc.). Attitudes toward non-Christian faiths, to the extent they entered the Constitutional calculation at all, were shaped by several hundred years of interaction between Christian and non-Christian that were, to be frank, very, very different than the interaction of the last 100-150 years.
It's another reason why the genius of Madison, et al, is so profound. Madison and the others didn't know how the world would change, but they knew that the world would change. They weren't just concerned with the specific abuses and usurpations of George III that Jefferson listed in 1776. They were wary of how the evolution of society would offer new opportunities for abuse and usurpation. So they designed the Constitution -- or tried to, anyway -- in a way that said "you can do this, and nothing else. If you want to do something else, then you have to amend the Constitution."
They may never have contemplated the modern nanny state, but they were well aware of the historical possibilities of centralized power and its dangers -- they knew of the history of France and Spain and Portugal, of Venice and Genoa, of the great Asian and North African empires. They also knew of the worries of majoritarianism: many of them feared, as much as did the Tories of England, the possibilities of democracy on the Paine-ite model.
And so they put together a Constitution that was designed, not to grant power, but to limit it. The separation of powers that we all heard about in school between the three branches, and the separation of powers between federal and state that, alas, too few of us learned about -- both of these were to limit power. And, most importantly, they limited the law-making power of the central state via enumerated powers in Article I and the Tenth Amendment.
They wrote the Bill of Rights, not to protect us from bad individuals, but to protect us from the exercise of state power.
Unfortunately, they didn't fully understand how the combination of majoritarianism and economic power-seeking would emasculate those limitations. They didn't understand how easy it would be for a majority to shift the burden of proof to those asserting freedom and away from those claiming a "need" to restrict it.
And they didn't predict how the majority view would come to be that "rights are civil rights, coming from the state". Whether the founders believed that certain rights came from God, from our nature as human beings isn't really important. What's important is that they believed that certain rights (life, liberty,and the pursuit of happiness, as it were) existed wholly apart from state action. Unfortunately, very few of us today (and for this I blame our teachers and elders) believe this. We believe that rights are created through political and state action. "Civil rights".
The right to travel is NOT a privilege. It is a fundamental part of "pursuing happiness". And just as the technology of travel changes, so too does how we wish to pursue happiness. It is neither the state's function, nor should it be in the state's power, to decide how we do so unless we wish to do so in ways that inhibit another's freedom. Without the ability to travel in the technology of the day we have the choices of feudal serfs tied to the land of their lords.
And it is not OUR burden to show there is no inhibition. It is the state's burden to show that there is. Or should be.
As for freedom of religion, freedom from religion, etc. The right is against the state telling us how to practice. The right is against the state telling us how to practice if we want to politically participate. Had we not corrupted ourselves into thinking that the state is our nanny, to thinking that the state's function is to solve all our problems, to regulate everything and anything that our fellow citizens might do, 99.90% of the debates over establishment of religion would be moot. If we had not made ourselves so damned dependent on state funds for everything from education to consumer protection to etc etc etc, we wouldn't have to worry about whether those funds also go help support this religion over that one, or religion over atheist practice.
Too many changes have been made the wrong way. Too many changes have been made by legislation, by improper delegation of both constitutional and legislative functions to bureaucrats and agencies, by improper acquiescence in executive orders. Today's constitution lives and on its face looks like the original, but it no longer matches either the wisdom or the spirit of the Founders'. We might as well be living by the Code Napoleon. Or the collected writings of Jeremy Bentham.
Bah.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)