Serving overseas in the Foreign Service, I heard many questions about the United States, some prompted by headlines, Hollywood, or social media. Asked about religion and religious liberty, I found that the common mantra, “in America we have separation of church and state” did not answer earnest questions from local counterparts. So in conversations — or in classrooms — I often told stories. Here are three.
Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin remains an American classic, and I shared passages in his memoir. It was usually necessary to explain to a foreign friend that George Whitefield was the eloquent Methodist preacher whose sermons helped launch the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s. (Here, I have divided and trimmed some paragraphs and edited his quaint original spellings.)
In 1739 arrived among us from Ireland the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, who had made himself remarkable there as an itinerant preacher. He was first permitted to preach in some of our churches, but the clergy, taking a dislike to him, soon refused him their pulpits, and he was obliged to preach in the fields. The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous . . .
It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.
And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner proposed, and persons appointed to receive contributions, but sufficient sums were soon received to procure the ground and erect the building . . . expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.
When Franklin noted that places of worship were “generally erected by voluntary contribution,” he implicitly contrasted the self-organizing of religious congregations in America with the established churches in Europe (and some of the 13 colonies).
And Franklin’s openness to the preaching of Islam pointed the way to a broad, accepting, and respectful American religious diversity.
Franklin is usually characterized as a deist, but this seems too simple.
I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and though some of the dogmas of that persuasion . . . appeared to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles.
I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. These I esteemed the essentials of every religion; . . . I respected them all, though with different degrees of respect, as I found them more or less mixed with other articles, which, without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, served principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another.
This respect to all, with an opinion that the worst had some good effects, induced me to avoid all discourse that might tend to lessen the good opinion another might have of his own religion; and as our province increased in people, and new places of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected by voluntary contribution, my mite for such purpose, whatever might be the sect, was never refused.
Franklin practiced as he preached: the subscription book for Philadelphia’s Mikveh Israel congregation records Franklin as a donor to its building fund.
Franklin’s resolve — “to avoid all discourse that might tend to lessen the good opinion another might have of his own religion” — merits inclusion among the good habits of citizenship.
Roland Gittelsohn on “The Purest Democracy”
Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn was the first Jewish Navy chaplain assigned to the Marine Corps in World War II. He landed with the Fifth Marine Division at Iwo Jima. Here are two paragraphs from his famous sermon, “The Purest Democracy,” given on March 21, 1945.
WE DEDICATE OURSELVES, first, to live together in peace the way they fought and are buried in war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors, generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor…together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews… together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy.
Any man among us the living who fails to understand that, will thereby betray those who lie here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this, them, as our solemn, sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves: to the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of white men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price.
Read more than eight decades later, Gittelsohn’s admonitions are at once bracing — yes, these are the ideals Americans profess – and admonitory. The Supreme Court continues to hear cases about “quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed.” And all Americans are now hearing words of religious prejudice and scorn, whether directed at Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, evangelicals, or even believers. Praying among the dead of Iwo Jima, Rabbi Gittelsohn called on the better angels of our nature.
George W. Bush on “great responsibilities for public safety”
In his first inaugural address, President George W. Bush explained that religions and charity answer social needs that government programs cannot. From President George W. Bush’s first inaugural address, January 20, 2001:
"Government has great responsibilities for public safety and public health, for civil rights and common schools. Yet, compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government. And some needs and hurts are so deep they will only respond to a mentor's touch or a pastor's prayer. Church and charity, synagogue and mosque lend our communities their humanity, and they will have an honored place in our plans and in our laws."
I recall reading this passage to a group of professors at an Islamic university in Nigeria, and they were startled and moved by the first mention of “mosque” in an inaugural address.
President Bush’s passage can open a discussion of the role of religious, private, and voluntary organizations – schools and universities, hospitals, soup kitchens and homeless shelters, adoption agencies, and visits to prisoners, for instance -- in American society.
It also introduces the concept that civil society, situated between government and the individual, provides for community and group initiatives without waiting for government action.
And for More Stories
Many more American stories can be told. I much like George Washington’s series of letters to religious congregations after he became president, Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur’s reflections on the many faiths in Pennsylvania, Chaplain William Corby’s blessing of the Irish Brigade at Gettysburg; the scene in Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War when Foreign Service Officer Leslie Slote is challenged by an SS officer to identify the Jews in a group of American citizens, and the “Prayer for America” service in Yankee Stadium after 9/11. And a reader may chuckle reading John Adams’s account of attending mass in Philadelphia. So did George Washington.
During his career 31-year in the Foreign Service, Donald Bishop served at nine posts in seven countries. He edited the wartime memoir of Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn, Pacifist to Padre, published by the Marine Corps University Press.
