How modern evangelicals are ignoring their own history.

[wyldwolf]

Excellent article here by Steven Waldman.

One specific part touches on evangelical revisionist history concerning the First Amendment.

Another details the first "faith-based intitiative" proposed by Patrick Henry and opposed by James Madison:

Historians on both sides of the modern culture wars have attempted to study the writing and passage of the First Amendment looking for clues about the Founders's intent. But to understand the role of broader public opinion, there's much more to be learned from the individual state fights over religious freedom. Right before the Declaration of Independence and for two decades after, state legislatures grappled with church-state issues with much greater specificity than the federal constitutional convention had. These battles were fought not only with a few elites in a committee room but also among a broad range of local landowners, merchants, and churchgoers. One of the most significant of these battles took place in Virginia.

After the revolution, there was a sense throughout the state that religion was in decline: Churches were struggling, and immorality was on the rise. Leaders of the dominant Anglican Church—which had turned into today's Episcopal Church—began pressing for state support of religion.

In 1784, Patrick Henry, the most popular leader in the state, campaigned for a law that would tax Virginians to support the promotion of Christianity. It is important to realize that Henry was not pushing to create a formal establishment of the Anglican church, and obviously Henry was no Royalist. He was taking the far more liberal view that religion in general should be aided. Under his proposal, voters could designate the denomination, or even the specific church, that their tax dollars would fund. Baptists could give money to the Baptist Church, and Presbyterians to their own church. Henry's bill even went so far as to provide that those who didn't want to support religion could have the option of targeting their tax dollars toward education in general.

The measure, “A Bill for Establishing a Provision for the Teachers of the Christian Religion,” gained wide support. It was viewed as a gentle and flexible approach to encouraging religion—surely an important goal—while remaining consistent with the spirit of the revolution. Richard Henry Lee declared that “avarice is accomplishing the destruction of religion for want of legal obligation to contribute something to its support.” A petition sent in by citizens in Amelia, Va., declared that “As every Man in the state partakes of the Blessings of Peace and Order” —and peace and order flow directly from the morality produced by religion—“every Man should be obliged to contribute as well to the Support of Religion.” Even George Washington supported the approach. One major Virginia leader stood in opposition to Henry and this popular proposal: James Madison. Though not as well known as Henry, Madison had just played the central role in the constitutional convention and had growing influence within the legislature. He fervently believed that even though the assessment did not create a religious establishment, it posed a severe threat to religious freedom.

more:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0604.waldman.html

[Kenergy]

1. Thank you for posting that wyldwolf, but can you or someone

refresh my memory here on something...what was 'The Parson's Cause'(re: P. Henry) about?
Thanks

[Aaaargh]

2. But the DLC says those who agree with Rev. Leland are ALL WRONG!

DLC | Blueprint Magazine | July 23, 2005

‘Faith-based Service,’ by Ronald J. Sider

“Nothing in the U.S. Constitution or their party history requires Democrats to oppose faith-based initiatives. They should look for ways to support them.
Much of the Democrats' recent talk about embracing moral values has focused on abortion and family. But there is another crucial area where Democrats could demonstrate that they are both "faith-friendly" and an effective voice for poor Americans: the faith-based initiative. Taking the right position on faith-based initiatives could enable Democrats both to advance the interests of their own core constituency and to reach out to red-state voters.
David Kuo, former deputy director of President Bush's White House Office on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, recently wrote a blazing critique of the Bush administration. Kuo deplored Bush's failure to provide any significant funding for his "compassionate conservatism," forcing faith-based social service agencies to "make bricks without straw." But Kuo also deplored the Democrats' knee-jerk opposition to the new faith-based initiative. A modest change would enable the Democrats to dare the Republicans to implement their own rhetoric. Or, more hopefully, it would make possible a bipartisan effort that would genuinely help the working poor.
There is nothing in earlier Democratic policies or the Constitution that requires the recent opposition of Democrats to Bush's faith-based initiative. President Clinton signed four separate pieces of legislation that contained the crucial provisions popularly called "Charitable Choice." The 1996 welfare reform bill sought to level the playing field so that effective faith-based social service providers could acquire government funds in a way that protected both the religious identity of the organizations and the religious freedom of their clients.
At the heart of Charitable Choice was the specific provision that faith-based organizations that received federal funds retained their right to hire only employees who shared the organization's religious beliefs. In the 2000 election, Vice President Al Gore embraced Charitable Choice and promised to make faith-based approaches central to his administration's battle against poverty. Unfortunately, when Bush sought to expand the Charitable Choice provisions that Clinton had earlier signed into law, the Democrats reversed themselves and denounced as "discrimination" the hiring right that is at the core of Charitable Choice.”
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=253464&kaid=115&subid=900025

As usual, the DLC scolds Democrats for not being as “progressive” (according to the DLC’s Newspeak definition, this word refers to those who follow the dictated DLC line) as Bush and the Republicans. And as usual, they avoid presenting a full description of what they’re really advocating.

Here’s part of what Bush’s ‘expansion’ of the so-called ‘Charitable Choice’ program would have entailed, and the farcical struggle over the legislation and the loot which ensued:

From ‘Faith-based Update: Bipartisan Breakdown,’
by Dennis R. Hoover, RELIGION IN THE NEWS
Summer 2001, Vol. 4, No. 2,’

“… Trouble started on the right, even before the initiative was introduced as legislation. In early March Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson wrote a USA Today op-ed suggesting that the whole initiative be converted into a tax credit scheme; and Jerry Falwell, the other aging pillar of the religious right, went on record in a Beliefnet.com interview with his own collection of worries.
This was a big story. Deborah Caldwell and Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.com cut straight to the heart of the matter: "Bush forced to the surface the anxieties of these conservative leaders. How? By being a strong pluralist." Falwell and Robertson wanted to exclude programs run by religious groups they consider fringe or cultic (such as Scientologists and Hare Krishnas), whereas charitable choice is open to all qualified faith-based organizations (FBOs).
Caldwell and Waldman explored the possibility that a Bush face-off with the Christian Right was to his benefit. It could yield a "Sister Souljah" moment for Bush, Michael Cromartie, director of evangelical studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Institute, told Beliefnet.com. "This is a good chance for Bush to tutor the religious right about what religious freedom means in this country."
Critics from the left quickly joined the fray. When a House Judiciary subcommittee held hearings on the issue in April, chair Steve Chabot (R-OH) noted that all the returning members had previously voted for charitable choice. But Democrats immediately signaled their change of tune. "Religion has never needed government, and it doesn’t need it now," declared Jerry Nadler (D-NY), according to the AP. With opposition to the initiative now full-throated and on the march, journalists gravitated to a theme of "initiative in trouble" (see sidebar), often noting with surprise that it was being attacked from the right as well as the left.
<snip>

“Critics’ allegations about partisan motivations were of much less consequence than the charge that charitable choice amounts to tax-funded religious discrimination in employment. Charitable choice attempts a constitutional balancing act, permitting FBOs to hire by religion while empowering clients to decline services from religious providers. Religious hiring exemptions historically have been more controversial when the form of government assistance is direct (contracts/grants) than when it is, like the GI Bill and analogous programs, indirect (vouchers). Most opponents rallied around the discrimination argument, regardless of the form of aid.
A day before the start of the congressional summit for black leaders, a group called the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination announced that it had collected 850 signatures from religious leaders opposing charitable choice. "This legislation is intended to permit some fundamentalist organization to put a sign on the door saying, ‘No Jews Need Apply,’" surmised Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, according to several reports.
Watts called the hiring issue a red herring—"Planned Parenthood receives federal funds, but do we raise Cain because they don’t hire Alan Keyes?" Nevertheless, on the Senate side, the hiring discrimination issue was the principal reason why charitable choice expansion was not even introduced as legislation.
The Senate point man on the initiative was Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Santorum wanted (and, after Senate control switched to Democrats, needed) bipartisan backing. So he looked to Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who initially positioned himself as a supporter, posing with Bush for faith-based photo-ops in January. But it soon became clear that he was interested in charitable choice lite, and wouldn’t support legislation until various issues, especially hiring discrimination, were addressed to his (or his party’s) satisfaction.”

<snip>

"Some White House officials say House conservatives overreached when they were writing the bill, giving too much leeway to churches," reported Mike Allen in the June 25 Washington Post. So the scaling back was done. On June 20, DiIulio told Laura Meckler, who covered the issue closely for the AP, "A number of really excellent modifications have been suggested." By June 26 a deal had been struck with House Republicans, and Judiciary passed it on a party line vote June 28.
Some of the changes simply clarified and beefed up provisions that were always part of charitable choice as originally conceived, such as the requirement that religious activities be optional for service recipients, and the requirement that public funds not be commingled with private. A measure in the original Watts-Hall bill allowing religious groups who are denied funding to sue the government for damages hit the cutting room floor. And on the crucial issue of hiring, new language said FBOs could consider religion in hiring but not "religious practices"—a phrase critics thought too easily justified other kinds of discrimination(…)”

,snip>

“But the problem ran deeper. The expansion of charitable choice had been proposed without any increase in public funds. This threatened the bottom line for key religious groups already involved in government-funded social services (e.g., Catholic Charities, Lutheran Family Services, the Salvation Army). The math was not fuzzy: As originally proposed in the House, every dollar granted to a new FBO was, in effect, one dollar less for present grantees (…)”
http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol4No2/faithbased.htm

In regard to the Waldman piece: Baptists had experienced hard persecutions at the hands of Anglican/Congregationalist authorities in Colonial America, and following the Revolution, saw it as being in their interest to stand against any further institutional government support for churches, which would only strengthen their oppressors, who had far larger memberships than they did.

As in Virginia in the early days of the Republic, the real dispute today, when it comes to ‘faith-based initiatives,’ private-school ‘vouchers’ and other efforts to pilfer taxpayers’ money into sectarian religious enterprises, is over WHO GETS MOST OF THE LOOT, and the power and influence that goes with it.