On God, History, and Glenn Beck.

"[The Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom] was meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.” - Thomas Jefferson

“America today begins to turn to God.” This was conservative talk show host Glenn Beck’s opening gambit at his controversial ‘Restoring Honor’ rally on Saturday. The rally, Beck claimed, had “nothing to do with politics.” Rather, he announced to the hundreds of thousands assembled in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the rally had “everything to do with God [and] turning our faces back to the values and the principles that made our country great.”

I thought this odd. Beck has long been in the business of claiming that America was founded a Christian nation. “I have done years now of reading the Founders, the diaries, their letters,” Beck recently reflected, “…and I will tell you that God was instrumental [in the foundation of the republic.]” He’s wrong, of course. Countless liberal defenses of the proposed Islamic community centre in Lower Manhattan have shown that, so I won’t bother here.

What’s more surprising about Beck’s comments is his failure to realize that America has already “turned to God.” America might have been founded as a secular nation based upon the principle that religion and government should never mix, but God has been hitting back. Indeed, it would not be a stretch to argue that God has been the most influential protagonist in American history.

Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Beck, gesturing to the white marble shrine, declared: “we look to a giant for answers.” Lincoln’s answers – engraved on the walls of his memorial – would probably have pleased Beck. It was Lincoln, at Gettysburg, who first described America as “one nation under God.” It was Lincoln who conceived of the nation united by Christianity: “[The North and South] both read the same bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.” And it was Lincoln who, during the nation’s darkest hour, followed what he interpreted as God’s will. In September 1862, immediately before the Battle of Antietam, a Confederate courier used General Robert E. Lee’s battle plans to wrap three cigars and mislaid them. By chance, Union soldiers happened upon the cigars – and the plans. With such detailed information about Lee’s tactics, Union general George McClellan won a famous victory. The victory – and, more importantly, the chance discovery that facilitated it – convinced Lincoln to issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, paving the way for the destruction of slavery. Lincoln, according to Gideon Welles, “had submitted the disposal of the subject  to a Higher Power.” That higher power, willing that Lee’s plans be mislaid and discovered, directed Lincoln towards emancipation. Thus, the supposed will of God shaped the path of American history during the nation’s bleakest moments.

How about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in whose footsteps Beck was literally standing on Saturday?* Like Lincoln, Beck conceived of America as a Christian nation. In King’s last speech, given in 1968, he imagined a “mental flight” through history. He began in Egypt and the “Promised Land.” He stopped “to watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.” Then he arrived at the present: “I just want to do God’s will,” he cried. The future, he finally reassured his audience, was safe in God’s hands: “I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” King’s conception of world history, of the Civil Rights Movement to which he had been so central, and of the future of America, was inseparable from Christianity.

More obviously, the New Right, which emerged to dominate politics in the late twentieth-century, was deeply rooted in an evangelical, millennial Christianity. Activists and preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham drove religion right to the heart of American politics and national life. Issues such as abortion, gay rights, school teaching, and censorship have become supercharged with religious zeal. Politicians grasped at this awakening. “Our forbears came not for gold,” Ronald Reagan proclaimed in 1982, “but mainly in search of God…Our Pledge of Allegiance states that we are ‘one nation under God’, and our currency bears the motto ‘In God We Trust’…the morality and values such faith implies are deeply embedded in our national character.” And he was right. The rise of the religious right further entwined America with Christianity.

Today, the statistics speak for themselves.  According to a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, 71% of Americans believe in God. 56% say that religion is very important in their lives. 39% attend religious services at least once a week. Compare this with the UK, where – according to a 2005 Eurobarometer poll – only 38% believe in God. America is, in relative terms, a phenomenally religious, thoroughly Christian, country. Sociologists commonly hold up the United States as a notable exception to the ‘secularisation thesis’.

Glenn Beck thinks that America needs to turn back God. A cynic might say he’s confusing his causalities. If America really is in the mire and the great project laid out by Jefferson, Adams, Madison, et al is in legitimate danger, surely the problem is not a lack of religion, but an excess. If Beck is a true ‘Tea Partier’ and believes in returning America to the principles upon which it was founded, he needs to rethink his ideas on religion.

America was founded as a slave-holding republic, but it has changed. America was founded as a non-religious republic, but it has changed. Of course, the history books celebrate the former transformation, but are more reserved about the second.

Yes, memorialise Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King for their contributions to the construction of a fairer, more racially inclusive nation; but don’t neglect their role in driving religion into the heart of American political and social life. You can't pick and choose your history. I can’t help but think that a clearer understanding of the history of religion in America would benefit the debate over the Islamic Community Centre and the broader discussion of the proper place of religion in American life.