The Roads to Modernity; The British,French, and American Enlightenments -Gertrude Himmelfarb

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   "The separation of church and state, however interpreted, did not signify the separation of church and society. On the contrary, religion was all the more rooted in society because it was not prescribed or established by the government. This is why, Tocqueville explained, religion and liberty coexisted and reinforced each other.  And this is the meaning of one of his most profound paradoxes: "Religion, which among Americans, never mixes directly in the government of society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not give them the taste for freedom, it singularly facilitates the use of it." Religion was "the first of their political institutions" because it was the prerequisite of both freedom and morality - thus of republican government itself.

Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its own duration.


At the same time that the law permits the American people to do everything, religion prevents them from conceiving everything and forbids them to dare everything.


Despotism can do without faith, but freedom cannot....How could society fail to perish if, while the political bond is relaxed, the moral bond were not tightened? And what makes a people master if itself if it has not submitted to God?


Finally, most eloquently:


I do not know if all Americans have faith in their religion - for who can read to the bottom of hearts? - but I am sure that they believe it necessary to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion does not belong to only one class of citizens or to one party, but to the entire nation; one finds it in all ranks.

   It is curious that Tocqueville, who often cited The Federalist on other subjects, never quoted the Founders on religion. Washington;s "Farewell Address" is eminently quotable: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." As if to warn his countrymen that enlightenment was no substitute for religion, Washington advised them not to "indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." John Adams made the point more pithily: "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." The French Revolution's attempt to establish a secular republic drew from him the famous comment: "I do not know what to make of a republic of thirty million atheists." Benjamin Franklin, himself a deist, agreed: "If men are so wicked as we now see them with religion, what would they be without it?"
   Even those of the Founders who were not devout believers, or those who were most wary of the government's support of religion (Madison most notably), respected religion in general and the religious beliefs of their countrymen.  It is sometimes said, in disparagement, that the Founders had a utilitarian or functional view of religion, valuing it as a social and political asset. But this view of religion is not in itself unworthy. To look upon religion as the ultimate source of morality, and hence of a good society and a sound polity, is not demeaning to religion. On the contrary, it pays religion - and God - the great tribute of being essential to the welfare of mankind. And it does credit to man as well, who is deemed capable of subordinating his lower nature to his higher, of venerating and giving obeisance to something above himself.
   If the founders did not look upon religion as the enemy of liberty, neither did the churches look upon liberty as the enemy of religion. The various denominations and sects had an obvious stake in religious liberty, and they appreciated, as Tocqueville did, the relationship between religious and political liberty. Most of them, especially after the passage of the Stamp Act, were enthusiastic supporters of republicanism and of the Revolution.  And they arrived at that position not by attenuating or secularizing their religion but by spiritualizing politics itself. "Far from removing political culture from the domination of religious concepts," one historian writes, "ministers extended the canopy of religious meaning so that even the cause of liberty became sacred."    (209-12)