Webster v. Emerson

Recently I came across a reference to a passage from a letter written by Noah Webster. My reflection following this excerpt is not to demise Christianity. Rather my thoughts are to do just that, cause us to think. Let's Break It Down!

In a letter from Noah Webster to David McClure in 1836 he writes,

"In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people... Any system of education, therefore, which limits instruction to the arts and sciences and rejects the aids of religion in forming the characters of citizens, is essentially defective. . . .

An attempt to conduct the affairs of a free government with wisdom and impartiality, and to preserve the just rights of all classes of citizens, without the guidance of Divine precepts, will certainly end in disappointment. God is the supreme moral Governor of the world He has made, and as He Himself governs with perfect rectitude.  He requires His rational creatures to govern themselves in like manner. If men will not submit to be controlled by His laws, He will punish them by the evils resulting from their own disobedience."

In 1836, 1) the only Americans with the rights and freedoms of an ideal democracy such as what was created in this New World were white men of means, usually with some degree of substantial land ownership. 2) Native Americans had to this point gone through a genocide of sorts by this newly self-endowed American
government lead by white men, most of European descent in which land was taken, destroyed, and lives altered or ended to clear the way for American expansion. These atrocities to Natives Americans did not stop here. 3) Africans, illegally ripped from their homes and families, being forced into slavery, owned as merchandise, denied the very rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so decreed in the documentation written by our Founding Fathers, white men of privilege, were still close to 30 years from seeing any amendment to the Constitution to end slavery. 4) Women were still 84 years away from seeing the ratification of an amendment to this Constitution which would grant them the right to vote.

Interesting, in 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the "Divinity School Address" at Harvard. Emerson, a one time Unitarian minister had resigned several years earlier. Among many things, he had become skeptical of the Communion ritual, and of the whole concept of public prayer. In his esteemed essay "Nature", Emerson denounced Christianity as it was being practiced saying, "Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power. What a cruel injustice it is to that Law, the joy of the whole earth, which alone can make thought dear and rich; that Law whose fatal sureness the astronomical orbits poorly emulate, that it is travestied and depreciated, that it is behooted and behowled, and not a trait, nor a word of it articulated. The pulpit in losing sight of this Law, loses its reason, and gropes after it knows not what. And for want of this culture, the soul of the community is sick and faithless. [...] The true Christianity — a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man — is lost."

Wow! Two intellectuals. Two differing points of view. One seeking exclusiveness, the other inclusiveness. One seeking dominance. The other seeking acceptance and common ground. One "man" centered, the other God centered loving and accepting all.


I wonder which of these two beliefs would be most applicable today? I for one will stand for the “Emersonian” belief and practice.