Posted by
CRB on Sunday, August 19, 2007 10:20:11 PM
This evening's post by Chris Rodda on TalkToAction is quite disturbing. While his goal of correcting errors made by those who would revise American history to one end, I'm afraid that Mr. Rodda commits precisely the same error in his post. That is, he revises facts to his own end, rather than the simple fact of history.
First, here are the facts (and I agree with Mr. Rodda on the facts) from the 1803 treaty with the Kaskaskia:
And whereas the greater part of the said tribe have been baptized and received into the Catholic Church, to which they are much attached, the United States will give annually, for seven years, one hundred dollars toward the support of a priest of that religion, who will engage to perform for said tribe the duties of his office, and also to instruct as many of their children as possible, in the rudiments of literature, and the United States will further give the sum of three hundred dollars, to assist the said tribe in the [erecting] of a church.(1)
And here is Mr. Rodda's assessment:
The Kaskaskia treaty is used by different religious right authors in different ways. For those attempting to prove that Jefferson was a devout Christian, it is evidence that he wanted to promote Christianity to the Indians. Much more often, however, as in Mansfield's book, it is used as evidence that Jefferson approved of using government funds to promote religion.
The problem with using the provision as evidence that Jefferson was trying to promote Christianity to the Indians is that the Kaskaskia were already Catholic, and had been for some time. Article 3 of the treaty even begins by stating that "the greater part of the said tribe have been baptized and received into the Catholic Church." The support of a priest and help building a church were provisions that the Kaskaskia asked for, not things the government recommended or pushed on them.
The problem with Mr. Rodda's is simple. By giving direct financial support to a religious establishment the idea of absolute separation that Mr. Rodda makes, indeed the theme of TalkToAction, here loses its historical basis.
His first attempt to qualify the distribution of funds was that it was requested, not forced upon someone. This is a deflection from the fact that the funds were still distributed to a religious entity. Now, I don't think that Mr. Rodda would at all support the U.S. government today giving funds to, say, Mennonite Central Committee or World Vision in order to fulfill an aid treaty with a nation in Africa or South America. Amazingly he does, later. (In this he will negate his own qualification. )
Mr. Rodda also attempts to qualify the character of the funds by clarifying that "it was in a treaty with a sovereign nation." That's a weak argument because the Roman Catholic church is not a part of either nation, but an independent entity that was to receive funds.
His third attempt to qualify the distribution of funds is a bit more creative.
Jefferson knew that the Kaskaskia treaty didn't violate anything. Its religious provisions clearly fell into the category of "those acts which are by the Constitution prohibited to Congress, but not prohibited to the makers of Treaties," as Abraham Baldwin put it in the Jay Treaty debate. There was no danger of these provision having any effect on a single American citizen, let alone even coming close to an "introduction of an established religion from another country," as Baldwin put it in the Jay Treaty debate.
Is he saying here that it's now acceptable for Congress to fund religion within certain contexts? This certainly appears to be the case and is the negation of his first qualification, as mentioned earlier.
The point he makes at the end of the paragraph is fascinating. He seems to accept the premise that the establishment of a new religion in the US is wrong, that supporting an existing religion in the U.S. is wrong, but supporting an existing religion in another nation, or otherwise outside the U.S., is acceptable. The contradiction is significant and should be addressed.
In the remainder of his post, Mr. Rodda provides some useful information and correction, and it is worth reading. A disturbing characteristic of TalkToAction is the writers' insistence on calling every error a "lie". It is quite tiring. Posters constantly demand perfection and call every error to its moral end. Let us be more gracious to their errors.
1. Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, vol. 7, (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846), 79.