The Good Old Days Were Not That Good!

March 1, 1994

To solve the problems of crime, corruption, and education, we are frequently exhorted to return to a time when Christian religion prevailed because that was the faith that was the foundation of our nation. A paragraph from a letter to the Editor is representative of the attitude many fundamentalist Christians proclaim:

“Our nation was founded by godly people seeking to further their Christian faith, and God wondrously blessed and sustained their efforts, and those of succeeding generations. We must realize that we compromise and reject our founding values at great peril to our nation.”

Somehow many people seem to think our problems can be solved by returning to a world that never was. The ancient Greeks believed in a Golden Age. Hesiod wrote “They lived like Gods, free from worry and fatigue; old age did not afflict them; they rejoiced in continual festivity.” They were not immortal, but they died as “though overcome by sweet slumber. All the blessings of the world were theirs, the fruitful earth gave forth its treasures unbidden. At their death they became guardians and teachers of the living.”

The Golden Age never existed. There never was a “pre-sin” Paradise in a Garden of Eden either. Such beliefs were never founded in historical fact, but on dissatisfaction with given circumstances, frustration with social problems that seemed unsolvable, or, perhaps as methods of social control.

We face massive problems with crime, poverty, education, unemployment, dealing with how to pay for doctors, hospitals, prescriptions, insurance premiums, (whether you call it a “crisis” or not.) It is a PROBLEM when YOU face it; it is a CRISIS when I face it. However to believe that today’s vexing, frustrating issues would be solved by a return to the beliefs and actions of the “Founding Fathers” is to lend credence to a nostalgic glow which is artificially lighted.

For example, in the book, BOSTON OBSERVED, written by my old friend, Carl Seaburg, he quotes a letter by a visitor from England, Edward Ward, in the year, 1699:

“...(Boston) is the metropolis of all New-England. The Houses in some parts joyn as in London. The buildings, like their Women, being neat and handsome. And the streets, like the hearts of the male inhabitants, are paved with pebble.

“The inhabitants seem very Religious, showing many outward and visible signs of an inward and Spiritual Grace. But tho’ they wear in their Faces the Innocence of Doves, you will find them in their dealings, as Subtile as Serpents. Interest is their Faith, Money their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they covet.

“Election, Commencement, and Training-days, are their only Holy-days; they keep no Saints Days, nor will they allow the Apostles to be Saints, yet they assume that Sacred Dignity to themselves; and say, in the Title Page of their Psalm-Book, Printed for the Edification of the Saints in Old and New-England.

“They have been very severe against Adultery, which they punish’d with Death; yet, notwithstanding the Harshness of their Law, the Women are of such noble souls, and undaunted Resolutions, that they will run the hazard of being Hang’d, rather than not be reveng’d on Matrimony, or forbear to discover the Corruption of their own Natures.”

Edward Ward observed the Bostonians’ widespread religious hypocrisy and greed for money and possessions. (“Money was their God.”) His paragraph on adultery was a gentle but candid observation of sexual promiscuity. Typical, however, is his implicit condemnation of women but not their necessary male partners. Would we really solve our problems by such materialism, morals, and manners?

In the same 17th century, a Quaker, Mary Dyer, was executed, hanged on Boston Common for religious heresy and protest. Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were expelled from the colony because they were religious dissenters. The late 17th century also witnessed the hysterical, infamous Salem witch trials when 20 women and one man were executed.

I don’t know about you, but I would NOT want a return of such cruelty, malice, intolerance, and ignorance. Certainly, NONE of our problems would be solved.

Furthermore, I believe that the last thing the Christian right-wing would want is a return to the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Monroe, Tom Paine were Deists. Deism represented a substantially different and heretical theology from the Christian gospel of the Trinity, Atonement, and Resurrection. You can look it up, as they say.

One more observation: Who do you think said this: “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

Was that Rush Limbaugh? Senator Bob Dole? The Republican National Chairman? Pat Buchanan? Ross Perot?

None of these. It was Henry David Thoreau in 1848.

We learn from history if we are aware of it and are not beguiled by nostalgic falsehoods or non-historical myths. Our social problems are mammoth. We must recognize that we are no longer sparsely populated colonies, with unlimited natural resources, but a nation of nearly three hundred million people. There is no “going West” anymore. We know that crowded, polluted cities contribute toward the complexity of problems to be solved. To mention just one, there is a vast, illogical conclusion to the continuous building of more prison cells. Are we to become a nation comprised of the jailed and the jailers?

I do not have answers. But I do believe that confronting the issues of today with the resources of today, political and economic, will be far more constructive than litanies of past “virtues”, particularly when they are engulfed in a haze of wishful thinking.