#1: How Religious Was Colonial America?

How Religious were our Founding Fathers?
Part 1:  The Colonies and States Themselves  (this posting)

Part 2:  The First Four Presidents and Benjamin Franklin ( a separate posting)

Listen to the entire sermon here.
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In public discourse and private conversations, I hear people bandy about opinions like, “we were founded as a Christian country” to justify Christmas trees in front of City Hall and prayers at the beginning of each legislative season or “a Judeo-Christian country” to warrant the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses.  On the other hand, we also proclaim a heritage of “separation of church and state” and point out that our national Constitution is a wholly secular document, even more so than many state constitutions.   How do we reconcile the two? 

How religious were our Founding Fathers?  How religious did they want our national or state institutions to be?  Those are two separate questions, and I’ll take them in reverse order, first talking about the religious context of the colonies, and then give some quotes and context for each of our first four presidents: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, along with Ben Franklin.  

The first point to note is that, of course the government was founded by Christians --the immigrants came from Europe, not Timbuktu.  More than Christian, though, our state and national governments were founded by Protestants.  99% of the immigrants were Protestant. 

As for “Judeo-Christian founding", though, this was no homogenious "kumbaya" Protestantism.  The dominant Protestant denominations of the time, Puritans in the north and Anglicans in the south, vigorously and sometimes violently restricted the rights of Catholics and Jews and Protestants they did not recognize as legitimate denominations, like the Quakers, Baptists, Universalists, as well as those who professed no religion at all.   Catholics and Jews and non-theists or non-Trinitarians were refused the right to public office, to vote, and in some places, to own real estate or businesses for more than a century in 11/13 colonies and early states. 

Virginia, for a while, had a law that it would execute any Jesuit!

Northern Lights and 14 Feet of Snow

Solar storms have been active this winter, and we were alert to the possibility of seeing the aurora borealis.  At 5:45 am, Bryan awakened me to see them.  I was surprised to see how much sky they covered and how quickly they moved across it.  We bundled on jackets and hats as we shifted from the front porch to the back, and then peered up and out from the side windows, too.   The color was a pale green with an inner light.  The closest analogy I can think of, and one that seems like an unlikely oxymoron, is of a grass, hula skirt.  The biomorphic shape did indeed seem to dance, and its general shape changed as it “turned.”  But as I watched more closely, I noticed sinuous lines within the larger shape moving too.  Well worth the wakeup call (and I don't say that very often).

Our first night back this winter, the temperature dropped to +3 degrees F, but the wood stove slowly warmed the cabin, and with it, started to thaw a motley array of water containers we had partially filled with filtered lake water before the lake froze over.  Smaller bottles ensure some drinking water the second day after arrival.  Larger jugs of frozen potable water take a few days to melt.  In the meantime, we shovel snow into a pot to melt on the wood stove. 

Since snow melts to water at a 10:1 volume ratio, it takes several days to accumulate any volume significant enough to clean the cabin, laundry or ourselves very well.  So, I turn my initial attention the first two days to cooking, which makes the cabin seem warmer, just by the scent.  I made two loaves of bread and whipped up some onion dip, hummus, and sundried tomato-olive tapenade for handy snacks.  Since we don't have an indoor refrigerator, I store items that can freeze, in a cooler on the back porch (so the scavengers can't get it). Other items, like eggs, dips, and cheese, I store in the coolest corner of the cabin, which is by the front door.

View from the porch

Out house and shed foreground, shower house background

The second afternoon, we took some time out to survey the property by a snow shoe hike. 

Pecking Order: Our First Flock of Chickens

The sheer number of phrases describing human interaction in chicken terms indicates the closeness and longevity of human domestication of chickens.  Even if you have never seen a live chicken, you surely recognize, and perhaps even use, terms such as “all cooped up,”  “walking on egg shells,” “pecking order,” “cock of the walk,” and even “bird brained.”

 

The first domesticated chickens evolved from jungle fowl in Southeast Asia.  The earliest dates  vary, according to advocates for one country or another, but at least 2500 BCE.  Surprisingly (to me), it was the fighting roosters, or cocks, that moved the practice of semi-domestication to India, and then, along the silk roads, to the Middle East, and then Rome, decades and even centuries before egg laying hens seemed like a good an idea!

 



The coop, the run, and the 6 chickens. Predator wire in front

We raised chickens for the first time this summer and loved it.  Their beauty and distinctive personalities made our six chickens fun pets, and their ravenous appetite for weeds, bugs, and garbage rendered them productive and valuable yard workers, as well.  Alas, we experienced with them a tragedy and some other surprises, too.  Below is a short version of our experience and a recommendation to others to consider raising chickens, if your neighborhood allow it.

 

Life with and without Plumbing

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Have you ever thought about how much water you use in a shower, dishwasher load, or washing machine?  What is it like living in a place where you have to think and plan and ration and filter water?  Below is our experience far from electrical and plumbing grids to get water and get ourselves hydrated and clean during Alaska's summer and winter (which offer very different water experiences). 

SUMMER WATER

We don't have a well, so from May through October, we rely on lake water for cooking, cleaning, and drinking.  This involves lowered expectations, high and low technology, patience, and effort. I am now much more respectful of every woman who ventured out on a covered wagon ... or who didn't and ran a home in a fifth floor walk up on Mulberry Street, NYC, as well as many contemporaries around the world who cleverly live without plumbing today.

The first summer the cabin was built, we had sitting and sleeping furniture but not much of a kitchen.  The propane and wood stoves were in place, but the rest of the kitchen was just a plywood counter on top of two saw horses.  Washing dishes (and clothes, and ourselves) was done outside, in  two deep utility sinks on the (uncovered) back porch.  By hefting 8 gallon jugs of cold water and occasional pots of stove heated water into the sink, we got by with rather greasy dishes and hair and laundry.  We drained the gray water down into a pit we filled with rocks and a perforated 55 gallon drum. This got very old, very fast, particularly on cold and rainy days, particularly since I hadn't brought any paper plates that year! 

Heat by Wood: How Much Wood/Work/Time per Year

Many of us, particularly in cities, I think, rely on “black boxes” of magic for the conveniences we enjoy. We click a switch “over here” so that lights or heat or air conditioning or TVs turn on “over there”. When they fail to work, as they do in an era of “planned obsolescence” or a power outage, we either buy something new or enlist shaman-like experts called electricians or plumbers or auto mechanics or computer technicians to wave their magic wands.

Living off-grid in Alaska has made me more aware of all that goes into those things I used to take for granted. The article below outlines how much labor we expend to generate heat for ourselves, and outlines comparisons to alternative heat sources enjoyed by people who don’t live in the middle of a forest.

Since passing chemistry (barely), I hadn’t given a thought to British Thermal Units. In Alaska though, as you can imagine, that concept means a lot. We produce the heat for our cabin by chopping down birch trees that we then cut, age, and stack to stoke a small but efficient wood stove. How much wood do we need? How long does that take to acquire? How long does it last? How much heat does it produce?

The measurement for wood is a cord (4 x 4 x 8 feet). For dry birch, which is the available wood of choice for heating our cabin, this volume weighs about 3000 lbs (“green” wood weighs much more, about 4500 lbs). We store about 8 cords, or 32 x 4 x 8 feet and 24,000 lbs in our “wood corral.”