Rosaries and Gospels

I spent the entire afternoon restringing an old rosary made of eucalyptus pods and listening to American Gospel by Jon Meacham.  The rosary, apparently meant to hang on the wall since it's nearly five feet long, is probably from Peru and well over 50 years old.  The cord had begun to rot and the whole thing was falling apart.  The restringing required tying lots of knots to separate the 'beads' and when I had completed about 2/3 of it, I realized I had made a mistake and had to redo part of it.  A rosary has ten 'decades'.  You can't have eleven beads in one and nine in the next.  That would disrupt the rhythm of the Hail Marys and Our Fathers.

And speaking of our fathers, working on this tedious task allowed my mind the freedom to contemplate the words and actions of our country's founding fathers as they struggled with where god and religion should fit in the structure of the new nation they envisioned.   I've always been fascinated by religion, and the expression of religion by humans.  I'm especially interested in the art, artifacts, and rituals - hence the rosary.  But more recently, I've been trying to understand the role religion and religious beliefs play in government, politics, and society.  I'm especially curious about (and alarmed by) the rise of alt-right groups claiming to be Christian and wanting to 'return' to our nation's 'Christian roots'.  One of the arguments in favor of that goal is that our founding fathers were Christian and meant this to be a Christian country.  There is a lot of information in this book about Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Franklin, and the rest - lots of quotes from their writings and speeches that give us an idea of their religious leanings.  And the truth is, most of them were Christians - of a sort, at least.  But I think the most revealing thing about this book is the level of struggle they went through to try and get it right.  True, this was a bunch of white men, most of whom owned slaves, so their idea of "all men are created equal" is a little problematic (with regard to women, slaves, and Native Americans.)  But I think they were really trying - hard.  The fact is, The Declaration of Independence mentions god only once (and not the god of Abraham or Jesus, but Nature's God) and in the three other references they use the terms Creator, Divine Providence, and Supreme Judge - pretty non-specific.  And the Constitution...?  Never mentions god in any form.  The fact that our founding fathers were Christian and made a conscious choice to steer away from recognizing any religion is the real point.  They knew that, while it was important to acknowledge that most of the citizens of this new country did believe in god, it would interfere with their basic goal - that of a citizenry of individuals that were free to make their own choices and follow their own conscience - to bind the government to any religion in any way.