Sermon

INTRODUCTION: On Jan. 10, 1776, Thomas Paine self-published a 50-page pamphlet in Philadelphia entitled, Common Sense. The first edition sold out quickly – 120,000 copies in three months and half a million copies in the first year. It has been identified as the most influential publication of the American Revolution, and dubbed by historians as one of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English language. To give you some inkling of how popular it was, in proportion to the population, more people read Common Sense than ever watched a single Super Bowl!

Common Sense attacked the notion of the divine rights of queens and kings, promoted the economic benefits of independence, and proclaimed the equality of all citizens. More importantly, what Common Sense did was to unite America’s many independent dissenters into one voice. It persuaded them that a Revolution was not only necessary, but a huge step forward for the world. Without Common Sense, most historians agree, the Revolution would have failed for lack of popular support.

Six months after its release, July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed the Declaration of Independence. In only five months, America was fighting for its life. General George Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army had suffered defeat after defeat in New York. Following losses at Fort Washington and Fort Lee, the Army made a hasty retreat across New Jersey with the British Army in hot pursuit. Washington’s forces found temporary safety by crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. They destroyed all the boats they weren’t using for crossing, making it impossible for the British to follow after them until the river froze over.

When Washington assessed his situation, he had lost more than half of his men for one reason or another. But guess who was there as a volunteer aide only two years after arriving in the country? Thomas Paine. He had already given all of his royalties from Common Sense to buy mittens for these same soldiers. Now he was volunteering on the frontlines.

While there, on Dec. 23, he wrote the first of 13 articles in support of American independence. It was entitled, The American Crisis. He took it to General Washington, who was so impressed by it that he had Paine read it to his army before they attempted to cross back over the river and engage the British Army. It was Christmas night, 1776. These are its first words:

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Washington and the Army won the Battle of Trenton. It’s identified as the crucial turning point in America’s military fight for Independence. Future president and Founding Father John Adams wrote, "Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain."

Knowing these things and the host of other major contributions not mentioned, how then, could the following also be true?[2]

On the 8th of June, 1809, at age 72, death came, almost Paine’s only friend now. At his funeral, no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display – only one horse drawn carriage carrying a woman and her son; on horseback, a Quaker; and, following on foot, two Negro servants. These constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.

Five people? Something happened. What was it? The answer has to do with the issues of belief, and the freedom of faith. To explain what I mean, let’s look more closely at the life and work of Thomas Paine.

At age 35, Thomas Paine – he had legally added an “e” to his name – met Benjamin Franklin in a coffee shop in London. Franklin was so impressed with Paine that he urged him to move to America. He even wrote a letter of introduction for him to use.

Two years later, in October 1774, Paine boarded the ship London Packet and sailed away. Once here, he immediately went to writing. He was one of the earliest and most influential of the Founding Fathers to speak out against slavery. His essay, African Slavery in America, was written in 1774 and published March 8, 1775. Hardly a month later, on April 14, 1775, the first anti-slavery society in America was formed in Philadelphia. Paine was a founding member. Later came Common Sense and then the 13 articles of The American Crisis. Afterwards were several important positions in government.

Then in 1787, at the height of his popularity, he returned to England and also to France, where he argued for democracy in both lands similar to that achieved in America. While in England, he put his views in writing under the title, The Rights of Man in 1791. In it, he proposes a written Constitution composed by a national assembly; a national budget without allotting military and war expenses; lower taxes and subsidized education for the poor; and a progressive income tax weighted against the wealthy. This was in 1791!

The publication of The Rights of Man caused a furor. Paine fled to France before being tried in absentia, convicted for seditious libel against the Crown, and sentenced to be hanged.

However, when Paine arrived in France, where a Revolution was in full sway, he was greeted as the great "Symbol of Freedom." So widespread was his fame, that he was elected by four separate constituencies, to represent them in the new National Assembly.

As a member, he voted for the creation of the French Republic, and argued against the execution of Louis XVI, both because of the monarchy’s support of America against England, and because Paine was opposed to capital punishment.

As the Reign of Terror increased, a decree was passed at the end of 1793 that excluded foreigners from serving in the Convention. Paine did not let up in articulating his views. Due to his increasingly being at odds with Robespierre, the dominant figure in the French Revolution, Paine was arrested and imprisoned in December 1793. Knowing that he would likely be executed, Paine wrote as much as he could of The Age of Reason.

Fortunately, the fall of Robespierre came before Paine’s execution. Paine now wrote the last half of The Age of Reason. It was a direct attack on the irrationality of revealed religion – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Despite Paine's unequivocal affirmation of a belief in the Creator, the book was denounced as atheistic. Nonetheless, much like his other writings, its circulation was phenomenal, with French, English, Irish, and American editions.

Paine remained in France until 1802, returning to America only at President Thomas Jefferson's invitation.[3] As a harbinger of things to come, he was cursed by crowds at the New York Harbor upon his arrival. The public’s perception was that Paine’s Age of Reason was an attack on God and organized religion.

Once here, Paine had little means of support; he was denied public forums to defend himself or discuss public issues. He became both sick and poverty stricken.

He wrote his last will in January 1809, requesting burial in a Quaker cemetery, the faith of his father. The local Society of Friends declined his request. His alternative was to be buried in a corner of his New Rochelle farm which Congress had granted him many years prior.

When he died, June 08, 1809 at the age of 72, a French woman whose husband and family Paine had defended, along with two Black servants, placed the body in a horse cart and drove the 22 miles north to New Rochelle. She conducted Paine's short funeral, which she described as follows: "Contemplating who it was, what man it was, that we were committing to an obscure grave on an open and disregarded bit of land, I could not help feeling most acutely. Before the earth was thrown down upon the coffin, I, placing myself at the east end of the grave, said to my son Benjamin, 'Stand you there, at the other end, as a witness for grateful America.' Looking about me, and beholding the small group of spectators, I exclaimed, as the earth was tumbled onto the grave, 'Oh! Mr. Paine! My son stands here in testimony of the gratitude of America, and I, for France!'"

So what do we make of Thomas Paine, not only Founding Father of America, but author of The Age of Reason?

First, we as a species have an innate need to be able to explain the Universe. Physicists do it, scientists of all stripes do it, Christians do it, Jews do it, Muslims do it, Buddhists do it, Hindus do it, and so do atheists, humanists and agnostics. All are attempted explanations with varying degrees of legitimacy, reason, and experience. They all are saying, “This is the way the world is. This is the way the world is.” Regardless of how we do it, we all have an innate need to be able to explain how the Universe works. That need to explain why we’re here is inherent in the human experience. We can’t live with questions. We as a species have a need to be able to say how things are, and if we can’t, to explain why we can’t explain why we can’t explain.

Secondly, few of us have created our own explanations; rather, we have accepted, added to and or taken away from, what others have done. That’s another way of saying, that we are all indebted one to the other, both now and in the past. We all are standing upon the shoulders of those who have gone before: including Thomas Paine, Jesus, Einstein, Gandhi, Moses, Alexander, Muhammad, Socrates, Plato, and the Buddha. We stand upon the shoulders of not only our physical ancestors, but also our spiritual ones as well.

Paine’s explanation of the Universe was through Western philosophical theism, namely, that our species could explain the way the world is by appeal to reason. In this world of reason, cause produces certain effects. In fact, according to Paine, the Universe yields to reason and understanding. It is a closed, explainable Universe where 2 + 2 = 4. And as a Deist, he believed the Universe works according to the Creator’s Divine Plan. And to make that point, he bitterly attacked standing religion with its appeal to revelation, which was supposedly above reason.

Third, reality is the same now as 2,000 years ago. There are no grounds for believing that somehow life was different when Jesus was alive, or 1,400 years ago when Muhammad prophesied. What’s true now was true then. What isn’t true now cannot have been true then.

So how does any of that apply to us here today, in 2008, in the 21^st century, in our enlightened land?

In hardly seven months, it will be the 200^th anniversary of Paine’s death – despised at his death because he didn’t accept traditional religion. Two hundred years ago. Isn’t it strange that only two weeks ago, General Colin Powell had to defend Barack Obama against charges of being Muslim? And then in a most eloquent way, he told of the young Muslim American who had died fighting in Iraq. And he asked, since when was it wrong in America to be a Muslim? An additional question might be, is it wrong to be any religion, or even no religion…in America…the land of the free?

Two hundred years after Paine died, just this week, listen to what happened in North Carolina. It concerns U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole, the former head of the American Red Cross, who was Secretary of Labor and also Secretary of Transportation – the only woman ever to hold two cabinet level positions. She is a graduate of Duke University, studied at Oxford, holds a Masters in Education from Harvard, plus being a graduate of Harvard Law School, and Phi Beta Kappa. She cannot feign ignorance. She’s brilliant, experienced and politically savvy. Plus, her husband was also the Republican candidate for president against Bill Clinton in 1996.

Two hundred years after Paine died she recently resorted to running a television commercial that links her opponent with support of “godless America.”

With the flimsiest guilt by association, she links her opponent Kay Hagan, to a political action committee that supports equal rights for atheists and the separation of church and state. The commercial intones, "A leader of the Godless Americans PAC recently held a secret fundraiser in Kay Hagan's honor," says a female voice, as ominous music plays underneath. The ad interviews prominent atheists before the announcer continues: "Godless Americans and Kay Hagan. She hid from cameras, took godless money. What did Hagan promise in return?" It ends with a grimacing photo of Hagan and the off-camera voice of the PAC's executive director, Ellen Johnson, saying, "There is no God."

But again, as with Colin Powell and Islam, even though it’s not true about Ms Hagan, since when is it wrong to be an atheist in America, or as Paine was, a Deist?

So 200 years after the death of the author of the Age of Reason, it’s disheartening to realize how unreasonable we still are. And how unwilling we are to grant greatness to anyone who believed as Paine, despite how much he did for the Republic.

John Adams, who was a bitter enemy of Paine’s, wrote to a friend after Paine’s death, “I know not whether any Man in the World has had more influence on its inhabitants or the affairs of America for the last thirty years than Tom Paine…."

To someone as sheltered from liberal religion as I was when I first entered the University, my first encounter with Thomas Paine in an American Literature class was earth-shattering. But not only did it challenge the foundations of my faith, but to embrace its viewpoints eventually would exact a huge familial toll, as well as losing friends of a lifetime. Church, profession, recreation, connections – all were lost when I realized that I believed more what Paine said about religion, than I did my father or mother, my brother or sisters, my minister, or bible school teachers, my bishop, my conference superintendent, my Director of General Evangelism – everyone of whom had gone out of there way to assist and support me.

That remains a loss for me even now. And yet I could never conceive of making any other decision about faith. Doing so opened up an incredible future that has been a phenomenal journey for which I wouldn’t trade.

The Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backward.” But there’s another half to that sentence: Yes, “Life can only be understood backward…but it must be lived forward.” That means with the lessons learned from the past, we live in the expectation of the future.

And how do we do that? By transforming every moment of the present into the most meaningful possible. We race to the corner to see what life has in store, but we also squeeze the most possible out of every moment experienced on the way. So look back to understand…but live forward…by living this moment to its fullest.

[1] A sermon presented November 02, 2008, as the first in a series entitled, “TRUE PATRIOTISM: Gifts of the Founding Fathers (I), followed by the Conversation Café of All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] By Robert Ingersoll.

[3] Paine blamed Washington for making no effort to secure his release from prison. He wrote a bitter Letter to Washington which had much to do with Paine’s subsequent lack of popularity in America.