July Fourth celebration prompts Catholic reflection on religion and U.S. founding
Friday, 4 July 2025 ()
The National Catholic Bioethics Center’s Edward J. Furton speaks at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2025. / Credit: Tessa Gervasini/CNA
Washington D.C., Jul 4, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Ahead of the celebration of Independence Day, Edward Furton, publications director for The National Catholic Bioethics Center, spoke in a lecture in the nation’s capital about the country’s founders and their desire for a republic open to all faiths but one in which no citizen would be compelled to profess any particular religious doctrine.
In a presentation titled “Natural Religion and the American Founding” at the Catholic Information Center, Furton referenced James J. Walsh’s book “Scholasticism in the Colonial Colleges” to discuss church and state separation and how the Declaration of Independence is “the founding truth of the United States” and should be “at the center of American public life.”
Furton, who received his doctoral degree in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., highlighted the founders’ general, important distinction between two paths to religious truth: faith and reason.
“The truths of faith were indeed meant to be separated from public life,” Furton said in reference to the consensus position of America’s Founding Fathers, as “they were a cause of deep divisions,” Furton said, referencing the religious establishment differences among and clashes within the 13 colonies.
On the other hand, Furton affirmed, “the truths of reason were not to be separated. They were to be the source of our national unity.”
Among the colonial colleges, Furton said, the problem of sectarianism was largely solved by emphasizing “natural religion, a conviction that certain theological and moral truths can be known independently of supernatural revelation.”
Ultimately, Furton said, each college-educated founder ended up adding “his own faith to what they had learned in the college without any contradiction to his own beliefs.”
“Faith is added to reason just as grace is added to nature,” Furton said. “So this distinction between faith and reason is the key to understanding the proper place of religion within American public life.”
Furton continued: “Supernatural religion begins with faith … every proposition in Christian doctrine carries with it this note of belief in supernatural revealing, supernatural truth. Also, what is believed transcends rational understanding. So the various doctrines of the Trinity, for example, are taken on faith, and they transcend human reason.”
In contrast, Furton said, “natural religion … begins with the world around us, as it’s experienced by the senses, and seeks to understand nature on its own terms, independently of faith. Historically … the two approaches have been considered compatible and complementary.”
The founders aimed to develop “a republic that would be open to all religious faiths, but one in which no citizen would be compelled to profess any particular religious doctrine.”
“There would be complete freedom of religious expression among all sects, but unity would be forged under the rationally known truths of natural religion.” People were free to “profess their doctrines in private lives, in their private life, in their homes, in their churches, but none was allowed to join these supernatural beliefs to the federal government.”
“The Declaration of Independence was the first test of this approach, and it was successful. So the American founding rests on a commitment to religious truth that can be known by reason.”
Concluding his presentation, Furton said “religious truths that are agreeable to reason cannot be ruled out preemptively. The argument that the First Amendment obliges to privatize these truths is based on a misunderstanding between the distinction of faith and reason.”
“The same distinction between faith and reason tells us that the true line of separation today between church and state is: All religious claims that transcend reason must be separated from public life, but all those that are within the range of reason may remain,” Furton asserted.
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