Robert Sutherland Alley

From Philosopedia.org

Alley, Robert Sutherland (1932 - 15 August 2006)

Alley, the son of a Baptist minister who became an authority on church-state relations and a professor emeritus at the University of Richmond, died in Richmond, Virginia, at the age of 74. He had been in failing health for a year at a Henrico County nursing home.

In 1977, he gave a speech to Richmond atheists in which he said Jesus "never really claimed to be God or to be related to him," one that raised a furor that produced calls for his dismissal and ignited a battle over academic freedom at the university.

"That was a turning point in his career," his son Robert recalled. "He didn't lose his job. He became chairman of the [newly created] area studies department" because his interests had begun to shift toward looking at popular culture. He was especially interested in television and how it affected values and ethics."

For 20 years, he and University of Richmond English professor Irby Brown taught a three-week summer course called "Film and Television: Values in Commercial Art." They took students to California, where they interviewed producers and actors to study the ethical impact of television and film. Dr. Alley produced two PBS documentaries in connection with the class in 1982.

Alley was on the Council for Secular Humanism’s Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. He had been a contributing editor of Free Inquiry.

The author of James Madison on Religious Liberty (1989) and School Prayer (1993), he was executive director of the James Madison Memorial Committee. Alley was a Secular Humanist Mentor of the Council for Secular Humanism and a member of Americans United’s Board of Trustees. Upon reading work by the Texas-based Religious Right propagandist David Barton, he researched some of the quotations that Barton was making and fundamentalists were quoting. Alley specifically found the following Christian Nation statements questionable, if not outright dishonest:

• It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. —George Washington (questionable)
• have always said and always will say that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make us better citizens. —Thomas Jefferson (questionable)
• We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves . . . according to the Ten Commandments of God. —James Madison (questionable)
• It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! —Patrick Henry (questionable)
• Whosoever shall introduce into the public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world. —Benjamin Franklin (questionable)
• A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or eternal invader. —Samuel Adams (questionable)
• The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations, are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be accessory [sic] to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer. —Noah Webster (questionable)
• There are two powers only which are sufficient to control men, and secure the rights of individuals and a peaceable administration; these are the combined force of religion and law, and the force or fear of the bayonet. —Noah Webster (questionable)
• The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. —Abraham Lincoln (questionable)
• The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion. -Abraham Lincoln (questionable)
• America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. —Alexis de Tocqueville (This definitely is not in Democracy in America.)
• Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In this sense and to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian. —Holy Trinity v U.S. (entirely false.)

At least nine of the twelve statements were included in Barton’s The Myth of Separation (1989).

In 1995, however, Barton’s group, WallBuilders, issued a one-page document titled “Questionable Quotes,” admitting the alleged statements are false. Embarrassed, Barton revised his earlier book and called it Original Intent. Alley, however, found that the revision cites sources with inaccurate material. Meanwhile, Barton continued to speak around the country at Christian Coalition meetings, attacking separation of church and state and advocating union between religion and government.

Alley, commenting upon the daunting task of proving that a quotation does not exist, laments that Barton and others are anti-historical. “We likely have not heard the last of this nonsense,” he added, “but it is important to press the new media frauds to document what they claim. Because they cannot do so in most instances, time may ultimately discredit the lot of them.”

In addition to his son Robert, he is survived by his wife, Norma Franklin Crane Alley; another son, John Reuben Alley of Richmond; and a brother, Reuben Alley of Annapolis, Maryland.

{Church and State, July-August 1996; WAS}