"Fortune favors the prepared mind."
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur
It
is
fashionable for a large and noisy segment of our population to
repeatedly make the claim that the United States was established by
our founding fathers as a Christian nation.
David Barton is a
major
advocate for this idea. Mike
Huckabee calls him
the “single best historian in America today,” others
call him a “sham historian.”
He
is in
fact
not a historian at all
but an evangelical
Christian minister, and a
graduate of Oral
Roberts University, a
third-rate school not noted for free inquiry and unfettered
scholarship. Barton
provides a thin patina of “historical” cover for a pack of
fundamentalist religious
extremists
such as Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, James Dodson, Alan Keys, Dennis
Prager, Randall Terry, Tony Perkins, and Jerry Falwell. These
people along with a host of others are waging an all out assault on
what Jefferson called the “wall of the separation of church and
state” with a goal of
changing our government into some form of theocracy.
In
this essay I will address
the question as to
whether the United States is a Christian nation by
first considering
the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution itself. I will also examine
both the process and politics that produced these documents and the
writings of the founding fathers on
the subject of religion and government with the hope
of better appreciating
their intentions. Since
our constitution is a living document,
I will also look at
a number of Supreme Court
decisions related
the to
issue of separation of church and state.
At
the start it is important
to understand the distinction between a democracy and a republic. If
the founding fathers had established a democracy providing
for every citizen to have a vote on every issue raised in the public
square, they
would have
most likely written
a constitution
based on the premise that all power to govern comes from God and
Jesus Christ and that religion deserves government support including
the funds to build churches. It
is also very likely that a national religion would have been
established
with provisions such as mandatory church attendance along
with harsh punishment for
anyone criticizing
the established church in any way. They
deliberately did not.
Instead
the founders erected
a republic where all decisions regarding the rights and welfare of
the citizens and public policy
are
decided by elected representatives, of
course constrained by the
constitution
as interpreted by the
Supreme Court. And
it was the fifty-five
selected
representatives from the disparate colonies who
gathered in
Philadelphia in the year
1776
to create a new
government. They
selected a five-man
drafting committee consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman to
write the Declaration of
Independence. It is
important to remember that the Continental Congress had already voted
in a legal act of treason to separate from England on
June 7, 1776. The
Declaration of Independence was an attempt to justify an action
already taken.
Jefferson,
Adams, and Franklin were all deists (the religious beliefs of
Livingston, and Sherman are
less well known) and they made ample use of the language of deism
employing words such as God of Nature, Laws of Nature, Creator, Supreme Judge, and Divine Providence. As
deist they believed in Spinoza's God who created the universe and the
laws governing its operation and then withdrew from any further
active role in “his” creation. This was not the God of Abraham
who performed miracles, answered prayers, and
provided for salvation and life after death.
As
everyone knows the committee chose Thomas
Jefferson to write what
we call the Declaration
of Independence. After Jefferson completed what he called a draft he
asked Benjamin Franklin to edit it. Franklin the brightest of what
Jefferson called “an
assembly of demi-gods”
made what appeared to be a small change to Jefferson's masterpiece
when he changed the words sacred and undeniable to self-evident. It
was from this small seed that our “God-less” constitution grew
creating
the first secular government in history in what was called The
Great Experiment.
The
words “endowed by their creator” are often cited by Barton and
other “Christian” nation advocates in an attempt to rewrite
history and create the
theocracy that they so desire. Two points alone destroy what is the
weakest of arguments. First, the Declaration
of Independence (never
ratified by the colonies)
is not a part of our
founding documents. And second it was addressed not to the American
people but to King George III and was nothing more than Jefferson's
strongest attempt to
justify the colonies'
right to be independent of Britain before
the court of world opinion especially the French. Jefferson
made full use of Seneca's adage that “Religion is regarded by the
common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as
useful.”
To
understand the enormity of Jefferson's task of justifying the action
already taken by the Continental
Congress, it essential to
understand
the concept of positive law versus natural law. Positive
law is any action taken by a legally constituted body such as the
Parliament of Great Britain. Natural law in contrast relies on some
metaphysical grounds that a personal is born with certain rights in
the same way that they receive their hair and eye color. Jefferson,
lacking any positive law to use against King George III, had to rely
on natural law. Many
philosophers and politicians bolster their natural law arguments by
appealing to a higher power such as God. This option posed a most
tricky proposition for Jefferson and his fellow deists who were
intent upon creating a secular government. To
achieve that
goal he employed the language of deism harvested from the Age of
Enlightenment thinkers such as John
Locke, Voltaire, and
Denis Diderot. Jefferson
as one of the best educated and best read of the founders was well
aware of the fact that the
greatest threat to the freedom and well being of people would be the merger
of church and state and
was most familiar with the words of Denis Diderot: Man will never
be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the
last priest.
After
Franklin signed the Treaty of Paris on
September 3, 1783 ending
the Revolutionary war and winning America's independence,
representatives from the thirteen states (no longer colonies)
gathered in Philadelphia at
Constitution Hall
in the year 1787 to create a new nation by
writing what turned out to be a God-less or secularist
constitution. It did not contain any reference to God and addressed
only two religious questions: freedom of religion (the
first amendment),
and the prohibition of any religious test for candidates
seeking any public office (Article
VI, Section 3)
of
the constitution.
To
understand how God was excluded from what has been described as the
greatest document ever
written, it is necessary to recognize
three major
groups
of delegates at the Constitutional Convention.
They were the enlightenment
rationalists,
religious
fundamentalists,
and slave
owners. The enlightenment
rationalists
(also called
Freethinkers) consisted of people like Jefferson, Madison, and
Franklin. The religious
fundamentalists
included
Catholics, Quakers, Baptists,
Jews,
and
other small religious groups such as the Mennonites.
Out
of the 55 delegates, more than half were members of the Anglican
Church/Episcopal
(Church of England).
The
enlightenment
rationalists
were
heavily influenced by the Age
of Enlightenment ideas
originating in the 17th
and 18th
century by such thinkers as Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Voltaire,
Isaac Newton, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Montesquieu.
Separation
of church and
state, freedom
of speech, full
rights for all, tolerance,
and a strong advocacy for reason
and
science are
some of the major ideas that influenced the founding father's
thinking.
Jefferson
one of
the
best-educated and best-read
of
the delegates and
was
probably most influenced by the
above mentioned thinkers and writers followed by James Madison and
Benjamin
Franklin.
The
religious
fundamentalist
delegates
were members of minority religious groups that most likely would
have favored a more theocratic constitution had they not feared the
Anglicans
who they thought would
impose
Anglicanism as
the state religion if the constitution permitted
it.
The entire matter was further complicated by the fact that the slave
states were the ones most in favor of some form of a theocracy, but
they sacrificed their desire
for a theocracy in return for blocking a constitutional
prohibition against slavery. In the end it was a compromise whereby
the freethinkers received
a secular government, the religious fundamentalists
received
freedom of religion and protection from
the Anglicans, and slave states got to keep their slaves. In
the
end
when
given the choice between God and slavery, the
fundamentalists
chose slavery.
In the words of Robert Ingersoll (America's Voltaire), They knew that to put God in the Constitution was to put man out. “They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought.”
At
the close of the Constitutional Convention on September 18, 1787, a
woman yelled out to Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from the hall,
“Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” His
answer “A republic if you can keep it,” is perhaps the most
prescient statement every uttered by a politician. History has
proved our beloved Franklin correct. Over the past 237 years
disgruntled and history-challenged fundamentalists have been
exploited by “conservative” politicians at the expense of our
secular-mandated government. Franklin was absolutely correct. If
secular citizens are not vigilant, fundamentalists will bully their
way into our way of live and destroy our most cherished freedom, the
freedom of conscience. The
Treaty of Tripoli was passed by the United States
Senate on June 7, 1797 and signed by President Adams taking
effect as law on June 10, 1797. It contained the following statement,
“the Government of the United States of America is not, in any
sense, founded on the Christian religion...”
Religious
freedom was tested as early as October 7, 1801 when the Danbury
Baptists fearing that the Congregationalists were attempting to
establish Congregationalism as the state religion of Connecticut
wrote a letter to President Jefferson requesting his support in
opposing the idea of a state religion. His answer included the famous words, a wall of separation between
Church and State. One-hundred
and forty-six years later (1947) Justice Hugo Black wrote in
the Everson case, “The First Amendment has erected a wall between
church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
In
1810 a law requiring Sunday mail delivery provided a thorn in the
side of religious conservatives. In 1828 there were attempts in
Congress to overturn the law. Senator Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky
(a devout Baptist) responded by saying it was “unconstitutional for
the federal government to promote Sabbath observation by ending
Sunday mail delivery.” It should also be noted that Johnson had
supported framing the federal constitution with no mention of God.
In
1864 the National Reform Association (a group of clergymen) met with
Lincoln in an attempt to have Congress amend the constitution
acknowledging Jesus Christ as the source of all just governmental
power. Being a politician, Lincoln listened politely and then
conceded a bit by prevailing on Congress to add In God We Trust
to the two-cent coin. In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt tried to
have it removed because he thought that it gave rise to sacrilegious
puns.
In
1892
the
Pledge of Allegiance authored by Francis Bellamy was
passed
into law with
recitation mandatory until 1943 when
the Supreme
Court
struck
it down as
unconstitutional. It should be noted that the words Under God
were not added to the pledge until 1954 as a
consequences
of McCarthyism.
In
conclusion all except the most zealous fundamentalists can clearly
see that the founding fathers in 1787 established a secular
government. In spite of a clearly written and preserved record of
this historical fact, there are many who mine the writings of the
founders cherry-picking the record in a feeble attempt to claim this
was not their real intention. Of course intentions are totally
irrelevant once any action is taken. Regardless of that, I will address
their intentions based on their writings of two of the most
influential founders, Jefferson and Franklin.
Thomas
Jefferson's list of accomplishments are so extensive and well-known
that space will only permit mentioning a few. He served in the
Continental Congress, wrote the Declaration of Independence, served
as the United States Minister to France, served as Secretary of State
under George Washington, served as the third president of the United
States, and founded both the Democratic Party and the University of
Virginia. After all of these and more, which accomplishments did he
most
want
to be remember?
Only
three, the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, and the University of Virginia. He personally selected them for inclusion on his tombstone. All three of Jefferson's most cherished accomplishments are secular in keeping with his strongly held belief that the practice of religion is a private affair separate and independent of the state. In the case of the University of Virginia, Jefferson even went so far as to ban the teaching of theology altogether.
In
one of worse cases of chutzpah many religious fundamentalists
actually claim that
Jefferson was a devoted Christian in direct opposition to his many
memorialized
statements
to the contrary.
For example in a letter to John Adams he wrote that
the
New Testament was written by
“very inferior minds,” and it consisted of “so much absurdity,
so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture,” that it could
rightfully be called “dung.” Jefferson
was adamantly opposed to the government using tax money to support
any religion. In his The
Life and Selected Writings he
wrote,
“compelling anyone, through taxation, to support religion, even
one's own religion was sinful and tyrannical.”
Although
Benjamin Franklin was an aggressive advocate for a secular government
with strict separation of church and state,
his personal religious views were more subtle than Jefferson's.
Tocqueville
observed that he “was more interested in building the city of man
than the city of God” and
he
resigned from the Presbyterian church in 1735 and
seldom attended church services calling them “boring.” He
also
said
that Divine revelation “had no weight with me,” but he did
think
that religious practices encouraged “good behavior and a moral
society.” In his words according
to Walter Isaacson,
“To
pour forth benefits for the common good is divine” and
“too much religion is worse than none at all.”
He
also said that “lighthouses were more useful than churches.”
And
don't forget that it was Franklin who changed Jefferson's words of
“sacred
and undeniable” to “self-evident” in
the
Declaration of Independence making
it clear that he was not staking the colonies'
right to independence on any deity or supernatural force but instead
anchored
this right firmly on natural rights.
In
summary I must return to Franklin's statement,
“A
republic if you can keep it.” The
great paradox of people of faith attempting to involve the government
in the support of their religious beliefs is the
fact that religion
flourishes in countries with secular governments and stagnates where
state religions
are
mandated. This is especially true for
smaller and lesser known religions who are usually powerless to
compete against a larger religion backed by the state. Religious
people have much
more
to lose with a theocracy than freethinkers and should stand strong in
their support of the wall of separation of church and state. I find
it strange that so
many
people
of
the Abrahamic faiths
claim
that their God is omniscient, omnipotent,
and omnipresent,
but
then
insist
that “he” requires the
assistance
of
the state
to
gain entrance to the public square. In the words of Thomas
Jefferson, “It is error alone which needs the support of the
government. Truth can stand by itself.”
1.
Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004)
by Susan Jacoby
2.
Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking Our Declaration
of Independence (2007) by
Alan Dershowitz
3.
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003)
by Walter Isaacson
5.
American
Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007)
by Chris Hedges
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