is america a christian nation 2008

8/8/2019 Is America a Christian Nation 2008

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IS AMERICA A CHRISTIAN NATION?

(And was it ever?)

John Rafferty

Is America a Christian nation?

There are a lot of people who insist that it is.

Like television preacher-politician Pat Robertson, who tells millions of his

listeners, There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the

Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore.

And like smiley-face Laura Bush, who coos that The Bill of Rights says

that our rights came from our Creator. By which she means a Christian

God, of course. And by which she betrays the fact that either she doesnt

know what the Bill of Rights says, or that she has confused the ten

amendments with the Ten Commandments.

Weve all heard it so many times, in so many venues, that many Americans

perhaps most have come to accept the idea of a Christian nation as fact

when, in fact, it isnt.

Most of those many Americans, Im sure, dont have an agenda behind theirbelief in the Christian nation notion but there are many who do.

Most are innocents who simply dont understand why they cant have

organized prayer in public schools and Christmas crches in Town Halls.

But many are Christian Reconstructionists and other fundamentalists whose

goal is nothing less than an American Taliban like Randall Terry of

Operation Rescue, who has announced Our goal is a Christian nation.

We have a Biblical duty we are called by God to conquer this country.

Now if conquering the nation for God is your goal, then theres nothing

really wrong with a little fudging of history to serve the cause, is there? You

can put words in the mouths of presidents long dead ignore facts that

dont fit your agenda and make up facts that do.

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Whatever their motives however the historical revisionists reconstruct

American history to fit their biases the claim that America is or was a

Christian nation is based on five arguments.

One: That America was settled by Christians most famously the Pilgrim

Fathers who braved the wilderness to find a place where they could

worship freely.

Two: That from the earliest days Americans were and are

overwhelmingly Christian and that the will of the people was then and

is now to have their government reflect their Christian beliefs.

Three: That the founding fathers were Christians whose intention it was to

create a Christian nation.

Four: That our founding documents from the Mayflower Compact to the

Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself are based on

Biblical law and Christian principles. And

Five: That it is only in recent years that our Christian heritage has been

attacked and subverted by liberals and secular humanists.

Okay lets examine these ideas in historical order.

First, that America was settled by Christians. Of course it was, but lets

remember that the so-called Pilgrims were not the first to land here. The first

colony of English-speaking Europeans was at Jamestown, Virginia, settled

in 1607 for trade, and to exploit the wealth they expected to find, including

gold, silver and copper in the words of the first charter of Virginia notfor religious freedom.

Naturally, Jamestown quickly became a magnet for such venture capitalists

as pirates, gamblers, and other swashbucklers not pious Christians.

But a new governor soon arrived, armed with Laws Divine, Moral and

Martial, and started whipping, imprisoning and even hanging those who

broke the Sabbath. Christianity had arrived in America.

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And in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed up north in Massachusetts,

the colony of Jamestown took delivery of Virginias first 20 African slaves.

And surprise! some of those Africans were Muslims.

So, before the pious Puritans, America was settled and unsettled by

pirates, hustlers, slaves, and Muslims.

In November, 1620, hundreds of miles to the north, the Mayflower arrived

offshore from what would become Massachusetts with 102 people aboard.

Contrary to popular misconception, those 102 were notall Puritans. In fact,only 37 of them were. The rest were a mixed bag who shared one thing in

common a deep mistrust and suspicion of the 37 Puritans.

Why? First, lets clear up a misconception about why those Puritans were

going to a wilderness an ocean away from the civilization of their times. Sothat they could practice their religion in freedom? Yes, but they could, and

were, already doing that in the Netherlands. They had left England and the

persecution of the Church of England several years before, and in tolerant,

secular Holland, were practicing freely.

But what they really wanted was to establish their own theocracy and to

take their children, who were, naturally, fraternizing with Dutch kids, away

from the contamination of ideas that were other than pure. So they left the

Netherlands, where they could worship exactly as they wanted, without

persecution or hindrance, for the New World.

The Mayflower was supposed to have landed in Virginia, not New England,

but had been blown off course. And many of the other passengers suspected

that the Puritans in their eagerness to set up their own idea of a pure

Christian community had connived with the Mayflower crew to take

them as far away from the Virginia colony and its Church of England

authority as possible.

And so was conceived the Mayflower Compact.

Puritans believed a couple of things that had important effects on the

subsequent history of this country.

First and the reason the 37 of them had set sail for America in the first

place was their belief that early Christian congregations in the New

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Testament era ran their own affairs and were subject to no higher

supervision than that of Christ himself.

Emulating those early congregations was a return to pure Christianity for

the Bible-literate Puritans hence the name Puritans and the name

Congregational, by which their churches and their brand of Christianity

would become known.

The Puritans also believed that like the Biblical Hebrews they had a

covenant with God and that covenants between men to govern

themselves justly were a reflection of that even more important covenant.

So they drew up and signed an agreement while at anchor off Plymouth to

enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws ... as shall be thought

most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony and togovern themselves by majority rule.

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While the history books have rightly emphasized the revolutionary

importance of this first-ever known example of free men consciously

creating a community and its government of laws by which they would live

an equally important point was that the Puritans invited the other men on

the Mayflower to sign on, too.

They invited men who were notof the Puritans religious persuasion to

become equal partners in the community. Four of them did, and some basic

trust among the colonists was restored.

But lets face it the Puritans were religious fanatics who believed that

everyone who did not believe as they did was not only doomed to eternal

hellfire, but was an agent of Satan.

And so the history of that little colony of believers up to the Salem WitchTrials in 1692 and beyond is a chronology of fanatic Christian

fundamentalism gone wild.

In 1630, 900 more Puritans emigrated to Massachusetts Bay led by JohnWinthrop, who became the colonys first governor. That year now that

they were the overwhelming majority they began using tax money to

support ministers of the Congregationalist church.

In 1631, they restricted the vote and the right to hold office to members of

the church.

By 1635, non-members were required to attend church services

and in 1638 non-members were taxed like it or not to pay for the

preaching that might lead ultimately to their conversion.

And although the Massachusetts general court did notpass a law proposed

by one of the colonys founding fathers that would have required women to

wear veils sound familiar? in 1646 the court didmake religious heresy ready for this? punishable by death.

Score? Christianity five, democracy zero and so much for the Mayflower

Compact.

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The Christian historical revisionists often point out that the Mayflower

Compact certainly didestablish the Christian religion in the new land.

So it did but it also reaffirmed the Puritans loyalty to the King of

England. If the Compact makes the argumentfora Christian Nation, it alsomakes the argument againstthe American Revolution.

In fact, if America was Biblically-based, there would be no United States ofAmerica. Because the New Testament specifically admonishes Christians to

accept authority in First Peter, 2:13. And in Romans 13 it warns that

those who resist authority will incur judgment.

So much for a revolution to overthrow the authority of a king.

Of course, there was dissent in New England. In 1636, Roger Williams, whohad been banished from Massachusetts for new and dangerous opinions

like religious and political freedom, including separation of church and state

founded Providence and Rhode Island, which became havens for

religious dissenters.

And in 1638, Anne Hutchinson also banished from Massachusetts for

nonconformist religious views moved her family to Rhode Island,

establishing their own colony there.

In the Rhode Island compact signed by the men of her family in 1638, one of

the first rules was: No person within said colony, at any time hereafter,

shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called into question

on matters of religionso long as he keeps the peace.

Of course as a woman with no legal standing, Anne Hutchinson couldnt

sign the compact herself. But when you travel through the Bronx on the

Hutchinson Parkway alongside the Hutchinson River right past the

spot where she and several of her children died in an Indian raid give a

thought to one of Americas early good guys.

By the way, the trial that resulted in Hathaways banishment from

Massachusetts which was all about the hair-splitting of doctrine, not

about anything we would consider a crime is a perfect example of

Christian self-righteousness run amok. She stood up to her inquisitors

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beautifully, but Governor Winthrop, frustrated by Hutchinson winning every

debating point, simply ordered her banished.

I desire to know wherefore I am banished? she asked. Say no more,

Winthrop answered. The courtknows wherefore and is satisfied.

Which reminds me of the great line from a Ring Lardner short story

Shut up, he explained.

And which brings us to Argument Two: that the early settlers of America

wantedtheir government to reflect their Christian beliefs.

Well, yes and no. By 1700, Congregationalism, based on Puritan principles,

was the established religion of almost all of New England Massachusetts,

New Hampshire, and Connecticut whose Code of 1650 ordained: If anyman shall have or worship any God but the Lord God, he shall be put to

death.

The lone New England exception was Roger Williams and Anne

Hutchinsons tolerant Rhode Island.

But in the rest of New England, the Puritans, who had fled religious

persecution, had become even worse persecutors an American Taliban.

In the south, following its establishment in Virginia, the Church of England,

known as the Anglican Church in America, became the established church

of all the southern colonies.

By 1770, on the eve of the Revolution, the Anglican Church reigned in

Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Reigned,

but didnt always rule.

In Virginia and South Carolina, the Anglican Church was well established

and thriving in spite of large numbers of dissenters who were toleratedin both states.

Maryland which had allowed Roman Catholics freedom of worship when

founded in the 1630s by 1770 had an established Anglican church and

imposed severe restrictions on Catholics and the new minority Protestant

sects like Baptists and Methodists.

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North Carolina and Georgia were both backcountry areas where the new

dissident sects were thriving. Georgia was only sparsely settled and North

Carolina had the reputation deserved or not as the least religious of all

the colonies. While the Anglican Church was established in both states, it

didnt make much difference in the backcountry lives of the residents.

In fact, throughout the colonies, the established churches ruled in the cities

and towns collected their support money from the local governments, ran

their schools and their charities but had little effect or influence in the

rural and mountain areas where the Great Awakening of the 1730s and

40s had converted so many to the Baptist and Methodist churches.

In the Middle Colonies, the picture is almost entirely different, and

established churches were almost non-existent.

The Anglican Church was the established church of New York and had

been since the British took the colony from the far more tolerant Dutch in

1664 but that meant little outside New York City and Westchester

County, where Anglicanism was the religion of the ruling elite.

During Dutch rule, New York then New Netherlands had been the scene

of one of the great advances in religious freedom in America.

As Russell Shorto tells it in his history of the New Netherlands colony

The Island at the Center of the World English Quakers drove Governor

Peter Stuyvesant nuts with their sermonizing and taunting and the

jiggling fits of spiritual frenzy for which they were named. They were, in

his estimation, a threat to the peace and stability of the colony, and probably

out of their minds as well.

When Stuyvesant forbade the town of Vlissingen which today we call

Flushing from abetting the Shakers in their defiance of the Dutch

Reformed Church thirty-one of the villagers signed a remonstrance to

Stuyvesant. The law of love peace and libertie ... they reminded him,extends even to Jewes, Turkes and Egiptians. Therefore, they respectfully

refused to obey.

And the tolerant Dutch government back in Amsterdam backed them up,

which really drove Peg-leg Stuyvesant crazy.

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The Flushing Remonstrance is not as well-known as the Mayflower

Compact but it is even more fundamental to American liberty, a true

ancestor to the first amendment in the Bill of Rights.

New Jersey which shared the same Dutch-to-English history as New

York didnt establish the Anglican Church or any other, and so became a

religious free market.

By the way, when the Brits took over in 1664, they set about renaming most

places, naming the big city after the Duke of York, and the New Netherlands

area we now call New Jersey after the Duke of Albany. But the new name

they came up with never caught on with the locals which is why we dontcall the state across the river Albania.

In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia was the second largest city in the BritishEmpire by 1770 only London was bigger and was home to every

religion known to Western civilization. And the colony remained true to its

Quaker founders ideals of religious tolerance.

So did little Delaware across the river which pretty much did whatever

Pennsylvania did.

So look at the scorecard in 1770, on the eve of the Revolution.

Of the thirteen colonies, three Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and

Connecticut had Congregationalist establishments with sometimes

brutally restrictive religious laws going back to Puritan days.

Six had established the mother countrys Anglican Church. But the church

held sway in only a small part of New York and the residents of North

Carolina and Georgia seem not to have been affected by or interested at all

in their official religion.

Four colonies Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware had no established Christian church at all.

In fact, mostof the new breed of people being called Americans were not

much interested in religion.

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While most would call themselves Christian, that title in the eighteenth

century would have meant pretty much the same thing as American or

European or not-a-barbarian would mean today.

According to two of the most distinguished American historians of the

twentieth century Richard Hofstadter and James MacGregor Burns by

1790 as many as 90 percentof Americans were notmembers ofany church.

So was America settled by Christians populated by Christians?

Of course but while many of the people who came to these shores were

driven by religious motivations, probably just as many if not more

came here for free land, for better opportunities or to escape privation and

even starvation back in Europe, even as indentured servants here.

And by the time of the Revolution, hundreds of thousands had come because

they had chains around their ankles. They harbored no dreams of creating a

Christian nation.

Was America a Christian nation at the time of the founding? Yes, in the

sense that most Americans considered themselves Christian but not very.

But what about the Third Argument? that the countrys leaders the

Founding Fathers who actually wrote the documents that created the new

nation were believing Christians hell-bent on creating a Christian

nation as the historical revisionists believe or would have us believe?

And what about the documents they wrote the Declaration and the

Constitution that are supposedly founded on Christian principles or even

Biblical law?

Lets look at the beliefs and the practices of perhaps the most important five

of those founders the first four presidents Washington, Adams,

Jefferson, and Madison and the man some historians have called the firstAmerican Benjamin Franklin.

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches, said Franklin the man who

discovered electricity and invented the lightning rod.

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That invention, by the way, caused Ben some grief among believing

Christians. Clergymen throughout the colonies actually condemned

Franklins invention because they said lightning rods thwarted the will

of God whose divine prerogative it was, presumably, to destroy houses

with lightning bolts.

As Franklin answered dont roofs on houses, then, thwart Gods rain?

Franklin was a scientist, a rationalist, and a Deist who helped write the

Declaration of Independence presided over the congress that approved it

and participated in the writing of the new Constitution.

He had little use for Christianity. I have found Christian dogma

unintelligible, he wrote. Early in life I absented myself from Christian

assemblies.

Like many others Franklin didbelieve that most people himselfnotincluded needed religion to keep them in line.

But, he wrote inAn Essay on Toleration If we look back into history for

the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have

not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The

primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but

practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England

blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the

Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice

themselves both here and in New England.

Franklin a Christian? Not even a little bit.

Do we really have to discuss the religious disbelief of that acknowledged

freethinker, Thomas Jefferson? Because of the revisionists, Yes.

Jefferson wrote most of The Declaration of Independence, which has beencalled Americas birth certificate and the revisionists claim that that

handiwork of his is chock full of references to God from the Laws of

Nature and ofNatures God and of men who have been createdequal,

with inalienable rights endowed by theirCreator to the signers own

reliance on divine Providence and on their pledge of their sacredhonor.

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Well, actually, thats it, five words or phrases Natures God, created,

Creator, divine Providence, and sacred. No Jesus, no Savior, no

Messiah, no Christian imagery at all.

But, says legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, the Christian historical revisionists

want to use those few words to turn Americas birth certificate into a

baptismal certificate.

In fact, those five words and phrases are all typical Deist formulations,

expressions of a benign but uninvolved deity who kick-started the universe

somethinghad to, most everyone then supposed and then left it, and

us, on our own to work out our own destinies.

Deism was a product of the English and French Enlightenments that swept

through the colleges of America in the 1750s and 60s when Jefferson,Madison, Monroe, and others of the founders were attending and forming

their own ideas and philosophies.

Some Deists inclined to a rationalistic Christianity some to materialistic

disbelief but most of them tried to construct a natural religion by the light

of reason, totally discrediting revelation, miracles, and the supernatural.

So using reason as a guide Jefferson went through the New Testament

painstakingly, literally scissoring out every reference to Jesus purported

miracles and any other supernatural event.

His edited bible ended with the death of Jesus a moral teacher whom

Jefferson much admired and cut out the letters of Paul, the book of

Revelation and the letters attributed to Peter, John, James, and Jude.

Jeffersons Deistic version of the New Testament titled The Life andMorals of Jesus was meant to be read by his friends, and was not

published until nearly a century after his death.

But that hasnt stopped todays historical revisionists ever on the alert to

utilize a half-truth ever ready to sucker the unsuspecting to actually

peddle the idea that not only was Jefferson a Christian, but that he published

his own bible The Jefferson Bible!

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Surely the best-known of all the Jefferson quotes is, I have sworn upon the

altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of

man. Its carved in stone on the Jefferson monument.

The revisionists have hijacked that, too because of that three-letter noun

with a capital G. But most people who have heard or read the quote dont

know its context.

Jefferson was roundly condemned as an atheist which he wasnt by the

clergy of his day many of whom denounced him from their pulpits when

he ran for the presidency. Why? Mainly because they knew he was

absolutely against any establishment of Christianity as a national religion.

About such an establishment, he wrote: The clergy ... believe that any

portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in oppositionto their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar ofGod, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

Every form of tyranny yes! but T.J. was talking about Christianreligious tyranny.

After winning the presidency in spite of the clergy, Jefferson did indeed

confound them by strengthening the wall of separation between church and

state that was written into the Constitution.

The first time he used that wall of separation phrase was in his famous

letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists in 1802, while he was President.

Again, context is important. The Baptists had written to President Jefferson

because they wanted relief from what they called the oppression of the

established Congregational Church of Connecticut the inheritors of the

Puritan Taliban.

The wall letter was Jeffersons answer to them. Believing with you, hewrote, that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God

I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American

people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting

an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus

building a wall of separation between church and state.

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Pop quiz. Who said this? During almost fifteen centuries has the legal

establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or

less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility

in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

Thats the fourth president of the United States, James Madison, who was

even more important to the founding of the nation as one of the authors of

the Federalist Papers the series of 85 long, detailed newspaper articles

that convinced the American public to support the new Constitution and

in which the word God appears exactly twice.

And both times, Gore Vidal said, in the sense of God only knows.

Ignoring the fact that Madison became more and more a Deist as he matured

and a Unitarian through his friendship with the Adamses todaysrevisionists have loudly proclaimed Madisons Christian faith and practice

in his youth.

Its true Madison came home to Virginia from the College of New Jersey

as an orthodox Christian. But almost immediately David Holmes says in

The Faiths of the Founding Fathers Madison witnessed the persecution

and jailing of religious dissenters by the Established Church his church.

At the age of twenty-two, Madison became a convert to religious freedom,

believing and arguing that only liberty of conscience could guarantee civil

and political liberty.

When Virginia adopted a new constitution in 1776, Madison insisted that it

guarantee freedom of conscience rather than mere toleration.

And in 1785 he wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious

Assessments which advancedfifteen arguments why government should

notsupport religion, and which was the precursor to the Constitutions First

Amendment.

In 1811, when he was president, the House of Representatives presented him

with what President George W. Bush would today call a bill for faith-based

initiatives. Madison vetoed it on First Amendment grounds.

He was a First Amendment absolutist. After all, it was his amendment.

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So where did they get their idea?

From the totally-fabricated and best-sellingLife of Washington written and

rushed into print by Mason Locke Weems in 1800. Thats the same Parson

Weems who gave us the famous tale of the hatchet and the cherry tree

featuring an insufferable, priggish little George telling his father, I cannot

tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet.

And ever after, millions of American schoolchildren who were fed that story

thought Jesus, what a little creep.

But even if Weems made it up, isnt it possible that Washington did kneel in

the snow and slush of Valley Forge every day to get divine guidance?

No, notpossible because he was a Deist and a Freemason. And so, inkeeping with his non-beliefs as a Deist and his practices as a Freemason, he

did notkneel in church or anywhere else. There are dozens of eyewitness

accounts that testify to his upright position in church while most of the

congregants knelt.

Where else did he notkneel? In the army at Valley Forge or anywhere else.

Parson Weems made up his story of Washington-in-the-snow complete

with detailed eye-witness accounts that turned out to be utterly bogus and

was either ignorant of or ignored a fact of eighteenth-century military life.

Washington was commander-in-chief of the army throughout the Revolution

and so would be senior to any other officer at any religious service he

attended including the chaplain conducting the service. And according to

military protocol of the time, the senior officer did notkneel.

I presume that if Washington hadknelt, everyone else would have had to get

down in the snow on their bellies.

Yes he attended church services as commanding general during the

Revolution because he wanted to set an example for the men. Like

Franklin and Adams, Washington believed that most men needed religion to

keep them in line and keeping his ragtag army in line was as much of a

problem for him as was fighting the British.

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In civilian clothes, although Washington attended church on occasion with

Martha while he was president and during his retirement, he did so because

one, it was a small favor he could do for his wife and, two, it was part

of the established social routine of an eighteenth-century Virginia gentleman

the noblesse oblige of setting a good example for the community.

Yes he was a vestryman of his local Episcopal church at Mount Vernon

as was the Deist Jefferson at Monticello and probably Madison and

Monroe at their homes in Virginia, as well.

But that, too, was a gentlemans obligation in the days when only local

churches not any government ran the schools and charities, supervised

by the vestrymen. The vestry at that time was also the local court so

being a vestryman was an obligation no man in political life could ignore.

Notbeing a vestryman in eighteenth-century America would have been likenot contributing to charity today really bad manners, and political

suicide.

Because he was an intensely private man who kept his personal opinions

very much to himself, he has come down to us as the great stone face of

our early history and the historical revisionists have used every even-

offhand reference he ever made to Providence or the Creator as proof

that he was a real and practicing Christian.

But Jefferson knew better. After Washingtons death, Jefferson wrote in his

private journal that when some clergymen had sent the brand-new first

president a set of questions trying to pin him down as to whether or not

he was a Christian the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered

every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed overwithout notice.

Today we call that spin control.

Now that weve examined the religious or irreligious opinions of the most

important of the founders, lets look at the Constitution they wrote and

the government they created when they assembled in Philadelphia in

1787.

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Was it, as the revisionists Fourth Argument would have it, based on

Christian principles? On Biblical law? The revisionists would have us

believe so but it just isntso.

To begin with, the Constitution begins with the words, We, the people of

the United States of America .

There is no invocation of God, no claim of a divine sanction, no appeal to

heaven or Jesus or God the Father for guidance no mention even of the

Deistic Providence that had appeared in the Declaration.

Not even an appeal to natural law, in spite of what Justice Antonin Scalia

says over and over. On whose authority does the founding document of our

nation depend? We, the people.

Not only is the Constitution the first political charter in the history of

western civilization to omit the words God and Jesus Christ but the

United States was the first Western nation to omit Christian symbolism

you know, the Cross from its flag and its currency while Masonic

symbols adorn our currency.

Religion is mentioned once in the Constitution, in Article VI, Section 3

which says that federal elective and appointed officials shall be bound

by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution .

Those two words or affirmation meant that no office holder would

ever be required to swear his loyalty on a bible and that is huge.

Article VI then concludes with no religious Test shall ever be required

as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

That was in direct contradiction of several of the state constitutions which

still allowed only Trinitarian Christians to hold office.

Of course, more than a few clergymen were outraged. One group wrote to

Washington during the debate on the new Constitution which was

sometimes called our Magna Carta complaining that it had no mention

of Jesus. Washington offered a classic defense of the First Amendment, even

before that amendment was written

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I am persuaded, he wrote, that ... the path of true piety is so plain as to

require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe

the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of

our country.

Alexander Hamilton put it even more plainly. When he was asked why the

Constitution made no mention of God, he wisecracked, We forgot.

They didnt forget. They gave a lot of thought to religion during those

closed-door deliberations in Philadelphia and the sense of the

overwhelming majority of the delegates many of whom were believers,

some of whom were clergy was that they wanted no part of establishing

any religion in the new Magna-Charta.

That old non-believing pragmatist, Ben Franklin, with an eye to publicopinion and to history, suggested to the Constitutional Convention that they

open each session with a prayer a fact that todays revisionists make

much of Look, Benjamin Franklin asked for divine guidance in writing

the Constitution.

What the revisionists dont have much to say about it is that the delegates

also with an eye on public opinion, didnt even vote on Franklins proposal

they just ignored it.

And Hamilton again with his own jaundiced eye on public opinion

said that if people knew that the delegates were resorting to prayer, it would

make them look desperate.

Good thinking.

But what about the Presidential oath of office, which is in the Constitution,

and which concludes with preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution

of the United States, so help me God?

The Secular Humanist Society of New York gives an annual Dumbth Award

to the public person who utters the years most clueless, anti-rational remark.

Our first winner, in 2006, was ex-TV personality Star Jones who is a

licensed attorney and who said on national TV, on The View along

with the remark that won her the award that the so help me God phrase

in the Constitution was proof that no atheist could ever be president.

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Well, its true the Presidential oath is in the Constitution, Article II,

Section 1, paragraph 9 but it does notinclude the words so help meGod.

And so help me God I think Star Jones got her law degree from the

classified ads in the back pages ofRolling Stone.

Well some of the innocents claim the words may not exactly be in theConstitution, but Washington added them at his first inauguration and

kissed the Bible, too. Whats more, every president since has carried on the

tradition and said, so help me God.

No, Washington did not. And no, all the other presidents have not.

There are dozens of eyewitness accounts of both of Washingtonsinaugurations including newspaper stories written by journalists who

could write as fast as anyone can talk and not one of them mentions so

help me God or any kissing of any bible. Not one.

And by the way, he used a Masonic bible, not a standard Christian one.

But what about allthe other presidents?

Again, inaugurations were reported widely and in detail right from the

beginning of the republic and there is not a single mention of an added

so help me God until the first inauguration of Chester Alan Arthur in 1881

eighty-two years and twenty presidents after Washington.

And mostof the oath-takings ever since have notincluded those words that

are notin the Constitution. Teddy Roosevelt didnt say them. Taft didnt Wilson didnt Coolidge and Hoover didnt Franklin Roosevelt didnt

three times out of four. Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon didnt.

So help me God is notin any American oath of office!

Religion is mentioned in the Constitution most famously not in the basic

document itself, but in the first amendment, which begins Congress

shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

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Freedom of religion was the first guarantee the first words of the first

amendment.

The founding era the period between the winning of the war for

independence in 1783 through the writing and adoption of the

Constitution in 1787 and 88 and through the first administrations

presided over by presidents who had led the Revolution was perhaps the

headiest, most exciting time in American history.

It was certainly the most secular. The revisionists Fifth Argument that

secularism, liberalism, and humanism are modern heresies in America just

doesnt jibe with the facts of our nations early history.

As Susan Jacoby writes of that era inFreethinkers, what is striking from

a twenty-first-century perspective is the speed with which many Americanscame to support a freedom of thought and religious practice that overturned

millennia of religious authoritarianism. Even when legal barriers to full civic

equality remained, as they did for Jews in most states, the first eight years of

the American republic were characterized by a de facto expansion of liberty

for nonbelievers as well as for dissident religious believers, for non-

Christians and Christians alike.

Secularism was in the air no matter what the revisionists would have us

believe. Americans took the new separation of church and state as the

natural order of things.

One after another the states began dis-establishing religions as they replacedtheir colonial charters with new constitutions. The post office and other

government offices were open and working on Sundays. Tom Paines

Age of Reason was a best-seller and Americans twice elected the so-called atheist Jefferson to the presidency.

How secular was the new United States of America? The best answer lies in

the wording of a document approved by three Presidents and unanimouslyendorsed by the U.S. Senate that needs to be much more widely publicized

by American rationalists and freethinkers.

212 years ago, the United States was having a problem with an Arab Muslim

state.

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Some things never change.

The problem was that Barbary pirates who owed allegiance to the Bashaw of

Tripoli were hijacking American ships and enslaving American sailors. The

Koran allowed him to do this, the Bashaw said, because America was a

Christian nation and therefore the sailors were infidels, who could and

should be enslaved.

In 1796 alone, 119 American sailors had been captured and enslaved.

The United States was only a few years old in 1796, and certainly no great

sea power. And so unlike a recent administration that could be named

the Washington administration defused a bad situation by using diplomacy

while beginning to build an American navy.

On November 4, 1796, Joel Barlow, the American consul to the Barbary

States, signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli. We paid an

outrageous ransom, but we got back all our sailors except for 31 who had

died in captivity and the pirates left American shipping alone for a few

years.

What was significant about the treaty?

Article 11, reads: As the Government of the United States of America is not,

in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no

character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen;

and, as the said [United] States never entered into any war, or act of hostility

against any Mahometan nation it is declared by the parties, that no pretext

arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the

harmony existing between the two countries.

Not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. Those words are in a

treaty written during the Washington administration he saw it and

approved it while Jefferson was Secretary of State. The treaty wasendorsed and signed the next year by the new president, John Adams

after being approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797.

Unanimously. Of course the present-day fabricators of bogus history try to

wish it all away by ignoring Washingtons connection to the treaty by

claiming that Adams and the senators hadnt actually read the whole text

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how could theypossibly know that? and that somehow the treaty was

sneaked through with only a handful of senators actually voting.

You know, the eighteenth-century version of cut-and-run Democrats.

More baloney. First the treaty had been published a couple of months

before the vote the idea that no one read it is simply made up.

Second there were 16 states by then, making for 32 senators in all. But

Senate office was not yet considered a full-time job, and travel from places

like New Hampshire and Kentucky entailed weeks on the dirt roads of 1797.

But a clear two-thirds majority of 23 senators were present and they allvoted Yes. And no one ever asked for a recount or repeal.

Of course the Bashaw reneged on the treaty, and another was signed a fewyears later and the Bashaw reneged again. So we went to war during the

Jefferson administration and again in 1815, when President James

Madison got really serious, and sent the new Marine Corps to put the

Barbary pirates out of action. You know to the shores of Tripoli led

by John Wayne.

But the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli, signed 212 years ago

this month, was never abrogated by the United States.

Nota Christian nation!

Naturally, many clergymen howled about the not-a-Christian-nation treaty

in 1797, and for years afterward. But during those heady, secular first few

decades of the new republic, most of the public and most of its leaders were

too committed to the idea of separation to pay them much mind.

Things would begin to change when the Second Great Awakening ignited

evangelical fervor across the nation in the 1830s and 40s but for a while,

secularism ruled in America.

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And while government in America has historically stayed out of religion,

Christian fundamentalists from the first have campaigned to overturn

the Constitution and the First Amendment which has empowered them.

They tried during the darkest days of the Civil War to get a frightened

Congress and an unpopular President to pass an amendment to the preamble

to the constitution, substituting Jesus authority for that of We the people

but Lincoln pigeonholed it.

They have tried it again and again, even as recently as the 1950s. But while

they havent changed the Constitution they have bullied spineless

politicians into adding In God we Trust to our currency, and under God

to our oath of allegiance. Theyve staged prayer breakfasts in the White

House and diverted billions of our tax dollars to faith-based initiatives.

And today they have their most powerful ally ever.

The Current Occupant is doing everything in his power and using powers

the Constitution never gave him to tear down the wall of separation.

When he was Governor of Texas he infamously proclaimed an official

Jesus Day in Texas. And in his presidential inaugural speech in 2001, he

announced that Church and charity, synagogue and mosque will have

an honored place in our plans and laws.

George W. Bush may believe America is a Christian nation and Laura

may think Jesus was the inspiration for the Bill of Rights. Pat Robertson

may lie that separation of church and state is a lie of the left and the other

historical revisionists and liars may falsify history but the truth abides.

The Declaration and the Constitution remain. They can be sometimes

ignored as they are in the White House today but they cannot be

airbrushed away and they will not be forgotten.

Anne Hutchinson and Thomas Jefferson lived, and their ideas will prevail.

Because, thanks to the foresight of the founders and the abiding good sense

of its citizens even most of its Christian citizens the United States is

nota Christian nation it is a free nation.

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NOTES

Washington

As Washington lay dying for a couple of days lay knowinghe was dying,conscious and in full command of his faculties he never asked for a

clergyman, never uttered a prayer, never once spoke of a god or an afterlife.

He did tell his physician, I am not afraid to go. And, a man of the

Enlightenment to the end one of the last things he did was to take his own

pulse and monitor it as it slowed down.

Episcopal services in those days included a communion service for thedevout usually held one Sunday a month, after the regular service. It is a

matter of more than one record that Washington along with other Deists

and masons always left church before the communion service.

In fact, in New York in the early days of his presidency Washington

attended services in various churches but when one sermonizing pastor

made a point of criticizing public figures who avoided the communion

service ... Washington avoided going to that church ever again.

My favorite Washington quote? In 1790, President Washington wrote an

extraordinary letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island a

group that would have much to fear from a Christian establishment in

America. They had congratulated him on the religious liberty guaranteed by

the new Constitution.

Washington, Susan Jacoby says inFreethinkers, saw this liberty not as agrudging concession or even as a generous gift from the American

government but as a right.

All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunity of citizenship, he

wrote the Jews of Newport. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of,

as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the

exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of

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We dont know much about the religious beliefs of our fifth President

James Monroe because thats the way Monroe wanted it a far cry from

our contemporary bible-thumpers.

Like Madison, Monroe was a Christian in his youth and like Madison he

became a Deist referring to Christianity and/or God less and less as he

grew older. His friends said that he kept his religious opinions to himself,

even in private conversation.

But, says David Holmes in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers James

Monroe may have been the most skeptical of the early American

presidents.

A Deist and a skeptic, Monroe nevertheless performed one of the foundingeras most Christian acts of charity.

In 1794, while he was American Minister in Paris, Monroe personally

rescued Tom Paine from a French prison.

Paine who was a fervent supporter of the French Revolution had been

elected to the French National Assembly but made the mistake of voting

against the death penalty for Louis XVI.

Good grief, a bleeding-heart liberal in a time and a country where

bleeding hearts often wound up bleeding from the neck.

Tom Paine had been a hero of the American Revolution for his pamphlet

Common Sense but was now anathema in America, reviled for the first

volume ofThe Age of Reason, which was openly atheist.

Thats why Gouveneur Morris the previous American Minister had

left Paine to rot in prison, where Monroe found him close to death from

starvation and cold.

Ignoring the political fallout back home for helping a very unpopular atheist,

Monroe not only got Paine out of prison but took him into his own home

and with Mrs. Monroe nursed him back to health while Paine wrote

the second part ofThe Age of Reason in Monroes home.

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is america a christian nation 2008

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