The fallacy of America being founded as a “Christian Nation”
Here’s a few quotes and facts on the subject - from America’s founding fathers:
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.” –Thomas Jefferson
“During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment known as Christianity has been on trial, and what have been the fruits, more or less, in all places? These are the fruits: pride, indolence, ignorance and arrogance and servility in the clergy. Ignorance, arrogance and servility in the laity, and in both the clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.” –James Madison
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.” –Thomas Paine, Age of Reason
George Washington refused to take communion or kneel in church, and was called “only a Unitarian, if anything” by Episcopalian minister James Ambercrombie.
“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies,”
– Benjamin Franklin, who was a member of Dashwood’s notorious “Hellfire Club,” which engaged in activities not at all Christian.
The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified soon after John Adams became president, was read aloud in Congress and ratified unanimously, says in part: “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 enimity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims); and as the said States never have entered into any war or acts of hostility against any Mahametan 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.”
Very few of the founding fathers were actually Christians. Most were deists who rejected the Bible as the word of God.
Article by Brooke Allen:
Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God.
The omission was too obvious to have been anything but deliberate, in spite of Alexander Hamilton’s flippant responses when asked about it: According to one account, he said that the new nation was not in need of “foreign aid”; according to another, he simply said “we forgot.” But as Hamilton’s biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton never forgot anything important.
In the eighty-five essays that make up The Federalist, God is mentioned only twice (both times by Madison, who uses the word in the “only Heaven knows” sense). In the Declaration of Independence, He gets two brief nods: a reference to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” and the famous line about men being “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” More blatant official references to a deity date from long after the founding period: “In God We Trust” did not appear on our coinage until the Civil War, and “under God” was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy hysteria in 1954.
The Christian Nationalist vision of America is consistent only with religious fantasy, not reality.
From this post.
What do my quotes prove? The same thing that your quotes prove. Nothing! Anybody can approach any argument with a foregone conclusion, then gather facts and quotes to support that argument. Sometimes the same people have said things that can be used to support both sides.
America is not a Christian nation, in that Christianity is the state religion, but Christianity heavily influenced many of the founders and it is and has been the majority religion practiced by most Americans.
William, I worry about this website. Five or six long posts by you every day might destroy the damn thing.
Don’t worry, I will take a long vacation soon. Sorry. I will refrain.
Religion, and primarily Christianity, was the belief system held by the founders…
No. Atheists.
But they set it up so you could play that way, if you are fool enough to do so.
Glen:
Cherry-pick often? In any case, the Jefferson quote is almost certainly fabricated, as he was no friend at all to the Christian religion.
America is not a Christian nation, in that Christianity is the state religion, but Christianity heavily influenced many of the founders and it is and has been the majority religion practiced by most Americans.
I don’t buy it. They founded the nation as explicitly secular. The only religious references of any sort they made in the charters of freedom were the Deist language of the Declaration of Independence, and the then-contemporary way of rendering the date in the Constitution (”Year of our Lord”).
It’s true that many of the founders were Christians (although many of these were Unitarians, whom most modern Christians would not recognize as “Christians,” given that they reject the idea of the trinity and the divinity of Christ), however there’s simply no evidence to suggest that they were “heavily influenced” by it, at least not in the act of founding the nation. The core principles upon which this nation was founded — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — aren’t closely identified with Christianity, and certainly weren’t at the time of the founding.
Instead, the founders were primarily influenced by the Enlightenment, which argued that reason was the basis for authority, rather than dogma. That’s antithetical to Christianity.
You’ll find a lot of religious undertones in ‘public’ speeches and comments of founding fathers - particularly Washington, but they differ markedly from their private beliefs as demonstrated in personal letters. It goes to show that even then, public figures had to suck up to the mass deception of religion to secure confidence in the public as ‘virtuous leaders.’ To claim ‘the emperor has no clothes’ would surely cause any leader to fall out of favor with the masses. That situation unfortunately persists to the present day.
Tgirsch, you failed to get my comment. The point was that anybody can “cherry pick” quotes to support a conclusion they have already arrived at.
As for my statement that you blockquoted, there is nothing in it that contradicts the secularness of our government. I wrote one thing and you read another.
The idea that there weren’t any influential Baptists, Quakers, Episcopalians, or any other sects that influenced the founding, is pretty stupid. Do you like the Establishment Clause. Say thank you to the Baptists.
Everything in western civilization, including the enlightenment, including the Renaissance, was influenced by Christianity. Also, you don’t understand Christianity, so you don’t really have any business saying what is antithetical to it. You have your understanding, which is based in your own prejudices, and influenced by examples that stand out to you, but you don’t have the understanding.
Glen:
I did get your point, but wanted to point out that in making your point, you didn’t even bother to use authentic quotes.
The idea that there weren’t any influential Baptists, Quakers, Episcopalians, or any other sects that influenced the founding, is pretty stupid.
I’m not saying they weren’t there. I’m saying that their Christian principles were not themselves terribly influential. Even the establishment clause was, for many of them, pragmatic. If they felt they could have gotten away with establishing their religion, I suspect many of them would have. (Of course, in those days, there was more federalism than there is today, and there was no concept of incorporation, so at the state level, they often did establish their religions.)
Everything in western civilization, including the enlightenment, including the Renaissance, was influenced by Christianity.
To say that the enlightenment was “influenced by” Christianity is to put it very kindly. By the seventeenth century, Europe had a long history of Christianity being used as a bully stick to oppress people, and the enlightenment was largely in response to this. So the enlightenment was influenced by Christianity in the same way US foreign policy was “influenced” by 9/11.
Also, you don’t understand Christianity, so you don’t really have any business saying what is antithetical to it.
I’d venture to say that my understanding of Christianity is better than that of most self-described Christians in this country. And I’m pretty sure it’s fair to say that authority based on reason is antithetical to Christianity, which is self-admittedly based entirely on faith (belief in the absence of rational, empirical evidence), and which believes that the rules of right and wrong are fixed and not subject to debate. If that’s not consistent with your understanding of Christianity, then I’d not-so-humbly submit that you are the one who’s got it wrong.
As to the founding principles not being specifically Christian ones (or even particularly heavily influenced by Christianity), I think that’s a fair assessment, too. Of course, if you can point to the scripture that advocates for distributed authority (as opposed to centralized power), or for personal responsibility (in the place of mandated behavior), or for free market capitalism, or even for the equality of all people irrespective of race, color, or creed, I’ll gladly issue a mea culpa.
(OK, that last one isn’t really a founding principle of this country — the founders were largely slaveholders who intended the “rights” they were talking about to apply only to white, male landowners. But I digress.)