From Chapter 24—Why I Wrote This Book. © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
One of the greatest principles the United States has given the world is the constitutional constraint against mingling the religious sector with the public sector. Yet this legal restriction is under constant attack in America. Responding to the attacks, former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor posed this astute question: “Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?” Why indeed? But attacks from well-funded and determined Christian groups, especially the religious right, have been relentless.
The religious right is a somewhat informal coalition of conservative Christians and Christian groups that, beginning in the late 1970s, have been very active in promoting their conservative Christian views in political and public affairs. A major objective has been to persuade the public that our founding fathers intended for Christianity to play an integral role in how our country operates, both privately and publicly. We hear this in various ways: “Our nation was founded as a Christian nation;” “Our nation was founded on Christian principles;” and “Our system of law and justice is rooted in the Bible and the Ten Commandments.”
We’ve already seen that the Bible and Ten Commandments have not played a significant role in our system of law and justice. In fact, the U.S. Constitution provides legal protection against several of the Ten Commandments. Likewise, American laws that protect against numerous biblical commandments are ubiquitous. Many acts that are commanded of humans in the Bible would lead to a lengthy prison term and wreck havoc on a person’s life. Many acts that were performed by God are today classified as war crimes or crimes against humanity by international treaty, warranting severe punishment.
Not in question is the fact that when the United States became a nation, most Americans were Christian and Christianity played a substantial role in their lives. That should not be up for debate. However, the founding fathers were greatly influenced by the Age of Enlightenment, a philosophical movement started in the 17th century that was based on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy. Among the many ideals addressed by the Enlightenment was the abolition of abuses in Europe that resulted from the entanglement of church and state.
When listening to arguments from either side about the role Christianity did or did not play in the founding of our nation, one should be very careful of founding-father quotations. By cherry picking quotations and playing a little loose with their context, both sides can make just about any founding father seem like an advocate for their side. When it comes to the religious leanings of the founding fathers, I’ll defer to the experts. One expert is David L. Holmes, Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary. Holmes is the author of The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. In discussing the religiosity of some of the most prominent founding fathers, Holmes has this to say:
Deism influenced, in one way or another, most of the political leaders who designed the new American government. Since the founding fathers did not hold identical views on religion, they should not be lumped together. But if census takers trained in Christian theology set up broad categories in 1790 labeled “Atheism,” “Deism and Unitarianism,” “Orthodox Protestantism,” “Orthodox Roman Catholicism,” and “Other,” and if they had interviewed Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, they would have placed every one of these six founding fathers under the category of “Deism and Unitarianism.”2
Benjamin Franklin was an especially influential founding father, and George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe were none other than the first five presidents of the United States.
The Constitution is clear on how the U.S. was founded—as a secular nation. The body of the Constitution has no reference to God, Christ, Jesus, the Trinity, the Messiah, the Bible or anything else that can be legitimately construed to be a reference to Christianity.
The Preamble is an introductory statement that explains the fundamental purposes and guiding principles of the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The new nation was established by and for “the people,” not by God or for God or under the authority of God. There are no theistic implications in the Preamble at all. Furthermore, there is only a single reference to religion in the body of the original Constitution, ratified in 1787. Article VI contains this prohibition: “[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This applies equally to the nation and the states. The founding fathers wanted to make sure that no religious sect could gain control and establish a theocracy. When the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments) was added to the Constitution in 1791, another reference to religion was included: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is the Establishment Clause of Amendment I.
There is one other religious reference in the Constitution, which has nothing to do with the founding or governing of the new nation. In closing, the document references the year as “the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.” Some Christian apologists argue that this is evidence of the founders’ intention to portray the U.S. as a Christian nation. However, this was the standard way at that time to identify the year and doesn’t provide any insight into what the founders were thinking or what they intended for the nation.
Had the consensus of opinion of the founding fathers been to establish a nation founded to any degree on Christianity the opportunity was certainly there. There were plenty governing documents to serve as precedents, particularly the first state constitutions. It took from May 25 to September 17, 1787 (116 days) to hammer out the final wording of the Constitution. Delegates to the Constitution Convention in Philadelphia conducted difficult negotiations and went through several drafts. The convention was closed to the public, and its proceedings were kept secret until the end. William Jackson, the official secretary, took notes during the convention but unfortunately destroyed them afterward. The best account of the convention proceedings comes from James Madison’s detailed Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, which includes copies of speeches given by delegates. His notes contain no mention of attempts by delegates to have Christian or any religious language or principles included in the Constitution.
Timothy Dwight, a Congregationalist minster and President of Yale College from 1795-1812, expressed his disgust over the godless Constitution in an address he gave at Yale:
We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgment of God; without any recognition of his mercies to us, as a people, of his government, or even of his existence. The Convention, by which it was formed, never asked, even once, his direction, or his blessing upon their labours [prayer was not a part of the convention]. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God [emphasis added].3
The question of whether the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation should have been laid to rest with the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796-97 that was established to maintain peace and harmony between the U.S. and the Muslim state of Tripolitania (in present day Libya). Article 11 of that treaty states that “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion … .” According to Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University, the assurances in Article 11 were “intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.”4 The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty unanimously in 1797.5
Another strategy in the religious right’s campaign of misinformation is to claim that the state-church wall of separation is a myth; after all, the expression “separation of church and state’ doesn’t even appear in the Constitution. The exact words aren’t in the Constitution, but that doesn’t mean the principle isn’t provided protection. Similarly, the right to a “fair trial” isn’t expressed in those words. Nevertheless, Amendment VI provides assurances that Americans will be tried fairly. If advocates of tearing down the wall separating church and state want to argue based on the absence of the common wording, then they should be prepared to give up their “freedom of religion” and “religious liberty.” These common terms are also absent from the Constitution, but are implied in Amendment I. If Christians want to push their argument based on terminology, then as former Christian evangelist Dan Barker says, they need to own up to the fact that Trinity isn’t in the Bible, nor is second coming, or original sin, or rapture, and many other common terms for important Christian doctrines.
Thomas Jefferson made clear what the Constitution means about keeping religion and state separate, in a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1802:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign 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 & State.6
Efforts to misrepresent the founding of our nation are intended to make it easier, both legally and through public opinion, to infiltrate public affairs with religion. Fortunately some religious organizations are wisely standing against the effort. They are well aware that if the country were to move toward a theocracy, one denomination of Christianity would eventually exert authority. The struggle between fundamentalists and liberal Christians for influence would be inevitable. So would the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, to mention just one other example of Christian sectarianism. Other religions could expect to have their freedoms restricted.
Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the Church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.
— Ulysses S. Grant (18th President of the U.S., 1875 address delivered in Des Moines, Iowa)
We establish no religion in this country … Church and state are, and must remain, separate.
— Ronald Reagan (40th President of the U.S., address delivered in Valley Stream, N.Y., 1984)
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President—should he be Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.
— John F. Kennedy (35th President of the U.S., 1960 address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association)
Notes:
2. David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp 50-51.
3. Address at Yale College by the school’s President Timothy Dwight on July 23, 1812.
4. Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America, (Princeton University Press, 2006), p 11.
5. There is a controversy over whether the language in Article 11 about the U.S. not being founded on the Christian religion was actually in the Arabic version of the treaty. Nevertheless, the English version that President Adams presented to the Senate, and was unanimously signed, did contain the subject language, which shows their intent.
6. From Library of Congress website: www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/ danpre.html. Accessed 8-18-18.
