| The �Christian Nation� Myth and the Secular Humanist Heritage By Charles Rose Right-wing Christians often claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. The story goes that our Founding Fathers intended for America to be an officially Christian state, and that the Constitution wasn�t meant to support separation of church and state at all. Debunking this myth is hardly strenuous mental exercise. Article VI And Amendment I of the Constitution respectively state: ...no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... These clauses seem like a very strange foundation on which to build a Christian state. Politicians cannot be required to take any religious tests whatsoever, not even a simple �Do you believe in God?� or �Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior?� How did the Founding Fathers intend to maintain a Christian state without Christian leaders? And the state cannot support or endorse any religion or group of religions, not even theistic religions in general. How could such a state be considered Christian? It is also significant that there are no references to God, Jesus, or Christianity to be found anywhere in the Constitution. Why would people found a Christian nation and then decline to make even a passing remark about the matter in the Constitution? Then there are writings of the time indicating the secular intent of the American system. For example, see Thomas Jefferson�s Jan. 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, and section XVII of his 1781 book Notes on Virginia: 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. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. And for the coup de grace we have the Treaty of Tripoli. This treaty was negotiated under President Washington, and was approved by Congress and signed into law by then-President Adams. Article 11 of this treaty contains the following clause: As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion... So I think that pretty much settles it right there. I brought up this myth for another reason than just to debunk it, however. The issue of the origins of our system of government is something that these right-wing Christians wouldn�t be bringing up if they knew more about it. Actually, many of the great heroes of the revolution weren�t even Christians. Many of the most commonly recognized figures of the era, such as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, George Washington, and John Adams, were Deists. They believed that there was a God who created the world but then withdrew from it and left it in our care. They rejected the idea of revelation and considered reason to be the only reliable foundation for belief. These Deists did not believe in the divinity of Jesus or the authority of the Bible It should be noted that these men are known to have attended Christian churches, and Jefferson and Washington were both vestrymen in Virginia prior to 1780. These facts have caused some confusion about the religious views of these people, but they are actually irrelevant. These people had obvious social and political motives for attending church, and in pre-1780 Virginia the office of vestryman was a political one, concerned with the assessment of the taxes to be paid by those living within the parish, among other things. In his book Living Without Religion: Eupraxophy Paul Kurtz called reason, courage, and compassion the basic virtues of secular humanism. Now obviously compassion and courage are not controversial values. Practically everyone agrees that they are essential ingredients of morality, at least when expressed in an appropriate manner. The insistence on the vital importance of reason is what gets humanists into trouble. Most modern theists insist that faith is of supreme value, and where faith and reason conflict faith should win. We take the opposite position. And so did the Deists. They believed that the existence of a God was demonstrated by the complex order apparent in nature. They didn�t see how things could get to be the way they are without the intervention of some greater power. Today we see that this argument isn�t tenable, but these people were products of their times. They didn�t have the advantage of our understanding of evolution and the expanding universe. And in their need to explain the order of nature, they overlooked some fatal philosophical problems implied by their position. But they firmly believed that reason was the only reliable means of discovering truth, and that was the foundation of their perspective. This becomes apparent when we look at some Deistic perspectives on Christianity. They considered it to be no more than a system of superstition. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine in particular expressed strong criticisms of Christianity. For instance, Paine expressed the opinion in his book The Age of Reason that all religions, including Christianity, were �...human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.� Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams dated October 12, 1813, and in another to William Short dated October 31, 1819, discussed his views on the Bible and Christianity. He held the teachings of Jesus in high regard, but believed that much that was attributed to him in the Gospels was not genuine. Further, he considered the entirety of the rest of the Bible to be without value as moral instruction. He compared drawing wisdom even from the study of the Gospels to searching for �diamonds in a dunghill.� He even created his own edited version of the Gospels (The Jefferson Bible) so that he could contemplate the diamonds without being distracted by the dung. And by the way, he considered even the good parts of the Gospels to be an inadequate foundation for a good life. He suggested that the teachings of Jesus should be supplemented with the teachings of the Greek Epicurian philosophers. There is a letter that Jefferson wrote to his young nephew Peter Carr on August 10, 1787 regarding the study of religion. I think that any secular humanist would have to agree with the advice that Jefferson offered on the subject: Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. 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 blindfolded fear. My point is that Christians have no special claims on these great heroes of American history. They are of course heroes for all people. But these Deists were rationalists. They submitted to reason, not faith. We � secular humanists � can trace a part of our particular tradition back through them. Conservative Christians cannot. If this were more commonly known, then I think the "Christian nation" crowd would be a lot less eager to bring the matter up. For more on these subjects, see Basic Issues Relating to Atheism on my main atheism page. Back to My Essays |