http://www.illinoisleader.com/letters/lettersview.asp?c=9970


America is not a Christian nation

Thursday, November 20, 2003

This is in response to the November 17 letters regarding, "More evidence against so-called "separation of church and state," November 17.


As a historian, I am dismayed by the letters I see that proclaim that America was founded as a Christian nation. Ms. Wittman’s letter is typical of those who take quotes out of context and buttress their argument with quotes from those who had nothing to do with the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 


Then I see that Ms. Normand and Mr. Ellyn believe that the Founding Fathers were escaping from religious persecution. They are not only in error but also off by a few centuries in their assessment. 


Those who first came to America were not running from religious persecution. The Puritans were a minority in England and were intolerant of the majority religion and left England for Holland so their children would not be exposed to what they saw as a false belief system. Holland was even worse for them so they set sail for the newly established colonies in America. Once they arrived, they set up an intolerant system to prevent the exercise of any belief system that differed from their own. 


Fast forward to the writing of our new Constitution and Bill of Rights. People like Noah Webster and Patrick Henry are often quoted as evidence to support the religious roots of our Constitution. Yet, they were well-known opponents of the new Constitution. Would you use quotes from Al Gore to show how Americans felt about George Bush to an audience 200 years into the future? George Washington, and others quoted from that era are also meaningless, as they did not participate in the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 


Thomas Jefferson was one of the most important forces behind the formation of the secular new nation but Ms. Wittman offers us a quote that states, "I am a Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ." Funny how she doesn’t list a source for that, or any other, quotation. This is not an actual quote from Jefferson, as he was clearly a Unitarian if not an outright Deist. Conservative Christian revisionists, like David Barton, have made up such quotes in a desperate attempt to legitimize their argument. They have been shown to be in error in such assertions. 


So let’s see what the Founders really had to say about religion and religious freedom.


"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." ~ Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1810. ME 12:345


"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." ~ Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21


"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." ~ Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119


"In the arguments in favor of a declaration of rights... one which has great weight with me [is] the legal check which it puts into the hands of the judiciary." ~ Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:309


"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority." ~ Thomas Jefferson to New London Methodists, 1809. ME 16:332 


As you can see, from actual quotes with sources, Jefferson was not a fan of religion meddling in the affairs of government. Jefferson and his fellow Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by a European Enlightenment philosophy that also recognized the Creator as being an uninvolved Deist God and not the God of Christianity. Jefferson actually wrote he did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. You can check out his version of the New Testament, called the Jefferson Bible. 


The vast majority of American law, including the rules against killing and stealing, was borrowed in whole or in part from the British common law, which itself was viewed either as rising from natural law or from custom, not from the Ten Commandments. 


Thomas Jefferson specifically railed against attempts to claim that the common law incorporated the Ten Commandments when he criticized judges for "lay[ing] the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others by declaring that [the Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land." John Adams also questioned the influence of the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount on the legal system.



At the Constitutional Convention, the Framers looked to the examples of antiquity, the Greeks and the Romans and not to the Ten Commandments. They were a pragmatic lot, and they were not interested in being bound by their religious heritage, despite today's claims to the contrary. Rather, they were searching for virtually any idea, from virtually any source, that would work to create a better government than the failure produced by the Articles of Confederation. 


Those Framers who were well educated had studied antiquity and the classics in depth, unlike the vast majority of Americans today, even those who are college educated. Thus, they were perfectly comfortable borrowing and adapting whatever suited their purposes. It would be a huge overstatement to say that they felt themselves constrained by the four corners of the Bible in finding the right government, or setting up the ultimate law that would rule the U.S.


The sources that influenced the Framers ranged from Greek and Roman law, to John Locke, to Scottish Common Sense philosophers, to Grotius. The influence of the Common Sensists was quite evident in the Framers' strong belief in the power of reason, not revelation or Biblical passages, to determine government. They were also influenced by the dominant religion of the time, Calvinism, in the sense that their worldview was rooted in distrust of any human who holds power. And this list is only a beginning.



Meanwhile, the very tenor of the times was distrustful of organized religion, and especially stakeholder claims to truth by religious individuals. Madison declared, in his Memorial and Remonstrance of 1785, "experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries, the legal establishment of Christianity has been on trial. What have 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."



And when Benjamin Franklin presented the draft Constitution to the Congress, he declared: "Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from that it is so far error."


What Ms. Wittman and the others who support her desire to tear down the wall between church and state, fail to understand is that our Constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom, to keep the government out of religious affairs, protects her interests as well as those of non-believers. 


After all, America is the most religiously diverse nation in history while maintaining a peaceful co-existence between such diverse believers. While people may write nasty letters to the editor about those who differ from their belief, rarely do we see an outbreak of violence over matters of conscience. Why are we different from all the other nations? It is our separation between religion and state that allows us the freedom as individuals to follow the dictates of our own consciences without any interference from the government.


Now imagine you are before a judge who has the Koran on his bench. Would you feel comfortable as a non-Muslim, that you would get a fair trial? Imagine your child is in school and is asked to chant a Hindu mantra. Even if your child does not participate, how would they feel being the lone Christian in the class? They are required to be there by law and cannot leave. They also are asked to recite the Pledge, which states we are one nation under Krishna. What concerned Christian parent wouldn’t be upset, after all, school is no place for religious indoctrination. The government has no right to inject religion into the classroom, such training is the parent’s right and responsibility. 


While some may scoff at such scenarios, I think many Christians never consider the impact of such actions as posting the Ten Commandments in schools or government buildings, or requiring the recitation of an altered Pledge of Allegiance or Christian (usually Protestant) prayer in schools on those who are different in their beliefs. After all, if what the government supports is your belief system, then how can it be harmful? That is what the First Amendment was meant to address that the tyranny of the majority would not be forced upon the minority. 


So there is no such critter as a right for Christians to use the government to promote their religious beliefs, no matter how hard supporters try to disguise their actions under the declaration of tradition and history. 


You are free to attend any church you desire, to pray anytime you wish, to read any religious text that interests you. You may post the Ten Commandments anywhere on your property, in your house, on your car and advertised on a T-shirt. Some people can actually try to live by them rather than forcing them on others. You have several radio stations, cable channels, publications and Internet sites all dedicated to religious messages, covering all beliefs. You have the right to raise your children in the belief system of your choosing, to speak to others about what you hold to be true and to decide for yourself which religion is right for you or even if no religion is right for you. 


So ask yourself why does your God need the help of the government? Does he really need state welfare to succeed? Benjamin Franklin sums up the issue of governmental involvement in religion quite well. He stated, "When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of a civil power, ‘tis a sign, I apprehend of its being a bad one." (The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, editor John Bigelow, vol. 13)


So will you support the Constitution and our civil liberties by supporting the wall of separation between church and state, or do you believe your deity is so weak and in need of governmental assistance that you will follow revisionists like Angela Wittman in destroying our freedom? Read the words of the Founders in the context of their times and not the works of those outside of that timeframe or those who had nothing to do with writing the Constitution or Bill of Rights. 


America is not a Christian nation but rather a nation of mostly Christians. That was the intent of the Founders, to allow each of us the right under natural law, to decide matters of conscience for ourselves. Ms. Wittman’s, and those who agree with her, actions would rob us of such liberty.


Robert Carver, MA
Madison Alabama