Most of my thought process on this started with the whole homosexual debate a few weeks ago where I heard people yelling about how this nation was founded as a Christian nation and we would be divorcing ourselves from that if we allowed gay people to marry. Having a few atheist and agnostic friends, I also heard the other side of the coin and one of them directed me to this article: 5 Reasons America Is Not—And Has Never Been—A Christian Nation So the debate raged in my soul and over the last week I have been thinking about this notion that we were funded as a Christian Nation and I have come up with my own five points not as a counter to this article above but as a reflective attempt to come to grips with this idea. This is part one where I will address this article, part two is where I will make the case that it is best for Christians that we are not a Christian Nation.
1. The Constitution does not say the United States is a Christian Nation.
As bombastic as the author of the article above can be at times (sorry his bias shows through), he is dead on right with this one. The Constitution does not mention God or anything like that. In the founding documents of this country only the Declaration of Independence mentions a creator. The Constitution bans religious test altogether as a means of holding office and guarantees the right of people not to be under the yoke of a religious establishment and free of the state influencing their religion. The government cannot establish a religion nor can it restrict religious practice. No mention of Christianity is in the Constitution of the Amendments to it. Point one to the people who say “No”.
2. The Founders Political Ideology would not have lead them to support a Christian Nation Idea.
This is also true. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were definitely for keeping religion out of things but even people who were more devotedly Christian among the founders did have a problem with founding a Christian Nation. They had witnessed and had studied history and knew that when religion gets power it is a dangerous force, but they also knew what could happen to religious group who differed from the state religion. The only reasonable solution to them was to keep the two forces separate. That is why the Constitution was written with this in mind. Point two to the people who say ‘No’. 2-0 if you are keeping score.
3. The Key founders were not Conservative Christians and would not have likely supported a Christian Nation.
The author makes a couple of mistakes here and the language ‘would not have likely supported’ indicates a lack of decisiveness on his part in make a definitive statement. Rightly so. The mistake he made is mentioning George Washington and John Adams both of which were Christians. Whether they supported a Christian Nation or not is debatable. I don’t know about John Adams other than he was a Unitarian who rejected the Trinity, etc., but George Washington seems two sided. On the one hand he seems very devoted to God and Christ (reading his prayer journal will tell you that) but on the other he is also the most cynical about Christianity. This quote comes to mind:
The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances, be made subservient to the vilest of purposes.
In short while Washington felt the gospel was the most wonderful thing in the Bible, he also felt that Christianity of his day had perverted it to something that had a vile purpose. No wonder I resonate with Washington so much, he is a lot like me in this. George, hate to tell you this but not much has changed.
The point could be made then that the founders that were Christian might have had that influence in their lives, but they distrusted the current religious establishment of Christianity too much to make it a part of government. I would say while the author of the article makes some mistakes, taken as whole the founders were definitely skeptical of mixing religion and the state at best. Point three to those that say ‘no.’ 3-0 now.
4. Shortly after the Constitution was ratified, Conservative Ministers Attacked it.
This is also true. Early on it was attacked and the quotes the author gives are entirely accurate. Several conservative ministers said that the nation would fail because they had not linked themselves to the Bible or Christianity. They did accuse it of being atheistic. The author mentions the National Reform Association and does a fairly good job of presenting the history there but I can do a more basic job because I know dates and the spiritual history of this nation.
The Constitution ws finally ratified in 1787. At the time the nation would hardly have been described as Christian. Morally this was a dark time for the United States with rum runners, piracy and prostitution being the norm. The Second Great Awakening did not start until the early 1790s some years after the constitution was written and didn’t have its full effect until the 1820s. This was a time where the constitution was attacked for being too secular. It is interesting that many Christians today revere the Constitution as a sacred work, but in the early days it was not so, quite the opposite. They did indeed propose Constitutional Amendment to this end but it did fail. My opinion we started out actually as a secular state holding up the highest ideals of the Enlightenment but became a Christian nation as more people became Christian. More on this in Part Two. That 4-0 for this author.
5. The Origin of the Christian Nation Myth.
This is where the author of the Article makes a very large error. His thoughts is the Christian Nation myth goes back to the Post Civil War era. I want to handle this is greater detail with my next post, but his thought seem to be centered on the idea that before the Civil War the religious were looked on as people trying to intrude and the secularists had the day. I would say the myth (yes, I too call it a myth, but for different reasons) had its origins in this period but did to get the opportunity to become reality until after the Civil War. This however is the subject of my next post. I am going to say that this point is subject to historical opinion so 4-1 for the sake of fairness.
Next post I want to deal with my thoughts on what happened historically in relation to the Christian Nation myth. Right now though I am going to tell you that the notion this has always has been a Christian Nation is mythology.
IMHO