"The United States is a Christian nation.” If
I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this statement at a religious Right
meeting or in the media, I wouldn’t be rich—but I’d probably have enough to buy
a really cool iPad. The assertion is widely believed by followers of the
religious Right and often repeated—and, too often, it seeps into the beliefs of
the rest of the population as well. But like other myths that are widely
accepted (you use only 10 percent of your brain, vitamin C helps you get over a
cold, and the like), it lacks a factual basis.
Over the years, numerous scholars, historians, lawyers, and judges
have debunked the “Christian nation” myth. Yet it persists. Does it have any
basis in American history? Why is the myth so powerful? What psychological need
does it fill?
I’m not a lawyer, and my research in this area has been influenced
and informed by scholars who have done much more in- depth work. The problem
with some of this material, great as it is,is that it tends to be—how shall I
say this politely?—’dense.’ If I were a lawyer (the kind found on television
dramas, not a real one), I would present the case against the Christian nation
myth in a handful of easily digestible informational nuggets. Swallow them, and
you’ll be armed for your next confrontation with Cousin Lloyd who sends money to
Pat Robertson.
There are essentially five arguments that refute the Christian
nation myth. I’m going to outline them here and then take a look at the history
of the myth. From there, we’ll briefly examine the myth’s enduring legacy and
how it still affects politics and public policy today.
1. The Text of the Constitution Does Not Say the United
States Is a Christian Nation
If a Christian nation had been the intent of the founders, they
would have put that in the Constitution, front and center. Yet the text of the
Constitution contains no references to God, Jesus Christ, or Christianity. That
document does not state that our country is an officially Christian nation.
Not only does the Constitution not give recognition or
acknowledgment to Christianity, but it also includes Article VI, which bans
“religious tests” for public office. Guaranteeing non-Christians the right to
hold federal office seems antipodal to an officially Christian nation. The
language found in Article VI sparked some controversy, and a minority faction
that favored limiting public office to Christians (or at least to believers)
protested. Luther Martin, a Maryland delegate, later reported that some felt it
“would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of
Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism.” But, as Martin noted, the
article’s language was approved “by a great majority . . . without much debate.”
The Christian nation argument just wasn’t persuasive.
In addition, the First Amendment bars all laws “respecting an
establishment of religion” and protects “the free exercise thereof.” Nothing
here indicates that the latter provision applies only to Christian
faiths.Finding no support for their ideas in the body of the Constitution,
Christian-nation advocates are left to point to other documents, including the
Declaration of Independence. This also fails. The Declaration’s reference to
“the Creator” is plainly deistic. More obscure documents such as the Northwest
Ordinance or personal writings by various framers are interesting historically
but do not rise to the level of governance documents. When it comes to
determining the manner of the U.S. government, only the Constitution matters.
The Constitution does not declare that the United States is a Christian nation.
This fact alone is fatal to the cause of Christian nation advocates.
2. The Founders’ Political Beliefs Would Not Have Led Them
to Support the Christian-Nation Idea
Key founders such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson opposed
mixing church and state. They would never have supported an officially Christian
nation.
Jefferson and Madison came to this opposition in two ways. First,
they were well-versed in history and understood how the officially Christian
governments of Europe had crushed human freedom. Moreover, they knew about the
constant religious wars among rival factions of Christianity. Second, they had
witnessed religious oppression in the colonies firsthand.
Remember, Madison was inspired to fight for church-state separation
and religious liberty because he had witnessed the jailing of dissenting
ministers in Virginia. Madison and other founders wrote frequently about the
dangers of governments adopting religion; they often worked alongside clergy who
made similar arguments. John Leland, a Massachusetts pastor and powerful
advocate for church-state separation, said it best: “The notion of a Christian
commonwealth should be exploded forever.”
Jefferson’s Virginia Statue for Religious Liberty, which many
scholars consider a precursor to the First Amendment, guaranteed religious
freedom for everyone, Christian and non-Christian. Attempts to limit its
protections to Christians failed, and Jefferson rejoiced.
In his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious
Assessments” Madison observed, “Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old
world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by
proscribing all difference in Religious opinion.”
In his Notes on Virginia Jefferson observed,
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty
gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Alexander Hamilton, writing in “Federalist No. 69,” speaks bluntly
to the religious duties of the U.S. president: There aren’t any. In this essay,
Hamilton explains how the American president would differ from the English king,
outlining several key differences between the two. He writes: “The one has no
particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor
of the national church!”
3. The Key Founders Were Not Conservative Christians and
Likely Would Not Have Supported an Officially Christian Nation
To hear the religious Right tell it, men such as George Washington,
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were eighteenth-century versions
of Jerry Falwell in powdered wigs and stockings. This is nonsense.
The religious writings of many prominent founders sound odd to
today’s ears because these works reflect Deism, a theological system of thought
that has since fallen out of favor. Deists believed in God but didn’t
necessarily see him as active in human affairs. The god of the Deists was a god
of first cause: he set things in motion and then stepped back.
Although nominally an Anglican, George Washington often spoke in
deistic terms. His god was a “supreme architect” of the universe. Washington saw
religion as necessary for good and moral behavior but didn’t necessarily accept
all Christian dogma. He seemed to have a special gripe against Communion and
would usually leave services before it was offered.
Washington is the author of one of the great classics of religious
liberty—the letter to Touro Synagogue (1790). In this letter, Washington assures
America’s Jews that they would enjoy complete religious liberty—not mere
toleration—in the new nation. He outlines a vision not of a Christian nation but
of a multi-faith society where all are free to practice as they will:
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud
themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a
policy worthy of imitation. . . . All possess alike liberty of conscience and
immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if
it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the
exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the
United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,
requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves
as good citizens.
John Adams was a Unitarian. He rejected belief in the Trinity and
the divinity of Jesus, core concepts of Christian dogma. In his personal
writings, Adams made it clear that he considered the concept of the divinity of
Jesus incomprehensible.
In February of 1756, Adams wrote in his diary about a discussion he
had had with a man named Major Greene. Greene was a devout Christian who sought
to persuade Adams to adopt conservative Christian views. The two argued over the
divinity of Jesus. When questioned on the matter, Greene fell back on an old
standby: some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for human
understanding.
Adams was not impressed. In his diary he writes, “Thus mystery is
made a convenient cover for absurdity.”
Jefferson’s skepticism of traditional Christianity is well known.
Our third president did not believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the
divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin, and other core Christian
doctrines. Jefferson once famously observed to Adams: “And the day will come
when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the
womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in
the brain of Jupiter.”
Although not an orthodox Christian, Jefferson admired Jesus as a
moral teacher. He even edited the New Testament, cutting away the stories of
miracles and divinity and leaving behind a very human Jesus, whose teachings
Jefferson found “sublime.”
Perhaps the most enigmatic of the founders was Madison. To this day,
scholars still debate his religious views. Some of his biographers believe that
Madison, nominally Anglican, was really a Deist. Notoriously reluctant to talk
publicly about his religious beliefs, Madison was perhaps the strictest
church-state separa- tionist among the founders, opposing not only chaplains in
Congress and the military but also government prayer proclamations. As
president, he vetoed legislation granting federal land to a church as well as a
plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor. In each case, he cited
the First Amendment.
4. Shortly After the Constitution Was Ratified, Conservative
Ministers Attacked It Because It Lacked References to Christianity
Ministers of the founding period knew that the Constitution didn’t
declare the United States officially Christian—and it made them angry.
In 1793, just five years after the Constitution was ratified, the
Reverend John M. Mason of New York attacked that document in a sermon. Mason
called the lack of references to God and Christianity “an omission which no
pretext whatever can palliate.” He predicted that an angry God would “overturn
from its foundations the fabric we have been rearing and crush us to atoms in
the wreck.”
Conservative pastors continued whining well into the nineteenth
century. In 1811, the Reverend Samuel Austin thundered that the Constitution “is
entirely disconnected from Christianity. [This] one capital defect [will lead]
inevitably to its destruction.”
In 1845, the Reverend D. X. Junkin wrote, “[The Constitution] is
negatively atheistical, for no God is appealed to at all. In framing many of our
public formularies, greater care seems to have been taken to adapt them to the
prejudices of the INFIDEL FEW, than to the consciences of the Christian
millions.”
These eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pastors knew that the
Constitution was secular and granted no preferences to Christianity. They
considered that a defect.
5. During the Post-Civil War Period, a Band of Politically
Powerful Pastors Tried Repeatedly to Amend the U.S. Constitution to Add
References to Jesus Christ and Christianity
Nineteenth-century ministers knew that the Constitution was secular
and that the nation was not officially Christian. They sought to remedy that
through an amendment that would have rewritten the preamble to the
Constitution.
The drive was led by the National Reform Association (NRA), a kind
of early religious Right organization that sought an officially Christian
America. This NRA had ambitious goals. It sought laws curtailing commercial
activity on Sunday, mandating Protestant worship in public schools and
censorship of material deemed sexually explicit or blasphemous. (Thanks to the
NRA, freethought societies of this period often had difficulties mailing
periodicals to supporters. The U.S. Postal Service was under constant siege by
the NRA.)
The NRA was successful in many of its legislative endeavors, but it
was never able to secure passage of the Christian nation amendment. The group’s
proposed preamble read as follows:
We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty
God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus
Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of
the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a
more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for
the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the inalienable
rights and blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves,
our posterity and all the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution of
the United States of America.
Congress did consider the amendment, but the House Judiciary
Committee voted it down in 1874, declaring its awareness of the dangers of
putting “anything into the Constitution or frame of government which might be
construed to be a refer- ence to any religious creed or doctrine.” The proposal
was reintroduced several times after that; in fact, versions of it were still
appearing in Congress as late as 1965.
While the NRA was never successful in getting the Christian nation
amendment passed, the group had better luck with another policy objective:
adding “In God We Trust” to coins. That practice was codified in the North
during the Civil War.
Obviously, there would have been no need to amend the Constitution
to declare America officially Christian if the document already said as much.
But it didn’t, which is why the NRA felt so strongly about its emendation.
The Origins of the Christian-Nation Myth
This last point provides the key to understanding the staying power
of the Christian-nation myth. The myth’s origins go back not to the founding
period but to a much different time in history—the post-Civil War era.
During this period, the country came as close it ever would to being
officially Christian. Many laws did reflect the tenets of that faith. For
example, books, magazines, and even stage productions were banned if they were
deemed insulting to the Christian faith. Protestant prayer and worship were
common in many public schools. Laws curtailed Sunday commerce. Even the Supreme
Court flirted with the Christian-nation concept in its infamous decision in the
Holy Trinity case.
The post-Civil War era was also a period of great social upheaval.
The end of slavery in the South created dislocation and confusion, which left
people grasping for answers in the chaos. Other social changes loomed. Late in
the century, women began advocating for the right to vote. Not surprisingly,
some people reacted to these changes by latching onto reactionary religious
views.
Despite the social unrest, in many ways this period of history is
the religious Right’s ideal society. Think about it: public schools were pushing
conservative forms of Protestantism. Religiously based censorship was common.
All people were required to abide by a set of laws based on Christian
principles, with the government playing the role of theological enforcer.
Significantly, this was also a time of rigidly enforced gender roles and
official policies of racial segregation.
Many of these principles still inspire the religious Right’s agenda
today. So when religious Right leaders or television preachers hearken back to
our days as a Christian nation, remember that they are not talking about the
founding period. What they long for is a return to an aberrant era in
late-nineteenth- century America.
The attempt to “nineteenth-century-ize” modern America continues
into the present. It’s not uncommon to hear the Christian-nation myth invoked in
battles over religion in public schools, displays of religious signs and symbols
on public property, and other church-state disputes. It has also been raised in
questions dealing with tax aid to religious groups through school vouchers and
“faith-based” initiatives. The argument is that it’s only to be expected that
large amounts of taxpayer money will end up in the coffers of Christian groups
because we are, after all, a Christian nation.
The myth also feeds several psychological needs. It assures
religious Right supporters who fear the pace of social change that things like
same-sex marriage and the rise of secularists are aberrations that run counter
to the “real” Christian nature of the country. It also invokes a “stolen legacy”
myth—the idea that a grand and glorious history (in this case, a Christian one)
exists but that it is being covered up or denied by usurpers who seek to sup-
press the nation’s history as part of a power grab.
The Christian-nation myth also has political ramifications. Put
simply, it is often used to motivate people to vote a certain way. Increasingly,
the theocrats of the Far Right are assailing what they call the “secular Left,”
an all-purpose bogeyman guilty of many crimes, including denying the
Christian-nation idea.
But the myth is by no means limited to the religious Right. Polls
show great confusion in this area: in 2007, for example, 55 percent of
respondents told the First Amendment Center they believed the Constitution
establishes America as an officially Christian nation.
Misinformation like this has especially bad consequences for secular
humanists. The myth promotes the pernicious idea that non-Christians are
second-class citizens in “Christian America.” It leads to the idea that the law
mandates only a grudging tolerance of nonbelievers rather than what the
Constitution really extends: full and equal rights to all Americans, regardless
of what they do or do not believe.
That the Christian-nation myth has many supporters among the
religious Right doesn’t mean it has validity. It is, in fact, a form of
“historical creationism” that mainstream scholars have repeatedly shown to be
fallacious. But, like “scientific creationism,” the Christian-nation myth still
has great power and wide acceptance. Humanists must confront—and debunk—the myth
wherever it appears.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Boston is the assistant director of
communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which
publishes Church and State magazine.
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