Deconstructing Randall Terry

There are quite a few theocrats in America - theocrats who wish to change the nature of American law so that it adheres to their conception of biblical principles. Some openly admit this. Others, like Randall Terry, tend to conceal it because they know that most Americans are repulsed by such a position.

Libertarian lawyer Jon Rowe writes a response to a message he received from Terry:

First, the claim that “[a]lmost all of the signers [of the Declaration of Independence] were Trinitarians (except Ben Franklin).” Many men signed the Declaration and I certainly don’t know the religious orientation of all of them, but the most important person behind the Declaration—its author Thomas Jefferson—not only did not believe in the concept of the Trinity, but referred to it as “insane.

One point I often hear apologists for the “Christian nation” idea make (after M.E. Bradford) is that there were only a handful of avowed deists at the time of the founding, the rest professed some type of orthodox Christianity. This is a distortion because, while the overwhelming majority of the founders may have been Christian in *some* sense, a great deal of our most important “Christian” founders were anything but the Jerry Falwell, et al. “born-again” fundamentalist types. Let us not forget, men like Bill Clinton and Howard Dean also are “Christians” in some sense.

[I]f our first President even to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity (and I'm still not fully sure that Madison did -- men imbibed in Enlightenment theory as Madison was were likely to be highly skeptical of this doctrine) was a militant advocate of the separation of Church & State, this tells us that America was not founded by a bunch of Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells.

The claims of the Christian Right that this is a “Christian” nation in any sense other than demographics are generally pretty nonsensical. America isn’t “Christian” in the sense of being founded on Christianity or existing to promote a Christian society to the rest of the world. Rowe makes a lot of good historical points — I recommend his full post.

Read More:

• Religious Right
• Christian Nationalism
• Evangelicalism
• Secularism 101
• Separation of Church and State 101