Myth of a Christian Nation
In the April/May 2005 issue of Free Inquiry, David R. Koepsell writes in his article “Putting to Rest the ‘Christian Nation’ Myth”:
[E]ven had the Founders been Calvinists, or fundamentalist Christians of a modern variety, for purely logical reasons the United States is not in any sense a Christian nation. According to the U.S. Department of State, “Turkey has been officially secular since 1924, although well over 95 percent of the population is Muslim.” Turkey is officially secular because its constitution proclaims it so. It is not an Islamic state. The First Amendment accomplishes the same for the United States, making it officially secular.
Even if we were to imagine that the Founders were fundamentalist Christians, they created a secular state, in which no religion, despite its majority status, has any special privilege or status compared with any other religion or with atheism. So, America is not a Christian nation, by virtue both of its history and the logic of its founding documents.
Koepsell is making a couple of very important points here. The Christian Right wants to talk about America as a “Christian Nation” in some sort of normative, moral, and political sense. The fact that America is demographically Christian does not lead to this, though, and neither would this be the case even if most of the authors of the Constitution were fundamentalists in the way that some today are.
America would only be a “Christian Nation” in some sort of normative, moral, and political sense if the Constitution enshrined and established that as a matter of fundamental law and political principle. Not only is that the case, though, but the Constitution actually does the exact opposite. Why, though, do so many religious conservatives continue to behave as if the Constitution were Christian in character?
Setting all of that aside, the nation is in any case becoming less Christian day by day, by virtue of its changing demographics. Perhaps much of what lies behind today’s desperate attempts to recast the United States as a Christian nation is the declining percentage of self-identified Christians in it and the fear this must provoke for those who foresee the day when Christianity is no longer the majority religion. Since the 1990 census, the percentage of Christians has declined from roughly 86 percent to 76 percent, while the numbers of minority religionists and the religiously nonaffiliated have doubled, according to both the U.S. census and recent polls, to nearly 16 percent!
What should the champions of the Christian nation myth draw from this fact? It should encourage them to embrace America’s secular roots, because it is minorities that the Constitution protects. These modern-day Calvinists forget that their ideological progenitors fled a nation in which the established religion and the religious majority persecuted them. It was their loathing of that history and a desire to protect freedom of conscience and belief, even nonbelief, that caused our founders to establish this secular, democratic republic-so that when today’s Christians once again become a minority, they won’t be relegated to second-class status as they now seek to do with members of minority religions and nonbelievers.
America has historically been Christian in the sense of demographics and culture — to call America a “Christian Nation” in those senses would be reasonably accurate. As Koepsell notes, though, that is becoming less true in very obvious ways. Conservative Christians know this and, understandably, don’t like it. They can’t change demographics and culture, so their hope is to change politics — to make American law more Christian according to their understanding of the term.
This is ironic, though, because one would assume from the nature of Christian principles that changing the culture and changing individuals’ hearts and minds would be precisely the goal. Instead of lobbying the government to endorse their Christian beliefs, shouldn’t they be out in the streets seeking to get individuals to adopt their Christian beliefs? Instead of arguing that America is “Christian” in law, shouldn’t they be working to produce cultural artifacts (paintings, television, etc.) that are “Christian” in character?
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All men are endowed by their “CREATOR”
and Read the Mayflower Compact.
You don’t really believe that only Christians believe in a “creator,” do you? You aren’t really unfamiliar with the fact that this was a standard word used by Deists at the time, are you?
1. The Mayflower Compact has no legal force.
2. The Mayflower Compact was written at the last minute so that a minority of Pilgrims, who were coming here for primarily economic reasons, and a majority of non-Pilgrims could manage to live with each other.