I think that this betrays and appalling lack of confidence in their own program. If what they wanted was so great and wonderful, it shouldn't matter if the Founding Fathers agreed with or intended it or not. Many didn't intend for slaves to be freed either, but it was obviously a good thing that slaves were freed. A program that can stand on its own can be defended on the basis of its own moral and practical qualities.
Even worse, Christian Nationalists' appeals to what the Founding Fathers wanted or intended are almost universally false. American government was not set up to be Christian, it was set up to be secular.
“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
“. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”
John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1788
Source: Jim Walker, Early America Review
Christian Nationalists are able to mislead people by playing upon the fact that while the Founding Fathers set up a secular government, they tended to value religion in their private lives. The fact that almost none of them adhered to any form of Christianity which looks very much like the Christianity advocated by Christian Nationalists doesn't matter. They praised and encouraged religion private and this is misused by Christian Nationalists to make it look like the Founding Fathers praised and encouraged religion as an official part of the American government.
As we can see in the above quote from John Adams, nothing could be further from the truth. According to Adams, the American government was designed and set up on the same sort of human reason and intelligence as it put to work designing ships and other human artifacts. The American government was not designed or set up in any way, shape, or form under the guidance of heaven or in the service of any gods. Government is instituted by humans and for humans, not by gods and for gods. The authority of government stems from the authority of human beings, not from the authority of churches, church leaders, self-proclaimed spokesmen for gods, or indeed any gods themselves.
It would be wrong, obviously, to make the same mistake as the Christian Nationalists and pretend that this alone justifies a secular government. Adams and the other Founding Fathers obviously believed in and wanted a secular government founded on human reason, but that alone doesn't make such a government valid. They were human beings and would hopefully be among the first to admit that they could be wrong. Fortunately, there are plenty of good arguments for why government is best when its secular — a secular government, after all, represents all people equally and doesn't fall prey to any of the problems inherent in religious institutions. A secular government is not dependent upon any narrow conceptions of what a god is, what a god wants, or how we are supposed to relate to a god.
Nevertheless, it's important to rebut the Christian Nationalists' claims about the origins of American government and their misrepresentations about how it was originally set up.
Separation of Church & State:
Is the Jon Adams qoute the only proof you have? You say most of the founding fathers didn’t practice christianity so where’s the other qoutes stating this. Christianity was a huge part of their daily lives as for everyone in that time period. It might have been twisted religous views but it was practiced in every family. Please show me more supporting facts to your opinion. One doesn’t make your case.
Proof of what, that the American government is set up to be secular rather than religious generally or Christian in particular? The proof of that is in the Constitution itself; the quote by Adams merely helps demonstrate that this was deliberate rather than accidental or an oversight.
No, I didn’t.
Actually, regular church attendance was pretty low during the colonial and revolutionary period. This doesn’t mean that people weren’t Christian, of course, but it’s hard for Christianity to be a “huge part” of one’s daily life when one doesn’t care enough to go to church. Furthermore, the intellectual elite of this era were heavily influenced by Deism and the Enlightenment, both of which were antagonistic to traditional, orthodox Christianity.
I’d be happy to provide supporting documentation for whatever claims you wish, providing they are claims which I have actually made.
You present a lame argument.
One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
One can practice any religion they wish here in the states but you must admit that the country was founded with Christian principles in mind.
Feel free to explain what’s wrong with it.
Feel free to provide support for this assertion. Just so you know, “under God” was added in the 1950s to a pledge that didn’t exist when the country was founded, so it won’t help you. Politically, the American government was founded on the Constitution so you’ll have to find your “Christian principles” in there somewhere.
Patriotism and religious affiliation are based on identity cons. Children are taught to identify with something completely imaginary at an early age around 5. The United States and Catholicism will last just so long as people keep clapping and identifying with tinkerbell. The sure sign of the coming death of institution is that people begin to question and no longer identify with it.
J.
History Lesson Time! The “under god” line was added in the early days of the cold war. The idea was to Xianize America, so we wouldn’t like “those godless communazis”.
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”
- George Washington
Many of our founding fathers were Deist and not Xian.
The constitution and its principle were actually based more on indigenous Americans principles than European or Christian principles. That’s why it was so different and so successful right from the start.
This fact was celebrated for the first hundred years or so of our US history. It was likely that Christians are responsible for the demise of the truth in our history lessons.
Treaty of Tripoli is another example that this is NOT a christian based nation! The founding documents speak for themselves as secular man made laws and also the well know litmus test.
Religious fundamentalist are the ones that continue to “muck” things up and try to rewrite history.
Here you go J.:
John Adams: “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.” – from a letter to Thomas Jefferson.
Benjamin Franklin: “I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”
Ulysses Grant: “Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separated.”
Thomas Jefferson: “Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.”
Abraham Lincoln: “The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.” Joseph Lewis quoting Lincoln in a 1924 speech in New York
James Madison: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.” April 1, 1774
Theodore Roosevelt: “I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be nonsectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools.” Carnegie Hall address, 12 October 1915
George Washington: “Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their [NOT our!] religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society.” Letter to Sir Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792
Additional quotations from our founding fathers and other presidents:
WASHINGTON, GEORGE, 1st U.S. President, commander-in-chief Continental Forces (1732-1799):
• “The government of the United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian religion. The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation. Religion is a matter which belongs to the Church, and not to the State.”
——–
ADAMS, JOHN, 1st Vice-president, 2nd U.S. President (1735-1826):
• “God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.” (“this awful blashpemy” that he refers to is the myth of the Incarnation of Christ, from Ira D. Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted in 2000 years of Disbelief, James A. Haught, ed.)
• “I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced.” (Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 2000 years of Disbelief, James A. Haught, ed.)
• “As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?” (Letter to F. A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816)
• “Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.” (Letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816, 2000 years of Disbelief, James A. Haught, ed.)
• “Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service.”
• “The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?” (Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 20 June 1815)
——–
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY, 6th U.S. President (1767-1848):
• “There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.” (diary entry, May 27, 1838)
——–
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, American statesman, scientist, author (1706-1790):
• [Of Christianity] “I wish it were more productive of good works. I mean really good works, not holy day keeping, sermon hearing, or making long prayers filled with flatteries and compliments desired by wise men.”
• “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. The way to see faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
• “Revealed religion has no weight with me.”
• “The United States Constitutional Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.”
——–
GRANT, ULYSSES S., 18th U.S. President, commander Union forces (1822-1885):
• “I would suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation.”
——–
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, 3rd U.S. President, founder of the University of Virginia (1743-1826):
• “The Christian God is a being of terrific character —cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust.The doctrines which he [Jesus] did preach were defective, on the whole. In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty.”
• “I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature.”
• “If God is just, I tremble for my country.”
• “Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believe nothing than he who believes what is wrong.” (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-1785)
• “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.”
• “It is wicked and tyrannical to compel any man to support a religion in which he does not believe.”
• [In Virginia] “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinion of belief; but that all men shall be free to profess…their opinion in matters of religion.” (Jefferson’s Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1786)
• “Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear… Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.”
• “What has been the effect of religious coercion? To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.” (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785)
——–
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, 16th U.S. President, (1809-1865):
• “My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”
• “What is to be, will be and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.The United States Government must not undertake to run the churches. When an individual in a church, or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest, he must be checked.”
How do you explain these quotes?
John Adams:
“ The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”
“[July 4th] ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
–John Adams in a letter written to Abigail on the day the Declaration was approved by Congress
“I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.” December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson
1. Personal beliefs that were never expressed in official government documents carry little weight when actually reading those official government documents. The unalterable fact is that the government of the United States is founded on the Constitution and this Constitution carries no mention of Christianity as having anything to do with the foundations or structure of government. That this was a personal view, not an official one, is demonstrated by the fact that Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which stated “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”.
2. The “Chrsitianity” referenced by Adams is far removed from the “Christianity” of conservative evangelicals today. Adams was a universalist, both in terms of salvation and in terms of the validity of other religions. This means that he believed everyone would be saved and that other religions were as equally valid as Christianitiy; being a “Christian” was a matter of culture and preference, not exclusive truth.
The pilgrims, who landed at Plymouth in 1620, did so in pursuit of religious freedom. At the time the Pilgrim Fathers were living in England there was only one church approved by the English rulers. Everyone was required to attend that church – and ONLY that church. Although the foundation of this great country is built on Judeo/Christian moral principles and values our forefathers were keenly aware that this country was also founded on the belief of religious freedom, even though they believed in Judeo/Christian principles. While the founding fathers invoke God’s name in many of our countries most important documents I challenge anyone to show me where in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution they invoked the name of “Christ” or “Jesus.” Our founding fathers did not want a “State Church.” They wanted this country to embrace all religions. We are fighting a war and sacrificing our sons and daughters lives in Iraq and Afghanistan to establish democracies to be used as models for countries with theocracies. Why then do we appear so intent on turning our democracy into a theocracy? While I am strongly opposed to the immoral secularization of this country, I am equally opposed to the establishment of a “State Church,” which it appears the religious right is attempting to bring about. God should play an important role in the lives of all Americans, but we must let individuals choose which God they wish to worship.
I agree that the founders did not build this country on christianity. and im aware of the true “religious” loyalties of the founders(and by that i mean the societies they belonged to). but i agree that this John Adams quote lacks proof that there was an abscence of ANY religious beliefs. if you read the wording carefully, and you are aware of what they were involved in, you might come away with a more esoteric message.
One Nation Under GOD…Chew on that to all you who say this nation wasnt founded on Chritian principals and cannot deny the awesome status this county has gained in its short lived life upon these principals…Keep Denying the truth …Your freedom of Speech is carried upon the backs of those who died for for it. Put a spin on it and twist it how you will, but Its still on our currency telling the World who we are.
Chew on this, #15:
If you can find anything in the Bible that expressly states that the best form of government is a constitutional republic or democracy, wherein the people decide for themselves who their leaders are and what laws they shall obey, and which of those are fair and legal, I would love to hear it.
Perhaps you might want to look for some mention of separation of powers, or the supremacy of the courts’ interpretation of law, or the instructions for how elections should be held and votes counted.
If the Bible avails you no information, perhaps you can find the word God or Jesus somewhere in the Constitution itself. Maybe in the preamble, which begins “We the people …” oops, probably not there. Not in any of the seven articles nor any of the twenty-seven amendments. I guarantee you won’t, except in passing in the phrase “A.D.” to indicate the signing date, which was the custom at the time.
Speaking of the Constitution:
Article VI: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Amendment 1: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
It’s sad that someone who invokes the memories of the men and women who died to protect our Constitution with such venom has such a limited understanding of that august document.
Mis-placed modifier alert:
“It’s sad that someone who venomously invokes the memories of the men and women who died to protect our Constitution has such a limited understanding of that august document.”
One Nation under God was added to the pledge in 1954. The pledge is credited to have been written by a minister who was defrocked for being a Socialist, so their Christian Nation Apologists your precious pledge was written by a Pinko. HaHaHa !!! Wow maybe you’d like to reinstate the old salute to the pledge which resembled the Nazi salute. You’ be a perfect match.
@#15: Can you read? And please note for future reference that capitalising certain words in a sentence does not make you sound grand and important. It merely makes you look seriously unintelligent. I wonder if you are as incapable of grasping basic grammatical rules as you are of admitting that the US was never intended to be a Christian nation.
If anyone, religious or not, would like more info on why our founding fathers left god out of the Constitution, “The Godless Constitution” by Kramnick & Moore is a great place to start. You can find some quotations from it here:
http://tirelesswing.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-america-christian-nation.html
The Americian govt. was founded to protect the interests of a privileged class of racketeers.
This is for all of you Christian bigots
Treaty of Tripoli-
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say there are nothing, or that there is no soul, no angels, no god. I cannot reason otherwise…I am satisfied, sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which we have no evidence
-Thomas Jefferson
Lighthouses are more useful than churches
-Benjamin Franklin
” The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.” – John Adams
“Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separated.” – Ulysses S. Grant
and the 1st amendment.
@Syn: Don’t forget this one:
Mark 12:17, Matthew 22:15-22, Luke 20:25: He said to them, “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” (saying that politics is politics and religion is religion and must not mix them together)