There's
a claim by the Christian Right and some members of the Tea Party
movement that the United States was consciously and deliberately created
as a Christian nation to spread the Gospel to the new world and create a
beacon of light and salvation to the rest of the world. They haven't
much evidence to back up this claim; just some scattered quotes from
people like George Washington, made in their private capacity and not as
spokespersons for the government or the nation.
Granted,
we had plenty of people settle here in the early days in a quest to
believe and practice those beliefs away from the oppression of the
established churches of Europe, but they weren't the only people to
leave Europe and settle here. There were plenty of people who were only
nominal members of any church, or followers of the Enlightenment
philosophers such as Voltaire who emphasized reason as the primary
source of authority and knowledge. Or they were just farmers and
trappers and whatnot who had no real use for religion in their life and
were happy to go about their daily lives and work without need for
religion. There was a lot of philosophical diversity in the early
colonies which became the United States.
And in fact
the the lawyers and merchants who formed the intellectual class from
whom the founding fathers of this nation emerged were mostly followers
of the Enlightenment, men such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John
Hancock, the Adamses of Boston, and Benjamin Franklin, self-declared
Deists who believed in a higher power but denied the legitimacy of any
formal religion. Even that ultimate gentleman farmer cum soldier, George
Washington, considered himself a Deist. And it was these people who
wrote our founding documents and created a purely secular, not
religious, government.
The
U.S. Constitution is the rock-solid foundation of the government of the
United States; it establishes and guides our whole form of governance,
from the legislative to the judicial to the administrative. It is, to
use a Judeo-Christian reference, the Ten Commandments of the nation. It
was written by men dedicated to reason and the Age of Enlightenment
(principally James Madison, who himself was a protegé of Thomas
Jefferson, probably the prime advocate of Enlightenment thinking, along
with Benjamin Franklin, among the founding fathers), and it never
mentions God, Jesus Christ, the Church, or the Bible. Never. Not even
once. It only actually mentions matters pertaining to religion once, in
the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances."
The key phrase in that
amendment is known in U.S. jurisprudence as the Establishment Clause -
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." -
which at the very beginning of our national existence says that the
government cannot sponsor or enforce a religious belief and practice on
the American people. There are people who argue that it does no such
thing, that the amendment only says that the government can't favor one
religion over the other. But the evidence, from the very records of the
Constitutional Convention itself, along with the writings of the men who
wrote the document, says otherwise.
The Library of
Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS) has released an
annotated Constitution, and the Columbia University Law School has put a
hyperlinked version online, which you can find
here.
The annotations quote the debates and discussions entered into at the
convention, as well as the documents which express the ideas of those
attending. The annotation page for the First Amendment can be found
here,
but I want to include passages from the "overview" section along with
the footnotes for that section (included in brackets after the passage)
that speak directly to the matter.
Madison’s original
proposal for a bill of rights provision concerning religion read: “The
civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or
worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the
full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any
pretence, infringed." [1 Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).]
The
language was altered in the House to read: “Congress shall make no law
establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to
infringe the rights of conscience." [The committee appointed to consider
Madison’s proposals, and on which Madison served, with Vining as
chairman, had rewritten the religion section to read: “No religion shall
be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be
infringed.” After some debate during which Madison suggested that the
word “national” might be inserted before the word “religion” as
“point[ing] the amendment directly to the object it was intended to
prevent,” the House adopted a substitute reading: “Congress shall make
no laws touching religion, or infringing the rights of conscience.” 1
Annals of Congress 729–31 (August 15, 1789). On August 20, on motion of
Fisher Ames, the language of the clause as quoted in the text was
adopted. Id. at 766. According to Madison’s biographer, “[t]here can be
little doubt that this was written by Madison.” I. Brant, James
Madison—Father of the Constitution 1787–1800 at 271 (1950).]
In
the Senate, the section adopted read: “Congress shall make no law
establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the
free exercise of religion, . . ." [This text, taken from the Senate
Journal of September 9, 1789, appears in 2 B. Schwartz (ed.), The Bill
of Rights: A Documentary History 1153 (1971). It was at this point that
the religion clauses were joined with the freedom of expression
clauses.]
It was in the conference committee of the two
bodies, chaired by Madison, that the present language was written with
its some[p.970]what more indefinite “respecting” phraseology. [1 Annals
of Congress 913 (September 24, 1789). The Senate concurred the same day.
See I. Brant, James Madison—Father of the Constitution 1787–1800,
271–72 (1950).]
Debate in Congress lends little
assistance in interpreting the religion clauses; Madison’s position, as
well as that of Jefferson who influenced him, is fairly clear... [During
House debate, Madison told his fellow Members that “he apprehended the
meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a
religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men
to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.” 1 Annals of
Congress 730 (August 15, 1789). That his conception of “establishment”
was quite broad is revealed in his veto as President in 1811 of a bill
which in granting land reserved a parcel for a Baptist Church in Salem,
Mississippi; the action, explained President Madison, “comprises a
principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United
States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the
article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no
law respecting a religious establishment.”’ 8 The Writings of James
Madison (G. Hunt. ed.) 132–33 (1904). Madison’s views were no doubt
influenced by the fight in the Virginia legislature in 1784–1785 in
which he successfully led the opposition to a tax to support teachers of
religion in Virginia and in the course of which he drafted his
“Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” setting forth
his thoughts. Id. at 183–91; I. Brant, James Madison—The Nationalist
1780–1787, 343–55 (1948). Acting on the momentum of this effort, Madison
secured passage of Jefferson’s “Bill for Religious Liberty”. Id. at
354; D. Malone, Jefferson the Virginian 274–280 (1948). The theme of the
writings of both was that it was wrong to offer public support of any
religion in particular or of religion in general.]
Obviously
Madison and the others were intent on keeping the U.S. government out
of the business of religion. Note especially this quote from Madison in
the Annals of Congress:
During House debate, Madison
told his fellow Members that “he apprehended the meaning of the words
to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the
legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any
Manner contrary to their conscience.” 1 Annals of Congress 730 (August
15, 1789).
This is a clear declaration of a hands-off
policy toward religion by the government, expressed by the architects
of the document which is the foundation of that government.
There
have been many acts by the government which have highlighted the
thinking of these founding fathers, a philosophy that has come to be
known as the "separation of Church and State", but perhaps one of the
clearest actions on that philosophy came early in the history of the
U.S. government with the
1797 treaty with Tripoli in the Barbary States of north Africa.
Joel
Barlow was the consul-general to the Barbary states of Algiers,
Tripoli, and Tunis; he was assigned by Commissioner Plenipotentiary of
the U.S. David Humphries to broker a treaty with Tripoli in 1796. Most
of the treaty concerns trade agreements, tariffs, rights-of-way for
shipping, etc.; mundane stuff. But Article 11 of the treaty makes a bold
statement regarding the attitude of the U.S. toward the religion of
Tripoli and the other Barbary States:
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 Mussulmen; and, as the
said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any
Mahometan 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.
There it
is, right out in the open in black and white on an official document of
the U.S. government: "...the Government of the United States of America
is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." In 1796,
only seven years after the ratification of the Constitution. You can't
get any clearer than that.
There's been an argument
advanced that Article 11 says no such thing in the original Arabic
document, and that it was a late insertion by the Dey of Algiers to
allay the fears of the Pasha of Tripoli. But that's irrelevant, a straw
man put up by opponents of church-state separation. No matter what the
Arabic document says, Joel Barlow's English translation - including that
eleventh article - is what was presented to President John Adams, who
then presented it to the Senate, in printed copy and read aloud on the
floor of the Senate. These were men who were in at the beginning of the
nation, many of them former members of the Continental Congress, signers
of the Declaration of Independence, and members of the Congress which
wrote the Constitution. They ratified the treaty by unanimous vote on
June 7, 1797, and President Adams signed it. They had all heard and read
that phrase - "...the Government of the United States of America is
not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." - and no one
objected; in fact no one said anything at all about it. Why? Because
this is what they believed.
So those who would want to
rewrite our history to conform to their particular, sectarian ideology,
led most notably by David Barton (who interestingly has no degree in
history but rather a bachelor's degree in religious education from Oral
Roberts University) and his Wallbuilders organization, haven't a leg to
stand on. By their own private writings and in the national documents
they inspired and helped create, the "Founding Fathers" of the United
States were not intent on creating a "Christian nation", but rather a
fully secular government with a clear hands-off policy toward religion.
There's really no question of that at all.
© 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger. Images owned by the United States and are public domain.
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