The U. S. Is NOT a Christian Nation

 

A few days ago I received one of those annoying emails that circulate around the internet that encouraged the recipient with some urgency to forward it to everyone she knew.  The focus of that email was an ad by the Biden for President campaign directed toward Muslim Americans that encourages them to vote because that is the way change happens and that their vote matters.  The premise of the email, not specifically stated but implied by its urgent tone, is that our Christian nation is being overwhelmed by Muslims and encouraged by Biden to undermine our Christian values.  There is a link to that Biden ad with a breathless plea to watch all of it to see how far our Christian nation has strayed from its roots by catering to foreigners with different values. 

Usually I ignore these chain emails but this one came from a very conservative religious and lovely elderly lady who is a dear friend and she sent it to a lot of people we know in common.  Because of the urgency of the times and the dangerous spread of disinformation from domestic groups and meddling foreign trolls in advance of the election I concluded that I should respond.  Evangelical Christian assertions to the contrary, the fact is that the Founders consciously and intentionally established this nation to be free of and from religion.  They saw religion as divisive and wanted the new nation to be neutral with respect to religion so that each citizen could worship or not in accordance with his/her beliefs. 

The email in question said that every American needs to watch every second of Biden’s political ad and that it would make the hair stand up on your neck.  So I watched it—twice.  I did not see anything scary.  It was directed to Muslim Americans. It quoted from the Koran.  It urged all Americans to vote in accord with their values.  It seemed a normal political ad, similar to ads directed to specific groups to remind them we are in this struggle together for the soul of the nation—labor union members in the Midwest, or the Jewish community in South Florida, or Hispanics in the Southwest—and that their voice matters.

I replied to her, from which I quote some excerpts below, slightly edited:

As you requested I listened to every word.  What he said was that every vote counts and that EVERY AMERICAN whether they are Muslim, or Jew, or Christian, or Black matters and needs to make their voice heard.  He quoted selected peaceful quotations from the Koran, just as Christians quote selectively from the Bible.  He said that Muslim Americans have a right and duty to vote in a democracy.  Every political presidential campaign, including Trump, sends messages to select groups of voters whose votes it is seeking.  There is nothing that was said in that Biden ad that any American who believes in democracy, the right to vote, and a better and more caring world should disagree with.

I am concerned that there is a conscious and deliberate attempt by Trump and his supporters to fan racial hatred and to claim that Americans should not participate in the Black Lives Matter protests against the injustice of treating poor blacks differently than well off whites.  That is the not very hidden theme of Trump’s law and order movement, to limit and criminalize the right of Americans to protest and why it is so important that all Americans protect our civil liberties from the abuses and fascist tendencies of the current Attorney General, who tried to use military style tactics in the streets of Portland to deny protest and turn it into a war zone.

There are two things that seem to be implied by that forwarded email, that there was something wrong and disturbing about the Biden video because it sought to encourage Muslim Americans to vote in our Presidential election, and that the US is a Christian country endangered by Muslims.  The issue of the U.S. as a Christian nation has been argued before and is a matter clear in our history that has been intentionally distorted by Evangelical Protestant Christians since the 1950s who assert that the US was founded as a Christian nation.  It was NOT.  [I taught US history, back quite a few years ago.]

Many of the original 13 colonies were founded by religious groups, Puritans, ana-Baptists, Calvinists, Catholics, Quakers, etc. ALL WITH THE INTENT of getting away from Europe's oppressive church-state religions and insisting on the freedom to worship (or not) as they chose.  The Founding Fathers were clear--in order for the colonies of the new nation to exist peaceably with each other there could be no establishment of religion.  We would be a new nation established in freedom of and from religion, where the nation was neutral and the people were free to worship as they chose.  That is a fundamental premise of democracy.  [Here is an article I wrote on the U.S. as a Christian nation.] Most of the Founders, including Thomas Jefferson in particular, were not Christians, they were Deists.

These are troubling times and the danger of fascist solutions are tempting.  I hate that the Trump people are trying to sow discord and division and promoting racial hatred and White Nationalism under the guise of a narrow view of Christian religion that is amenable to limiting freedom.  Our country deserves better.  We need new national leadership that is committed to democracy, that has the will and the ability to solve our pandemic problems, and to re-establish our place in the world of free nations—not make things progressively worse.  It will take an election in November to achieve this.

 

Religious Freedom Day - January 16

In my youth as a member of a Southern Baptist church in northern Virginia I became acquainted with an organization called Protestants and Others United for Separation of Church and State (now called Americans United), an advocacy group supported by my church to remind us that the Constitutional principle of the separation between Church and State was a key construct of both the Virginia and the Federal constitutions.  

Since Religious Freedom Day occurs today (January 16) and Donald Trump will be inaugurated later this week with Republicans coming to power with threats against our religious freedom, it seems a good time to remind ourselves that our nation was founded on this bedrock principle.  Since the religious right in our country has regularly and intentionally distorted the facts by a stubborn insistence that Christianity was an integral part of our Nation’s founding documents and history, I want to correct the record by extensively quoting from an article entitled “The Christian Right Does Not Want You To Know About This Day” by Frederick Clarkson, originally published December 27, 2014 and just republished in Daily Kos.  I have written on this subject before [See Is The United States a Christian Nation?] and because Mr. Clarkson has stated the issues so clearly I am quoting extensively from his article because there is no point in my writing again when he has stated the issues so clearly.

"For all of the shouting about religious liberty — from the landmark Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, to the passage of the anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Mississippi, and more — there is barely any mention, let alone any observance, of the official national Religious Freedom Day, enacted by Congress in 1992 and recognized every January 16 by an annual presidential proclamation.

The day commemorates the enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.

Why is this seemingly obscure piece of Revolutionary-era legislation so vital? And why doesn’t the Christian Right want you to know anything about it?

The bill, authored by Thomas Jefferson and later pushed through the state legislature by then member of the House of Delegates, James Madison, is regarded as the root of how the framers of the Constitution approached matters of religion and government, and it was as revolutionary as the era in which it was written.

It not only disestablished the Anglican Church as the official state church, but it provided that no one can be compelled to attend any religious institution or to underwrite it with taxes; that individuals are free to believe as they will and that this “shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

As a practical matter, this meant that what we believe or don’t believe is not the concern of government and that we are all equal as citizens.

Following the dramatic passage of the Statute in 1786, Madison traveled to Philadelphia, where he served as a principal author of the Constitution in 1787. As a Member of Congress in 1789 he was also a principal author of the First Amendment, which passed in 1791.

Jefferson was well aware that many did not like the Statute, just as they did not like the Constitution and the First Amendment, both of which sought to expand the rights of citizens and deflect claims of churches seeking special consideration.

So before his death, Jefferson sought to get the last word on what it meant. The Statute, he wrote, contained “within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

That is a powerful and clear statement. Jefferson, almost 200 years ago, refuted the contemporary claims of Christian Right leaders, many of whom not only insist that America was founded as a Christian nation, but that the framers really meant their particular interpretation of Christianity. (And they are sometimes encouraged by a surprisingly wide array of pundits.)

Jefferson further explained that the legislature had specifically rejected proposed language that would have described “Jesus Christ” as “the holy author of our religion.” This was rejected, he reported, “by the great majority.”

No wonder the Christian Right does not want us to remember the original Statute for Religious Freedom — it doesn’t fit their narrative of history! Nor does it justify their vision of the struggles of the political present, or the shining theocratic future they envision.

Religious Freedom Day is nothing but bad news for the likes of Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins, who argue that Christians who favor marriage equality are not really Christians. They can believe that if they want, but it can make no difference in the eyes of the law. That is probably why on Religious Freedom Day 2014, Perkins made no mention of what Religious Freedom Day is really about — instead using the occasion to denounce president Obama’s approach to religious liberty abroad.

This barely commemorated day provides an opportunity for LGBTQ people, and progressives generally, to reclaim a philosophical, legal and constitutional legacy that the Christian Right is busy trying to redefine for their own purposes.

Alright. So the Christian Right really does not want us to know about this day, but if we do, they certainly don't want us thinking about this stuff -- and so the standard fare of faux outrage about president Obama and various conspiracies against faith in general and conservative Christianity in general is likely to dominate our foreseeable future.  

But it doesn't have to be this way. And the Christian Right probably knows it.

When I say that the Christian Right does not want “us” to think about it, I mean everyone who is not the Christian Right and their allies, and especially not LGBTQ people and the otherwise “insufficiently Christian.”  I think that is why the Christian Right is mostly so eerily quiet about it, even though religious freedom is so central to their political program.

But what if we did?

What if we seized this day to think dynamically about the religious freedoms we take for granted at our peril; freedom that is in danger of being redefined beyond recognition.  What if we decided to seize this day to consider our best values as a nation and advance the cause of equal rights for all?

If we did, we might begin by recalling the extraordinary challenge faced by the framers of the Constitution when they gathered in Philadelphia. They met to create one nation out of 13 fractious colonies still finding their way after a successful revolt against the British Empire; and contending with a number of powerful and well-established state churches and a growing and religiously diverse population.

Their answer?   Religious equality.  And it is rooted in Jefferson’s bill. Let's remind ourselves about the origins of the bill.

Jefferson wrote the first draft in 1777 — just after having authored the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  And it was James Madison who finally got the legislation passed through the Virginia legislature in 1786, just months before he traveled to Philadelphia to be a principal author of the Constitution.  The Virginia Statute states that no one can be compelled to attend or support any religious institution, or otherwise be restrained in their beliefs, and that this “shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities . . .”

The Constitution, framed according to “The Virginia Plan,” drafted primarily by Madison, contains no mention of God or Christianity.  In fact, the final text’s only mention of religion is in the proscription of “religious tests for public office,” found in Article 6.  

In other words — Jefferson’s words — one’s religious identity, or lack thereof, has no bearing on one’s “civil capacities.”

If we thought about the meaning of Religious Freedom Day, we might start thinking about things like that — and not capitulate to the Christian Right’s effort to redefine religious freedom to include a license for business and institutional leaders (both government and civil) to impose their religious beliefs on employees and the public.

If we thought about things like that, then we might consider them in light of a host of initiatives in recent years, often advanced under the banner of religious freedom, but which, in fact, restrict the religious freedom of others.

We might consider, for example, the recent federal court decision in the case of General Synod of the United Church of Christ v. Cooper, which found that North Carolina’s ban on clergy performing marriage ceremonies without first obtaining a civil marriage license, was unconstitutional.

Since state law declared that same-sex couples could not get marriage licenses, this subjected clergy in the United Church of Christ, the Alliance of Baptists, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, among others, to potential prosecution for performing a religious ceremony.

As religious equality advances, so does equal rights for all. So you can see why the Christian Right might not want people—people like us—thinking like Jefferson. And that is why we must."

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