I grew up in a conservative Christian home, and from a young age my parents pounded a conservative view of America and American History into my mind. Of all the things I was taught about America and its government, one conservative religious precept stands out among all others:
I cannot begin to put a value on the number of times I heard that fundamental phrase. Next to the Bible, The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and The Bill of Rights were probably the most sacred texts in our religion.
Yes, make no mistake, those documents were a part of our religion. The second most important phrase might just have been recited more than the first, and left no doubt about that fact. It was a verbal “sign against evil” often delivered with enough vitriol to sever limbs:
In the version of American History taught by A Beka Books, Bob Jones and others of that ilk, we learned that the Founding Fathers of our great nation were the most devout of Christian Men. We learned that in England, all they had desired was to practice their faith in the manner it was meant to be practiced, free of the corrupt influence of the dictatorial English monarchy and the idolatrous English and Catholic churches. They left the Old World to find that very peace, and when the corrupt governments of the Old World came after them, they did the only thing they could do: they rebelled, and then founded a government based on the principles of true Christianity.
Furthermore, these statesmen turned about and heaped coals on the heads of their old enemies by enshrining in the very Constitution of the United States the right they had been denied in the Old World – the right to practice Christianity in any manner (i.e. denomination) you saw fit. That, we learned, was the entire purpose of the first portion of the First Amendment:
You might have noticed that my worldview has changed a lot since then. A large portion of that change in worldview came about when I realized that the American History I’d been taught was completely corrupted by right-wing religious revisionism…
Once I began to study history on my own, using sources and texts uncontaminated by the imaginations of the ultra-conservative movement, I realized that the “Occam’s Razor version” of US history was probably the most accurate: the government of the United States of America was founded to enshrine one simple rule into law: the Ethic of Reciprocity – more commonly known as The Golden Rule. Virtually every other portion of the Constitution sprang out of a necessity for the creation of systems to prevent internal corruption of that goal, or external threats thereto.
I learned that indeed, many of the Founding Fathers were Christians – though their version of Christianity was probably as far removed from ours as cars are from horses and buggies. I also learned that a significant number of them were not Christians at all – but rather Deists or possibly even agnostics. In their time, these men were liberals of the best kind – they questioned the will of the establishment on every point in which it impacted the freedom and happiness of mankind. Just listen to James Madison’s original wording for the First amendment:
To my great amusement, I discovered that “Separation of Church and State” is probably one of the worst, most inadequate ways of wording the intent of the Founding Fathers regarding the interaction of religion and government. These men had discovered and enshrined in law a principle that superseded any religion; a principle that every rational, healthy human on earth embraces in their daily lives, and uses to interact with those around them: the Ethic of Reciprocity.
I firmly believe that they intended to establish a secular state, a system and ethic in which people of all religious affiliations (or of none!) could freely interact and happily exist. Examine the words of Thomas Paine, from his work The Age of Reason (pub. 1794-1795).
These are not the words of a man who intends to codify a religion into a system of government. They are the words of a man who mistrusts religions to such an extent that he has discarded many of them in turn. If you need further proof, you need only look as far as the Treaty of Tripoli (Article 11.), signed by the second President of the United States, John Adams:
It doesn’t really get much clearer than that. “…the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion…”
Welcome the The United States of America according to the Founding Fathers.
