Founded

June 07, 2009

People often make statements with confident conviction that have absolutely no basis in fact. Sometimes, they repeat what they have heard from the pulpit, say, or from a family member, co-worker, or fellow believer, and they simply do not bother to verify whether or not their assertion is true. Sometimes, a person knows that a statement isn’t true, or may not be true, but he repeats it anyway, figuring nobody will bother to contradict him or check his facts after the conversation is over.

In either case, the statement goes unchallenged, and the falsehood is perpetuated.

One of these false statements that has been popping up lately on television, in general discourse I’ve overheard, and in a personal encounter I had not too long ago, is “all of our founding fathers were Christian.” This statement is usually used to shore up two other statements uttered in a variety of configurations. One, “This is a Christian nation,” and two, “Our nation was founded on Christian principles.”

The unspoken conclusion to this parade of lies is that the United States should be a Christian nation now, and our government should be operated according to Christian doctrine.

I heartily disagree.

I embarked upon an Internet research adventure last week, looking for quotes by seven of our nation’s founders, trying to determine whether or not they were, based on what they said or wrote themselves, Christians. Only one, Alexander Hamilton, clearly professed Christianity. Two, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were not convinced of Jesus Christ’s divinity, one of the main tenets of Christian doctrine, which Franklin claimed to find “unintelligible,” and said he “absented myself from Christian assemblies."

Several of the founding fathers, John Adams and George Washington for example, believed in god, and Washington considered it impossible to “rightly govern a nation” without god and the bible. I couldn’t verify one way or the other if either of these men were Christians, but Franklin professed to be a Deist, meaning he believed in a creator of the Universe and its inhabitants but rejected belief in a supernatural being who intervenes or interacts with humanity.

In response to a friend requesting that he clarify his position on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson embarked on the task of cutting apart--literally, with scissors--the biblical account of Jesus Christ’s life, removing all inconsistencies and mention of miracles, piecing back together what was left into his own version of scripture, complete with French, Greek, and Latin translations. While he indicated a certain level of respect for the New Testament teachings of Jesus, he did not believe he was the son of any god. Jefferson did not seem to hold much esteem for religious dogma of any kind, nor did he seem particularly invested in aligning himself with any one religious creed. In fact, from everything I read, Thomas Jefferson stood apart from his fellow American citizens in his desire to keep his religious beliefs private.

Perhaps the most boldly outspoken founder on the topic of religion, particularly Christianity, was Thomas Paine. In The Age of Reason, he doesn’t mince any words, and his position could not be more clear. He wrote, “Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.”

Many more quotes underscore Mr. Paine’s feelings on Christianity, and I am convinced that he was not a Christian. Based on the other quotes I read of our founding fathers, to say they were all Christians would be misinformation at best, but while our nation’s founders differed in their religious beliefs, they all shared one powerful and unifying similarity.

Every one of them believed in religious freedom, and they took a strong measure to preserve it in the First Amendment to our Constitution, which reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Even if every one of our founding fathers had been devout Christians, which is clearly not the case, their dedication to religious freedom was clear and complete. Thomas Jefferson explained to the Virginia Baptists in 1808, “Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.”

Many Christians seem so desperate to preserve their influence and power that they are willing to sacrifice religious freedom, even their own, in the process. While I am not a Christian, I will always stand for the rights of Christians or Jews or Muslims or Wiccans to believe in whatever they choose because preserving their freedom preserves my own, and I don’t want the government telling me or anyone else what to think, what to believe. The Christians who keep passing around this false claim, along with the agenda it is meant to support, apparently do not value their religious freedom as much as they value the illusion of being entitled to a government run by their version of truth.

And what they clearly don’t understand is if they insist upon forcing our government to legislate belief, then our government will have the power to force us to believe in whatever serves the current administration.

Any assertion that our nation was founded by Christians upon Christianity is not only wrong, it’s a dangerous trick, equivalent to an optical illusion or sleight of hand, except not as harmless. Men like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine staked their lives on the vital importance of religious and civil liberty. It was upon their dedication to establishing and preserving those freedoms for themselves, their countrymen, and their heirs that this nation of United States, which still thankfully enjoys religious freedom, was founded.

Not Christianity.

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