Did Founders Intend For USA To Be A Christian Nation?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, ReligionAuthored by American diplomat Joel Barlow in 1796, the following treaty was sent to the floor of the Senate, June 7, 1797, where it was read aloud in its entirety and unanimously approved. John Adams, having seen the treaty, signed it and proudly proclaimed it to the Nation. [...]Art. 11. 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 tranquillity, 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.
Discuss.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 10th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Great post, Justin. Thanks for this one; now linked at Central Sanity … http://centralsanity.blogspot.com/2007/04/christian-nation.html.
April 10th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Did Founders Intent for the United States government to be a Christian government in that U.S. government should declare its Christian and declare war on Muslim nations - no. Wow, I’m so glad we’ve got that clear up. Tommorrow we can discuss how the U.S. government was not set up to be a monarchy.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
The problem lies in any question that asks “What did our founding fathers intend?” Guess what? They disagreed with each other as much as we do today! We all know the federalist papers, but founders wrote the Anti-Federalist Papers as well. Much in the Bill of Rights were to appease the very questions they raised. The only thing all founders could agree on is what was written and ratified- and sometimes not even then. Look at the process of ratifying bills today: Representative sign bills that they might disagree on in part as long as it’s the best option in whole. The founders were no less conflicted.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I concur with Dos. I think the Musselmen and the Mohatmetans got the message that America wasn’t about perpetual jihad in order to make “All the world for Christ.”
April 10th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Wait a second…we’re not a monarchy?
April 10th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Another fascinating bit of history is the efforts of the National Reform Association. During the Civil War, they proposed rewording the Constitution’s preamble to include an explicit reference to Christ. It went nowhere.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I think one might characterize this post as a prime example of the “usa and abuse of history.” The problem is you are, evidently, attempting to have this statement of 1797 say more about 2007 than it could ever possibly say.
To state that the country was not “founded on the Christian religion” was saying something different from how we think of the phrase after 200+ years of Constitutional history. It is difficult, if not impossible, for us to conceive of “divine right” as a living thing, a real alternative for which people were willing to fight and die for, both for and against. The early Americans were keenly aware, in a way we today are not, that they were different from the other nations of the world. They had a human founding, outlined in documents, debated by representatives of the “people” (as construed in the day), where the entire notion of sovreignty rested not in an individual but in a collective. It must also be remembered that they were trying to impress this fact upon muslim nations of the day who obviously needed some convincing on this point. It would have been a hard sell to tell them that despite the ties of history the US had to Europe, they did not subscribe to the religious theory which would make them (at least nominally) the historical enemies of all muslims.
Another difficulty is to pull individual statement, even when properly contextualized, as being representative for the whole of opinion of the day. That is impossible, since there was a range of opinion. Hell, even someone like John Locke went back and forth on just what the value of Christianity was in his ideas of the Social Contract, individual rights, and popular sovreignty. At some points he feels that reason can stand alone, and at other times he seems more hesitant. (And claiming that his hesitancy was due to his being “politick” doesn’t work when you look at where these doubts are raised in his writings. They crop up when he is at his most secure.)
This statement should probably be read as stating, “Yes, we are a nations of Christians, but we are not a Christian nation. That is, we do not found our state on our religion. Therefore, we take no portion of the long struggles between Christian and Muslim in Europe as OUR struggle. We do not deign to speak for God via “divine right” so we shouldn’t come to blows. At least initiated on our end.”
Of course we were at war with the Muslim pirate states by 1801 in large part because we were viewed as Christians, the same as any other European state. So much for imparting the subtleties of American founding thought on the Barbary states.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
that should be “usE and abuse of history”, although the usA and abuse of history” sound like it must mean something.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:21 am
During the Civil War, they proposed rewording the Constitution’s preamble to include an explicit reference to Christ. It went nowhere.
How would anyone be expected to actually implement such an amendment even if it were to pass, anyway? Constitutional amendments are merely appendages to the original document. It’s not as though when an amendment is ratified, someone takes the document out of the national Archives, whips out a Magic Marker and changes the existing text.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Great post. Seriously, I guess “One Nation Under God” means the more generic term of God and not any one particular view of him or her. The article promotes religious tolerance. Maybe it needs to be taught in our schools as a part of American History and possibly a question in the “No Child Left Behind” test if history is part of that federal program.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Thank you Rich Norton for that eloquant and reasoned reply to this bit of little-useful history-prop. Justin conveniently switches “Government” with “Nation” — well, what are words & meanings really anyway?
April 11th, 2007 at 10:59 am
RIch,
I think that this statement does say quite a bit more about 2007 than many are willing to accept. Sadly, these words seemingly have no significance to highly religious politicians or the Religious Right base that keeps electing them.
You know very well that government and nation go hand in hand, and the religious right is trying to remake this INTO a Christian nation. They make no secret about this. Bush makes no secret about this. The two being intertwined is not only dangerous for government, it’s also dangerous for Christianity too.
April 11th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Justin, my concern is less about the present day politics. I think the constitutional tradition & vocabulary developed in (especially) the 20th century is sufficient to express our present political situation. I’m just wary of projecting our sensibilities backwards in time. The concerns of 18th century Americans were not ours. And vice versa.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I agree mostly with that sentiment, but when it comes to religious ideology, though, I disagree. I think the concerns of many in the fundamentalist, Religious Right movement do mirror the concerns of similar fundamentalists in the 18th century. Even to do this day, the Religious Right fights to combine church and state, and you can hear them proclaim frequently that the US is a Christian nation and they want to remake the government into the same thing.
I too am wary of projecting our sensibilities back in time as well, and that’s why when I hear so often that the founders wanted this or the founders wanted that…it seems rather dated. And this too could be seen as dated, but those who hold “founder’s intentions” with the highest regard should recognize that this states pretty explicitly that the government wasn’t founded on religion.
If nothing else, it presents an interesting footnote to the arguments.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
All I have heard the “Christian Right” do is to espouse the accurate constitutional proposition that the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment is a neutrality clause - not a Stalinist cleansing which results in idiocy like the banning of Christmas trees and nativity scenes from the public square.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
DosPeros,
… or a Judge of a superior Court hanging a copy of the Ten Commandments in his Court (or was it a plinth at the door?).
Oh. Hang on. He wasn’t a Stalinist obviously. They were the ones trying to stop him…
… or the selection of SCOTUS Judges on the basis of their (known) religious beliefs, and specific continuing legal challenges such as the reversal of RvW.
Oh. But of course. A Judge who supports RvW should not be appointed because there are too many already on the SC benches supporting that particular decision…
April 11th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
He toa taua, mate taua, he toa piki pari, mate pari, he toa ngaki kai, ma te huhu tena — and I mean every gatdamn bit of it, now sit down, man, you’re a bloody tragedy. How are those elections going down under btw?
April 12th, 2007 at 12:11 am
“The warrior dies on the battlefield, the cragsman by cliff-side, but the industrious cultivator perishes of natural decay”…is what DP said.
Am I missing something?
April 12th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Ask your Christian Right friends if they would like for the U.S. Constitution to be amended so that it reads this way: “The government of the United States is a system based on belief in God, His exclusive sovereignty and the right to legislate, and the necessity of submission to His commands.� I suspect there are quite a few people who think it would be just dandy if the Constitution were to read something like this.
After they tell you how much they like that idea, you can reveal to them the above quote comes from an actual constitution — that of Iran, linchpin of the “Axis of Evil.â€Â? All I did was substitute the words “United Statesâ€Â? for “Islamic Republic of Iran.â€Â? If they want a Constitution that explicitly supports Christian ideals, all they need do is look to the constitutions of the Middle Eastern Islamic states for their model.
April 12th, 2007 at 10:08 am
I agree (I’m shocked to say) with DosPeros, at least as regards the Constitution’s injunction that the government be strictly neutral with regards to matters of religion. The government cannot take sides on religious disputes, it cannot favor or promote one religion over another, and it cannot prohibit people from practicing their religions (within a few boundaries of criminal law; I don’t think the law against murder violates the First Amendment because it has the effect of prohibiting human sacrifice).
The troublesome, and recent, development in this area of the law is the argument that “atheism is a religion” and the government promotes this “religion” by failing to promote other forms of religion at the same time. Atheism is not a religion, it is the absence of religion. And failing to promote religion is not the same thing as suppressing it.
April 12th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Justin - I just like to give the wine-drenched New Zealander a hard time in his native tongue. I find Prob’s blog to be very interesting by the way and would encourage all to read about the campaign finance reforms going on in NZ.
Transplanted Lawyer - you should be shocked to agree with me no matter how repellent I may be to you. My constitutional legal analysis is a great wall 100 ft tall X 10 ft. thick, filled with the iron of genius and wisdom. Many have tried to topple it, only to find themselves face-down in despair, slurping hopelessly through the bog of inferior analysis.
Now can we all agree that the ACLU is in fact a Stalinist, disgusting organization worthy of a Night of Long Knives? Come on, lets come together people.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I call “threadjack” on the Great Wall of DosPeros. The post is about whether the Founders intended this to be a Christian nation or not, and by extension whether it should be considered a Christian nation today.
The First Amendment resolves that issue in the negative, fine distinctions between the “nation” and the “government” notwithstanding. The Founders intended that there be tolerance for all and favoritism towards none. That’s the kind of government they wanted to create, that’s the kind of nation they wanted to live in, and for the most part, that’s the sort of policy that our leaders have worked to preserve for us all. It takes only a momentary glance at a nation like Iran or Saudi Arabia to see how fortunate we are to live in a society with religous liberty and tolerance.
Railing against the ACLU does not illuminate this topic in any appreciable way.
April 12th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
I believe my original point was that this post illuminates nothing on this topic. So railing against the ACLU is what I’m left with. This post was just another example of Justin’s never-ending little rebellion against Christ.
The kind of nation that the founders wanted to live in and the kind of government that they wanted to create are two fantastically different things, TL. You make the rather common error of thinking that the founders believed that the government was suppose to be the primary shaper of the Nation; The government having a rather limited role according to the founders.
So, yes, in fact, there is a different between “the government” and “the Nation” — the Nation being a broader concept of the culture, the people, the history, exc. The founders wanted the federal government to be neutral with regards to religion — meaning that the culture and the people could in fact express religious symbolism and faith in the public square, as long as the government took a neutral position on regulation.
This is obviously much different than what the ACLU and Justin wants - which is clearly reflected in the title to this post, to wit, that US not be a Christian Nation. Their means for effectuating this desire - as much as they can - is to purge Christianity from anything remotely associated with government (and correspondingly to increase the size of government, squeezing out Christ for the State.) One could go on forever giving examples of this ideology at practice with the ACLU.
It is an erroneous constitutional interpretation meant to support an anti-Christian agenda and this post was part of that effort.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Dos, thanks for the compliment…
The warrior is killed in war; the fearless scaler of lofty cliffs (in search of sea-fowl) is dashed to pieces; the industrious husbandman lives long and dies peacefully of old age.
It is an old proverb, and a nice compliment upon my ability to provide for my family and my community.
Thank you again.
“All I have heard the “Christian Rightâ€Â? do is to espouse the accurate constitutional proposition that the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment is a neutrality clause…”
… in exactly the way that I previously enumerated (with a note of sarcasm on the side).
Tena te ringa tango parahia!
April 13th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Query, do you propose that the government be “neutral” with regards to the religion of Christianity without “purg[ing] Christianity from anything remotely associated with” itself? I’m sure you have no problem with the government purging Islam from itself (I have no problem with that, either), so why shouldn’t the government also purge itself of Christianity and be purely secular?
For the record, I have no problem with private citizens expressing their religious point of view, or even proselytizing, in a public forum. That is what a public forum is for — it’s a free speech zone subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner regulations, and free speech includes religious speech. I do have a problem with evangelizing when public money is used to subsidize the spreading of a religious message or the religious message appears to be originating from the government.
April 14th, 2007 at 1:08 am
TL,
You have already seen the public reaction to the idea of a Congressman swearing Oath of Office on the Quran (that was 2004?)
My fear (and I apply this to the NZ but it is the same principle) is the adoption of one religion in the governance of the nation.
I accept your comment on proselytising, provided that it is limited to religious belief and activity.
When that proselytising is used to influence or even to create governmental policy and action then I strongly disagree.
To take a specific example…
I have no problem with Exclusive Bretheren (or Destiny Church)advertising for members, selling their beliefs to expand their Church.
I have a major problem with the Exclusive Bretheren (or Destiny Church) being involved in the machinery of governance when they base political action on their beliefs.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Then my suggestion would be: Don’t vote for them.