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IS AMERICA A CHRISTIAN NATION? (PART 2)

10/29/2014

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An important question in the debate over the relationship between church and state is how broadly the religion clauses in the First Amendment – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” – should be construed. Those on the religious right insist on a narrow reading: the government cannot establish a national church, but nothing in the Constitution prohibits, say, state-sponsored school prayer. Strict separationists on the other hand interpret this passage more broadly: any government encouragement of religion is a “law respecting an establishment of religion”; thus, school prayer and the like violate the Constitution.

Since there is disagreement, it might be interesting to know how those who were most directly responsible for this law viewed it. The two people whose opinions are the most significant on this question are James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” actually drafted the religion clauses. Jefferson, his mentor, was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which strongly influenced Madison, and the person who convinced Madison of a need for a Bill of Rights – one “providing clearly for freedom of religion.” And how did they view the matter? As it turns out, both of them interpreted the religion clauses broadly.

That this is the case can be seen from a variety of examples. For instance, when he was president, Madison vetoed a bill that would have given federal land to a church because it would have set “a precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies.” He was against the appointment of chaplains to Congress for similar reasons, and there were several other instances during his presidency that clearly show he read the First Amendment clauses rather broadly. And Jefferson had if anything even stronger opinions on this. His position is very clear: in a well-known letter to a group of Baptists, he wrote about his reverence for “that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof', thus building a wall of separation between church and state” [emphasis added].

Members of the religious right are quick to point out that the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. While that is true, it is clear that both Jefferson and Madison believed that the idea it expresses is implied by the First Amendment.


As with Part 1, the main source for the above information was The Godless Constitution, by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore.

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IS AMERICA A CHRISTIAN NATION? (PART 1)

10/28/2014

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It has become common among the religious right to maintain that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Sarah Palin, for instance, said on the Bill O'Reilly show that the founders and the founding documents are “...quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments...”

Now, if our laws are based on the Ten Commandments, then it seems we should pay attention to the first of these commandments, the one that states “I am the Lord your God... you shall have no other gods before me” – which of course would make anything other than Judeo-Christian views illegal. It made no sense, then, when O'Reilly asked “What do you say to the people... who come from a different religious culture?” for Palin to answer, "We get to say to them, 'Yay, welcome to America, where we are tolerant and you have a freedom to express whatever faith... that's what America is all about'." Yes, that is one of the things America is all about, but it most definitely is not what the Ten Commandments is all about.

As everyone ought to know, our government was in fact explicitly based on non-religious principles. John Adams wrote that none of the architects of American government “were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven” and thought that governments should be “founded on the natural authority of the people alone,” while the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by Adams and unanimously ratified by the Senate, states that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Our government's non-religious basis used to be recognized by those who opposed a secular constitution. Early opponents of that document often complained about its godlessness. One New Hampshire delegate warned that to ratify the Constitution would mean to create a godless America, and even worried that with it, “congress might deprive the people of the use of the holy scriptures.” Another critic warned that because of God's absence from the law of the land, America would face the fate that Samuel prophesied to Saul: “because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee.”

This recognition of the Constitution's godlessness persisted among the religious right for quite some time. In 1811, Reverend Samuel Austin – who would later become president of the University of Vermont – wrote that the document's “one capital defect” is that it is “entirely disconnected from Christianity.” In 1820, the chaplain of the New York state legislature scolded the founders for their “ingratitude” – which he regarded as “perhaps without parallel” – in omitting even “the slightest hint of homage to the God of Heaven.” And by the 1860's, many regarded the Civil War as divine retribution for the belief that government shouldn't be divinely ordained. There was even an attempt at the time to amend the Constitution so as to make it into a Christian document. The (very scary) proposed change to the preamble read:

“We, the people of the United Sates, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, The Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the Nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

It was only in relatively recent times that the religious right changed its tune and began claiming that the Constitution was never godless after all. That way, rather than attempting to change it, they can instead convince the ignorant to misunderstand it.

In the O'Reilly interview, Palin complained that those who disagree with her are attempting to rewrite history. The irony, of course, is that it is people like Palin who are doing just that.


Notes:

Main source for the above information: The Godless Constitution, by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore.

Palin's interview with O'Reilly can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LahUxkyaRh8


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sandy hook blamed on atheism

10/7/2014

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You may have heard that Zach Dasher, a congressional candidate and nephew of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson, blames the Sandy Hook massacre on atheism. The perpetrator, he said, “believed what the atheist says. He reduced humanity to nothing more than a collection of atoms, to be discarded like an old banana peel. I guarantee you... that he even saw himself as nothing more than chemicals.”

It seems that in Dasher's fantasy world, a religious individual could not have committed such an act. Never mind that there have been instances of people killing their children because they believed the children would go to a better place; or that there have been thousands upon thousands of murders committed by religious believers throughout history (just as there have been countless murders committed by atheists); or that the Bible itself has God commanding people to do things comparable to the Sandy Hook massacre. No, in this fantasy worldview only those convinced that human beings are entirely physical beings can be mass murderers.

And how does Dasher even know what the madman responsible (who incidentally was brought up religious and even attended a religious school) believed? 

At any rate, there isn't one bit of evidence that atheists regard human life as having no value – and for a very good reason: believing that we are physical beings has no bearing whatsoever on how we should treat one another. What Dasher and those like him need to get through their physical skulls is that for a nonbeliever, what human beings are composed of and how they got here is morally irrelevant. Neither having a non-physical part nor being created by a god would make human beings one iota more valuable. It is only in the minds of people like Dasher that such things are seen as significant.

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