| Tuesday, August 05, 2008 |
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Our Secular Constitution
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:54 AM   
[Originally posted to Politics without God, the blog of the Coalition for Secular Government.]
The Christian theocrats are attempting to transform America into a thoroughly Christian nation in her laws, institutions, and mores. They demand that abortion be banned, solely based on their tenuous interpretation of scripture. They vigorously campaign against any attempt to allow loving homosexual couples to secure their bond by law. They demand that all television be prudishly "family-friendly," without a boob or butt in sight.
One of the most common arguments of these theocrats for their coveted religious transformation is based on an appeal to our Founding Fathers. The Founders, they say, were devout Christians seeking to establish a Christian nation. The Founders, they say, never envisioned anything like the secularism of today's society and government.
Most Americans feel some reverence for our Founding Fathers, yet they know little of the actual words and deeds of the men who shaped our country: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and others. (Thanks, government schools!) So too many American can be bamboozled by these claims of the theocrats. The snippets so often quoted by Christians to support their case are usually ripped from their proper context, then interpreted through Christian lenses. Any mention of God is read with an endorsement of Christianity and Christian government. The deism of many prominent Founders is ignored, as is their strident opposition to any kind of promotion of religion by the government.
However, the most clear evidence that the Founders intended their new government to be independent of any religion is found in three places in the Constitution:
First, the Preamble:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Notice what is missing from that basic statement of purpose: God. Moreover, the Constitution attempts to secure the very kind of this-worldly goods like peace, security, and justice that Jesus admonishes his followers to ignore. And it does not aim to promote the otherworldly goods like the salvation of one's soul that Jesus admonishes his followers to seek above all else.
Second, Article 6:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. So all government officials are required to uphold the Constitution, yet none can be subject to any kind of religious test. They cannot be required to espouse belief in Jesus, nor even belief in God, nor even in some vague Higher Power. Surely, if the Founders wished to create a Christian nation, they would have required that government officials be Christian.
Third, the First Amendment :
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment forbids the government from interfering in people's religious lives, whether by forbidding or promoting certain religious beliefs and practices. If a Christian nation was their aim, then the Founders should have required the government to promote Christianity -- not forbidden it from doing so.
In future blog posts [on Politics without God], I will say more on the relationship of the Founding Fathers to religion, as the half-truths and outright lies spread by the theocrats must be combated. Yet it's amazing that a clear look at just these few passages from the Constitution wholly undermine their basic claim that America was founded as a Christian nation.Labels: History, Politics, Religion
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| Comments on "Our Secular Constitution" |
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 | Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 5:33:39 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Paula Hall
E-mail: paula.hall(at)live.com
URL: http://www.msthink.com
"Yet it's amazing that a clear look at just these few passages from the Constitution wholly undermine their basic claim that America was founded as a Christian nation."
Uh, not really. The theocrats aren't going to let the facts get in their way, and most of the rest of the body politic is intellectually lazy, unwilling to examine issues that can't be reduced to soundbites.
Sorry for the cynicism. I'll bounce back when I'm a bit more awake.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 5:36:03 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Katelynn
E-mail: katelynn(at)uchicago.edu
A professor at the University of Chicago law school gave a talk on this subject. See: http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2008/07/geof-stone-the.html
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 6:45:43 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Lemuel
E-mail: synthesist(at)ymail.com
You could even go a step further with the First Amendment. It clearly contradicts something Christians have been claiming for ages, that the Constitution was divinely-inspired, some even saying it's based on the Ten Commandments. Evidently the latter didn't read very closely.
In the Constitution ...
Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Now contrast that with the following Commandments (from the King James version) ...
Exodus 20:3 - Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Exodus 20:4 - Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Exodus 20:7 - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain
How on Earth can anyone derive freedom of religion and free speech from such blatant prohibitions on blasphemy, idolatry, or not following a Judaic religion? I know it's a lot to ask for logic from those who vociferously defend the nonexistent, but it's just plain incorrect to say that anything in the Constitution is derived from the Bible, much less the Ten Commandments.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 7:27:39 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: William H. Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/
It may also be relevant that article II, section 7, provides that the president shall take an "oath or affirmation." If you have been called up for jury duty, you may have encountered the fact that a juror's oath is explicitly religious, concluding "So help me God"; an affirmation is explicitly nonreligious. So it appears that the authors of the Constitution may have made a point of providing a nonreligious formula for entering into the presidency.
More generally, I have read the Constitution in its entirety, and have not been able to find the word "God" there anywhere. Or "Christ." It's not just missing from the Preamble; as far as I can tell it's entirely omitted.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 7:35:18 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: softwarenerd
E-mail: softwarenerd(at)gmail.com
URL: http://softwarenerd.blogspot.com
My favorite meme on this topic is when Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison, writing against Patrick Henry's attempts to make Virginia more explicitly religious. Of Henry, Jefferson wrote this:
"What we have to do I think is devoutly pray for his [Patrick Henry's] death".
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 7:47:02 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Adam
E-mail: amossoff(at)gmail.com
I agree with Diana Hsieh that the Constitution contains several provisions that contradict the proposition that the Founders were seeking to create a so-called "Christian nation."
However, I must disagree with Lemuel (Comment #3) that the text of the First Amendment by itself is further evidence of this truth. Many religious law professors and judges, such as Justices Scalia and Thomas, have an explanation for the First Amendment that comports with their religious views. Their explanation sounds reasonable, because it is supported by the text of the First Amendment and some historical evidence. By the terms of the First Amendment, it applies only to Congress (“Congress shall make no law . . . .”). It is only after the Fourteenth Amendment is adopted (and much unnecessary mangling of this important Amendment by the Supreme Court) that the First Amendment is eventually applied to both the state and federal governments.
Thus, according to conservative legal scholars and judges, the purpose of the First Amendment, as adopted in 1791, was simply to prevent the federal government from trumping the states (under the Supremacy Clause in Article VI, section 1) in adopting a national religion. The states were left free--and, as maintained by conservative legal scholars, expected--to adopt official religions for their own citizens. This point is further supported with some historical evidence that is consistent with this reading of the First Amendment. For example, Connecticut and Massachusetts both had established state churches at the time the First Amendment was adopted, and these states disestablished the churches only in the antebellum era in the nineteenth century.
So, the First Amendment is different from the specific clauses that Diana highlights. These clauses explicitly reflect a principle of freedom that is contrary to the express claims of conservatives about the Founders creating a Christian nation, i.e., they refused to inject religion into the *institutional structure* of the federal government. However, express prohibitions on the federal government's *actions*, such as the First Amendment, do not necessarily prove this proposition in the same way. Evidence about the structure of the government is not the same thing as a negative prohibition on actions, especially when there is some evidence that this negative prohibition existed for the purpose of keeping the states free to adopt their own established churches.
Accordingly, the First Amendment works for our purposes here only insofar as we can show that it reflects a principle of freedom, which is consistent with the other provisions of the Consitution that Diana highlight. As such, the First Amendment (as adopted in 1791) contained in it the seeds of the elimination of religion from civil society. But to prove this fully, one needs the further evidence of the Fourteenth Amendment in the same way that one needs to discuss the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments) as further evidence of how the Constitution contained within it the principle for the eradication of slavery. Moreover, one needs the evidence of how Massachusetts and Connecticut disestablished their own churches even when the First Amendment *did not* apply to them.
In sum, we Objectivists must be careful about jumping too quickly from particular examples to principles, making sure that the evidence necessary for this inductive step is sufficient to prove the abstract proposition that we're claiming to be true.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 9:25:17 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Lemuel
E-mail: synthesist(at)ymail.com
Thanks for your detailed insight, Adam, and for the subtle admonition.
I know I took a short-cut there ... :)
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 9:37:01 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Liriodendron
E-mail: monicabeth10(at)gmail.com
URL: http://sparkasynapse.blogspot.com
An all-too important issue.
Both Paula and Diana are correct. The facts are there as Diana states, but the facts don't matter to Christians as Paula states.
I've routinely encountered so-called secularists online trying to argue with Christians about the founding of this country, as if the ideas of the Christians are based in ignorance, stupidity, or a simple lack of education. That's clearly not the case, as is evidenced by such Christian organizations as the American Center for Law and Justice (http://www.aclj.org/), a non-profit law firm that actively campaigns for an introduction of state-sponsored religion into our lives while trying to obfuscate the issue and claim that it's the Christians' rights that are being trampled on.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 10:05:18 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://ecosmos.com
Hey, Diana -- thanks for the excellent posting! I recently happened across this other resource that might be helpful for further angles and leads on this:
"The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense founded on the Christian religion"
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Tripoli.htm
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 14:15:28 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog
Greg, I blogged about the treaty with Tripoli about a year ago.
http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2007/09/newsflash-us-not-christian-n ...
So there! (It's in the virtual queue for PWG blogging.)
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 20:26:32 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://gregperkins.net
[chuckle] Yeah, yeah, I did think the Tripoli thing would be the best reference to share on this front (and sadly, while I do endeavor to be a model fan, I had no recollection that you'd already blogged on it).
The Common Law thing was a new angle for me, though.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 21:12:03 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Frank
E-mail: oney(at)buffnet.net
Yes, this article is definitely what I refer to as a "keeper". I have studied this issue a LOT; in fact my investigation some years ago led to my discovery of Objectivism, and Diana specifically. The article and accompanying comments just scratch the surface. I must have dozens of Founding Father quotes, and like numbers of articles and web posts about it. Some (hopefully) quick notes on the notes:
As William has noticed, "God" is absent from the main text. What people don't realize is just how far-out and new that was back then. But what he missed was that at the end it's dated "In the Year of Our Lord..." In their pathetic desparation, the religious crazies like to try to make a big deal out of that phase (which I can't imagine was even voted on, or debated, and carries no legal weight). As Diana points out, all the references in the original document are religious prohibitions.
It's worth noting that the President's oath of office is proscribed in the original Constitution, and it does not conclude with the phrase "so help me, God". It is a customarily addition. The oaths for the Vice President and Congress are set by Congress. Before the Civil War, they didn't include a religious reference either, but afterward oaths from the South were adopted as some sort of olive branch. So ever since then, the very first official act of any Senator, Representative, or Vice President - being sworn in - has required them to violate the First Amendment.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 21:29:08 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Frank
E-mail: oney(at)buffnet.net
As to Lemuel's observation, that just drives me crazy, too. When my religiously-adicted mother spouts the absurd mantra that the US govt is based on the 10 Commandments, I retort, "Do you even know what the Ten Commandments are!?!" You would think these people would be sensitive to the fact that only two or three of the Ten even carry the force of law - and those are the same laws common to virtually every culture, Christian or not. No murdering people. Don't steal stuff. Bearing false witness. If I said, "To hell with you, MA, God damn it!" I'd break at least two Commandments but a cop would laugh at you if you wanted to prosecute me for it.
And, yes, the First Amendment is literally *contradictory* to at least one or two Commandment.
This isn't "rocket science". Any layman could follow this. But denial is a big part of both the method and purpose of religion, and so they are impervious to the obvious.
Oh, and how about how they claim that the US owes it's success to Christianity, even though there are plenty of countries around the world that are even more Christian than we are, but nowhere near as successful. But I digress...
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 22:23:27 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Frank
E-mail: oney(at)buffnet.net
Adam, you are really getting into the nitty-gritty. It was well into my investigations before I ran into the fact that, yes, the First Amendment did NOT prohibit the states from having official religions of their own. As you say, that only expanded to the state level with the 14th Amendment.
But I have to differ with you on a thing or two. You make it sound like the Founders didn't believe in Separation of Church and State, and that couldn't be further from the truth. The reason they wouldn't have prohibited official religions within individual states would be that they believed in states' rights. Scalia and Thomas are the LAST people anybody should pay attention to on this subject. Despite their lofty judicial credentials, their logic is subservient to their religious convictions.
The religious freedom movement at the time was instigated by Jefferson, who got the law passed that established religious freedom in Virginia. He was supported by Madison, who went on to co-chair the committee that drafted the Bill of Rights and, I think, to write the first draft of the First Amendment. The writings of both men make their intentions completely unambiguous - they were passionate about separation of church and state, no "ifs", "ands", or "buts".
What people don't realize is that without the law he got passed, Thomas Jefferson - the writer of the Declaration of Independence, himself - stood a good chance of literally being barred from public office by the religious tests that were common at that time. He was a classic Deist, an outspoken non-Christian disclaiming any supernatural hocus-pocus, and very much in favor of freedom of thought. He requested his tombstone outline his three great accomplishments: 1) writing the DoI, 2) getting the religious freedom act passed, and 3) founding the UofV. (Being President didn't make the list).
Adam, you remind me of how they often "conveniently" misread the First Amendment as prohibiting "establishment of a religion" vs. the exact quote: "respecting an establishment of religion". The former would mean "no state religion", but the latter is reasonably clear about not making religious endorsements of any kind.
These guys also like to ignore that the American secular tradition dates back to Roger Williams' Rhode Island colony (about 1650, I think), that vast numbers of the early immigrants left England in the first place because of government-mandated religion. Not to mention that the Founders broke with the Christian concept of the "Divine Right of Kings" when they rebelled against George III. The Treaty of Tripoli didn't even raise an eyebrow back then (but, ironically, would today!) The facts against the "Christian America" mythology just go on, and on, and on...
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