God in America

July 17, 2022

I grew up in an evangelical Christian home. My parents were devout Christians who attended church weekly, prayed before every meal, read the Bible regularly and expected their children to do the same. In my adolescence, I professed to be a born again Christian and I enthusiastically joined groups like Young Life and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Up until college, the church was an integral part of my social life. Without dwelling on the details, I’ll say that my childhood and adolescent beliefs evolved over time into a spiritual landscape that does not, and hasn’t for decades now, included organized religion in any shape or form or denomination.

The only memory I have of politics intruding in our family’s religious life was the 1960 presidential election when I clearly remember my father’s concern over John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism, and whether it was appropriate for a U.S. president to be beholden to the Vatican or the Catholic church. But he was also a devoted Republican at the time, so it wasn’t clear if his vote was informed by religion or political affiliation. Otherwise, my parents lived their Christian values in their personal lives. In the midst of my hometown’s racial violence in 1970, my mother insisted that I invite one of my African-American basketball teammates for dinner at our home, a ranch house in the middle of a 100 percent white, middle class neighborhood. While only one example, I knew my mother, who lived to be nearly 105 years old, treated people with fairness and acceptance regardless of skin color, religious affiliation or background.

Today, my recollections run smack into the debate in the public arena about the role Christianity should have in the public life of the United States of America. Comments like Lauren Boebert’s that the “church should direct government” and that she’s “tired of this separation of church and state junk” reflect a disturbing trend in a segment of the population that shares her beliefs; since she was speaking to a Christian congregation, you can interpret her use of the word church, to mean Christian church. Even the recent Supreme Court decision allowing a high school football coach to pray (we can assume it wasn’t with a Muslim prayer rug) after games at the 50-yard line opens the door to allowing the imposition of one’s personal religious beliefs on non-believers.

One bedrock assumption of the ongoing Christian crusade polemic is that the Founding Fathers, the authors of the Declaration of Independence and subsequently of the Constitution, actually intended the fledgling nation to be guided by the Christian faith.

Those claims about the Founding Fathers are revisionism at its worst. The danger in allowing those claims to go unchallenged is clear. The hidden goal of America’s new Christian crusaders, whether you label it Christian supremacy, or Christian nationalism, is to create a quasi-theocracy in America. It’s not hyperbole to label the movement with those words. Read the movement’s own literature about homosexuals, same sex marriage, birth control, the Ten Commandments in public venues, the primacy of Jesus Christ; the role of women in marriage. Each of these attitudes run contrary to beliefs, both religious and secular, that many Americans hold.

The record is clear. Many of the Founding Fathers were deists. They believed in a divine creator, but not one which actively intervened in earthly activity. Nor did they believe the Bible was the revealed word of God, and they rejected biblical scripture as a source of religious doctrine. In accordance with their beliefs, they rejected the notion of a national religion, or any restrictions on the practice of one’s religious faith, whatever it might be. Here are some salient quotes from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Thomas Jefferson: “Christianity neither is nor ever was a part of common law. … In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. (Personal correspondence to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Feb. 1814; Dr. Horatio Spaffard, March, 1817)

John Adams: “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. (as stated in the Treaty of Tripoli, which Adams signed in 1797)

James Madison: “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 1822.)

For sure there was debate in the Constitutional Convention about the role of religion in the new Republic. But the men there were learned individuals, who knew the history of Europe and the religious conflicts that had battered the continent throughout history. They also had seen laws and attitudes in some American colonies that led to arrest and expulsion and even execution of so-called heretics.

Cognizant of the past violence in Europe and intolerance in the United States, the men writing the Constitution did agree on the wording of the 1st 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.”

While some argue that amendment doesn’t explicitly call for the separation of Church and State, the intention was clear. Both Jefferson and Adams considered it one of their greatest achievements, keeping the church out of government, but also the government out of churches. Today, the Christian nationalist movement seeks to undermine the original intent of those men, who constructed a framework for a nation that has survived for 246 years.

You may identify as a Christian, either ethnically as I do or as a full practicing member of the faith. You may even believe that the teachings of Jesus Christ are superior to Yaweh, Budda, or Shiva, or Mohammed. But in this country that has not, and hopefully will never, give you the right to impose your faith’s principles on others.

In fact, in all the world’s major religions, there is a simple and wonderful premise: treat others as you would want to be treated. The golden rule: that is universal. If you call yourself a Christian, when you start vilifying others based for their sexuality, their skin color, their politics, you are violating one of the basic tenets of your own faith.