CHRISTIAN AMERICA - NOT!
By Howard Thompson
Editor: The Texas Atheist
Copyright (c) 1999 by Howard Thompson
[For publication in Texas newspapers.] -----------------------------------------------------------
"CHRISTIAN AMERICA" is a frequent headline. "Well of course," you think. We learned that in school.
Reader Alert! This atheist Grinch is about to demolish the myth of a Christian America. Unlike the Grinch, I won't relent later.
Let's start with those Puritans. Oddly, they came to America for religious freedom, but prohibited it for others. Biblical punishments governed many personal behaviors. Everyone had to pay for Puritan churches and failure to attend church was punished.
Puritans persecuted Baptists and others for speaking their beliefs. Many were banished under death sentences. Quakers were silenced with the stocks, cutting off ears, burning holes in women's tongues, flogging and hanging. Bloody glorious history, isn't it?
Yup, the Puritans founded colleges. They valued, however, not education but properly indoctrinated ministers for their colonial theocracy.
The Great Awakening of 1720-1760 evokes visions of crowds flocking to Jesus. However, maximum church attendance circa 1790 was no more than 17% and perhaps only 10%. The Not So Great Awakening sounds more like it.
Some claim the Declaration of Independence is evidence for our nation's Christian genesis. Where, then, does it mention Jesus, Salvation, the Holy Spirit or the Apostle's Creed?
The Declaration's, "separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them," is Jeffersonian Deism, not Christianity. It foreshadows his, "wall of separation between Church and State." We even declared our independence "by the authority of the good people of these colonies," not God's authority.
Religion was absent during deliberations at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Two motions for opening sessions with prayer were allowed to die. Benjamin Franklin noted that "only 3 or 4" wanted prayers, the rest thought it "unnecessary."
Our Founders' Godless Constitution separates religion from government. We were the first Western nation to reject Christian tradition and to claim authority from "We the People," not God. This is why religious tests for office are prohibited and "so help me God" is not in the Presidential Oath.
Our Constitution is based on Freethinking ideas from the Enlightenment. Christianity had Kings who ruled with God's authority, as described by St. Paul. An elective democracy of the people with rights protected by civil law is radically Unchristian.
Many Christians opposed the Constitution or tried to get God and Jesus added to it; yet it passed as written in all thirteen states. With all the publicity, the people knowingly approved a Godless Constitution.
So are we a "Christian" nation? Certainly not at our nation's founding, with a Godless Constitution and less than one in six attending church. Freethinking principles of human rights have a better claim than Christianity as the principles upon which our nation was founded.
But 85% now say they are "Christian" and 66% are church members. Doesn't that make us Christian? Probably not. Membership data are inflated. My Texas Almanac reports 25 Texas counties where more than 100% of the people are religious. Pat Robertson even says that less than 20% of us are "real" Christians.
Christianity did play an important, but not leading, role in our history. Christianity now plays an important cultural role. However, words like Capitalist, Consumer, Educated, Corporate, Wage Workers or Technological describe our nation more completely than "Christianity."
The boast of "Christian" America is at best an exaggeration. At worst, it is a propaganda myth that fundamentalist politicians use to destroy our Founders' Godless Constitution. I hope you examine the facts and reach your own conclusions.
[Howard Thompson is editor of The Texas Atheist newsletter. You may send comments to him at gofreemind@aol.com.]
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SOURCES "The Churching of America: 1776-1990," by Roger Finke & Rodney Stark, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1992. "The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness," by Isaac Kramnick & R. Laurence Moore, W.W. Norton & co., New York, paperback edition, 1997. "The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment," by Thomas J.Curry, Oxford University Press, New York, paperback edition, 1986. "The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson," Ed. Adrienne Koch & William Peden, Random House, New York, paperback edition, 1993. "The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop," by Edmond S. Morgan, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, paperback edition, 1958. "Myths about Public School Prayer," by John M. Swomley, Americans for Religious Liberty, Silver Springs, Maryland, 1996. "To Secure These Blessings," Saul K. Padover, Washington Square Press/Ridge Press, New York, 1962. [ Padover drew much of his information from: "Debates ... of the Congress of the Confederation," and "Debates in the Several State Conventions," both by Johnathan Elliot, 1861.] "The Framing of the Constitution of the United States," Max Farrand, Yale University Press, 1916. [Farrand also edited, "The records of the Federal Convention of 1787," rev. ed. Max Farrand, 4 vols, New Haven, 1937.] "Miracle at Philadelphia," by Catherine Drinker Bowen, Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1986 edition. "Benjamin Franklin," Carl Van Dorn (1885-1950), Penguin Books, 1991. Originally by Viking Press, New York, 1938. "Taking the Constitution Seriously," Walter Berns, Madison Books, 1987. [Burns quotes Madison's failed amendment from, "28. Annals of Congress, Vol 1, p. 784 (August 17, 1789), p. 434 (June 8, 1789).]
Howard Thompson is editor of The Texas Atheist newsletter. You may contact him at gofreemind@aol.com.