Religion UnAmerican by Lapis .....
The mixing of politics and religion is a recipie for disaster.
Date: 6/5/2006 7:15:09 PM ( 18 y ago)
The idea of America as a Christian nation was anathema to the Founding Fathers, as it should be to all Americans.
By Joseph Smigelski
Many people associated with the Religious Right in America would have us believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. They foster this lie because they want to force their narrow-minded religious beliefs down our throats. They would like us to envision that Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison are standing with them shoulder to shoulder when they spout their distorted views on abortion, contraception, gay marriage, school prayer, evolution, etc. But to assert that the U.S. is a Christian nation is clearly un-American, if we define "American" as holding dear the precepts and values handed down to us in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. The framers of the Constitution had no intention of defining our country as Christian. On the contrary, they were deeply concerned about preventing any kind of religious tyranny.
On the Christian Coalition of America's website banner, the group proclaims that it is "America's leading grassroots organization defending our godly heritage." This statement begs the question, "Is our heritage a godly one?" The answer is a resounding "No." The United States of America was founded as a secular nation with a firm "wall of separation" between church and state. The Founding Fathers were against establishing a national religion because they were keenly aware of the results of such tyranny throughout history. This caution did not prevent them, however, from giving all American citizens the right to privately practice freedom of religion, even the freedom to have no religion at all. Everyone had the right to go to church, but the pew and the pulpit were not fit places for partisan politics, and vice versa.
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, once wrote, "Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project." Those are strong words that could justifiably be leveled at the Religious Right today.
Have you read the Constitution lately? The words "God," "Christ," "Christian," and "Jesus" do not appear even once. The word "religious" appears but a single time, in Article VI:
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
The word "religion" can be found only in the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
When we see the words "religious" and "religion" in the Constitution, it is in the context of a warning against the use of religious pressure as a weapon of tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson, a leading voice behind including the Bill of Rights as an addendum to the Constitution, was adamant about building a "wall of separation" between church and state. In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Jefferson wrote:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence 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.
When Jefferson wrote the following words that are carved on his memorial in Washington, D.C., he was specifically referring to the tyranny of state-sponsored religion:
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.
In their book The Godless Constitution, Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore robustly point out Jefferson's attitudes toward religious tyranny. I think it will be clear that what Jefferson said about priests is applicable today to those of the Religious Right who proselytize that the only real American is a “Christian” American.
How shocking Jefferson's vitriolic attacks on ministers of God, especially those who meddled in politics, seem to late-twentieth-century sensibility. Christ saw no need for priests, Jefferson wrote. They were not necessary "for the salvation of souls." He suggested to John Adams, his friend after they had left politics, that "we should all, then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests," and "moralize for ourselves, following the oracle of conscience." The … irritable tribe of priests had subverted the pure morality of primitive Christianity to serve their own selfish interests, according to Jefferson. They "perverted" Christianity "into an engine for enslaving mankind, a mere contrivance to filtch wealth and power to themselves." On another occasion he labeled this as the priestly quest for "pence and power," which "revolts those who think for themselves." The clergy stood condemned, along with monarchy and the nobility, as the people's enemies. Like kings and aristocrats "in every country and in every age," Jefferson wrote, "the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
One can argue, of course, and use hundreds of quotations for support, that the Founding Fathers often thought and wrote about God and religion. But whether or not Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison believed in a Christian God is not the issue. The important thing is that these Founders wanted to keep religion out of politics for the good of religion. They saw religion as a moral and ethical guide for the individual, not the state. Moral men should establish the state; the state should not dictate morality to men. That's why the Founders were so adamant about personal freedom of religion, no matter what that religion was. They indeed went even further and defended everyone's right to full freedom of thought, even atheistic thought. Jefferson wrote:
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights.
The Founders also believed that if religion were a part of politics, religion would lose its value as a moral force. After all, politics is a rat's nest of deceit, backstabbing, and manipulation. Why soil religious thought by embroiling it in politics? Religious principles, the Founders held, were an antidote of sorts to the detrimental chimeras and that try to crawl their way into the political mind. This is Jefferson again:
State support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
The idea of establishing a Christian nation was anathema to the Founding Fathers, as it should be to all thinking people. Jefferson wrote, "I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another." So do not believe those proselytizers on the Religious Right who claim that they are true Americans, and that they uphold the true ideals of our Founding Fathers, when they make the specious claim that America is a Christian nation. They are spouting un-American nonsense.
Joseph Smigelski teaches English at two Northern California community colleges.
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