“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans five basic rights — freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for the redress of grievances.
The clause at the beginning of this piece is the first 16 words, the part guaranteeing both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. The only other place in the Constitution where religion is mentioned is in Article VI, Clause 3, which specifically prohibits the government from establishing any religious criteria for officeholders or those in positions of public trust.
The actual wording:
“.. no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
You would never know it from listening to so-called Christian Nationalists, but the Founding Fathers never intended the United States to be a Christian nation.
The three greatest minds of the American Revolution were basically Deists, believing that a divine creator designed the universe to operate under natural laws and did not then intervene in the affairs of those he had created. Thomas Jefferson edited his own version of the New Testament to remove all miracles and everything supernatural.
Benjamin Franklin was an outspoken Deist, as was Thomas Paine. James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution, and John Adams were both Unitarians, rejecting the Holy Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. George Washington attended church, but rarely spoke of religion. His pastors said he was strongly influenced by Deism.
In fact, in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, then-President Adams said it bluntly.
“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
Now I need to be honest here. I have never been a huge believer in so-called “original intent.” The Founders themselves never believed the documents they wrote in the last part of the 18th Century should live forever unchallenged by intellectual and moral progress.
I mean, come on. They accepted slavery. They didn’t see women as equal human beings.
The reason I’m writing this to cite original intent is that evangelicals and fundamentalists are basically lying to us when they say the U.S. was always intended to be a Christian nation.
The worst part of it is when it comes to the teachings of Christ, these people are crummy Christians. The three most significant teachings of Jesus were to love God, love your neighbor and help the poor and unfortunate. Christ never said anything in the Bible about homosexuality or abortion.
America’s silliest Christian, Donald Trump, said his favorite Bible verse was the one about an eye for an eye before completely misrepresenting it. He said if someone hit him be would hit back ten times harder, when of course the verse is from the Old Testament and refers to proportional retaliation.
Jesus himself rejected it in Matthew 5:38-39 when he urged his followers not to retaliate but to “turn the other cheek.”
Then of course there is the Prosperity Gospel of evangelists like Joel Osteen that says if you’re a good Christian, God wants you to be rich.
What Christ said in Mark 10:21 (KJV) when a rich young man asked him how to get to heaven seems to contradict that.
“One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.”
The thing I have the toughest time understanding is that if these folks are convinced they’re right, why not just be happy and leave the rest of us alone?