GUEST ARTICLE
Notes on "Christian" America
(A Myth That Won't Die)
Marshalling an impressive array of census statistics, they
[the authors] argue that, contrary to popular misconception,
religiosity was fairly weak in Colonial America. About 17%
of the colonists belonged to churches. If this proposition
is true, then the oft-repeated claim that our forefathers
were religious believers, is simply untrue. Moreover, the
claim that moral purity accompanied religious piety at the
founding of this nation is a myth. Nor were so-called traditional
family values in dominance. For example, the authors cite
data that one in three births from 1761-1800 occurred within
less than nine months of marriage, despite harsh laws against
fornication. They also say that the taverns in Boston were
more jammed on Saturday night than the churches were on Sunday
morning. [The Church in America, 1776-1990: Winners and
Losers in Our Religious Economy, by Roger Finke and Rodney
Stark (1992).]
The facts of history show that early America does not deserve
to be considered uniquely, distinctly or even predominantly
Christian. There is no lost golden age to which American
Christians may return. In addition, a careful study of history
will also show that evangelicals themselves were often partly
to blame for the spread of secularism in contemporary American
life. ... We do not want to contend that Christian values
have been absent from American history. On the contrary,
there has been much commendable Christian belief, practice,
and influence in the history of the United States and the
colonies which formed the new country. Their presence, we
agree, justifies a picture of the United States as a singularly religious country.
... And we feel that its history is liberally sprinkled with
genuine Christian influences radiating from lives of exemplary
belief. However, we still wish to call into question the
assumption that just because many Christians have done many
Christian deeds in America, the country enjoys simply a "Christian
heritage." There are too many problems with this assumption.
... One set of questions has to do with how much Christian
action is required to make a whole society Christian. Another
way of stating the same issue is to pose it negatively --
how much evil can a society display before we disqualify
it as a Christian society? These kinds of questions are pertinent
for all of early American history. (The Search for Christian
America, pp. 17-19.)
When we look at the Puritans of the 1600s, do we emphasize
only their sincere desire to establish Christian colonies,
and their manifest desire to live by the rule of Scripture?
Or do we focus rather on the stealing of Indian lands, and
their habit of displacing and murdering these Indians wherever
it was convenient? Again, do we place more emphasis on the
Massachusetts Puritans' desire to worship God freely in the
new world, or their persecution (and, in four cases, execution)
of Quakers who also wished to be free to worship God in Massachusetts?
... Do we praise American patriots for wanting to be free
of Parliaments restraints upon their freedom, or condemn
them for taking away freedom of speech and press from their
opponents? Likewise, do we praise American patriots for their
defense of "natural law" and "unalienable
right," or condemn them for failing to heed Paul's injunction
in Romans 13 to honor their legitimate rulers? ... American
patriots began to speak about the republican political principles
of the Revolution as if these had an almost saving power.
Many Christian patriots regarded Americans who were loyal
to Great Britain or who wanted to stay out of the conflict
as much more that just politically mistaken. They were rather "accursed
of God." Then in the early years of the United States,
most Christian bodies took the basically secular principles
of the American Revolution as the guiding light for organizing
churches, interpreting the Bible, and expressing the Christian
faith. (The Search for Christian America, pp. 19-20.)
The two most significant events in America during the 1700s
were the Great Awakening and the American Revolution. The
first was a broad revival of Christianity that swept through
different parts of the colonies from the late 1720s to the
early 1750s, with its most visible manifestations in the
early 1740s. The second involved a War for Independence in
the 1770s and the creation of a vast new nation, the United
States, after Americans defeated the world's greatest military
power of the day. ... The implication is sometimes drawn
that if the American Revolution was in fact grounded in the
Great Awakening, then the Revolution must be considered as
much a work of God as the revival itself. ... Does such a
view represent good history? And does it represent clear
Christian thinking? Yes, definite connections do exist between
the Awakening and the Revolution. But, no, these connections
provide neither a sufficient explanation for the Revolution,
nor a satisfactory Christian evaluation of it. ... History
shows that the Great Awakening did not lead to permanent
gains in the number of people either attending church or
formally becoming members. In the last years of the decade
1740-1750, the number of those joining church by personal
confession of faith actually declined to levels below those
of the 1730s. The result was that the number of people making
profession of faith and joining churches for the entire period
1730-1750 amounted to just about the same rate for the entire
population as had been witnessed for the thirty or so years
before 1730. Church members never amounted to more than a
third of the population of New England adults, and may never
have been as high as 5 percent of adults in the southern
colonies. ... We are forced to conclude that whatever kinds
of connections existed between the revival and the Revolution,
it is not appropriate to consider them as two expressions
of the same spirit. ... Yet, Christians leaders spoke as
if it were more important for fellow believers to make the
proper choice against Britain than it was to maintain spiritual
unity around the gospel. It became common for believers during
the Revolution simply to equate loyalty to the new nation
and loyalty to Christ. (The Search for Christian America,
pp. 48-63.)
- Ethan Allen was one of the most prominent
Deists in early America and an ardent opponent of the divinity
of Christ and the supernatural character of Scripture. ... George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin
Franklin were brilliant leaders -- all genuinely religious
but not specifically Christian. Thomas Jefferson's views
are perhaps best known. As an old man he summarized the basic
religious convictions of his entire life by affirming that
Jesus' doctrines "tend all to the happiness of man ...,
that there is only one God ..., that there is a future state
of rewards and punishments, that to love God with all thy
heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion." For
the rest -- the deity of Christ and his resurrection, the
Trinity, the divine authority of Scripture -- these, according
to Jefferson, were the "deliria of crazy imaginations." Franklin saw
Christ as primarily a moral teacher and true religion as
an expression of perfectible human nature. Washington's faith
was also deeply moral and profoundly humane, but not particularly
Christian -- his religion was a social performance. "He
seems never to have taken communion; ... and he did not invariably
go to church on Sundays." He attended his parish church
only about ten times a year in the decade before the Revolution.
The God of the founding fathers was a benevolent deity, ...
This God had made the world an orderly and understandable
place. He had created mankind with great skill and imbued
him with nearly infinite potential. They were utterly convinced
that human exertion and goodwill could make America a nearly
ideal place. They were not, in any traditional sense, Christian.
They had found in God what they most admired in men. ...
They did incorporate into their politics many elements compatible
with Christianity. It should not be surprising that most
of the founding fathers paid some attention to Scripture,
for they lived at a time when educated people in the Atlantic
community had a broad knowledge of the Bible. ... Yet, John
Adams spoke of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation
and of the deity of Christ, as "this awful blasphemy" which
it was necessary to get rid of. Thomas Jefferson,
though willing to contribute money to Bible societies, could
not accept the canonical accounts of Jesus as the Son of
God (he twice edited the New Testament in order to remove
the objectionable, unreasonable parts -- see next item).
(The Search for Christian America, pp. 67-75)
- Driven by
a desire to select what he considered the most attractive
and authentic material from the Gospels, Thomas Jefferson pasted
up 46 pages' worth of his favored passages. He took translations
of the Bible from several languages -- Greek, Latin, French
and English (the King James Version) -- and arranged his
selections in parallel columns. (The English version has
now been reissued as The Jefferson Bible: The Life and
Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Appropriately, publisher
Beacon Press is an arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Jefferson's religious outlook fit the budding Unitarian
movement of his day, although he never formally affiliated
with it, but did once say, "There is not a young man
now living in the U.S. who will not die a Unitarian." That
forecast was obviously mistaken.) The Old Testament was
of no interest to Jefferson, who regarded Jesus as a reformer
of "the depraved religion of his own country." He
further repudiated the writings of the Apostle Paul, whom
he considered the "first corrupter of the doctrines
of Jesus." He also eliminated much of the material
from the four Gospels, whose compilers he castigated as "groveling
authors" with "feeble minds." Jefferson
censored out any hints that Jesus was God, or even had
an unusual relationship with God, and all supernatural
events. "No miracles, no metaphysics, no mystery," summarizes
one writer. All that's left are parables and aphorisms. "He
made a Socrates out of Jesus." Deciding what to keep
was easy, Jefferson wrote John Adams, because it was "as
distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill." What was
left at the end was "the most sublime and benevolent
code of morals which has ever been offered to man." Jefferson
told another correspondent that the discards were "so
much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture," and
wrote yet another that they reeked of "vulgar ignorance,
of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and
fabrications." Jefferson did not employ technical
study of ancient manuscripts nor newly emerging theories
from European liberals about literary sources that might
underlie the biblical texts: He simply picked what he liked.
His anti-miracle mindset forced him to awkwardly chop some
passages in half. In Matthew 12, he included Jesus' assertion
that it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath but eliminated
the subsequent healing (verse 13). In John 9, he retained
Jesus' statement that a man's blindness was not punishment
for sin but dropped the actual cure of his handicap (verses
4-34). (Source: AP Story by Richard N. Ostling: "Founding
Father Jefferson radically rewrote Bible," 7/21/01, Bloomington Herald-Times.)
- The founding fathers may have read the Bible, but
explicit references to Scripture or Christian principles
are conspicuously absent in the political discussions of
the nation's early history. Biblical texts do not appear
in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or
the new state charters. Moreover, conscious reference to
Biblical or Christian themes is also almost entirely absent
from the places where it might be expected -- the pamphlet
literature advocating independence, the various stated debates
over the Constitution, and the political disputes of the
1790s. In short, the political spokesmen who read the Bible
in private rarely, if ever, betrayed that acquaintance openly
in public. ... The American Revolution was led by men who
were not very religious: At best, the founding fathers only
passively believed in organized Christianity and at worst
they scorned and ridiculed it. So long as religion supported
political harmony, few of them were all that concerned with
what a person believed. Benjamin Franklin, for instance,
had no use for a particular evangelical clergyman because "he
wanted to make persons good Presbyterians rather than good
citizens." (The Search for Christian America,
pp. 81-107.)
- David Barton, a staunch "Christian" America advocate, wrote
the book America: To Pray or Not to Pray? In it he quotes from the notes
of the "James Madison Debates on the Federal Convention of 1787." Barton
quotes a speech by Ben Franklin out of the Madison Journal, requesting that
the Convention turn to prayer. Barton cites only part of the quote, then concludes
that "Franklin's rebuff rearranged the priorities of the delegates --
they indeed did stop to pray. They adjourned, and for almost three days they
prayed, attended Church and listened to ministers challenge and inspire them." As
Christians, we love to hear that our founding fathers prayed. It sends warm
fuzzy feelings down our spine. But the fact is that the Journal he quoted said
nothing to confirm his story. It is true that on Thursday, June 28th, Franklin
made the motion for the convention to turn to divine guidance. Barton wrote
that "those three days were the turning point in the success of their
deliberations." But Madison writes in his Journal for Friday, June 29th,
that the Convention resumed Saturday, June 30th with all the delegates there,
including Franklin. They adjourned late Saturday and started Monday, July 2nd.
When did the three days of prayer and church attendance to "listen to
the ministers" take place?
- A letter written on March 9, 1790 by Ben Franklin to
Ezra Stiles, a Congregational minister and president of Yale College, responding
to specific questions by Stiles regarding Franklin's "opinion concerning
Jesus of Nazareth" (written when sick at 85 years old -- Franklin died
a few weeks later on 4/17/90):
"As to Jesus
of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire,
I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left
them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes,
and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England
some doubts as to his [Jesus] divinity; though it is a question
I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think
it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon
an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I
see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief
has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his
doctrines more respected and better observed; especially
as I do not perceive, that the Supreme take it amiss, by
distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world
with any particular marks of his displeasure."
By Ben Franklin's own admission, Jesus had good ideas on
morals. Like most Deists-Universalists,
however, Franklin thought Jesus was a good philosopher and
a good man, but he had doubts as to His divinity. Franklin
had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian, but could
not embrace the doctrines such as the eternal decrees of
God, election, reprobation, etc. Was Franklin a follower
of Christ? Barton often uses this quote by Ben Franklin: "He
who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of
primitive Christianity will change the face of the world." Philosopher
Franklin had practical wisdom, but apparently Franklin did
not believe in original sin or the need for Christ's atonement.
Franklin artfully dodged Ezra Stile's question of Christ's
divinity, choosing to dismiss the concept on the grounds
that the corruption that 'his religion' had acquired somehow
made the question irrelevant. How could he have been a Christian
when he was not sure of the Deity of Christ or of the atonement
by His blood?
- Ben Franklin the anti-Semite: in an address before
the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 -- "In
whatever country Jews have settled in any great numbers,
they have lowered its moral tone, depreciated its commercial
integrity, have segregated themselves and have not been assimilated,
have sneered at and tried to undermine the Christian religion,
have built up a state within a state, and have, when opposed,
tried to strangle that country to death financially. If you
do not exclude them from the United States in the Constitution,
in less than 200 years they will have swarmed in such great
numbers that they will dominate and devour the land and change
our form of government. If you do not exclude them, in less
than 200 years our descendants will be working in the fields
to furnish the substance while they will be in the counting
house rubbing their hands. I warn you, gentlemen, if you
do not exclude the Jews for all time, your children will
curse you in your graves. Jews, gentlemen, are Asiatics;
they will never be otherwise."
- Christian America advocates want us to believe that
Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer declared this a
Christian nation over 100 years ago. And on its face, this
appears to be the case -- Supreme Court decision, Church
of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S., 457, 471,
(1892) -- "Our laws and our institutions must necessarily
be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of
mankind (the Lord Jesus Christ). It is impossible that it
should be otherwise: and in this sense and to this extent
our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian
... this is a Christian people. This is historically true.
From the discovery of this continent to the present hour,
there is a single voice making this affirmation ... we find
everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth ... these,
and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume
of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances
that this is a Christian nation."
But Justice Brewer later wrote a 98-page booklet explaining
his views in greater detail. He wrote: "But in what
sense can (the United States) be called a Christian nation?" asked
Brewer. "Not in the sense that Christianity is the established
religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support
it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides
that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Neither
is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either
in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions
have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people
profess other religions, and many reject all." Continues
Brewer, "Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession
of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise
engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either
politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal
organization is independent of all religions."
And when referring to a New York supreme court case he wrote: "Christianity
is not the legal religion of the State, as established by
law. If it were, it would be a civil or political institution,
which it is not; but this is not inconsistent with the idea
that it is in fact, and ever has been, the religion of the
people." This means beyond question, Brewer said that
there was to be NO official legal Christian State Church
established by law.
- Few Americans know that Thomas Jefferson wrote,
in a letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823) -- "The day
will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme
being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed
with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain
of Jupiter." Or know that Jefferson wrote many sneers
at "priestcraft" -- that he was denounced as a "howling
atheist" -- and that his famous vow of "eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of
man," which is engraved in his memorial in Washington,
D.C., was written of the clergy. Or know that Thomas Paine wrote
in The Age of Reason (1794) -- "All national
institutions of churches whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish,
appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. ...
My own mind is my own church." Abraham Lincoln never
joined a church, and once wrote a skeptical treatise, which
friends burned in a stove, to save him from wrecking his
political career.
- In 1863, the National Reform Association, a coalition
of people from 11 Protestant denominations, sought to "secure
such an amendment to the Constitution of the United States
as will declare the nation's allegiance to Jesus Christ and
its acceptance of the moral laws of the Christian religion,
and so indicate that this a Christian nation." A year
later, the groups petitioned Congress to amend the preamble
of the Constitution so that it would read: "We, the
people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty
God as the source of all authority and power in civil government,
the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His
revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to
constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a
more perfect union." The amendment was finally rejected
in 1874, but similar resolutions have been introduced as
recently as 1965. (11/20/92, Religious News Service)
- Freemasonry was
a huge influence at the time of America's founding. Paul
Revere, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin, and many others were Masons.
(After Washington's presidency, he went on to become the
Worshipful Master of a Masonic lodge in the state of Virginia.)
America's Great Seal of the United States was designed by "illuminated
Masons" and adopted by Congress in 1782. With the blessings
of Thomas Jefferson, the Great Seal dedicated to America
as the nation that would bring forth the "New Order
of the Ages." The U.S. one dollar bill sports the Great
Seal. On the Front of the seal, the Latin phrase above the
eagle, "E Pluribus Unum," means "giving order
to chaos by uniting many into one." This is the message
of Genesis about the first Tower of Babel, the roots of Babylon,
where the many attempted to declare their independence from
God and unite into one "lest we be scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen. 11:4). The back
of the seal, surrounding the occultic pyramid, reads "Coeptis" and "Novus
Ordo Seclorum." Read together, these mean "announcing
the birth, creation, or arrival" of the "New Secular
Order." The Roman numerals at the bottom of the pyramid
represent the year 1776 as the birth of the nation that was
to bring forth the New Order of the Ages. At America's birth,
this country was sealed with the Seal of Babylon, not the
seal of Christ as many would like us to believe. (Concerned
Christians, Jan./Feb. 1990)
--Dave Hunt
Biblical Discernment Ministries - Revised 8/01
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/amr/camer.htm
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