When James Madison protested Patrick Henry’s proposed three-penny tax to fund Christian ministers, he wrote a landmark in American history and law: the “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” (1785). Madison’s arguments overwhelmed Henry and convinced Virginians to strike down the proposed tax. Madison argued that even small, seemingly insignificant battles to uphold our rights must be fought on principle; otherwise the infringements become authority for future violations of our rights:
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.90
Because of history’s power, myths can endanger our liberty. It is our duty as citizens to guard the truth and prevent these myths from becoming tangled in legal and legislative precedents. When Christian nationalists are permitted to use the machinery of the state to impose their religion on us all, even if they do so during times when dissent is punished, these constitutional violations are remarkably tenacious. Christian nationalism operates like a ratchet or a noose, with each violation tightening its hold and making it more difficult to undo. Worse, the violations are used to justify other violations, so the tightening proceeds apace.
Unfortunately, there are two Christian nationalist myths we failed to guard against. These two myths encompass all the lesser myths that Trump and Project Blitz feed into. The first is that America was founded as a Christian nation. The claim is demonstrably false as revealed by any number of documents from the time, including America’s godless Constitution, Madison’s Memorial, or the Treaty of Tripoli, which was negotiated under President George Washington and signed by President John Adams with the unanimous consent of the US Senate in 1797, and which says that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”91 Most people with even a modest grasp of US history, law, government, or politics can debunk this divisive fabrication.
This book does not depend on the specific language of a single treaty, however applicable it may be—“not in any sense founded on the Christian religion” is admirably clear. Nor will it focus on the first myth, that America is a Christian nation. According to Bertrand Russell, religious apologists “try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is.”92 So do Christian nationalists.93 They abandon their earlier obscurantism, the first myth, in favor of a new one: the subtler argument that our nation is founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Christian nationalism hinges on this second myth and, unlike the first, it is broadly accepted.
This second myth is the focus of this book because it pervades all other Christian nationalist arguments. If America is not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, it is not a Christian nation. If America is not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, Christian nationalists are wrong. And although other authors have refuted the first fiction, the second remains untouched. This book seeks to change that by comparing the principles of Judeo-Christianity and the principles upon which the United States of America was founded. By focusing on the central tenets, the core ideas, of America and Judeo-Christianity, the first myth—America as a “Christian nation”—will necessarily be tested, as will the relevance of the founding fathers’ personal religious choices. But those issues are subsumed in the second, greater question, the question the “nine commandments” judge never had to answer: did Judeo-Christian principles positively influence the founding of the United States?
No, they did not. America was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles. In fact, Judeo-Christian principles, especially those central to the Christian nationalist identity, are thoroughly opposed to the principles on which the United States was built. The two systems differ and conflict to such a degree that, to put it bluntly, Christianity is un-American.
Not only is it fair to say that Judeo-Christian principles are un-American, we must. The word “un-American” might make some squeamish because of the value judgment inherent in it. But America is in a fight for its values—its soul, if you prefer—and Christian nationalism is warping and torturing those values, dragging this country down a dark hole. To hesitate to describe this identity with apt phrases because they may be unpleasant is to cede the American identity to an imposter. To refuse to label that which is antithetical to America is to watch Christian nationalists hijack our nation.
Previous books offered gentle corrections to the Christian nationalist: Here’s what history tells us, here’s what the founders actually meant, here’s what the founders actually said. And they’ve left it at that. But correction is not enough—otherwise we wouldn’t have a President Trump. No, pointing out errors is insufficient. This book does so, but then it takes the next step. It goes on the offensive. This book is an assault on the Christian nationalist identity. Not only are Christian nationalists wrong, but their beliefs and identity run counter to the ideals on which this nation was founded.
This book is an assault, but it’s also a defense, a defense of that quintessentially American invention, the “wall of separation between church and state.” I am a watcher on that wall. As a constitutional attorney with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, I defend the First Amendment to the US Constitution by ensuring that government officials do not use the power of a public office to promote their personal religion. It is my duty to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We handle thousands of state/church complaints every year. Without fail, recalcitrant violators and their vocal supporters argue that they can impose prayer on kindergartners or pass out bibles in public schools or display the Ten Commandments on public property because this is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. In short, I rebut this claim for a living, and I’ve dedicated my career to this fight because it is so important.
What I’m Not Arguing
It is important to understand the arguments this book is not making. Our country’s government and laws are distinct from its society and culture. It is the difference between our constitutional (or legal) identity and our popular (or social, or cultural) identity. This book does not argue that religion is absent from our culture. Indeed, some of the founders thought religion was necessary for an ordered society (as we shall see, this belief was both elitist and mistaken). However, this book will argue that religion is absent from our constitutional identity and that much of the Christian religion conflicts with that identity.
That constitutional identity is not fully realized, and this book does not argue otherwise. Many of America’s founding principles are aspirational, or were for a long time. Since the American founding, successive generations have failed to fully implement the values, leaving it to their children to conquer human tragedies like slavery, segregation, and the subjugation of half the American population. We’ve made progress toward including all people in “We the People” and have made strides toward genuine equality, but there is still work to be done. Those as-yet-unmet goals do not alter America’s founding principles; rather, they speak to our ability and appetite to realize those principles.
This book will also not revisit that well-trod territory of Judeo-Christianity’s role in important campaigns like the abolitionist and civil rights movements. Many books have been written about religion’s role in those movements while seeming to ignore religion’s contribution to the need for those movements in the first place. It’s a bit like praising a child for cleaning up his messy room. Religion helped perpetuate slavery in the first place, as we’ll see in chapters 17 and 24. Religion did not create slavery—war, economics, racism, poverty, and many more explanations for slavery have been advanced. But religion did provide a moral justification for American slavery. Plenty of h
istorians and authors have focused on the cleanup while ignoring who made the mess. It may seem that this book blames all of society’s ills on religion, but that is simply because I am focusing on the side of the ledger that is typically ignored. Religion has much to answer for.
In short, this book considers the accepted narrative of America’s founding from a new angle, one that does not assume religion is a positive influence on the world. I am an atheist with reasoned, thoughtful objections to religion. I do not think religious beliefs should be immune from criticism, even when analyzed from a historical perspective. Religious beliefs are ideas like any other, though they are defended more fervently and can often seem immune to reasoned argument. This book will treat religion like any other idea: not with contempt, but not with undue respect either. Christian nationalism has succeeded in part because of Americans’ ingrained unwillingness to offend religious sensibilities. But catering to these sensibilities limits our search for the truth, as does religion itself. There is strength in throwing off those self-imposed restraints.
Of course, irreverence is not enough. This book presents the facts. The endnotes are extensive, though the important substance is in the text, not the citations. Wherever possible for the founding era, citations are to original sources. If no original source could be found, the point cannot be found in this book.
One of the paradoxes of writing a book like this is that simply stating facts and relating history from original sources will be seen as an attack on Judeo-Christianity. The destruction of a beloved myth is no more persecution than the erosion of an unwarranted privilege. Many conservative American Christians fail to grasp these distinctions and, as a result, they are gripped by a morbid persecution complex. Every new instance of equality—every time a Christian government employee is told to obey the Constitution, every unconstitutional religious display removed from government property—becomes another talking point of the persecuted majority: the same majority that is overrepresented at every level of American government. When Trump told the Values Voter Summit in 2017, “We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values,” he was referring as much to books like this as he was to store clerks not saying Merry Christmas.94 The Founding Myth is not a work of academic history but an argument, an attack. Specifically, it is an attack on Christian nationalism.
The Argument in Brief
This book takes seriously JFK’s warning about holding fast to the clichés of our forebears. It is time to subject the second myth—that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles—to the discomfort of scrutiny.95 This book will analyze Judeo-Christian principles and compare them to American principles to see if there is agreement or positive influence.
First, we examine America’s pre-constitutional era, beginning with the founders. We will not attempt to provide an in-depth examination of the founding fathers and their religion, which would be a book itself, but some discussion is inevitable. In looking at the founders’ personal views on religion, which are largely irrelevant, and their views on religion’s role in society, which were largely misguided, we find that the Christian nationalist’s argument is both wrong and disrespectful to those founders. The founders’ beliefs about the separation of state and church and political science, not their personal religious beliefs, are most important.
The Declaration of Independence and even its quasi-religious language, examined next, are opposed to biblical law. Then we’ll step back and survey colonial history, where we find true Christian nations—the colonies—founded on Christian principles. Those Christian governments were so tyrannical that they became examples for the founders of how not to build a nation.
Next, we turn to the bastion of Judeo-Christian principles, the bible, and compare some of its fundamental principles—the Golden Rule, obedience to god, crime and punishment, original sin, redemption through Jesus’s sacrifice, faith, and biblical governments—to America’s founding principles. The comparison is disastrous for Christian nationalists.
Then we scrutinize each of the Ten Commandments to see how they stack up against America’s founding principles. The few principles that appear both in the decalogue and in America’s judicial and legislative system—the prohibitions on murder, theft, lying—are not uniquely or originally Judeo-Christian. The exclusively Judeo-Christian principles are actually opposed to American principles.
The book concludes with a look at some unavoidable American verbiage: “in God we trust,” “one nation under God,” and “God bless America.” These are not founding principles, but simply relics of Christian nationalists’ using government offices to promote their religion during times of fear, strife, and diminished civil rights.
Usage Note
Capitalization was used deliberately in this book, not as a way to slight religion, but as a way to accurately reflect how we ought to write about religion. The founders overused capital letters, often adhering to a personal style that befuddles the modern reader. I will try to avoid that mistake.
There are many different bibles, thesauri, and dictionaries. There is Roget’s Thesaurus, the Oxford English Dictionary, the King James Bible, and the New Revised Standard Version. But there is no Bible with a capital B, just as there is no Thesaurus or Dictionary. For this book, I chose to quote the New Revised Standard Version. When a particular bible is written about, its name will be capitalized; otherwise it will not. Nor should it be. Despite the word’s ancient Greek root (biblia, plural of biblion, book), the bible is not the book. It might be for some, but certainly not for all. The mechanics of writing and grammar should not be dictated by the edicts of one religious sect.
The same is true of the word god. While I may be writing of your god, I would not capitalize your husband, your wife, your mother, your father, and so forth. If I were to name that god—YHWH, Jesus, Allah, Thor, Vishnu, Apollo, Hermes, Zeus, and so on—the initial capital would be appropriate. It is proper mechanics to not capitalize the title president unless one is naming a specific president—President George Washington. Refusing to capitalize god is not a mark of disrespect; it is simply an assumption that one religion is not more true than another. It treats religions equally.
When quoting others, I will capitalize as they did.
The phrases founders, founding fathers, and framers are loaded terms, but are difficult to avoid when writing a book of this kind. (Note: these terms will also be lowercase in this book.) Take each use with a healthy dose of skepticism. For the sake of simplicity and at the expense of accuracy, we tend to group the founders as a homogeneous unit. The term founders itself assumes what was rarely true—that all the founders agreed. But they disagreed on nearly every issue. The political divisions in George Washington’s cabinet crystallized into America’s first two political parties. Jefferson and Adams—two men so pivotal in uniting the colonies and declaring independence—became such bitter political opponents that they did not write to each other for twelve years. (Happily, they resumed their correspondence and friendship, leaving us a wealth of correspondence from 1812 until their death on the same day, the fiftieth anniversary of July 4, 1776.) The terms are also politically loaded. Founding fathers was popularized in religious campaign speeches by President Warren G. Harding: “I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers. Surely there must have been God’s intent in the making of this new-world republic.”96
Using this terminology also presents a host of questions that are rarely answered. Who qualifies to rank among the founders? Does the pantheon include everyone who signed a founding document? If so, which document or documents? The Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Only six men signed both. What about the Articles of Confederation? What about the people who were present for the debates on those documents but who did not sign or who refused to sign? What about those who had an important contribution and impact, like Thomas Paine, but who neither debated nor signed? Should greater weight be given to those who were more instrumental—for instance James Mad
ison, who wrote most of the Constitution, defended it in The Federalist Papers, and was the force behind the Bill of Rights? What about someone like Vice President Aaron Burr, who was an active politician and altered our history, but contributed less to the development of ideas and the debates that shaped our country?
So please do not abandon reason when reading that term in this book. Assume that I’m referring to the major founders or a majority of the founders, and by all means, disagree with me.
PART I
THE FOUNDERS, INDEPENDENCE, AND THE COLONIES
“There is a fierce custody battle going on out there for the ownership of the Founding Fathers.”
— Joseph Ellis, historian and author1
“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”
— Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, 19882
The Founding Myth Page 4