The Founding Myth

by Andrew L Seidel

  Three other possibilities, none adopted by the drafters, offer more specificity.

  First, they could have written “Men are endowed by the Creator.” The is a definite article with specifying effect, which says that there is one view on the subject, ours, and we’re right.

  Second, they could have expressed a shared view, choosing “our Creator” as some might say “our savior.” Choosing “their” over “our” diminishes the possibility of a shared view of a creator, though not excluding it altogether. However, the shared view possibility is even more unlikely given that the Declaration was written to the entire “world.” The world had suffered never-ending religious conflict, which Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams were acutely aware of—indeed, that was one of the reasons they chose to separate state and church.56

  And of course, the best option for referring to a specific god would be to specify a particular “creator” by name—Jesus, Yahweh, YHWH, Our Christian Lord and Savior. This seems most likely if they had intended to invoke the Judeo-Christian god. They could have named a specific creator, but these deists did not name Christ. Any generic creator god to whom they referred was beyond organized religion.

  “Their” is also a possessive pronoun—“their rights as individuals.” In this context it indicates a choice, that individuals have their own, valid view of “their Creator.” Readers are meant to interpret this phrase as referring to whichever creator—god or otherwise—they believe in. This is probably why Christian nationalists believe the phrase refers to the Christian god.

  Of course, the wording may have been chosen simply for clarity because Jefferson is speaking of two sets of people: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator…” The first set of people, “We,” is the Continental Congress. The second set is “all men,” all humanity. But even so, Judeo-Christian specific wording could have been selected. It was not. Even the word “Creator” is not unique to Christianity. Nearly all religions, even deists, have a creator-god.57 In fact, that’s all deists have. Given the phrase’s proximity to Nature’s God, we can be fairly certain that the framers were referring to natural laws and forces. This clause is either invoking a concept that is not Judeo-Christian or, with the simple and elegant use of the word “their,” recognizing the right to freedom of thought and belief that Jefferson protected in the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom.58 Perhaps both. Neither supports the Judeo-Christian foundation myth.

  UNDER NATURAL LAW, individuals possess natural rights—inherent and unalienable. But this phrase, “endowed by their Creator,” leads many Christian nationalists to argue that our rights are god-given, that without a god, there would be no rights. Answering an atheist’s question during a town hall meeting, Florida Senator Marco Rubio argued, “This nation was founded on the principle that our rights come from our Creator.”59 But this translation of our founding philosophy is dangerous and something the Declaration avoided. The biblical ideal of political authority—Jesus “will give authority over the nations; to rule them with an iron rod…as [he] received authority from my Father”60 to give but one example—is refuted in the Declaration. The bible is interpreted and enforced by men. And if rights are given by a god, they can be taken away by the men claiming to speak for that god. This is the idea Jefferson rebelled against when he wrote that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”61 Claiming that a god plays a role in human equality lets people who claim to know god’s will be “more equal than others,”62 to borrow from George Orwell.

  Jefferson and Madison were incredibly critical and suspicious of organized religion and “the priests of the different religious sects.”63 Jefferson not only cut up the bible, removing all the supernatural nonsense, but he also observed, when discussing religious opposition to the newly founded University of Virginia, that priests “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live.”64 As we’ve seen, Madison thought that “Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient allies.”65

  Jefferson would probably have disagreed with any religious connotation “their Creator” may have had. In A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), he wrote: “Our ancestors, before their emigration to America,…possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them.”66 In Notes on State of Virginia, written five years after the Declaration, Jefferson might at first appear to side with the god-given rights idea. But he’s as sly as ever. Discussing slavery, he writes:

  And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.67

  A mangled version of this quote even appears on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. A careful reading of the original shows that this passage is not as religious as it might first appear. Jefferson does not say that rights are a gift from god, but that rights are secured by “a conviction in the minds of the people” that the rights are a gift from god. This actually supports the idea discussed in Chapter 2: that religion is not the source of, but a substitute for, morality. Jefferson is saying that most people are not sophisticated enough to ponder moral questions, so they should adhere to religion. This belief actually undercuts the Christian nationalists’ claims because it means that Jefferson, as a member of the elite, along with the other founders, did not need religion and would not have needed it to draft the Declaration. Jefferson was also writing in poetic terms. He used the biblical language of a wrathful god to prophesy a Civil War over slavery. Langston Hughes would express the same sentiment 150 years later, in “Warning,” a beautiful poem that likened retributive justice to the wind, not a deity.

  Rights are agreed on by humans and enforced by society. This is the social contract the founders enshrined in the Constitution. In The Federalist Papers, those letters written to the citizens of New York by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay to explain the virtues of the newly proposed Constitution, Jay wrote, “Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.”68 That we agree on rights is evident because we also agree that rights can be taken away in certain circumstances. We can take away your rights if you fail to adhere to the social contract by violating another’s rights. The bible neglects to note that “the people” are the source of power, instead placing that firmly in the divine plan. It has no mention of “consent of the governed.”

  More importantly, Jefferson did not include “their Creator” in his original language, which read, “…that all men are created equal and independent, and from that equal creation…” (see page 69). The creator language, if it is indeed the radical change the Christian nationalists suggest, could not have been a substantial or integral part of Jefferson’s underlying philosophy. It might glaze a religious veneer over parts of that philosophy, but that hardly makes it a founding principle.

  THE DECLARATION WAS NOT WRITTEN IN A VACUUM. Statements on American independence were common during the years and months surrounding July 1776. Given that Jefferson did not describe rights as god-given in his draft, it is instructive to see what others did at the time.

  We already saw that the Continental Congress’s 1774 declaration, Samuel Adams’s circular letter, and George Mason’s declaration69 all relied on natural law and inalienable rights by birth, not on god-given rights. Pennsylvania’s Constitution (September 1776), authored with h
elp from Benjamin Franklin and likely Thomas Paine, said that certain human rights were assumed: “That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights.”70 The Massachusetts Constitution (1780), which John Adams drafted, declared that “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.”71 New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights (1784) was similar: “All men are born equally free and independent,” and “All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights.”72 James Wilson’s 1774 pamphlet, Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament, laid out the humanity and birthright foundation of government: “All men are, by nature, equal and free: no one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government is founded in the consent of those who are subject to it.”73 Wilson was one of the more influential founders, speaking more at the Constitutional Convention than any other person except Gouverneur Morris.74 Wilson thought there were two indispensable rules for government and society: “that all men are naturally equal; and that all men are naturally free.”75

  The founders understood that human rights are more powerful, absolute, and universal than god-given rights. God-given rights depend on geography, varying drastically for residents of Indiana, India, and Iran. God-given rights depend on those claiming to speak for god, as shown by Mohammad, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s interpretations of their respective gods’ will. Women and the LGBTQ have fewer rights in almost every religion because of god’s will. The abolition of slavery, women’s rights, the end of segregation, marriage equality—progress in each was opposed by those claiming to know god’s mind and executing god’s will. Human or natural rights are far less susceptible to the whim of preachers. Simply by virtue of being human, of being born, you have certain inherent, inalienable rights. 76

  The god-given rights fallacy is also moral relativism masquerading as moral absolutism. Moral relativism, bemoaned by religious scholars and Christian nationalists, is the idea that morality might change with time or the situation. They believe in moral absolutes handed down from on high. To take an oversimplified example, the moral absolutist might believe it is always immoral to kill because god says so. The moral relativist, on the other hand, might believe it is acceptable to kill in some circumstances, to save innocent lives, for instance. The religious system of absolute morality is actually moral relativism in disguise, but with an alarming alteration: God-given rights depend solely on a particular individual’s interpretation of god’s word. Perhaps that individual adheres to the interpretation of a higher authority, such as a pope or an author of a holy book. But at the end of the line, a human being is claiming to know “God’s will.” One person’s moral belief is given the authority of divine law. That relativism is far more dangerous because it involves a fallible human being claiming divine sanction. In our example, the moral absolutist believes killing is unacceptable because god said so; therefore, if god changes his mind and orders someone to kill their child, as he did with Abraham and Isaac, or to fly a plane into a building, the moral absolutist must listen. If they balk at murdering their son, as any decent human ought, they are exercising their own morality and moral relativism. In other words, what most religions label absolute morality is simply their personal morality given divine sanction. It is far better to premise human rights on the simple fact of being human, as the founders did, than to put them into the hands of people claiming to speak for a supernatural being that does not exist.

  This masquerade was laid bare as believers, and especially evangelical Christians, supported Donald Trump as scandal after immoral scandal broke over his candidacy and presidency. Numbers highlight the pretense. In 2011, a mere 30 percent of white evangelicals thought that an elected official who committed an immoral act in their personal life could still behave ethically and fulfill their public duties. Things had changed by the 2016 presidential race and no group had shifted more than those moral absolutists, the white evangelicals, who swung 42 points, with 72 percent believing that an immoral person could be a moral public figure.77 Evangelicals’ view of Trump actually became more favorable over the scandal-ridden first eighteen months of his presidency. A year and a half after the election, 75 percent of white evangelicals had a favorable of Trump, about ten points higher than on Election Day.78

  Franklin Graham, son of and heir to Billy Graham’s evangelical empire, put a face on these statistics less than a month after the numbers were released. In a May 2018 Associated Press interview, Graham said that Donald Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels and the subsequent hush money was nobody’s business: “That’s for him and his wife to deal with. I think when the country went after President Clinton, the Republicans, that was a great mistake that should never have happened. And I think this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business.”79 But this was a change for Graham. Almost exactly twenty years earlier, he went after President Clinton. In a 1998 Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Clinton’s Sins Aren’t Private,” Graham wrote, “The God of the Bible says that what one does in private does matter. Mr. Clinton’s months-long extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family. If he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”80 It turns out that what the biblical god says depends on the point Graham is trying to make. Deep down, the evangelical concern was not over morality, but over being able to claim a divine sanction for whatever was considered moral. This conception of morality and of human rights is dangerous.

  God-given rights are not sacred, self-evident, or inherent: they are fragile, exclusive, and used to favor the chosen few. That was not the intent or legacy of the Declaration.

  Third and Fourth References: “Supreme Judge of the world” and “divine Providence”

  The third and fourth references are similarly not specific to Judeo-Christianity or any other religion. Nor can they be found in bibles contemporary to the founding. Like the second reference, these were added during the drafting process and are not integral to the intellectual or philosophical structure of the Declaration’s underlying principles. They are poetic, more akin to Thomas Paine’s assertion that King George can “unfeelingly” hear of the “slaughter” of Americans and “composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul,” though less moving.81 And however poetic, the references are not Christian. Although some scholars think these mentions are more specific to a particular religion, they do “not definitively identify this God as uniquely Christian,” as evangelical Christian and historian John Fea notes.82

  Garry Wills once wrote that to read the Declaration as dogmatic or theological is to misread it.83 It is difficult to read the Declaration and think these final two references are anything but superfluous—late additions forced into their respective sentences. Professor Steven Green is correct when he observes that these two “rhetorical appeals…come too late in the document to redo the Declaration’s overall Enlightenment framework.”84 The truants interrupt the flow of beautiful sentences and detract from the impact rather than add to it.

  The jarring nature of the slapdash religious interjections is perhaps most evident when looking at the Declaration’s final paragraph as a whole. Like the first paragraphs, it has nothing to do with religion or the supernatural. This paragraph is solely concerned with this world, with people and governments:

  We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great
Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

  “We…the Representatives of the united States…our intentions…in the name and by the authority of the good People of these Colonies….” The paragraph is bent to this world—to here, not to the hereafter—and written on the people’s authority, not that of a divine judge. According to the language, “the Supreme Judge” is judging “the rectitude of our intentions.” Basically, the Continental Congress was saying that their intentions were good, as any who knew their genuine intentions would understand. Even if this language had been in the draft and could therefore be considered integral, it is not part of a statement on self-government or political philosophy. It’s window dressing. “We promise we’re telling the truth” is all it amounts to. It’s strategic piety calibrated to appeal to a candid, credulous world and a pious king.

  As a justification to a candid world, the writers were wise to choose language that would take advantage of the majority’s religiosity but still remain wholly nonsectarian. The language drew in a broader audience instead of alienating those who would be made outsiders by its expressing a religious preference. One historian labels this “equivocal religiosity” and asserts that it is specifically “designed to be acceptable to deists and orthodox believers alike.”85

  When the Continental Congress relied on “divine Providence,” they did so to make a pledge. But they did not pledge to that god—they pledged to each other. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. There is something stirring about the group of rebels pledging all they had and all they were to one another and not to a supernatural deity. They acted on Franklin’s exhortation to “Join, or Die” and supported Henry’s demand for liberty or death, and they rebelled against the most powerful nation on earth together. The strength of fifty-six of the most brilliant minds on a continent were bent toward one object: self-government. Their honor—their word—was sacred, not their religion.