The Founding Myth

by Andrew L Seidel

  Our nation would continue this trend of pledging to each other, to people, in the Constitution and in the first law Congress ever passed. The presidential oath, despite modern trends, does not actually mention god or include a request for a god’s help. The words “so help me God” never appear and were not first used to alter the words of the constitutional oath by a president until nearly 100 years later. The first law that Congress ever passed prescribed congressional oaths for office, and all gods were deliberately edited out of it.86 The presidential oath remains godless, though modern political piety and a disrespect for the Constitution has marred it.

  “The closing sentence [of the Declaration] is perfection itself,” wrote Becker, continuing, “Congress amended the sentence by including the phrase, ‘with a firm reliance upon the protection of divine Providence.’ It may be that Providence always welcomes the responsibilities thrust upon it in times of war and revolution; but personally, I like the sentence better as Jefferson wrote it. ‘And for the support of this Declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’”87 I agree with Becker. The congressional edit cheapens the document. Jefferson would probably have agreed as well. In the last letter he would ever write, penned less than two weeks before he died, Jefferson recorded some final thoughts on the Declaration. He was politely declining an invitation to a fiftieth anniversary celebration of American independence. Jefferson was too weak to make the trip, but offered this reflection on the legacy of his Declaration:

  May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. The palpable truth, 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.88

  Both Jefferson and John Adams would die on the same day, July 4, 1826, the day their fellow citizens celebrated bursting the chains of monkish ignorance and superstition and shedding the saddles enforced by god’s grace. If the Declaration they authored is at all theological, its theology is anti-biblical and anti-Christian.

  Exercising poetic license does not make the Declaration religious; nor does it establish a religion. The genius of the document and its poetic language is that readers may read into it what they will. Christians will see the religious references as being about their god, and atheists like me will think “divine Providence” simply means luck. In psychological terms, the founders were playing to people’s confirmation bias—our innate selection and interpretation of evidence to support our existing beliefs. But to claim a national, legal, or governmental foundation on such persuasion or poetry is specious. The references are tools of persuasion, not expressions of a founding faith. Franklin, a pragmatic persuader, would later serve as an ambassador to France to win its support for America’s war of independence. To play upon the French people’s romantic ideas about Americans, Franklin wore a coonskin cap around France.89 He would do anything to win support, even play a little dress-up. And he succeeded in soliciting French aid, which eventually helped win the war. To the extent that these four references are religious, they are the coonskin cap of the Declaration.

  5

  Christian Settlements: Colonizing the Continent, Not Building a Nation

  “History began on July 4, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake.”

  — Ron Swanson, a fictional character on the NBC show Parks & Recreation1

  “It was this great struggle that peopled America. It was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed; but it was a love of universal liberty, and a hatred, a dread, a horror, of the infernal confederacy before described, that projected, conducted, and accomplished the settlement of America.”

  — John Adams, describing the struggle against the confederacy of “ecclesiastical and civil tyranny.”2

  America’s colonial history does include governments established on Christian principles and the bible, but it is a mistake to argue that the United States is a Christian nation from those early examples. Some colonies had Christian governments—indeed, some were settled for that purpose. But when the founders were inventing America, they rejected the example of colonial governments established on Judeo-Christian principles, viewing them as examples of what to avoid.

  Colonial governments were often overtly and officially religious. This is hardly surprising. Every colony was part of the British Empire, subject to the Christian king who headed the Anglican Church. Every colony had an established church, and English common law made heresy—a crime interpreted and defined by ecclesiastical judges—a capital crime, punished by burning in some colonies.3 The problem for Christian nationalists is that colonial history precedes the adoption of a US Constitution that separated state and church. Much of the history that Christian nationalists cite comes from a time when the United States of America was not a nation, but a British outpost.

  This was a different time, and citizens of the British Empire had a different outlook. The Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress (1765)—which met eleven years before independence and twenty-two years before the Constitution—provides a glimpse into the pre-Revolutionary colonial mindset. That declaration was issued by devoted royal subjects and Englishmen, not Americans:

  The members of this congress, sincerely devoted, with the warmest sentiments of affection and duty to His Majesty’s person and government, inviolably attached to the present happy establishment of the Protestant succession, and with minds deeply impressed by a sense of the present and impending misfortunes of the British [emphasis of “British” in original] colonies on this continent; having considered as maturely as time would permit, the circumstances of said colonies, esteem it our indispensable duty to make the following declarations, of our humble opinions, respecting the most essential rights and liberties of the colonists.4

  The Stamp Act Declaration was not about the United States or American States, but about “British colonies.” The tone is humble, supplicating, and very different from that used in the Declaration of Independence. A full reading of this important document shows that religion and god were not factors motivating the resolution, but that rather, the central motivation was the colonists’ rights as Englishmen.5 Historian John Fea makes a useful distinction between the colonies, which were “planted” on the North American coast, and the “founding” of the United States of America.6

  Christian nationalists have a stable of colonial history and quotes they cite in support of their myth.7 But by definition, each argument relies on a time when the United States was but an outpost of a Christian king’s estate. Two hackneyed, yet well-accepted “proofs” are:

  1. The Continental Congress prayed; therefore America was founded on Christian principles, and

  2. The Pilgrims came to this continent seeking religious freedom and established a Christian duchy; therefore America is a Christian nation.

  Even though these are pre-American myths, they are so popular and so integral to the Christian nationalist identity that they must be addressed individually.

  ATTENDEES AT THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS appointed a chaplain to pray in September 1774, when the colonies were still subjects of the British king and had not declared independence. That assembly spent a considerable amount of time discussing reconciliation with Britain, not independence. The battles at Lexington and Concord were still six months away. This is a seminal meeting in American history, but it was fifteen years before our country invented the separation of state and church. There was no United States of America and there was no Constitution, let alone a First Amendment to th
at Constitution. Stating that the Continental Congress prayed is like stating that part of the British empire prayed: unremarkable. But still, Christian nationalists point to the chaplain’s appointment and his prayer as evidence of America’s having been founded on Judeo-Christian principles. The US Supreme Court, in an ill-advised decision in 1983, even declared that modern-day prayers at government meetings are not subject to the First Amendment partly because dependent British colonies prayed in 1774.8 (More on that case on pages 96–97.) As president, John Adams issued calls for prayer and thanksgiving, but thought they might have been responsible for his failed 1800 reelection bid: “Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion.”9

  Without the benefit of that hindsight, Adams participated in the chaplain’s appointment and that prayer in 1774. He wrote Abigail a brief account when the Continental Congress first met:

  Mr. Cushing made a Motion, that it should be opened with Prayer. It was opposed by Mr. Jay of N. York and Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina, because we were so divided in religious Sentiments…so that We could not join in the same Act of Worship. Mr. S. Adams arose and said he was no Bigot, and could hear a Prayer from a Gentleman of Piety and Virtue, who was at the same Time a Friend to his Country. He was a Stranger in Phyladelphia, but had heard that Mr. Duché…deserved that Character, and therefore he moved that Mr. Duché, an episcopal Clergyman, might be desired, to read Prayers to the Congress, tomorrow Morning.10

  Relying on any religious colonialism for a Christian nation claim is a bit beside the point, because the colonies were still colonies; but pointing to the appointment of Jacob Duché as chaplain and the prayer he gave as an example of our Christian founding is fruitless for three more reasons: (1) The prayer was opposed; (2) The prayer was a political gambit, not a statement of religion in a founding principle; and (3) Duché’s whole story (see pages 95–96) shows the appointment to have been a mistake and tends to undercut the Christian nationalist claim.

  First, John Jay and John Rutledge opposed the prayer motion. Jay and Rutledge would become the first and second chief justices of the Supreme Court. Their opposition should not be ignored nor their reason: that this land is religiously diverse. The more diverse the company, the greater division religion will cause. In such cases, the best policy is to remove religion from the equation.

  Second, the important qualifier of Sam Adams’s acquiescence to Duché, “who was at the same Time a Friend to his Country,” gets left out of the Christian nationalist retelling of this story. This proposal was political, not religious. The Adamses were enlisting clergy to help spread the fire for independence. The proposal was less about joining together in an act of worship, and more a political move designed to manipulate a large, relatively unsupportive sect. As legal scholar Christopher C. Lund has explained: “The Continental Congress desperately needed help ingratiating the revolutionary movement with the Anglican clergy and laity (who would be overwhelmingly Loyalist when the Revolutionary War came). Duché’s selection thus was a way to move Anglican clergy into supporting the cause for liberty—or at least not opposing it so vigilantly.”11

  Christian nationalists see this prayer as evidence of a deeply religious body doing god’s work, but it was strategic piety. John Adams recorded that Joseph Reed said, “We never were guilty of a more Masterly Stroke of Policy, than in moving that Mr. Duché might read Prayers.”12 Policy, not piety. The Continental Congress was a political body debating politics, not religion. And just like the strategic piety in the Declaration, this pious move has no bearing or influence on our founding principles. When writing the US Constitution, the founding document, strategic piety was not necessary to score political points, and the founders shunned religious political theater. They did not pray during the Constitutional Convention. The delegates thought the sole motion for prayer so “unnecessary” that they didn’t even bother to vote on it.13

  Finally, the Adamses’ faith in the clergy was misplaced. True to the flexibility of religious ethics, Duché abandoned the Revolution. John Adams concluded the above letter to Abigail by noting a contradiction in Duché’s occupation and politics. He was, as Adams put it, a member of “the Episcopal order, upon this Continent—Yet a Zealous Friend of Liberty and his Country.”14 Yet is an important qualifier. Despite being an Episcopal clergyman, Duché supported independence. At least while it was convenient. Three years later John wrote to Abigail, “Mr. Duché I am sorry to inform you has turned out an Apostate and a Traytor. Poor Man! I pitty his Weakness, and detest his Wickedness.”15

  When the British took Philadelphia in 1777 and threw Duché in jail, he switched sides, pledging his allegiance to the Crown. He spent only one night in jail because of this apostasy.16 After defecting to the British, Duché wrote George Washington a letter condemning American independence, explaining that the only reason he accepted the chaplaincy was self-interest.17 Duché was not a true believer in self-government or independence, but was merely using his position as a political “expedient,” just as the Adamses were using him. Duché told Washington that independence was impious, a form of idol worship, and asked, “Are the dregs of Congress then still to influence a mind like yours?”18 After attacking Congress as “illiberal and violent men,” Duché turned his pen on the army, calling them unprincipled cowards: “Can you, have you the least confidence in a set of undisciplined men and officers, many of them have been taken from the lowest of the people, without principle, without courage…19 Duché begged Washington to convince the Congress to end the war and rescind “the hasty and ill-advised declaration of Independency.”

  Washington forwarded this craven letter to the Continental Congress, noting that Duché might have been “induced” into the “ridiculous–illiberal performance.”20 As to coercion, Duché himself dismissed the idea: “The sentiments I express, are the real sentiments of my own heart, such as I have long held.”21

  Duché is the man Christian nationalists choose as a standard bearer for claiming that our country belongs to their god—a man who abandoned American independence, labeled our soldiers cowards, and slandered the founders. But to the Christian nationalist, facts matter less than being able to claim that at one time, when the colonies were still colonies, an Anglican preacher was selected for political reasons to say a prayer for the same men he would later denigrate.

  The better argument for Christian nationalists is to point to what happened after Duché. Not immediately (after reaping the political benefit of the first prayer, the Continental Congress had no further prayers for eight months22), but Duché’s legacy of chaplains in the US House and Senate continues to this day. In the poorly reasoned 1983 case mentioned on page 93, Marsh v. Chambers, the Supreme Court relied on two things to exempt government prayer from the First Amendment: Duché colonial prayers and the bill that the First United States Congress approved for congressional chaplains. I explained why this second rationale is unsound in the 2014 Supreme Court amicus brief I authored for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in which I argued Marsh should be overturned.23

  The Supreme Court tends to heed Madison’s First Amendment advice, but, curiously, it relegated Madison’s legal opinion on the chaplains to a footnote.24 Madison condemned “the chaplainship to Congress” as “a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles.”25 He’s correct, but the court instead highlighted his vote for the appropriations bill that included two chaplain salaries.26 That bill was not really about chaplains—it authorized salaries for government officials, including the congressmen voting on it.27 Because of that bill, the Marsh court concluded that “the First Amendment draftsmen…saw no real threat to the Establishment Clause arising from a practice of prayer.”28

  The more reasonable conclusion is that the members of Congress missed the threat in their rush to secure their own salaries and build the US government from the ground up. Congressmen had been serving at their own expense, most far from home. Salaries and travel allowances were mor
e important than the legality of the chaplaincy buried in the fourth of seven sections in an appropriations bill. This seems even more likely given how few seemed to care about the prayers, which were sparsely attended. A scholar sympathetic to the Christian nationalist perspective wrote in 1950, “One of the chaplains for eight years from 1792 on, complained of the thin attendance of members of Congress at prayers. He attributed the usual two-thirds absences to the prevalence of freethinking.”29 He also noted other complaints that the “Congressional Chaplaincy was not always treated with respect,” including that congressmen nominated freethinkers like Thomas Paine to fill the chaplaincy.30 Not exactly a pious group.

  It’s also not true that the First Congress “saw no real threat” to the First Amendment, though that would be understandable if only because the amendment had just been written and would not have any legal effect until it was ratified two years later. Madison specifically condemned the chaplaincy when looking back on the bill, writing in 1822 that “it was not with my approbation, that the deviation from it took place in Congress when they appointed Chaplains, to be paid from the National Treasury.”31 Those who did ponder the legality of government prayer, in the form of presidential thanksgiving proclamations, thought it unconstitutional and a threat of the kind the court dismissed. In a debate following this appropriations bill, prayer opponents relied on the Constitution and the law, while proponents relied on the bible and Duché’s prayers. Representative Thomas Tucker of South Carolina thought government calls to prayer “a business with which the Congress have nothing to do; it is a religious matter, and, as such, is proscribed to us.”32 Roger Sherman of Connecticut countered with “holy writ” and “the solemn thanksgivings and rejoicings which took place in the time of Solomon,” an example he thought worth imitating.33 The only other pro-prayer speaker, Elias Boudinot of New Jersey—who would go on to found the American Bible Society—relied on Duché’s prayers.34