“…the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
— John Adams, Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 (1797)
“The less we emphasize the Christian religion, the further we fall into the abyss of poor character and chaos in the United States of America.”
— Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice
The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States of America is a Christian nation … Our Party pledges to … dispel the myth of the separation of Church and State.”
— Platform of the 2004 Texas Republican Party
Gradually, deliberately, fundamentalist Christians are seeking to re-write the history of America. Early American documents prove our founding fathers were wary of religion in general … and Christianity in particular. Yet again and again, Bush and other fundamentalist Republicans assert America is “a Christian nation,” founded on “Christian principles.”
In doing so, they betray an alarming ignorance of our nation’s history. In the process, they betray a tradition that worked, in part, to make America the great nation she is: religious freedom.
That said: how long since you’ve read our nation’s Constitution? When you do so (especially after having been conditioned by the Republican’s faith-based election-year rhetoric), you may be surprised to find no reference at all to God or Christianity.
The original Pledge of Allegiance did not feature the words, “Under God,” added in 1954. “In God We Trust” did not appear on our money until after the Civil War. The “God” referenced on so many monuments and referred to in so many early documents is the God of deism — the revolutionary philosophy embraced by so many of the founding fathers. This impersonal, mechanistic, rationalistic, Universal God is in no way like the God imagined by fundamentalists.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but by asserting again and again that there were, the Republicans have convinced most Americans that this was, indeed, the case — despite all clear evidence to the contrary.
Marriage between same-sex partners is not currently legal in Mississippi, but repeated Republican assertions that, any day now, gay marriage would be a reality, spooked millions of Mississippians into amending the state constitution to forbid something already forbidden.
And now, having realized the mind-altering power of repeated assertion, the Republicans are busy re-writing history: “America is a Christian nation … America was founded on Christian principles … America is One Nation Under God.”
This was never the case. But unless we are careful — and vocal — in our defense of religious freedom, we soon will be One Nation under A God — specifically, the ruthless, vengeful God of American Fundamentalism.
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