Christ and the Constitution
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense,
founded on the Christian religion.” – John Adams, under the
Washington Administration.
An ancient and unnecessarily contentious issue was brought into
the public eye yet again in a recent controversy in Montgomery,
Ala., The object of dispute was a monument on the grounds of a
Montgomery courthouse sporting the Ten Commandments; the monument
was challenged as an obvious endorsement of the Christian religion
in a place where the Constitution, not the Bible, should be the
single and ultimate judge of conduct. The case was taken to the
Supreme Court, who ordered the monument to be removed, and,
rightfully, so it was.
As could be expected, a massive outcry was raised against this
action. Christians of all stripes thought the monument was
perfectly at home with the courthouse, since, the argument goes,
America is founded on Christian morals and principles. What’s wrong
with paying debt to our heritage? All of the founders were
religious people, after all, and don’t the references to God on our
money and the Pledge of Allegiance give obvious proof of our
Christian background?
In fact, the only thing our country is “founded on” is the U.S.
Constitution and its Amendments. All laws and judicial rulings are
(supposed to be) guided and restricted by the document’s language,
intent and implication. Where, then, does the Christian influence
lie? You will not find God, Jesus Christ or “Christian principles”
as such referred to in the documents anywhere. The words simply
never appear. One of the only references to religion at all is in
the First Amendment, which contains two clauses on the subject; the
Free Exercise clause ensures the free practice of religion for
anyone of any faith, and the Establishment Clause explicitly
prevents government from establishing or endorsing any one
religion. The only other reference to religion in the Constitution
is a prohibition of a religious test for public office in article
VI.
The states, including Alabama, are subject to this amendment
just as much as the federal government. The Supreme Court, in the
McCollum case of 1948, invoked the First Amendment to remove
religious instruction from pubic schools. Christianity can still,
of course, be studied in a historical or objective sense, right
alongside Judaism and Islam, but this is an entirely different
thing than religious instruction.
The language is clear, unarguably straightforward. Apologists
will sometimes resort to quoting the reference to the “Creator” in
the Declaration of Independence, but there are two problems with
this. First, the Declaration has no legal sway over the affairs of
the United States, and can be used as guidance only in an abstract
sense. Second, reference to a Creator is a far cry from Jesus
Christ and the Ten Commandments; the language is intentionally
vague so as to include each person’s own God, if they have one.
Thomas Jefferson himself was not a Christian but a Deist, as was
Lincoln. John Adams, John Q. Adams, Millard Fillmore and William H.
Taft were Unitarians, and Harrison, Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant and
Rutherford Hayes were not members of a church.
Other religious references in state-sponsored instances have
been arbitrary decisions of contextually-biased legislators. The
McCarthy hearings of the 1950s and the corresponding “Red Scare”
was a time of unhealthy jingoism in the United States, and one
unfortunate result was that Congress thought it pertinent to add
God to the Pledge of Allegiance, and a few years later, to our
money. Although the Pledge had in fact been around for 50 years
without the reference to God, Americans now mechanically recite the
pledge typically without awareness of the influences that shaped it
into its modern-day form.
Given these facts, it can be seen that the claim for America
being “founded on Christian principles” has no legal or rational
basis whatsoever. Even if a majority of Americans who ratified the
Constitution were Christian, they consciously ratified a secular
document, so their own religion is irrelevant. They were also slave
owners for the most part, after all.
I don’t wish to be misunderstood as condemning the Christian
religion in itself here; this is a separate issue, and is
irrelevant to the question of Christian influence in American
government. I can only hope that honest believers will look at
their country’s history and heritage and realize that their
religion needs to be kept where the Constitution puts it, in their
own lives.
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