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March 21 - April 13, 2023
Christian nationalists are historical revisionists bent on “restoring” America to the Judeo-Christian principles on which they wish it were founded.
Christian nationalism’s fabricated history conceals an important historical truth: that religion and government are best kept on either side of an impregnable wall, as the founders intended.
PATRIOTISM HAS NO RELIGION. The Christian nationalist’s argument seeks to change that
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.”
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.
Washington refused to have a priest or religious rituals at his deathbed,
They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought.
There is no freedom of religion without a government that is free from religion.
Most of the founders agreed with Gibbon and recognized that religion can be exploited for political gain and that religion, when it has civil power, is often deadly.
“Pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution” were the “fruits” of fifteen centuries of established Christianity, Madison wrote.
Religion gets its morality from us, not the other way around.
For many founders, religion was not the source of morality; they thought it was a substitute for morality: a substitute for those who didn’t have the time and education to discover moral truths on their own.
As enlightened gentlemen, they abhorred ‘that gloomy superstition disseminated by ignorant illiberal preachers’ and looked forward to the day when ‘the phantom of darkness will be dispelled by the rays of science, and the bright charms of rising civilization.’”
as the physicist Steven Weinberg observed, the real danger of religion: “With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
The idea that all people are created equal is not a religious idea; the idea that some people are special or chosen is one that various religious groups have embraced throughout history.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE is an anti-Christian document with snippets of religious-sounding language as window dressing.
Natural law centered on humanity was so foreign and antithetical to Christianity that the church considered it atheism.
Madison thought that “Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient allies.”
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.
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.
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.
religious freedom is not possible in a Christian nation or any other theocracy.
The principles Americans are so proud of today have far more in common with the liberal Dutch colony that would become New York City than with the Puritans, the Pilgrims, Menéndez, the conquistadors, and their religious intolerance.
The Puritans imposed the death penalty for worshipping other gods, blasphemy, homosexuality, and adultery.68 It is out of this society and this mindset that the terrible idea of a Christian nation founded on Christian principles lodged itself in the American psyche.
Thomas Paine was correct when he wrote, “Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and seeks to pursue us into eternity.”
Like the biblical god evangelicals worship, Trump is a thin-skinned authoritarian with totalitarian tendencies. He craves love and punishes any disloyalty or slight. Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others.
there is no longer male and female;
Galatians 3:28 - the bible supports refutes the gender binary!
Judeo-Christian principles have had a devastating impact on women—half the country’s population—and the tenth commandment exemplifies the problem. The bible treats women like property, not people.
Religion is often too inflexible to incorporate new information, like human evolution or a heliocentric solar system, so it demands that followers shut out reality.
Christian nationalists take advantage of times of fear and use them to impose their god on everyone.
The father of the modern conservative movement, Barry Goldwater, recognized and feared the inflexibility of religion in politics in 1994 when he famously insisted, “If and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise.”
There are some universal human principles that the human authors of religion can’t help but put into their religion. Don’t steal, kill, or lie; treat others as you’d like to be treated; help those who can’t help themselves. But these are not religious principles. These are universal human principles, and we must jettison the religious from the humane. Humans need saving, but they need to be saved from religion.
We need to remind Americans that our Constitution demands an absolute separation between church and state, as John Kennedy said. We must raise hell when the wall of separation between state and church is breached.
