The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

The only physical evidence that a divine being had visited this world was in his hands. The most priceless object in all history and possibly proof that god exists, yet the religious leader destroyed it…before any of his followers got a chance to examine or even read it.

Joseph Smith used a similar ploy when dictating the Book of Mormon. Smith claimed he discovered two golden plates etched with reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. An angel led him to the plates but also decreed that Smith could not show the plates to anyone. He translated the story on the plates using a hat and a magic seeing stone. Smith returned the plates to the angel after his translation was complete. All the priceless physical evidence of divine existence was destroyed or returned to the divine plane.

The differences between the first two sets of commandments, the Exodus sets, are particularly vexing for believers in the bible’s infallibility because Yahweh says they should be identical, yet they are not.

The third set, issued in chapter 5 of Deuteronomy, is basically the same as the first.22 In the biblical narrative, the third set is really just Moses retelling the story of how he received the first set. But even the retelling is flawed because the sabbath commandments of the third and first sets don’t match.

The fourth set issued later in Deuteronomy is markedly different from the others, but it meets the criteria: they are commandments from Moses set in stone tablets.

Four Sets of the Ten Commandments in the Bible26

FIRST SET

Exodus 20:2–17

SECOND SET

Exodus 34:11–28

[*This is the first time “the ten commandments” is referred to; later in Deuteronomy 4:13 and 10:4, the reference to tablets is again made. Given that the first set was destroyed, those later references probably refer to this set of commandments and not to those that are now so popular.]

THIRD SET

Deuteronomy...

FOURTH SET

Deuteronomy 27:1–2, 27:15–26

So which ten influenced our founding?

Thomas Jefferson once asked whether these minor points of division could ever be eliminated and uniformity attained. He thought not: “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” The religious coercion made “one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites” and “support[ed] roguery and error all over the earth.”

Mosaic Law actually encompasses some 613 commandments found in the first five books of the Hebrew bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These 613 rules, known as the mitzvot, are as important in Judaism as the Ten Commandments. There is no biblical or theological reason to think that the Ten Commandments are special.

We are told read the law and “learn to fear the LORD his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes.”45 All 613, not just ten. (Note again that obedience to god is based on fear.) These biblical books are clear: “If you do not diligently observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, fearing this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will overwhelm both you and your offspring with severe and lasting afflictions and grievous and lasting maladies.”46 We must “take to heart all the words [and] give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law.”47

Not all the 613 mitzvot are so benign or risible. Some are undeniably divorced from anything that could be considered an American principle, such as the prohibitions on mixing fabrics and trimming facial hair; others are downright barbaric.53

However, these brutal laws are fair game for two reasons. First, Christian nationalists are careful to say that we are founded on Judeo-Christian principles, not Christian principles, and the mitzvot come from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Second, even if Christian nationalists claim that only Christian principles were influential, Jesus himself said that he came to uphold all 613 rules: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law.”54

The Texas School Board altered its curriculum in 2014 to include Moses in American History because of his supposed influence on the Constitution.55

Every one of the ten would be considered unconstitutional in our system—every single one, including the commandments against killing and thievery. The Ten Commandments conflict with our American principles so completely that they alone of the 613 amply prove that our nation is not founded on Mosaic Law.

Many Americans’ knowledge of the Ten Commandments comes from Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston and their Hollywood epic. DeMille often felt accused “of gingering up the Bible with large infusions of sex and violence.”61 He said of these allegations, “I can only wonder if my accusers have ever read certain parts of the Bible. If they have, they must have read them through that stained-glass telescope which centuries of tradition and form have put between us and the men and women of flesh and blood who lived and wrote the Bible.”62

Protestants are no longer a majority of citizens, most religious Americans are Protestant; so for the purposes of this book, let’s use the Protestant interpretation of the first set to answer, in the next eight chapters, the apparently unanswerable question: which Ten?

14

The Threat Display: The First Commandment

It would be difficult to write a law that conflicts more with America’s founding document, the Constitution, than this rule: “I am the Lord your God…you shall have no other gods before me.”

The six rights enshrined in the First Amendment—secular government, religious freedom, free speech, free press, free assembly, and a right to petition the government—can be summed up as the freedom of thought.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The first two clauses protect your right to think for yourself about life’s most important questions; the third, fourth, and fifth protect your right to speak and even publish those thoughts without fear of censure, and to gather with others to discuss them; the sixth protects your right to ask the government to listen to those ideas. Of the six clauses, the first two are arguably the most important, for without the ability to think freely about life’s questions, little would be added to the discourse protected by the other rights.

The freedom of religion cannot exist without a government that is free from religion (nor can the freedom of religion exist without the freedom to choose no religion at all).

John Adams noticed this historical trend,11 as did James Madison, the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights. Madison penned the greatest defense of religious freedom and secular government in 1785 to oppose a three-cent tax that would support Christian ministers. His “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” examined what churches with civil power—ecclesiastical establishments—had wrought. “In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people,” wrote Madison. “Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.” He concluded, “A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.”

The Constitution sites power in the people. The Ten Commandments’ authority rests on the claim that they are the words of a god—even though the first commandment’s prose and feral threat, the “other gods” it refers to, and even the “god” himself, all suggest a man-made, not divine, author.

Thomas Paine’s point in the Age of Reason: “When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so.”

In the United States, the people are supreme, not god. Article VI of the Constitution reads: “This Constitution…shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

The Supreme Court has specifically decided that religious belief cannot take precedence over the Constitution: “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.”

The people are not one source of power and god another; “the people are the only legitimate fountain of power,” wrote Madison.

The conspicuous absence of a god from the Constitution, and the rather heavy emphasis the founders gave to its first three words—“We the People”— embody its conflict with the first commandment.

As the framers excluded god from the document, the document excludes religion from government—its only references to religion are exclusionary: Prohibiting a religious test for public office.29 Prohibiting governmental interference with religious worship.30 Prohibiting religious interference with government.31

The Judeo-Christian first commandment and the US First Amendment fundamentally conflict. They are irreconcilable.

15

Punishing the Innocent: The Second Commandment

II. “You shall not make for yourself an idol [alternate translation: “any graven image”1], whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” — Exodus 20:4–6

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, the press, and worship.4 It protects one’s ability to worship any idol one chooses, be it a saint, as the Catholics do, or a sandal, as in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. It also protects the right to reject worship. The amendment protects not only worship, but also many forms of expression, including religious or even blasphemous imagery.

The freedom to make and display images of Jesus, a freedom most Christians cannot resist exercising, is protected by our Constitution but prohibited by this commandment.

The second commandment did not influence our nation’s founding, but it did shape history. It has robbed historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and humanity of many riches and wonders.

Celsus and Tacitus, two non-Christian historians living during the first two centuries of Christianity, both note that Christianity opposed imagery of its god8—much like Islam today.

Art is freedom: freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom to explore what it means to be human. Religion cannot thrive in the face of such freedom, so it seeks to muzzle or control it.

God promises to punish children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren for their parents’ mistakes.