The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

Timothy Michael Dolan. Above all, there is Vice President Mike Pence (who, presiding

The archdiocese noted that the "unassignable priests" were still receiving full salaries and would continue to do so until they were formally laicized;[19] and that the payouts were a "motivation" so that the priests would not contest being defrocked. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests sent a formal protest asking, "In what other occupation, especially one working with families and operating schools and youth programs, is an employee given a cash bonus for raping and sexually assaulting children?"[19] Dolan had previously responded to accusations that he had given "payoffs" to accused priests as "false, preposterous and unjust".[19] In 2011, Dolan thanked Bill Donohue for a press release, reproduced on the Archdiocese of New York website, in which Donohue referred to the non-profit support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests as a "phony victims' group".[75]

pains to discuss the ways in which the Ten Commandments (which actually are a part of shared Judeo-Christian tradition) emphatically do not form the basis of American law.

Some aren’t laws at all

If the founding fathers had observed the first commandment’s prohibition against graven images, for example, we would have no portraits to tell us what these august “Judeo-Christians” looked like.

Never thought about that

Some of the most prominent deists among the founders, like Thomas Jefferson, were called atheists by their contemporary political opponents because deists rejected the supernatural and did not belong to any church.)

So by that standard we have already had an atheist president

In fact, the pledge was written in 1892, and the phrase “under God” was not added until 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era.

Benjamin’s Franklin’s argument—as incisive today as it was more than 200 years ago—that when “a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support [it], so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

“Judeo-” is a sop, a fig leaf, tossed about to avoid controversy and complaint. It is simply a morsel of inclusion offered to soften the edge of an exclusionary, Christian movement.

They not only think it appropriate for the government to favor one religion over others, but also believe America was designed to favor Christianity.

History had proven to the framers of the US Constitution that religion is divisive. They separated religion from government to avoid the mistakes of past regimes.

The single most accurate predictor of whether a person voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election was not religion, wealth, education, or even political party; it was believing the United States is and should be a Christian nation.26

sobriquet

nationalism poses. First, it seeks to alter our history, values, and national identity. Then it codifies Christian privilege in the law, favoring Christians above others. Finally, it legally disfavors the nonreligious, non-Christians, and minorities such as the LGBTQ community, by, for instance, permitting discrimination against them in places of public accommodation or in employment.

including a bill that mandates displaying “In God We Trust” in all public schools, libraries, and buildings and on license plates,

“Religion in Legal History Acts” bill that requires “public displays of religious history affecting the law,” including the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington’s Farewell Address.36

Steve King

King of Iowa, known for his racism and xenophobia, proclaimed that our nation “was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, which means we need less law enforcement than anybody else in the world”

The racist was defeated in the 2020 Primary

Its effects on education policy

Audio book says The burden it is having on education policies

President John F. Kennedy explained to Yale’s graduating class of 1962 that “the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears…. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

“Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments”

Audiobook says December 12

Neither made the final cut, and the oath remains godless until 1862 (see chapter 24).

Audio book says until this day

They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Sounds like people who keep saying well if you Hatten been breaking the law the cup with this song. Even though we know our police are not supposed to judge jury

“The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same.”43 Not a god, but the people alone.

Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies,

People not god give the authority

“in acknowledging Nature’s God, the Creator, and Divine Providence,

the Declaration carefully and quite consciously eschewed any invocation of the Christian religion.”

At the time, there were about eleven major English versions of bibles that the founders could have borrowed verbiage from.

do not appear in any of those bibles.

but every religion that describes a creator-god and deism is defined solely by a belief in a cosmic creator-god.

This was almost not the case. Jefferson’s rough draft did contain a mention of the Christian religion—in a section condemning the slave trade.

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them to slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportations thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative [his veto] for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce…10

The only reference to Christianity in the Declaration of Independence was in a section that condemned the Christian king of England for participating in slavery it was also cut out of the Declaration of Independence by the congressional congress

you can see in the passage on the opposite page. The founders left the task of capitalization to the engrosser, Timothy Matlack, and to printers John Dunlap14 and Benjamin Towne. Writers of the time capitalized many words, mostly nouns, that are not capitalized today.

Church authorities declared natural law as ordained by “Nature’s God” to be heretical. They had been saying so for decades. Churches and theologians raged against the enlightened thinkers who would influence the founders:

with the simple and elegant use of the word “their,” recognizing the right to freedom of thought and belief that Jefferson protected in the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom.58

Claiming that a god plays a role in human equality lets people who claim to know god’s will be “more equal than others,”62 to borrow from George Orwell.

People like Trump and Abbott want citizens to believe this. For all their talk of local control, they only want it when the local’s agree with them. If He could Abbott would give a County Judge like Mark J. Keough all the power he wants because Keough agrees with Abbott. Abbott wants to hog tie Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo because she wants to follow science The fact she is young, female, and Latina makes the Racist Misogynistic Abbott more controlling

“dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl

on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live.”

Negreos, Sweet and docile, Meek, humble and kind: Beware the day They change their mind! Wind In the cotton fields, Gentle Breeze: Beware the hour It uproots trees!

In 2011, a mere 30 percent of white evangelicals thought that an elected official who committed an immoral act in their personal life could still behave ethically and fulfill their public duties. Things had changed by the 2016 presidential race and no group had shifted more than those moral absolutists, the white evangelicals, who swung 42 points, with 72 percent believing that an immoral person could be a moral public figure.77

Deep down, the evangelical concern was not over morality, but over being able to claim a divine sanction for whatever was considered moral. This conception of morality and of human rights is dangerous.

The presidential oath, despite modern trends, does not actually mention god or include a request for a god’s help.

I do solemly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

To the extent that these four references are religious, they are the coonskin cap of the Declaration.

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.

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

They wanted freedom for themselves not other groups.

Their opposition should not be ignored nor their reason: that this land is religiously diverse.

THe first two chief justices of the SCUS opposed opening he contential congress with prayer.

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

Duché supported independence. At least while it was convenient.

Duche favored independence until captured by the British then he turned traitor and took the British side.

The Plymouth Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Puritans were not seeking religious freedom. They were seeking the ability to form a government and a society dedicated to their particular brand of religion.

They wanted religious uniformity, not freedom. They wanted a government based on their god, on their religion, and to meld the civil and religious authority into one alliance.

“But GOD was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery