The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

“You shall not make for yourself an idol [alternate translation: “any graven image”1],

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

“A curse from the Lord righteously falls not only on the head of the guilty individual, but also on all his lineage.” — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 15592

“We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer.” — John Adams, opening statement defending British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre, 17703

The initial command is simple: do not make idols or images. However, the rationale Yahweh gives for obeying the command is coercion of the worst kind. God promises to punish children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren for their parents’ mistakes. God’s most moral law promises to deliberately punish innocent children.

This vicarious punishment conflicts with principles underlying American justice. In Article III, the Constitution explicitly forbids punishing children for the crimes of their parents, even for crimes as serious as treason: “No Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”20 This means that “even if all of one’s antecedents had been convicted of treason, the Constitution forbids its penalties to be visited upon him.”21

Punishing the innocent is not a Ten Commandments quirk; it’s a biblical constant. God handed down this barbaric commandment shortly after he slaughtered the firstborn of Egypt, both infants and octogenarians alike.

Jesus dying for our sins is the most prominent example. He was innocent, but somehow his punishment absolves others of wrongdoing.

In this god’s eyes, actions do not determine guilt—beliefs do, an idea that resurfaces in the final five commandments.

III. “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.” [or “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” (KJV)] — Exodus 20:7

In the more careful translations of the bible, when the word LORD is written in small capitals it is not a generic title, but a substitute translators developed to refer specifically to the Hebrew god, Yahweh. Yahweh was represented by four Hebrew letters, YHWH. This was known as the tetragrammaton, from the Greek for “having four letters.” But given the taboo on using the name, the word “LORD” in small caps was substituted.

According to Jesus, breaking this commandment is the one unforgivable sin in the bible: “People will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”6 And if a parent were to violate this command, Yahweh would kill their newborn child, as he did to David and Bathsheba.7

Thomas Aquinas could not decide whether blasphemy was worse than murder.

as the blasphemer intends to do harm to God’s honor, absolutely speaking, he sins more grievously than the murderer.8

Nearly thirty-five years after the First Amendment was adopted, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson questioning the American commitment to liberty because of blasphemy laws:

There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or to doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations.

I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws.16

IV. “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” — Exodus 20:8–11

“The word Sabbath, means rest, that is, cessation from labour, but the stupid Blue Laws of Connecticut make a labour of rest, for they oblige a person to sit still from sunrise to sunset on a Sabbath day, which is hard work. Fanaticism made those laws, and hypocrisy pretends to reverence them, for where such laws prevail hypocrisy will prevail also.” — Thomas Paine, “Of the Sabbath Day in Connecticut,” 18041

The biblical penalty for sabbath-breaking is death.2 The Israelites stoned a man to death for gathering kindling on the sabbath.3 At least a part of this rule is meant to encourage, or perhaps coerce, worship. If everyone has the same day off, nobody has an excuse for missing church.

But the American colonies, which were part of Great Britain, and their established churches, passed sabbath laws to do just that: coerce attendance. British colonists in Virginia passed the first in 1610:6 Every man and woman shall repair in the morning to the divine service and sermons preached upon the Sabbath day, and in the afternoon to divine service, and catechising, upon pain for the first fault to lose their provision and the allowance for the whole week following; for the second, to lose the said allowance and also be whipt; and for the third to suffer death.

This law is not about rest. It is about imposing religious conformity; about forcing people to worship and believe in a certain god. Nothing could be more fundamentally opposed to our First Amendment and founding principles than such a law.

American Sunday closing laws have been around since the founding but are upheld in court for strictly secular reasons.7

But as early as 1885, the Supreme Court recognized that Sunday closings were not about the sabbath: Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of rest are upheld not from any right of the government to legislate for the promotion of religious observances, but from its right to protect all persons from the physical and moral debasement which comes from uninterrupted labor.

the Supreme Court has explained, any Sunday closing law would violate “the Establishment Clause if it can be demonstrated that its purpose…is to use the State’s coercive power to aid religion.”12

The fourth commandment recognizes that human beings can be property: “You shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock…” Surely any god’s ultimate collection of moral precepts should include an injunction against slavery, not a recognition of it? This is the influence Christian nationalists are unwilling to admit. Judeo-Christianity contributed significantly to our country’s long and shameful history of slavery.

The Hebrew bible is rife with slavery. Exodus and Leviticus lay out the laws for beating, selling, buying, and raping one’s slaves. Slaves who worshipped the Hebrew god were treated more leniently, some even being set free after six years.14

The Jewish Encyclopedia says, “The Hebrew word ‘ebed’ really means ‘slave’; but the English Bible renders it ‘servant.’”15

When a man sells his daughter as a slave…If she does not please her master, who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed.16 Just to be clear, “who designated her for himself” means the buyer can rape the young girl. The law is not concerned for the girl unless “she does not please her master,” in which case she may be returned like a defective product.

Jesus endorses slavery too. He tells his disciples a story involving the appropriate force with which to beat a slave: “That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating.”18 Had Jesus been antislavery, this would have been a good time to mention it.

Saint Paul expanded his savior’s immoral teachings: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ…. Render service with enthusiasm.”19

The American justification for slavery was inextricably tied to Christianity and the bible. We’ll see more of this later (see chapters 17 and 24). For now, it is enough to know that our Constitution is not free from what Thomas Jefferson, himself a slaveowner, called that...

Article 1, Section 9, the clause protecting the slave trade until 1808, illustrates how the framers viewed the slavery problem. The southern states would not give up their slaves. They would sooner refuse to join the union. The founders thought the union more important for the moment, so they postponed the slavery fight. The failure to stand for the principle of universal equality led to the Civil War seventy-five years later.

But abolition was not a goal of the 1787 Constitution; uniting the colonies into one nation—the United States—was.

the Constitution did not prohibit slavery. It would prohibit slavery later, but that would require a war and constitutional amendments. Our Constitution was not perfect when it was written, nor is it perfect now.

The framers recognized that they were fallible and were embarking on a great social experiment. The framers knew the document would be flawed—the inevitable result of political compromises—and would require alteration over time, so they provided procedures for future changes. Americans tend to forget that the amendments they so often cite actually amended the Constitution.

THE SABBATH COMMANDMENT ITSELF is a reminder to believers that they are, as Paul wrote, owned, not free. The sabbath is not meant for people to rest; it is to remind them whom they serve.

The fourth commandment in the third set of Ten Commandments (see pages 164–165), very like the first, reminds readers that they were once slaves to an earthly master and are now slaves to a more powerful one: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”23 Ownership simply transferred from Pharaoh to Yahweh.

One final point on this commandment: Yahweh differentiates Israelites from other “alien residents,” listing non-Israelites after livestock: “you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”24 He makes a point of saying that, although non-Israelites are lesser and treated as such in most of his laws, even they should not be made to work on the sabbath. As we’ll see, different...

V. “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” — Exodus 20:12

Interestingly, this is the “only commandment that comes with an inducement instead of an implied threat,” as Christopher Hitchens observed.2

Whether Hitchens is correct that this is an inducement for inheritance or whether it is a veiled threat that this god may take away the Promised Land, the rule is tainted. Remember, “the land that the LORD your God is giving you” is given with the promise of genocide, according to the second set of Ten Commandments (see pages 164–165). That gruesome promise is kept in subsequent books of the bible, such as Joshua.

Not all parents are worthy of honor or respect. Recall that Noah cursed his own grandson because he, Noah, passed out drunk and naked. We already met Lot of Sodom, the person the Judeo-Christian god considered the sole bastion of morality in that doomed town, who offered up his daughters to be raped by a mob.5

But things got worse for Lot’s unnamed daughters. Both “became pregnant by their father.”6 The bible blames this on the young, nameless girls, claiming that they plotted together and, to preserve the family line, got their dad drunk and raped him without his knowledge. Yes, really. Which is more likely: that a male author of a book of the bible blames women for a crime committed by a male assailant, or that two young girls who had been offered up for gang-rape by their father and who had lost their mother seduced their drunken, unconscious father?

Must these girls really honor the man who would give them to a gang of rapists and later rape them himself—the more plausible explanation for their paternal impregnation?

If the true purpose of this commandment is not to spread familial bliss, as seems evident by its shortcomings, what might it be? There are three possibilities: (1) ensuring obedience, (2) supporting priests, and (3) supporting the clan. All three purposes work to perpetuate the religion that issued the mandate. This commandment is not about honor and respect; it is about obedience and power.

Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others. This strain of religion cultivates a veneration for extreme authority. Studies bear this out: religious fundamentalism and a tendency to submit to authoritarianism are highly correlated.17 Trump acted like the character evangelicals worship and benefited from their ingrained adulation. Evangelicals were simply seeing in Trump a character they’d been taught to revere.

The religious mind is primed to accept lies. Presented with an extraordinary claim, it does not demand extraordinary evidence, but instead engages faith to overcome skepticism. Their religion has taught evangelicals to accept, rather than to question. Trump’s constant waterfall of outright lies landed on amenable minds. His support was greater among regular churchgoers than among lukewarm believers.20

The US Constitution honors individual rights over naked authority. The fifth commandment is about perpetuating religion, ensuring obedience, and venerating authority. It had no influence on America’s founding.

VI. “You shall not murder.” [or “Thou shalt not kill.” (KJV)] VIII. “You shall not steal.” IX. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” — Deuteronomy 5:17, Exodus 20:13, 15, 16