The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

LGBTQ youth who are rejected by their families are eight times more likely to attempt suicide than those who are accepted.37 Ann Coulter, a mouthpiece for Christian nationalism, approves these Christian family values: “Last Thursday was national ‘coming out’ day. This Monday is national ‘disown your son’ day,” she wrote.38

religion will reflect the morality of the time and place of its origin. Such morality is often archaic, as the Ten Commandments illustrate. The Ten Commandments and the rest of the mosaic laws are not a moral code—they are a religious code. They enforce religious conformity, not morality.

George Washington stood tall, his six-plus feet impressive as he recited the presidential oath on April 30, 1789, in New York City, concluding with a promise that he would, to the best of his ability, “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” Period. The oath and Washington’s recitation both end there. The words “so help me God” do not appear in the oath prescribed in Article 2, §1 of the Constitution. Our godless Constitution does not ask presidents to seek a god’s help or call down a god’s wrath on oath breakers. There is no evidence that even hints at Washington adding these words, nor is such an addition in keeping with his character.

No evidence suggests that any early president—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams—added pious words to the oath.

The first reliable, contemporaneous account of a president adding these words comes nearly a century after the founding, at Chester A. Arthur’s public inauguration in 1881.17 Arthur was assuming what had become a dangerous office, taking the oath after James Garfield was assassinated, the second president gunned down in sixteen years. This public oath was actually Arthur’s second presidential oath. He had already taken the official oath and assumed the office of president two days earlier, immediately on Garfield’s death. In that private ceremony, he did not edit the oath. The second oath, the one with the religious language, was a public reenactment done for show.18 It was more strategic piety.

All the evidence suggests that Wilson did not add the phrase to the oath in the private ceremony, though he did add it in the public ceremony.19

The inflection point for presidents adding the words seems to have been the United States teetering on the brink of the First World War. In fact, up through Wilson’s private 1917 oath, the phrase was used in, at most, only two of forty oaths, about 5 percent of the time.20 Beginning with Wilson’s public 1917 oath, it was used in thirty-four of thirty-five oaths, about 97 percent of the time.21

in God we trust!”

one nation under God,”

“God bless America.”

Though it is hard to credit, people regularly invoke these slogans to prove that America is a Christian nation, and even a nation founded on Christian principles.26 It’s argument by idiom. A little bit of research reveals that none of these phrases dates to the founding era.

“In God we trust” was first added to American coinage in 1863, during the height of the Civil War, seventy-five years after the Constitutional Convention. It was added to paper currency in 1955 and became the national motto in 1956. “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The first president to close a speech with “Go...

Three men are ultimately responsible for getting “God” on American currency: a preacher, a secretary, and a man seeking to amend the Constitution to promote his personal deity.

The men’s work spanned from late 1861 until 1864, but the final wording—“in God we trust”—was decided on in 1863, when the Civil War was at its height.

Religion commandeered both sides of the slavery issue. Lincoln made this point in his Second Inaugural: “Both [sides] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”8 The bloodshed might have been stemmed were it not for the unmovable certainty religion breeds in the faithful. We might say today that abolitionists motivated by religion were correct to be certain on such an obvious issue, but their brethren south of the Mason-Dixon Line were just as certain, and they had the stronger side of the biblical argument. As William Lloyd Garrison, a leading abolitionist, put it, “In this country, the Bible has been used to support slavery and capital punishment; while in the old countries, it has been quoted to sustain all manner of tyranny and persecution. All reforms are anti-Bible.”9 This is not to say that religion caused slavery, but it did justify slavery and allow others to justify it. The bible gave slavery a divine sanction (see chapter 17). Diametrically opposed certitude on an issue like slavery, held without evidence or reason but instead on religious faith, is a blueprint for conflict.

The country’s first major religious political party, the Liberty Party, founded in 1839, gained prominence then and used spiritual blackmail to win votes by telling citizens to “vote the Liberty ticket as a religious duty.”14

Religion had been largely absent from politics and government up to that point.

“religion has nothing to do with politics.”16 But that separation, so assiduously cultivated by the founders, was obliterated during the buildup of tensions that were released in the Civil War. According to Goldfield, “Churches became party gathering places; ministers stumped for the party’s candidates and even served as poll watchers.”17 Religion became a political weapon.

The North was morally justified to fight a war to free the slaves if that was necessary. But had there not been a divine justification for slavery to begin with, the institution might have failed without a war. Religion on both sides solidified arguments, many untenable, as articles of faith. That was Webster’s point. And that was the point of Lincoln’s religious language in his second inaugural.

But the South, though morally wrong, had the stronger religious argument for its position and was therefore far less likely to do away with slavery because of religious pleading or moral reasoning. After all, God was on their side. The Confederate States of America motto said so: Deo vindice, “God will vindicate” or “With God our protector [or avenger].”22 The motto meant to call upon the “Christian God.”23

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, thought that slavery “was established by decree of Almighty God…. It is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation…. It has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.”26 He might have added that Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, owned slaves.

Slavery is sanctified and permitted in the bible. Jesus even discusses the proper force with which to beat one’s slaves in Luke 12:45–49, a passage the Southern states often used to justify slavery.31

By exposing “the African race” to “the humanizing influence of Christianity” through their bonds, the slavers believed they were doing the slaves a favor—they were saving Africans by enslaving them.39 The slave owners justified enslaving an entire race using the perceived superiority of Christianity.

Christianity may not have caused slavery. Slavery predates Christianity and factors other than religion, such as economics, play a role. But in America, Christianity and the bible justified slavery and allowed otherwise moral people to assuage their consciences by telling themselves that they were acting in accord with their god’s law. That divine sanction was critical.

Whatever factors caused slavery, Christianity helped make its patent immorality palatable to believers. Both sides had religious arguments to buttress their position. The idea that “God is on our side” breeds a certainty that no logic, reason, or fact can shake.

The realities of war shattered the deception of faith. As commanders have for millennia, Civil War generals and preachers stoked soldiers’ piety, recognizing religion’s usefulness in convincing men and boys to march to their death without fear because god is on their side. Margaret Mitchell commented on this phenomenon in Gone with the Wind. Rhett Butler dryly asks, “If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?”49

What better way to spread their version of the Good Word than by putting it on currency everyone has to use? In fact, that was one reason Congress added the phrase to paper currency during the Red Scare of the 1950s, to spread the gospel “behind the Iron Curtain,” as one congressman put it.60

US currency would effectively become a Christian missionary, and it began with this preacher and secretary. Chase took Watkinson’s suggestion seriously and wrote the director of the Mint, James Pollock, discussing how a nation becomes strong enough to win a war: “No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust

On December 9, 1863, Secretary Chase approved the final language: “In God We Trust.”66 Congress made the change official a few months later when it passed a new coinage bill, though it did not actually vote on the new language—it simply gave the Mint director, Pollock, the power to fix the shape, motto, and devices of the coins, with the approval of the Treasury secretary.67

So, at the advice of a proselytizing preacher, two government officials—one with a religious agenda so all-consuming he was trying to amend the Constitution to honor his god—deliberately used the time of “national peril and danger,” when people were too busy dying for the Constitution to protect it from a rear-guard assault, to promote their personal religion. Even if this addition were not decades after the founding, it’s hard to see how three men betraying a founding principle—keeping state and church separate—is itself a founding principle. Watkinson, Pollock, and Chase took advantage of a fearful, distracted nation and abused their government offices to impose their personal religious beliefs on all citizens.

coinage. The Continental Congress, on April 21, 1787, just before the Constitutional Convention met, resolved to create a new copper cent.69 On July 6, they selected a design by Benjamin Franklin. On one side it was inscribed “FUGIO. MIND YOUR BUSINESS” with a sun and sundial. Fugio (“I fly”) and the sundial together mean time flies.70 The other side contained a unifying message: thirteen interlocking rings around the perimeter, one for each state, made a chain. Within the chain was a smaller circle with the words “UNITED STATES” circumscribed. Within that circle were the words “WE ARE ONE.”71

The US Congress, following Alexander Hamilton’s advice, established the US Mint in 1792. It decreed that coins should have “an impression emblematic of liberty” and the word “Liberty” on one side and an eagle with “United States of America” on the other side.74

The original maxim that appeared on many American coins and still appears on US currency also had unifying language: E pluribus unum or “from many, one.”75

To recite the Pledge is not to describe the United States; instead, it is to swear allegiance to the values for which the flag stands: unity, indivisibility, liberty, justice, and—since 1954—monotheism. The text of the official Pledge, codified in federal law, impermissibly takes a position with respect to the purely religious question of the existence and identity of God.” — US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 20022

AN OSTENSIBLE PARADOX OF STATE-CHURCH SEPARATION is that citizens living under secular governments tend to be more religious than citizens in countries with established churches. England, with the Anglican Church and a religiously apathetic populace, and the United States, with a rabidly devout (though shrinking) majority, typify this paradox. But it’s not actually a paradox. This is precisely what we would expect to see if religion is like any other product for sale. In a country with an established church, that church has a monopoly. With no competitors and taxes supporting the church, the priests grow fat and indolent, and feel entitled to a flock. They can be successful without effort. In countries with secular governments and protections for the freedom of worship, the religious marketplace is a jungle. If a church gets lazy or a preacher feels entitled, their flock can easily worship across the street. As a result, preachers in America are better salesmen. They have to be. The jungle-like market ensures that the religions that are the best at attracting and keeping members survive. Adam Smith, writing in 1776, actually predicted this, as did James Madison in 1819, who used the idea of a thriving religious marketplace to help sell state-church separation.3

One of the more prominent corporate evangelists, James Fifield, sought to enlist seventy thousand ministers “in the revolt against Roosevelt” by arguing that the New Deal undermined Christianity.8

The high-water mark for the religious messaging was the Religion in American Life campaign conducted by the Ad Council in partnership with America’s best admen and advertising agencies. RIAL professed two goals: “(1) to accent the importance of all religious institutions as the basis of American life” and “(2) to urge all Americans to attend the church or synagogue of their choice.”10 The Ad Council ran 2,200 RIAL ads in newspapers in 1949 and steadily increased that number each year, to nearly 10,000 ads in 1956.11 Magazine, radio, television, billboards, posters in transportation hubs, and ad cards all told Americans that “free civilization rests upon a basis of religious faith.”12

Between 1952 and 1956, as RIAL and the anti–New Deal religion peaked, Congress saddled Americans with most of the political piety so familiar today. The timeline is telling: 1952 – National Day of Prayer. Billy Graham says it would be “thrilling” and “glorious” to “see the leaders of our country kneeling before almighty God in prayer” and to use those leaders to bring the nation to Jesus.24 On the Capitol steps, Graham calls for a National Day of Prayer.25 Congress quickly agrees.26 1953 – The National Prayer Breakfast is held for the first time, and President Eisenhower attends.27 This was integral to the anti–New Deal, corporate religion.28 1953 – Congressmen propose 18 separate resolutions to add “under God” to the pledge on April 20.29 1953–54 – Flanders Amendment proposed. This constitutional amendment, which was attempted during the Civil War by the then director of the Mint James Pollock, of “In God We Trust” infamy (see page 271), would have added the Christian god to the godless American Constitution: “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Saviour and Ruler of Nations, through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” The Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings on the amendment.30 It fails, again. 1954 – “In God We Trust” is placed on a US postage stamp for the first time.31 1954 – Installing a prayer room in the US Capitol is proposed, and the resolution passes.32 The Congressional Prayer Room, built in 1955, features a ...