The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

And, of course, the Judeo-Christian god is described as a creator—in Genesis and at least five times outside the Genesis story9—but every religion that describes a creator-god and deism is defined solely by a belief in a cosmic creator-god. Scholars can argue forever about whether the references are deist or theist, but we can all be sure that they are not Christian. 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. But the Continental Congress removed this passage from the final version. The omitted paragraph helps illuminate another phrase, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” In the list of King George’s crimes, Jefferson wrote: 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