The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

WHEN REVIEWING THAT IRREVERENT MANUSCRIPT, Franklin rhetorically asked, “If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it?”47 [emphasis in original] Here, Franklin’s imaginative mind failed him. To be fair, Franklin and the other founders did not have the data we possess today. Social science now unequivocally shows that the less religious a society is, the better off it is. We now know that religion is not necessary for a society to succeed. In a metastudy examining this very question, sociologist Phil Zuckerman explains, “Murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations where belief in God is deep and widespread. And within America, the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon. Furthermore, although there are some notable exceptions, rates of most violent crimes tend to be lower in the less religious states and higher in the most religious states. Finally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively nonreligious countries, and of the eight cities within the United States that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the country.”48