The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

Rights are not bestowed, not even by kings. Rights are asserted, not given. Rights come from human nature, not divine nature. Most of all, natural law is a product of “liberal and expanded thought,” not of divine revelation. In the draft language of the Declaration that condemned the “Christian king,” Jefferson wrote that violations of natural law, such as slavery, are not violations of divine law; rather, they amount to “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty.”32 In the Declaration, Jefferson appealed to a natural law founded in human nature and discoverable by human reason to justify a revolution against tyrannical positive law.

“The inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS.”34 Samuel Adams wrote a famed circular on behalf of Massachusetts to other colonial citizens that discussed natural rights in 1768. Sam Adams was one of the more orthodox founders, but he still rested rights on nature and not the Christian god. He wrote that the right to property “is an essential, unalterable right in nature, engrafted into the British constitution, as a fundamental law, and ever held sacred and irrevocable by the subjects.”35 The right is “in nature, engrafted” and held “sacred and irrevocable by the subjects.” It is not god-given.

Matthew Stewart, in Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Revolution (2014), has shown conclusively that the Enlightenment view of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” enshrined in the Declaration was not religious in any Judeo-Christian sense.36 As Stewart points out, Nature’s God, “the presiding deity of the American Revolution, is another word for ‘Nature.’”37 This makes sense. After all, the full phrase is “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Thomas Paine agreed: “As to that which is called nature, it is no other than the laws by which motion and action of every kind, with respect to unintelligible matter, are regulated. And when we speak of looking through nature up to nature’s God, we speak philosophically the same rational language as when we speak of looking through human laws up to the power that ordained them.”38

This phrase invokes no religion, though it may evince a belief in the unorganized and heretical idea called deism. One of America’s unsung founders, Dr. Thomas Young, wrote, “That the religion of Nature, more properly stiled the Religion of Nature’s God, in latin call’d Deus, hence Deism, is truth, I now boldly defy thee to contest.”39 Jefferson and Adams agreed. Adams explicitly tells Jefferson that a belief in “Nature’s God” is deism, not Christianity: “We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, that is, nature’s God, that ...

Is [god] ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is he vain, tickled with adulation, exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance? Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is always ready. I believe no such things. My adoration of the author of the universe is too profound and too sincere. The love of God and his creation—delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my own existence—though but an atom, a molécule organique in the universe—are my religion.41

Natures God is NOT Christian

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: Bruno, Pierre Gassendi, Lucilio Vanini, Galileo, René Descartes, Spinoza, Shaftesbury, and even Locke, to name a few. Priests condemned as “new Epicureans” those who believed that “there is no other divinity or sovereign power in the world except NATURE,” that “God is Nature, and Nature is God.”43

Christian nationalists claim that the phrase “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” refers to a Christian god, but there was nothing of Judeo-Christianity in Jefferson’s invocation of natural law.47

the newly founded University of Virginia, that priests “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.”64 As we’ve seen, Madison thought that “Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient allies.”65

“Our ancestors, before their emigration to America,…possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them.”66 In Notes on State of Virginia, written five years after the Declaration, Jefferson might at first appear to side with the god-given rights idea. But he’s as sly as ever. Discussing slavery, he writes: And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.67

Jefferson does not say that rights are a gift from god, but that rights are secured by “a conviction in the minds of the people” that the rights are a gift from god. This actually supports the idea discussed in Chapter 2: that religion is not the source of, but a substitute for, morality. Jefferson is saying that most people are not sophisticated enough to ponder moral questions, so they should adhere to religion. This belief actually undercuts the Christian nationalists’ claims because it means that Jefferson, as a member of the elite, along with the other founders, did not need religion and would not have needed it to draft the Declaration. Jefferson was also writing in poetic terms. He used the biblical language of a wrathful god to prophesy a Civil War over slavery. Langston Hughes would express the same sentiment 150 years later, in “Warning,” a beautiful poem that likened retributive justice to the wind, not a deity.

The average person is not sophisticated enough to have morals that God

The bible neglects to note that “the people” are the source of power, instead placing that firmly in the divine plan. It has no mention of “consent of the governed.” More importantly, Jefferson did not include “their Creator” in his original language, which read, “…that all men are created equal and independent, and from that equal creation…” (see page 69). The creator language, if it is indeed the radical change the Christian nationalists suggest, could not have been a substantial or integral part of Jefferson’s underlying philosophy. It might glaze a religious veneer over parts of that philosophy, but that hardly makes it a founding principle.

THE DECLARATION WAS NOT WRITTEN IN A VACUUM.

“That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights.”70 The Massachusetts Constitution (1780), which John Adams drafted, declared that “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.”71 New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights (1784) was similar: “All men are born equally free and independent,” and “All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights.”72 James Wilson’s 1774 pamphlet, Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament, laid out the humanity and birthright foundation of government: “All men are, by nature, equal and free: no one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government is founded in the consent of those who are subject to it.”73 Wilson was one of the more influential founders, speaking more at the Constitutional Convention than any other person except Gouverneur Morris.74 Wilson thought there were two indispensable rules for government and society: “that all men are naturally equal; and that all men are naturally free.”75

The god-given rights fallacy is also moral relativism masquerading as moral absolutism. Moral relativism, bemoaned by religious scholars and Christian nationalists, is the idea that morality might change with time or the situation. They believe in moral absolutes handed down from on high. To take an oversimplified example, the moral absolutist might believe it is always immoral to kill because god says so. The moral relativist, on the other hand, might believe it is acceptable to kill in some circumstances, to save innocent lives, for instance. The religious system of absolute morality is actually moral relativism in disguise, but with an alarming alteration: God-given rights depend solely on a particular individual’s interpretation of god’s word. Perhaps that individual adheres to the interpretation of a higher authority, such as a pope or an author of a holy book. But at the end of the line, a human being is claiming to know “God’s will.” One person’s moral belief is given the authority of divine law. That relativism is far more dangerous because it involves a fallible human being claiming divine sanction. In our example, the moral absolutist believes killing is unacceptable because god said so; therefore, if god changes his mind and orders someone to kill their child, as he did with Abraham and Isaac, or to fly a plane into a building, the moral absolutist must listen. If they balk at murdering their son, as any decent human ought, they are exercising their own morality...

Moral relativism

This masquerade was laid bare as believers, and especially evangelical Christians, supported Donald Trump as scandal after immoral scandal broke over his candidacy and presidency. Numbers highlight the pretense. 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 Evangelicals’ view of Trump actually became more favorable over the scandal-ridden first eighteen months of his presidency. A year and a half after the election, 75 percent of white evangelicals had a favorable of Trump, about ten points higher than on Election Day.78

Franklin Graham, son of and heir to Billy Graham’s evangelical empire, put a face on these statistics less than a month after the numbers were released. In a May 2018 Associated Press interview, Graham said that Donald Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels and the subsequent hush money was nobody’s business: “That’s for him and his wife to deal with. I think when the country went after President Clinton, the Republicans, that was a great mistake that should never have happened. And I think this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business.”79 But this was a change for Graham. Almost exactly twenty years earlier, he went after President Clinton. In a 1998 Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Clinton’s Sins Aren’t Private,” Graham wrote, “The God of the Bible says that what one does in private does matter. Mr. Clinton’s months-long extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family. If he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”80 It...

God-given rights are not sacred, self-evident, or inherent: they are fragile, exclusive, and used to favor the chosen few. That was not t...

“We…the Representatives of the united States…our intentions…in the name and by the authority of the good People of these Colonies….” The paragraph is bent to this world—to here, not to the hereafter—and written on the people’s authority, not that of a divine judge. According to the language, “the Supreme Judge” is judging “the rectitude of our intentions.” Basically, the Continental Congress was saying that their intentions were good, as any who knew their genuine intentions would understand. Even if this language had been in the draft and could therefore be considered integral, it is not part of a statement on self-government or political philosophy. It’s window dressing. “We promise we’re telling the truth” is all it amounts to. It’s strategic piety calibrated to appeal to a candid, credulous world and a pious king. As a justification to a candid world, the writers were wise to choose language that would take advantage of the majority’s religiosity but still remain wholly nonsectarian. The language drew in a broader audience instead of alienating those who would be made outsiders by its expressing a religious preference. One historian labels this “equivocal religiosity” and asserts that it is specifically “designed to be acceptable to deists and orthodox believers alike.”85 When the Continental Congress relied on “divine Providence,” they did so to make a pledge. But they did not pledge to that god—they pledged to each other. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and...

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. The palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.88

Both Jefferson and John Adams would die on the same day, July 4, 1826, the day their fellow citizens celebrated bursting the chains of monkish ignorance and superstition and shedding the saddles enforced by god’s grace. If the Declaration they authored is at all theological, its theology is anti-biblical and anti-Christian.

The genius of the document and its poetic language is that readers may read into it what they will. Christians will see the religious references as being about their god, and atheists like me will think “divine Providence” simply means luck. In psychological terms, the founders were playing to people’s confirmation bias—our innate selection and interpretation of evidence to support our existing beliefs. But to claim a national, legal, or governmental foundation on such persuasion or poetry is specious. The references are tools of persuasion, not expressions of a founding faith.

“It was this great struggle that peopled America. It was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed; but it was a love of universal liberty, and a hatred, a dread, a horror, of the infernal confederacy before described, that projected, conducted, and accomplished the settlement of America.” — John Adams, describing the struggle against the confederacy of “ecclesiastical and civil tyranny.”2

America’s colonial history does include governments established on Christian principles and the bible, but it is a mistake to argue that the United States is a Christian nation from those early examples. Some colonies had Christian governments—indeed, some were settled for that purpose. But when the founders were inventing America, they rejected the example of colonial governments established on Judeo-Christian principles, viewing them as examples of what to avoid.

The problem for Christian nationalists is that colonial history precedes the adoption of a US Constitution that separated state and church. 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. This was a different time, and citizens of the British Empire had a different outlook. The Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress (1765)—which met eleven years before independence and twenty-two years before the Constitution—provides a glimpse into the pre-Revolutionary colonial mindset. That declaration was issued by devoted royal subjects and Englishmen, not Americans: The members of this congress, sincerely devoted, with the warmest sentiments of affection and duty to His Majesty’s person and government, inviolably attached to the present happy establishment of the Protestant succession, and with minds deeply impressed by a sense of the present and impending misfortunes of the British [emphasis of “British” in original] colonies on this continent; having considered as maturely as time would permit, the circumstances of said colonies, esteem it our indispensable duty to make the following declarations, of our humble opinions, respecting the most essential rights and liberties of the colonists.4

Christian nationalists have a stable of colonial history and quotes they cite in support of their myth.7 But by definition, each argument relies on a time when the United States was but an outpost of a Christian king’s estate. Two hackneyed, yet well-accepted “proofs” are: 1. The Continental Congress prayed; therefore America was founded on Christian principles, and 2. The Pilgrims came to this continent seeking religious freedom and established a Christian duchy; therefore America is a Christian nation.

There was no United States of America and there was no Constitution, let alone a First Amendment to that Constitution. Stating that the Continental Congress prayed is like stating that part of the British empire prayed: unremarkable. But still, Christian nationalists point to the chaplain’s appointment and his prayer as evidence of America’s having been founded on Judeo-Christian principles. The US Supreme Court, in an ill-advised decision in 1983, even declared that modern-day prayers at government meetings are not subject to the First Amendment partly because dependent British colonies prayed in 1774.8

“Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion.”9

Relying on any religious colonialism for a Christian nation claim is a bit beside the point, because the colonies were still colonies; but pointing to the appointment of Jacob Duché as chaplain and the prayer he gave as an example of our Christian founding is fruitless for three more reasons: (1) The prayer was opposed; (2) The prayer was a political gambit, not a statement of religion in a founding principle; and (3) Duché’s whole story (see pages 95–96) shows the appointment to have been a mistake and tends to undercut the Christian nationalist claim.

First, John Jay and John Rutledge opposed the prayer motion. Jay and Rutledge would become the first and second chief justices of the Supreme Court. Their opposition should not be ignored nor their reason: that this land is religiously diverse. The more diverse the company, the greater division religion will cause. In such cases, the best policy is to remove religion from the equation.

“The Continental Congress desperately needed help ingratiating the revolutionary movement with the Anglican clergy and laity (who would be overwhelmingly Loyalist when the Revolutionary War came).

Christian nationalists see this prayer as evidence of a deeply religious body doing god’s work, but it was strategic piety. John Adams recorded that Joseph Reed said, “We never were guilty of a more Masterly Stroke of Policy, than in moving that Mr. Duché might read Prayers.”12 Policy, not piety. The Continental Congress was a political body debating politics, not religion. And just like the strategic piety in the Declaration, this pious move has no bearing or influence on our founding principles. When writing the US Constitution, the founding document, strategic piety was not necessary to score political points, and the founders shunned religious political theater. They did not pray during the Constitutional Convention. The delegates thought the sole motion for prayer so “unnecessary” that they didn’t even bother to vote on it.13

Despite being an Episcopal clergyman, Duché supported independence. At least while it was convenient. Three years later John wrote to Abigail, “Mr. Duché I am sorry to inform you has turned out an Apostate and a Traytor. Poor Man! I pitty his Weakness, and detest his Wickedness.”15

When the British took Philadelphia in 1777 and threw Duché in jail, he switched sides, pledging his allegiance to the Crown. He spent only one night in jail because of this apostasy.16 After defecting to the British, Duché wrote George Washington a letter condemning American independence, explaining that the only reason he accepted the chaplaincy was self-interest.17 Duché was not a true believer in self-government or independence, but was merely using his position as a political “expedient,” just as the Adamses were using him. Duché told Washington that independence was impious, a form of idol worship, and asked, “Are the dregs of Congress then still to influence a mind like yours?”18 After attacking Congress as “illiberal and violent men,” Duché turned his pen on the army, calling them unprincipled cowards: “Can you, have you the least confidence in a set of undisciplined men and officers, many of them have been taken from the lowest of the people, without principle, without courage…19 Duché begged Washington to convince the Congress to end the war and rescind “the hasty and ill-advised declaration of Independency.” Washington forwarded this craven letter to the Continental Congress, noting that Duché might have been “induced” into the “ridiculous–illiberal performance.”20 As to coercion, Duché himself dismissed the idea: “The sentiments I express, are the real sentiments of my own heart, such as I have long held.”

A scholar sympathetic to the Christian nationalist perspective wrote in 1950, “One of the chaplains for eight years from 1792 on, complained of the thin attendance of members of Congress at prayers. He attributed the usual two-thirds absences to the prevalence of freethinking.”29 He also noted other complaints that the “Congressional Chaplaincy was not always treated with respect,” including that congressmen nominated freethinkers like Thomas Paine to fill the chaplaincy.30 Not exactly a pious group.

As we’ve seen, Christian nationalism operates like a ratchet or a noose; once the separation of state and church is violated, it tightens its hold and the violation becomes nearly incurable. It is then used to justify other violations, which has happened here. Congress ignored sound legal analyses and did what it was accustomed to before state and church were separated. Currently, Congress pays close to a million dollars a year for two clergymen and their staff, whose only job is to pray once a day over their proceedings.35 This is unconstitutional, as the only framers, including Madison, Father of our Constitution, to offer a legal opinion on government prayer argued.

The Pilgrims and the Puritans are often conflated into one sect, when in fact they were two distinct groups. The Pilgrims established Plymouth in 1620, having first fled to Holland. John Winthrop and the Puritans established Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. In 1691, the colonies were combined. As historian Nancy Isenberg has explained,36 our popular conception gives these two colonies disproportionate weight largely because New England historians dominated the nineteenth century and shaped the American myth-making by focusing on their genetic and geographic neighbors. The Christian nationalist claim gives these colonies even more weight and goes something like this: 1. Christian settlers came to North America seeking religious freedom and established Christian governments—Christian nations—to protect that religious freedom; 2. The United States also has religious freedom; 3. Therefore, America is a Christian nation with a Christian government.37

In truth, religious freedom is not possible in a Christian nation or any other theocracy. The concepts are mutually exclusive; each destroys the other.

The danger a Christian nation poses to religious liberty is exemplified in an aspect of America’s religious colonial heritage that is often warped and misrepresented. Many Americans, not just Christian nationalists, romanticize the continent’s first European colonists, claiming that they fled persecution in England in search of religious freedom.

This is not quite true. Fleeing religious persecution is not the same as seeking religious freedom. 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. This distinction is crucial. Religious freedom allows citizens to practice any religion so long as it doesn’t infringe on another’s rights. The Mayflower settlers were looking for a place to practice their religion and force others to practice it too. That is not freedom. It is dissent from the ruling religion and a desire to impose your own. They wanted a theocracy. As Je...

This distinction is underscored by the Pilgrims’s path to Plymouth. The Pilgrims—Church of England Separatists—left England and fled to Amsterdam and then Leiden in several waves between 1608 and 1609. They spent more than a decade in Holland, and most stayed for good. Some sailed for the new world aboard the Mayflower and the Speedwell and founded the Plymouth colony in 1620 (leaks forced the Speedwell to quickly return to England, never to sail again). The Pilgrims had religious freedom when they settled in the Netherlands after fleeing persecution in England. James Madison described Holland’s civil relationship to religion well: “Holland ventured on the experiment of combining a liberal toleration, with the establishment of a particular creed.”39 This is not the freedom we would expect today, but at that time, the Netherlands was the most tolerant, religiously diverse country in Europe. The Pilgrims selected Holland for the freedom it promised.40 It was where the oppressed fled and were welcomed. Spinoza, Locke, Pierre Bayle (“atheism does not necessarily lead to the corruption of morals”41), Descartes, Hobbes, and Baron d’Holbach all found a Dutch haven from religious persec...

dichotomy between religious freedom and a religious government is conspicuous in the history of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans too. They banished Roger Williams—who would go on to establish the Rhode Island colony, which actually practiced tolerance—and Anne Hutchinson, among many others, for theological disagreements. Hutchinson was banished for believing in salvation through grace when orthodox doctrine claimed salvation through works. Such disagreements can be fatal under a religious regime. The Puritans executed Mary Dyer, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, and William Leddra on Boston Common for the terrible crime of being Quakers. The Puritans also waged a holy war on the Pequots, setting fire to a village on the Mystic River, killing 700 Native men, women, and children. The survivors were sold into slavery. The genocide was like something out of the Book of Joshua. And indeed, the Puritans saw it that way. They saw themselves as instruments of their god’s holy will: “Such a dreadful Terror did the ALMIGHTY let fall upon [the Natives’] Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished.”...

When religion, the Christian religion included, unites with the civil power, this kind of violence is typical: a recipe for genocide, land theft, and consigning the enemies of a god to a “fiery Oven.” A tende...

Christianity used fire and the sword to purify citizens elsewhere in colonial America. In 1565, Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, founder of St. Augustine, Florida, and his zealous Catholic missionaries slaughtered 111 French Huguenots on the Florida coast for refusing to convert to Catholicism. Two weeks later, Menéndez slaughtered another 134 Huguenots, again for refusing to convert. Lest anyone doubt the religious motives of the murderers, Menéndez hung the corpses from trees with a sign proclaiming that they were killed, “not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.”46 Pope Pius V personally commended Menéndez for doing “all that was requisite” to extend “our Holy Catholic faith, and the gaining of souls for God” and also for converting “the Indian idolaters.”47 In the American Southwest, conquistadors and Franciscan...

WHEN THE PURITANS AND PILGRIMS FLED LEIDEN, they escaped the liberalizing effects of Dutch tolerance, but not completely.48 Two hundred miles south of their new Massachusetts home, the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which would become New York, was thriving. John Adams observed that the Netherlands—which gave the fledgling, newly independent colonies their first loan in 1782 thanks to Adams’s hard work—and America were two republics “so much alike, that the history of one seems but a transcript from that of the other; so that every Dutchman instructed in the subject, must pronounce the American revolution just and necessary.”49 The principles Americans are so proud of today have far more in common with the liberal Dutch colony that would become New York City than with the Puritans, the Pilgrims, Menéndez, ...

The Puritans’ “grim theocratic monoculture,” to borrow a phrase from historian Russell Shorto, was the antithesis of the thriving, diverse Dutch communities farther south.50 New England’s enforced uniformity stood opposed to what would become an important American principle: strength through diversity. Manhattan, on the other hand, was America’s first melting pot. Shorto’s Island at the Center of the World (2005), a history of the Dutch colony on Manhattan, eloquently recaptures an era that was lost when the less progressive English took over in 1664. Amsterdam was the most liberal and tolerant city in Europe, perhaps the world, and New Amsterdam, renamed New York by the English in 1664, took after its parent city. It was liberal and diverse, a character it has maintained. A marker of the city’s early diversity is that in 1646, one observer counted at least eighteen languages while strolling the streets.51 Religion in the city was as varied as nationalities and tongues. A later English governor, Thomas Dongan, listed fourteen denominations in the newly English colony, including “Singing Quakers, Ranting Quakers, Sabbatarians; Antisabbatarians,…Jews, [and] Independents.” He concl...

What then is the American, this new man? He is…[a] strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new...

Melting pots require toleration or they boil over. Captain William Byrd of Virginia traveled to New York in the 1680s and seconded Dongan’s observations on the absence of religion. He found it remarkable that the citizens were “not concerned with what religion their neighbor is, or whether he hath any or none.”55 This is not to say that Holland or New Amsterdam reached the modern ideal of religious freedom. But even a “grudging acceptance” from the authorities was hard to come by anywhere else.56 The distinction between tolerance and true freedom, neither of which the Puritans practiced, is another important one. But the distinction did not exist until America became the first country to separate civil government from religion. That invention is the key to genuine religious freedom.

Both tolerance and intolerance claim the power to crush dissent and heresy. Intolerance wields that power, tolerance does not. But claiming to have this power, even if the powerful hand is stayed, is problematic. Thomas Paine explained this in The Rights of Man: Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the Pope, armed with fire and faggot, and the other is the Pope selling or granting indulgences. The former is church and state, and the latter is church and traffic [as in trade or commerce].57

George Washington expressed the same thing in his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Connecticut. This letter is justly famous for Washington’s declaration that “the Government of the United States…gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

But Washington also noted that that government cast aside “toleration” in favor of a natural right: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”58 True religious freedom comes only when state and church are completely separate, when the government has no power over the human mind at all, neither to prohibit nor to allow thought.