To the Editor:

The political Far-Right, in its efforts to secure the Christian evangelical vote, has extolled Christianity to the point where they claim that America was “founded as a Christian nation.” It wasn’t.
The purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to explain and justify a rebellion to secure “God-given rights.” In each case, reference to a higher power served to validate the assertion of independence and equality with other nations of the world. Even the least religious Founders saw the political advantage to invoking divine favor on the question of independence.

However, the Constitution adopted by Congress in 1787 is secular, making no mention of divine power except references dating the document “In the year of our Lord.” The rebellion having been accomplished under the protection of the Deity, the purpose of the Constitution is a “blueprint for stable and effective republican government in a free country,” establishing basic rights of citizens which the government cannot deny. Religion was viewed as a matter of voluntary individual choice and the Constitution secured that religious neutrality.

Christian Founders, present at the birth of America, including Jefferson and Adams, denied that the new country was established as a Christian nation. John Adams wrote, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” Thomas Jefferson was a bitter ideological rival to Adams, but agreed. He wrote, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law,” and saying the First Amendment establishes “a wall of separation between church and state.”

The Christian Founders, educated in the philosophers of The Age of Reason, such as John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Rene Descartes found their religious beliefs generally compatible with “theistic rationalism,” a belief system for the educated elite rather than a religion, wherein a powerful, rational, and benevolent Creator established laws of the universe and can intervene in human creation.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently said that, “Christianity is the faith and America is the place slavery came to die,” ignoring that it cost hundreds of thousands of lives to force the end of slavery, and certain Christian sects, like the Southern Baptist Convention, were founded explicitly for the preservation of slavery, “a God-ordained institution.”
Hawley recently tweeted bogus Christian theocratic propaganda stating that the country was founded on the “Gospel of Jesus Christ.” He falsely argued that the US was founded as a Christian nation but allows other faiths to practice here.
Many Christians today have forgotten that America was sought first as a place where people could practice their chosen religion as a God-given right, not by permission of a generous Christian state. The history of joint Church/State government power has a lurid past, never to the advantage of the ordinary citizen. Our Founders wanted to ensure that it would never happen here.

Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca.