May 23, 2022 Kandiss Taylor, Georgia Republican Gubernatorial Candidate: “We’re going to do a political rally and we’re going to honor Jesus… They’re not going to tell us ‘separation of church and state.’ We are the church. We run this state!… The church runs the state of Georgia.”
July 26, 2022 Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican member of Congress “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk. It was not in the Constitution; it was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.”
Boebert and Kandiss are the most recent politicians to claim the United States of America was founded as a “Christian nation” and suggest separation of church and state is a subversive concept. Current advocates of this view appear less interested in Christian doctrine and more determined to use the Bible as a political weapon. They hope to impose into our nation’s policies their interpretation of Biblical morality while also using religious fervor to raise money and motivate voting. Their intent is to grasp power to advance unChristian and anti-democracy agendas. As an American citizen holding advanced degrees in theology and policy, I find this revolting.
So let’s be clear. America is not now, nor has it even been, a Christian nation. Moreover, our Founders never intended it to be.
Saying this is neither anti-American nor anti-Christian; only a matter of history and from much more than “a stinking letter.” In 1797, the U.S. Senate, a body more than 50% composed of original signers of the U.S. Constitution, unanimously affirmed a Treaty with Tripoli clearly stating:
[Article 11] As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, [Muslims] -and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
Obviously, time has altered this relationship but it clearly demonstrates at our nation’s founding neither Christian dogma nor identity played any role in how our government was constructed or operated. Separating political power while carving out a cultural space for each person to follow the dictates of their own conscience was a clear goal of our nation’s Founders and one of their crowning achievements. In their time, this was considered radical, so why did they do it?
Our nation’s founders knew first-hand from European history how the mingling of political power and religious dogma was a toxic brew leading to bigotry, social divisions, bloodshed, and repeated religious wars. In 1785 James Madison, the Father of the US Constitution, published a letter to the Virginia legislature as it worked out the State’s constitution where some wanted a tax to support a state church. In opposition Madison wrote, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” ( in Memorial & Remonstrance)
in other words, Southern Baptists would rebel against a government mandate to live by Catholic doctrine and vice versa. In 1803 Madison again pressed this point stating:“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”
Nearly 20 years later on July 10, 1822 Madison wrote to Edward Livingston still insisting, “Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
Distancing church from state protects both, a belief held by many of our Founders. Despite biographies published after his death portraying George Washington as a fervent Christian, his own letters and diaries portray a different person. In one such letter he assures a Hebrew [Jewish] Congregation of their status as equal citizens in this new nation. As an adult, Washington only occasionally attended worship services, was never a church communicant, and on his deathbed no minister or priest was called into attendance. Academic study by known historians has debunked fabricated stories and misattributed quotes intending to portray him otherwise.
When someone asked Alexander Hamilton why the U.S. Constitution makes no reference to God, he famously quipped, “We forgot.” The Founders did not, of course, merely forget; it was a conscious decision based on both their principles and their experience. The writings of our nation’s Founders never refer to the Bible as an authoritative source for governing or policy. Neither Christianity nor the Bible are quoted as a basis for their political views. Our Founding documents do not cite Jesus Christ and rarely reference God in more than general terms such as “Providence” or “Creator” or “Nature’s God.” To read even those statements with 21st Century Evangelical lenses is to misunderstand profoundly, even dangerously, what they intended. While some of the Founders were church members most viewed religion, broadly defined, as a source for moral guidance, not absolute or spiritual truth.
For example, while Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of independence, viewed Jesus as an excellent moral example to which one could aspire – a view he called “Christianism”—he rejected Jesus’ divinity, resurrection, and miracles. I could continue with similar documentation about Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Paine (who called the Bible “the pretended word of God”) but you can explore these links for yourself. There is ample, written documentation the nation’s Founders deplored the idea of the United States ever establishing one religion over another, including Christianity. Moreover, for those Founders who were observant Christians, their beliefs would fail the current litmus test of being “true” Christians by today’s Christian Nationalists, Evangelicals, and Fundamentalists.
The Founders’ chief interest in religion was not its dogma but its usefulness in providing a common moral code within which a democratic society could function. Yet in the 21st Century large portions of American Christianity have abandoned that moral code, supporting highly immoral individuals and political tactics. Moreover, parts of that religious segment have become arrogant, autocratic, punitive, and more lately, violent. All of these are traits inherent in religion that our Founders feared and sought to uncouple from the power of the state.
Intermingling state and church is becoming coercive and dangerous to our democracy and to the free exercise of religion. Their wisdom is once more revealed by a violent Christian presence in the January 6th insurrection, an eye-opening moment for many of us. Boebert’s shockingly ignorant comment that the church is supposed to direct the government, coming from a sitting member of Congress, reveals how far we have strayed. The most recent ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade protecting access to abortion was made by a predominantly conservative, Catholic Supreme Court and supported by Evangelical Fundamentalists. It is not the will of the larger American public. These are the latest examples of intermingling church and state. Christian dogma must never be the source of national policy. Our Founders would applaud our resistance to it.
Tikkun Olam
[A following article explains the principles upon which our nation was founded and why our forgetting them is costing us so dearly.]