Posted on 07/04/2018 7:22:43 AM PDT by OneVike
No country venerates its “Founding Fathers” like the United States. Academics, legislators, judges, and ordinary citizens all frequently seek to validate their opinions and policy prescriptions by identifying them with the statesmen who led America to nationhood. It is not surprising, therefore, that debates about the role of religion in the United States are infused with references to the faith of the Founding Fathers and to the two greatest documents they gave to the fledgling republic: the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. People across the religious spectrum, from the most devout believers to the most committed atheists, look to these documents for support. Yet the blessings they offer are mixed. The Declaration contains several references to God, the Constitution none at all. The reasons for this variation reveal a great deal about the founding principles of the United States.
The Declaration of Independence is an apology for revolution. Support for a complete break with Great Britain was growing stronger week by week in the spring of 1776, both in the Continental Congress and in the thirteen colonies at large. On June 7, 1776, a resolution advocating independence was presented to Congress by Richard Henry Lee of the Virginia delegation. Four days later Congress appointed a committee of five delegates to draft a document explaining the historic separation it would soon be voting on.
The resulting Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and edited by his fellow delegates, contains a theory of rights that depends on a Supreme Being, not man, for its validity. The Declaration states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is possible to see in these words an affirmation of the Founders’ religious faith, but God-given rights had less to do with theology in the summer of 1776 than they did with rebellion.
In stating that people’s rights were given to them by their creator, the Continental Congress endowed those rights with a legitimacy that knows no parallel in mortal sources. What God has given to man is not enjoyed at the sufferance of any monarch or government. Liberty is the inviolable birthright of all. The right of revolution proclaimed by the Declaration flows directly from this notion of inviolability: it is to secure people’s divinely endowed and unalienable rights that governments, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” are established. The people consequently have the right and indeed the duty to alter or abolish a form of government that becomes tyrannical.
The Declaration contains several other references to a higher power. The introduction states that the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitle the American people to a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the conclusion, Congress appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world” for the rectitude of its intentions and professes its “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” In each case, reference to a deity serves to validate the assertion of independence.
The genius of the Declaration is the inclusive way the divine is given expression. The appellations of God are generic. Adherents of traditional theistic sects can read the words “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Supreme Judge,” and understand them to mean the god they worship. The claims made on numerous Christian websites attest to this. Yet opponents of dogma read those same words and see an embracive, non-sectarian concept of divinity. This is no small testimony to the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers. All Americans could support the Revolution and independence. All can regard their rights as unalienable, their liberty as inviolable.
Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution contains no reference to God. At first, this may seem odd. Why did the men who drafted the Declaration invoke a Supreme Being several times, while the men who drafted the Constitution did not mention a higher power even once? Only six individuals signed both documents, so it could be hypothesized that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that convened in Philadelphia in 1787 were a different and less religious group then the delegates to the Continental Congress, or perhaps that the delegates to the Continental Congress were savvy freethinkers cynically manipulating people’s belief in God to win support for their overthrow of British rule. Neither explanation holds water. Some of the Founders were conventional Christians and some were not, but the belief in a deity implied in the Declaration was sincere and likely universal among the delegates to both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. And a belief in the possibility of divine favor was held by even some of the least religious Founders. So, again, why no invocation of God in the second major founding document?
The threefold answer lies in the stated purposes of the Constitution, its religious neutrality, and the theory of government it embodies. Whereas the Declaration explained and justified a rebellion to secure God-given rights, the Constitution is a blueprint for stable and effective republican government in a free country. The Preamble to the Constitution declares that its purposes are “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” These are wholly secular objects; religious references are extraneous in a document drafted to further them.
Eighteenth century America was religiously diverse, and by the time of the Revolution religion was widely viewed as a matter of voluntary individual choice. The Constitution acknowledged these realities and, unlike contemporary European political orders, promoted no sect and took no position whatsoever on theological issues. There is no state religion and Article VI of the Constitution provides that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The absence of references to a deity in the Constitution is consistent with the strict religious neutrality of the entire document.
The Constitution established a strong national government to replace the relatively feeble Confederation Congress created by the Revolutionary-era Articles of Confederation, but the Constitution is hardly a document glorifying top-down power. On the contrary, the theory of government underpinning the United States Constitution is popular sovereignty. The government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, not from an assembly of elders, not from a king or a prelate, and not from a higher power. The stirring opening words of the Preamble, “We the People of the United States,” make it clear both who is establishing the government and for whose benefit it exists. There is no consent required beyond the will of the people for the people to govern themselves.
This view that the Constitution is a bold assertion of popular sovereignty is often countered by pointing out how elitist some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were and how allegedly undemocratic the document they drafted was. Only the members of the House of Representatives were initially chosen directly by voters. Senators were to be chosen indirectly by state legislatures, and the President by electors appointed by the state legislatures.
This criticism confuses an admittedly elitist preference for government by the able with a theory of power emanating from above. The Constitution not only rejected monarchy, but all forms of hereditary privilege and arbitrary rule. It established fixed rules that delimited the powers of the governors, not the rights of the governed. It is to the citizens and the states, not to the executive, that legislators are answerable. The source of all legislative and executive power can be traced, directly or indirectly, to the people.
And in the early years of the American republic, the people in question were deeply suspicious of power. There was considerable opposition to the Constitution as initially drafted, both in the state conventions called to ratify it and among ordinary Americans. Opponents believed that a centralization of authority would lead to tyranny and argued either for outright rejection or, at a minimum, for amendments to limit the powers of the new government and safeguard liberties. In such an anti-power environment, few Americans wished to see their new rulers claim, as European rulers did, that their authority was divine in origin. In creating a political order based on popular sovereignty, the Founding Fathers thus turned prevailing European political theory on its head. In place of the divine right of monarchs, the Declaration asserted the divine rights of all men, and both the Declaration and the Constitution source the legitimacy of political rule exclusively in the consent of the governed.
The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution do not therefore represent competing views of the existence of a Supreme Being or its role in American political life. They are two sides of the same coin. When read together, the Declaration and Constitution tell us that the people’s rights are divine in origin, sacred and unalienable, while governments are human in origin, answerable to the people and dependent entirely on their consent.
Plenty of people are saying theocracy, or were until it kind of went out of fashion politically.
And plenty of churches are revealing the taint of dominionism, even if they don’t explicitly teach it or dare to say it. The whole “improve your life through God” cult. It’s the apostasy that we were warned about, or at least a part of it. Even “improve the world” can be a bit suspect if something like social justice becomes your religion.
I’m sure the founders called upon God privately. As proof of that, we still exist! That’s what the Israelis say too.
...It cannot be overlooked that the entire argument of "declaring independence" from tyranny was worded as such because of Biblical prohibitions of "Rebellion"...
"For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king."
http://biblehub.com/kjv/1_samuel/15-23.htm
Jefferson needed to word the Declaration of Independence from British Tyranny in the manner that he did in order to avoid putting forth a national position of the sin of rebellion!
Jefferson would have had no reason to declare independence from Tyranny so eloquently if the Bible had not been so specific about the evil of "rebellion".
Lincoln also must have understood this. I faintly recall Lincoln using the word "Rebels" for the Confederacy, and this moniker carried a terrible religious weight against the Southern cause, a weight our modern day mindset cannot truly fathom.
The 'law' Constitution mimics the 'law' of God... Any student worth their salt in the WORD would know who rains Supreme. Course now, Jesus did foretell what would be of those that sit in the seat of Moses, the law-giver. It reads like today's newspapers/internet and boob tube. No one can attribute 'precedence' to being from God, that is a man made tradition. The Supremes bucked the Constitutional 'system' right out the gate.
I didn’t cite that as proof of intentional theocracy. You made that up.
But the references are there and they are proof of what most of the founding fathers believed.
Whatever Jefferson was, he clearly studied the Bible, having composed two works about Jesus.
“No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances towards rational Christianity.”...
“I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also.” - Jefferson letter to Adams
Jesus’ life was the only event in human history to prompt everyone on the planet set their watches.
Eighteenth century America was religiously diverse, and by the time of the Revolution religion was widely viewed as a matter of voluntary individual choice. The Constitution acknowledged these realities......and in its omission of key contexts of these statements, presents a very different picture to the contemporary reader than the actual context in which it was written, and indeed, its foreseeable intention.
The words "religiously diverse", while sounding high-mindedly tolerant, is misleading. The actual religious diversity that the Framers were daily faced with was the array of different sects of Protestant Christianity, who in total formed the majority of the colonial population—perhaps 95%.
The numbers of persons in the colonies professiing Judaism (some 2,000 mostly Sephardic Jews) or even Catholicism (only one colony established RC primacy, but even that law was soon rescinded) were greatly fewer in number. Even so, those creeds shared many commonalities with colonial varieties of Protestantism or Deism, most importantly the belief, regardless of whether or how one regards the Messiah or the Christ in history or in faith, that there is One Supreme God, culturally understood as the God of Abraham. All acknowleged the Ten Commandments of the Jewish people and religion.
The numbers of what were then called "Mohametans", as well as Hindus, Shinto, Buddhists, Ba'hai, et cetera, were so tiny as to have only miniscule impact on the generally accepted moral values of society, based in the Ten Commandments.
Today's diversity cheerleaders like to use such sweeping generalities to place religions with direct and irreducible opposition to JudeoChristian/Western Civ in the same intellectual box—for purposes of promoting an overthrow of traditional American moral values, including whether God even exists, and if so, how is God defined for purposes of suppressing majority Christian social values in favor of the "rights" of people professing Islam, NewAge, and even Satanism? This ignorance of context, also known as "category creep", confounds intelligent discussion and effective decision-making regarding policy, and serves as a means to silence and oppress Christians under the guilt flag of tolerance.
As of 2017, Jews still only represent 2% of American population and muslims, 1%. A far bigger group is those professing no religion. Figures I've seen vary from 15% to 25%; yet professing no religion does not necessarily indicate a non-belief in God; but perhaps only an aversion to or ignorance of belonging to an organized denomination.
The "religious freedom" phrase often cited in reference to our Constitutional Repubic is more accuratly illustrated by a non-sectarian Bible study group of 350 that I belong to. Members from several counties meet once a week, and come from 91 different congregations of various denominations of Christianity, including many types of and Protestants and evangelicals as well as Roman Catholics. That is "religious diversity" in the long American tradition.
Selected sources:
Library of Congress: Religion and the Founding of the American Republic
Wikipedia: Religion in the United States
Facing History blog: Religion in Colonial America: Trends, Regulations, and Beliefs
Excellent, TY
Agreed.
My only point was Jefferson clearly understood the Biblical problem of inciting “rebellion” against authority.
Because he knew it could appear they were instigating a Biblically sinful rebellion, Jefferson’s entire raison d’être for writing a declaration of the Colonies’ independence was to establish a justifiable moral separation from Tyranny.
How Jefferson morally justified being a slaveowner etc., in latter years was a problem Lincoln knew he had to deal with.
That’s true. The Declaration not only lays out our reasons for separating from Britain, but warns that such a course is not to be taken lightly.
I’m always comforted at how the entire nation, even Lincoln in one of his speeches, were profoundly affected by the deaths of both Adams and Jefferson on the 50 year jubilee anniversary of the Declaration in 1826.
As Lincoln discussed (I think he gave the speech on July 4th, 1863, after the victories of Vicksburg and Gettysberg) he saw the hand of God on the Union victories in the same way God honored Jefferson and Adams by taking them from this earthly toil on this important American day.
A theocracy is a top-down political system overtly declaring itself aligned with a specific religious tradition. A society is a natural, organic mass of persons whose beliefs influence their thoughts and order their actions. These two things should have remained distinct in American jurisprudence, so that while church may not intrude upon the state, neither should the state have routinely intruded upon the society of believers in Nature's God over the past 70 years, distorting our republic to its present state of utter moral relativism without a unifying basis in law.
As but one example, over the past fifteen years, two-thirds of U.S. state legislatures passed laws specifically limiting marriage to "one man and one woman", indicating that the societies of those states wished to remain within the JudeoChristian traditions representative of their electorate. All, count 'em, all of these laws were overturned by activist judges.
It shouldn’t be the reason we follow Christ, however.
And Jesus improves your life in a totally different way than the one most people in these churches are counting on.
The word “blessing” and the use of A.D. are proof of nothing of the kind. They would have had to be crazy to reject A.D. in particular when it was the only thing anyone ever used at that time for what some now call C.E.
We know they worshipped God, because of other sources. The idea that the use of “blessing” and “AD” is some kind of dogwhistle to the believers is preposterous.
I didn’t say they weren’t believers.
OK, I’ll accept that.
Thanks for clarifying.
What an extremely valuable post. Thank you.
Well said.
They intended it, however, no matter what their vision was.
Not every concept in the Constitution is stated only one way, so it is foolish to say the Constitution writers were not aware of the concept. In fact in this case they were careful to keep the MENTION of God out of it, although the whole thing was inspired by Christian love for others.
Wouldn’t you love to have been in on these discussions? Not everything is covered in the Federalist Papers. Purposely.
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