Posted on 07/18/2024 5:24:00 AM PDT by SJackson
Deal with it.
You knew that the New York Times wouldn’t let a patriotic holiday like Independence Day pass without taking a subversive shot at patriotism or America itself or her founding. Sure enough, author, editor, and Times columnist Pamela Paul wrote a July 4th opinion piece with a headline that, in addition to being wrong, was insulting to all Americans of faith: “Your Religious Values Are Not American Values.” Predictably, it regurgitates many of the Left’s usual negative tropes about Christianity and our country’s founding.
Allow me to address some of those tropes, and please forgive the belated response to a 4th of July editorial. The news cycle was understandably hijacked by the Trump assassination attempt, but I couldn’t let this Times op-ed go unanswered, because the debate over whether America is a Christian nation is one that continues to rage today, in no small part due to misconceptions about what the term even means. But mostly the debate rages because secular subversives like those at the New York Times work perpetually to dismantle the moral and religious foundations of America and the West.
Pamela Paul begins her article, “Whenever a politician cites ‘Judeo-Christian values,’ I find it’s generally followed by something unsettling.” Of course she does, because as a self-identified “rationalist,” she rejects the biblical basis of our morality – or at least, the parts of it that “unsettle” her. She’s fine with the “Thou shalt not kill” part, she states, but chafes at the “jealous God” part.
She segues quickly to raise the terrifying specter of Christian nationalism which – as I’ve written elsewhere – is the boogeyman the Left relentlessly warns will transform the country into a patriarchal theocracy, a Handmaid’s Tale dystopia in which infanticide is illegal (horrors!) and women are reduced to baby-making slavery. As evidence that Christian nationalism is an ominous Threat to Democracy™, Mrs. Paul cites the mission statement of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. It reads, in part, “doing everything we can to restore the Judeo-Christian foundation of our nation.” This is scary only if you object to Judeo-Christian values.
The crux of her argument is,
Despite what the Christian nationalist movement would have you believe America was not founded as a Christian nation. Nor is it one today. In a pluralistic country, neither the Bible nor Judeo-Christian values are universal…
Yes, of course this is a pluralistic country; people of all faiths and none populate our shores. Being a Christian nation does not mean that every American is, or always was, or must be, Christian. No one who says America was founded as a Christian nation means that Hindus or Buddhists or even satanists are not allowed to live here or worship their gods (or lack thereof) freely. What the expression “Christian nation” means is quite simply that this country was founded on and sustained by Judeo-Christian principles.
What are Judeo-Christian principles? I’m glad you asked. They are the religious moral code that forms the foundation of Western civilization and that powered it to become the freest and most prosperous civilization in history (change my mind). They derive from the Bible, the single most foundational text of the Western world.
By the way, for those who complain that there is no such religion as “Judeo-Christian”: that’s true, but the term is not intended to suggest as much. Judaism and Christianity are distinct faiths, but at the same time they are bound together by the code of values called Judeo-Christian because Christian morality is rooted in the Ten Commandments of Old Testament Judaism. Jesus was a Jew.
Rather than get into a definitive list of Judeo-Christian values, let me just summarize the ones most relevant to the New York Times piece: there is one God who is the source of objective morality and from whom our rights and freedoms flow to all men, who are created in the image of God. These values confer an historically unprecedented dignity and worth on the individual, and are all reflected in the founding documents of our nation. The values of Islam or Shinto or Wicca, etc., are not.
Many argue that we were not founded as a Christian nation because the Founding Fathers themselves held a variety of unorthodox beliefs including and especially deism. Deism posits a god who sets the universe in motion and then acts essentially like an absentee landlord, removed from the affairs of men. But as Mark David Hall writes in Did America Have a Christian Founding?, “there is virtually no evidence that America’s founders embraced such views.” On the contrary, the Founding Fathers routinely referred to God as the “Providence” who most definitely involved Himself in the affairs of men. In the main, the Fathers were all orthodox (with a small “o”) Christians and believed that our freedoms flow from the Creator. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, asked, “Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”
Anyway, Mrs. Paul asserts that “not everyone draws ethical guidelines from religion” and that the Commandment “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” implies “there is one true god.” Sorry, but that’s how monotheism works, and the West’s religious origins lie in monotheism. Maybe that’s not inclusive enough for the atheist left, but monotheism works; the alternative of embracing a pantheon of false gods is a recipe for civilizational disaster.
And contrary to Mrs. Paul, everyone does draw ethical guidelines from religion. As mentioned above, without a god who is the authoritative source of our morality, there is no objective basis for morality at all. Everyone could simply “do what was right in their own eyes” – a quote from the Book of Judges referring to a biblical era that was a time of terrible human misery and moral chaos. That is where we are currently headed, precisely because our civilizational values are breaking down and being replaced by the new pagan faith of expressive individualism.
Paul claims her faith lies in “science or humanity, as disappointing as humanity can be.” First, the cliché that faith and science are irreconcilable opposites is false. In fact, Western science was born out of the Christian impulse to understand the laws of nature and the nature of God Himself through the faculty of reason with which He imbued us. Second, science is not a faith system but an investigative procedure, and as we are all painfully aware after the pandemic, behind the push to posit science as a faith system is a corrupt and controlling cabal of corporate false prophets.
She goes on to complain that the Bible is a questionable moral source because it justifies slavery and “has inspired and abetted many of the world’s most violent and deadly wars.” Let me remind her that it was biblical values that led to the Christian abolition of slavery in the West before anywhere else in the world. As for war, it is endemic to human nature; not only is it ludicrous to think that we would be a more peaceful species without religion, but the “world’s most violent and deadly” ideologies have in fact been atheist, not biblical.
“This Fourth of July,” Paul concludes, “let’s bear in mind that what many Americans value in this country is its inclusion and protection of everyone, regardless of their beliefs.” Yes, of course. That’s called religious freedom, and she can thank the Judeo-Christian convictions of the Founders for the establishment of protections for those “sacred rights of conscience.”
The New York Times’ dismissive headline “Your Religious Values Are Not American Values,” on the birthday of our independence no less, couldn’t be more wrong. Indeed, it is because we have devolved into a post-Christian America today that our country is in such distress. Our nation and civilization will rise again only when we have reclaimed those religious values as our guiding star.
All our rights come from a Creator and not man. Only He can take the rights but if you believe they came from man, then man can take from you and that is a dangerous belief.
“tell a lied often enough and it will become the truth” applies.
Ask the men who made the revolution, they’ll tell you otherwise.
The only reason for a pluralistic society is our Judeo-Christian heritage. Look at the Left and anywhere in the world not sharing that perspective… differing ideas are not tolerated. The Left flourishes here because we are the tolerant ones.
...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other...
To your point, see my reply #6. :-)
It was in the heart of our founders, and perpetrated throughout our history, that God would be a primary source of Americanism.
I counsel young’uns brainwashed by publik skrewling into thinking the Founding Fathers sucked to read what they wrote.
The ones who’ve done so have changed their minds.
Of course we’re a Christian nation. Name another religious figure whose birthday is a national holiday.
“She’s fine with the “Thou shalt not kill” part, she states, but chafes at the “jealous God” part.“
This is the very driving force in leftist God-hate, that GOD has the final word NOT themselves. It’s funny that people will bow and scrape before others who have done big things and become rich but the Author of Time and our universe they meanly begrudge. These insignificant blobs of water and some chemicals have a rude awakening coming. A being as significant as God has every right to demand and get His props. They resent that to hell and back. This self aggrandizement is what make them the most accomplished murders in history.
I compiled the Babylon keyword while looking for something historical, and found a selection of FRchival material, the top section is from Babylon Bee::
Actually, many of the Founding Fathers were Diests, but not necessarily Christian. They certainly refer to God often but there are few references to Jesus.
Relevant sections of the U.S. Constitution:
First Amendment: Protects freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.
Fifth Amendment: Protects against self-incrimination and double jeopardy, and guarantees due process of law.
Fourteenth Amendment: Guarantees equal protection under the law and prohibits states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
Just to mess with folks, use the term “Abrahamic.”
It all goes back to him.
There were several founding fathers concerned with replicating or creating a state religion so they avoided tying to a denomination and were NOT Christian. Personally, I would characterize our founding on Judeo-Christian values and that these rights come from Him and not man.
Doesn't matter what they were. They represented States that were explicitly Christian.
They certainly refer to God often but there are few references to Jesus.
There are two important references to Jesus in the US Constitution.
The part where they exempt the President from working on Sundays, and the part at the very end where it says "YEAR OF OUR LORD."
When America became a nation it was a Culturally Christian Nation. King George III said his worst enemies during the Revolution were the “black Robed” clerics(Presbyterian) in the Colonies.
John Adams,who was what would be called Unitarians today, said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,”
I see no reason why a Bible should not be included in classrooms to show where that Culturally Christian concept came from.
Bookmark.
Conservatives are playing into the hands of the Left by trying to defend religion on secular, cultural terms. People are defending opposition to abortion on the grounds that one doesn't need to believe in G-d to oppose abortion. This is a travesty. The whole point of opposing abortion is to submit to Divine Law. The only grounds on which to adhere to or oppose any religion is Theological.
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