God and the Constitution

A reader writes, in reply to this post below:

....our forefathers bled and died so that we could be free. They were radicals, and rebels, but they were also Godly men. Not Muslim, Buddist or Atheist, this country WAS founded on the basic principals of the Bible. Not the Q'rann or any other book of false gods. The Bible. And as much as this country says it's free, it is only free because of the basic principals that it was founded upon. America is special BECAUSE of those specific principals. When the Constitution was written there was nothing in it about seperation of church and state. That was later in a letter that John Adams wrote SUGGESTING a separation. Whether or not, the "others" want to admit it, this is a country founded on the deep belief of God. Not Allah, not Buddah, not Science.

It's amazing to me that the Christian Right has had such a hard time seeing the plain facts about the Constitution. It is really not ambiguous or complex at all.
Historian Garry Wills has it right: The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government—until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present. (The best book to read on this subject is Will's Head and Heart: American Christianities.)
I am not suggesting that America as a nation was not religious or majority Christian. It clearly is the most religious country in the West and remains majority Christian (of which I am a happy part). Yet when the Constitution was written, in which are found the 'basic principles' that every President vows to protect and defend, there was nothing in it about God. It is not a religious document but a legal and political document, devoid of religious reference, except to prohibit 'religious tests'.

That doesn’t mean the founders didn’t believe in God (e.g. John Adams was Unitarian, James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were deistic Anglicans, others were Congregationalists, Quakers, Lutherans, Catholics, etc), but it does mean that they were intentionally 'disestablishing' the church (no state-sponsored or promoted church, unlike England and Europe in general) and keeping the state and church insulated from each other, for the good of both. (First Amendment.)

This of course benefited many churches (like Methodist and Baptist), while hurting others (the Congregationalist established church of New England and the established Anglican Church of Virginia). It has provided freedom for all Christian denominations, and even non-Christians, to practice their religion freely without government interference or partiality or discrimination. This is the basic reason that we are the most religious people in the Western world. It follows that our beliefs and ethical positions are also reflected in the people we elect to serve in government positions and therefore influence public policy.

Furthermore, not only is there no mention of God in the Constitution, and not only is there to be no ‘establishment’ of religion but complete religious freedom, but there is also a specific prohibition of any religious test for holding national office: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” (Article VI, Section 3) The plain, 'strict' meaning of this is that any person, regardless of their religious faith (or no faith at all), is eligible for any national government office.

So when the Christian Right speaks about America as a 'Christian nation', it is true that we are majority Christian. But it is not correct to say that our Constitution is Christian in any direct sense. Which of course is why Jews and Muslims, not to speak of others, can become American citizens and pledge their full allegiance to the Constitution without violating their own religious faith.
In all of this, I am not necessarily arguing that this is the way it should have been (in fact, I've argued elsewhere that Methodism should be the established religion!). I'm just saying that that is the way it was. If anyone wants to try and change the Constitution to more accurately reflect their religious views, be my guest. There's an amendment process for that. I don't, however, think that would get very far.