Someone wrote to me once that the USA
is specifically a Christian nation, and I often hear it said that the
American 'founding fathers’ intended America to be Christian or theistic.
This, I assume, is why at the late date of 1954, after a
campaign by the Catholic Knights
of Columbus, Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan sponsored a bill
to amend the Pledge of Allegiance
(an American text sometimes recited
in school) to include the words "under God". On June 8, 1954, Congress adopted
this change.
I believe there is ample evidence that
it is not the case that America is a 'Christian nation'. In fact, the very first
treaty signed by the USA confirms this view in no uncertain terms. Since
the current US administration is so populated with fundamentalist Christians
whose views are apparently influencing domestic and foreign policy, I
thought it would be useful to assemble some quotes on the subject.
Pip Wilson
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, – and as the said States never have
entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan 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.
Treaty
between USA and Libya, signed at Tripoli, November 4, 1796, and at
Algiers January 3, 1797
Senate advice and consent to ratification June 7,
1797
Ratified June 10, 1797
Entered into force June 10, 1797
Proclaimed by the President of the United
States June 10, 1797
As pointed out by Brooke Allen in 'Our
Godless Constitution':
"It is worth
pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded
vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote
in the Senate's history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text
of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in
two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might
expect today."
“George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.”
Steven Morris, 'The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians', in Free
Inquiry, Fall, 1995; Mr Morris gives as his reference, George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr, pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)
Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds,
Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of other trumpery that
we find religion encumbered with in these days?
John Adams, second President of
the USA
Gentlemen, we are not, nor have we ever been a
Christian Nation ...
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or Mohammedan nation.
John Adams
The
doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
John Adams
Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!”
John Adams
The
hocus-pocus phantasy of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and
three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and
thousands of martyrs.
Thomas
Jefferson, third President of the USA, Jefferson’s Works, Vol. IV, 360, Randolph's
edition
No
man [should] be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship,
place, or ministry whatsoever, nor [should he] be enforced, restrained,
molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor ... otherwise suffer on
account of his religious opinions or belief ... All men [should] be free to
profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion,
and ... the same [should] in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their
civil capacities.
Thomas Jefferson; Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779
Among the
sayings and discourses imputed to [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many
passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the the most lovely
benevolence, and others, again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so
much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that
such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate,
therefore, the dross; restore to him the former and leave the latter to the
stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of
dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corruptor of
the doctrines of Jesus.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to William Short, 1820
I have examined all the known superstitions of the word, and I do not
find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature.
They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent
men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been
burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this
coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to
support roguery and error all over the earth.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to William Short
Christianity ... (has become) the most perverted system
that ever shone on man. ... Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were
perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and
importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.
Thomas
Jefferson
I have recently been examining all the known
superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition
(Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded upon fables
and mythologies. The Christian God is a being of terrific character – cruel,
vindictive, capricious, and unjust ...
Thomas
Jefferson
The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus
into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial
constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves ...
these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.
Thomas
Jefferson
The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.
Thomas
Jefferson
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
Thomas Jefferson; Notes on Virginia, 1782
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson; ibid
Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
Thomas Jefferson; Autobiography, referring to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Richard Price, January 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to
Jefferson on October
26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789
They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Dr Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT, January 1, 1802
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Thomas Jefferson ; letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Dr Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them …
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Horatio G Spafford, March 17, 1814
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist?
... Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814
You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible
propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no
man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of
the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.
Thomas Jefferson
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to William Short, October 31, 1819
[I do
not believe in] The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the
creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and
visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity;
original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy,
etc.
Thomas Jefferson; ibid
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to William Short, April 13, 1820
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to James Smith, 1822
I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of
Minerva in the brain of
Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
Thomas Jefferson; ibid
It is between fifty and sixty years since I read [the Book of Revelation], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to General Alexander Smyth, January 17, 1825
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
Thomas Jefferson; letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (the last letter he
wrote)
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of
Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.
Thomas Jefferson
Hence the doctrines which
[Jesus] really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of
what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, & often
unintelligible.
Thomas Jefferson;
'Syllabus of an
Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, Compared with Those of
Others', in a letter to Benjamin Rush (April
12, 1803)
What
influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil
society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political
tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the
liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty
have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government,
instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.
James Madison, fourth President
of the USA
Religion
and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed
together.
James Madison, fourth President
of the USA
During
almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on
trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and
indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both,
superstition, bigotry and persecution.
James Madison; A
Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93
Among
the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than
Moses. Here is an order, attributed to 'God' to butcher the boys, to
massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare
so dishonor my Creator's name by (attaching) it to this filthy book (the
Bible).
Thomas Paine, Anglo-American
revolutionary philosopher
It
is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God
against the evils of the Bible.
Thomas Paine
... the Christian religion
is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they
call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which
was originally paid to the Sun ...
Thomas Paine, 'Origin of Free-Masonry'
Accustom
a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins ... and you
will have sins in abundance.
Thomas Paine
The
Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended
imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.
Thomas Paine
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of.
My own mind is my own church ... Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine; The Age of Reason, pp. 8, 9 (Republished 1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)
All national institutions of churches, whether
Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions,
set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Thomas Paine, ibid
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his
Religion ... has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less
trouble.
Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972,
Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting letter by
Franklin to Exra Stiles March 9, 1790
Lighthouses are
more helpful than churches.
Benjamin Franklin
That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words.
Ethan Allen, American revolutionary commander, organised the citizens’ militia, the ‘Green Mountain Boys’
[I am] denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no
Christian.
Ethan Allen
I am no Christian, except infant baptism make me
one.
Ethan Allen
Prayer to God is no part of a rational religion,
nor did reason ever dictate it.
Ethan Allen
David Frost: Say is
this still a Christian Country?
Billy Graham: No! We're not a Christian Country. We've
never been a Christian Country. We're a secular Country, by our
constitution. In which Christians live and which many Christians have a
voice. But we're not a Christian Country.
*Dr Billy Graham is
an American
evangelist and associate of US presidents; Sir David Frost is a
British interviewer
Note: Christianity did influence the world
view of the 'founding fathers' in many ways. It is true that on September 6, 1774 the first resolution ever made by the Continental Congress said: "Tuesday, September 6, 1774. Resolved, The Rev. Mr. Duche be desired to open the Congress tomorrow morning with prayers, at the Carpenter's Hall, at 9 o'clock."
(The Journals of the Continental Congress 1774 - 1789, Washington DC)
The Bible is not my book nor
Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long,
complicated statements of Christian dogma.
Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809 - '65)
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