One of my proudest boasts as a schoolboy was an ability to both identify and spell what my teacher insisted was the English language’s longest word: antidisestablishmentarianism. I had, of course, no idea what it meant. Now I know that it defines the political third rail onto which John McCain threw himself when he recently said that the United States was established as a “Christian nation.”
No, it wasn’t! Or so answered a chorus of critics, heading off an inevitable denigration of minority religions - and no religion. The disestablishmentarians always point out that the Constitution nowhere mentions God, and that the founders were Deist gentlemen whose God was so impersonally detached from history as to be not recognizably Christian at all. The framers of the American political system, appalled by what “establishment” had led to in Europe, took pains to set their government on a religiously neutral path.
But government is not nation. Just because McCain’s assertion is dangerous - as I believe it to be - does not mean it is untrue. For one thing, what the founders intended may weigh less than how the nation developed over the next two centuries. The Constitution created “an open national space,” in the scholar Mark Noll’s phrase, but, Noll says, instead of it being filled with Alexander Hamilton’s economic planning, Thomas Jefferson’s yeomanry, or John Adams’s communalism, that space was seized by unexpected 19th-century “awakenings” of evangelical fervor.
Christian religion, from prairie preachers to elite universities, became the main “arbiter of national culture.” Eventually, Protestant revivalism, immigrant Catholicism, and African-American Gospel jelled into the public zealotries of “civil religion,” a term coined by Robert Bellah in 1967 when such religion braced the nation - and the government - in its contest with “atheistic Communism.” Jewish participation in this implicitly Christian consensus was necessarily uneasy. When Dwight D. Eisenhower underwent baptism in the White House 12 days after his inauguration in 1953, he showed how these pressures could squeeze the national leadership. This was the era of Billy Graham’s “Crusade,” a word Ike himself had used to define his war making.
The danger in mixing religion and nation lies in the way these two enterprises have exploited one another, each to advance its separate cause. This is as old as the early-4th-century emperor Constantine, who used Christian orthodoxy as a club with which to enforce political control of his vast empire. (The Nicene Creed was a loyalty oath composed at his order, by the Council of Nicea in 325.) At the same time, Christian leaders happily enlisted Constantine’s legions to suppress heresy. When the word “Christian” is used today, the broad movement it defines owes as much to Constantine as it does to Jesus Christ.
Even pious Americans have been properly wary of efforts to use state power to enforce uniformity of conscience. The vaunted separation of church and state is a minimal protection from such abuse, but civil religion points to a need for the broader separation of religion and nation. That protection comes not from law, but from the knowledge of citizens, which is unreliable. The fact that, since the founding of the United States, Christianity has been much used, against the intentions of the founders, to justify governmental impositions and adventures is one cause for concern. That is what McCain’s critics warn of, in the name of a better America. The last thing needed today is a Christian nation embarked on a new crusade, at home or abroad.
But a warning must be sounded in the name of a better Christian religion, too. What’s bad for the state can be worse for the church. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and all religious minorities are assaulted by even implicit claims of a “Christian nation,” but so are Christians. A government that blesses itself in the name of Jesus Christ, while waging war and advancing empire, must first demolish the meaning of who that man was - three centuries before Constantine.
Scholars know very little about this Galilean rabbi (nothing, for example, about his attitude toward homosexuality), but there are two things that can be said with certainty. Jesus lived and died in resistance to the Roman empire. And Jesus rejected violence. If there are two notes of identity that go to the heart of what America has become, they are violence and empire. A Christianity that makes its peace with those, as has so often happened, is an apostate religion. John McCain, and the objects of his appeal, betray the nation - and the faith.
–James Carroll
© 2007 The New York Times Company
Thank you for mentioning the Nicene Creed and its plain implication of which 99% of all Christians are completely unaware. The Christian faith as it emerged after that date is simply a matter of imperial decree that forcefully ended a theological conference. It also gave license to kill those who didn’t buy the new precepts and started eons of religious persecution while still being incapable of preventing schisms. Why one would base anything on something as volatile as theology is beyond me. One implication the Founders made was to not seek a deity’s blessing for the new state. This was actually the only thing entirely new about the Constitution, all else had been assembled from previous essays at statehood. But they realized that blessings aka the beseeching of divine protection had not worked for ANY of the hundreds of states that had come before theirs. They’ve all had those ‘blessings’ and yet had succumbed to war, defeat, disaster and decline. So, akin to a doctor who finds a prescription has no effect on the patient they decided to skip it. Skip skip, hurray!
Christianity is a force for good when it is kept in the churches and homes where it belongs and the beliefs are applied indirectly to our society. When it is attempted to be forced into schools and government entities, it only causes trouble for them and also for Christianity.
I believe Carroll could have written a better piece if he had gone into some depth in analyzing how the elites used Christianity to convince the rubes that the atheistic Soviet Union was evil and so all of its ideals and economic programs had to be evil as well.
Before the Soviet Union, the economic elites in the US were becoming less and less religious, as their new belief system of Social Darwinism was known to obviously conflict with the tenets of Christianity. It is more of a modern phenomenon that Orwellian techniques have been developed and implemented to the extent that the rubes can be manipulated into the doublethink of simultaneously holding beliefs in Christianity and unbridled capitalism.
History clearly shows that there have been very few free societies in which the government was dominated by a religion and dictated policy.
Billy Graham was chief among those who railed against Soviet communism, against British socialism and against unions while he worked to rebrand the U.S. as a Christian nation. I’ve spent the last five years examining his embrace of McCarthyism, his advocacy for MacArthur’s Chinese adventure and on up to his blessing of G.W. Bush’s new crusade. Meanwhile he sided with multinational corporations to fight trade sanctions against countries that violated human rights and worked with oil companies as they cleared out indigenous tribes in Latin America.
During my research I found that James Carroll saw through the enterprise long ago, and here he continues to offer his clear insight.
If you’re interested you can read more about my work at http://theprinceofwar.com
I agree with Kernel’s post above.
While we know that too much religion has damaged American government in the last 10 years or so, it’s just as arguable that too much political influence put through incorporated churches has caused considerable damage to religion and faith.
Churches can adopt doctrines and publish them. But only individuals can believe, feel, repent, love and serve. The institutions just can’t do those things, but they can–and do–sometimes serve as impediments to some of the living breathing folks who are trying to do those things. The more the doctrine follows political positions, the greater the impediment becomes too.
The religion/politics conundrum is a question of ultimate authority.
To whom does one owe the highest allegiance?
Politics, if we define it narrowly as ‘rule of law’, necessitates that laws (ultimately the Constitution, in the USA), are owed allegiance because those are the rules that we all agreed to live by and are the behaviors that we expect from everyone in order to get along.
If you don’t agree with a law, a rule, you are free to try to change it.
Religion necessitates that the rules to live by, the behaviors expected, are decreed by self-proclaimed experts who are owed allegiance due to their declared closeness to whichever Almighty is convenient.
If you don’t agree with them, well, tough. You can go to hell.
The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796 and at Algiers January 3, 1797, states in article 11:”As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…”
It was unanimously ratified by the Senate,and it was endorsed by President John Adams. This is what the founders believed, not its currently professed opposite.
Today there is a great debate in America regarding religion and the state, FINE.
But in a purely historical sense, please James Carroll, pick up a history book. Back in 1700’s, whether on the European continent or in any European colony, religion was part of politics.
One thing your founding father’s established in your constitution were mechanisms to try and prevent the protestant/catholic wars, and other minority christian sect persecutions that were common in Europe. ALMOST everyone in 1700’s in Europe and all the colonies were “CHRISTIAN”.
Unless I am reading my history books incorrectly, the purpose was “freedom to worship any way you want.” But almost everyone was CHRISTIAN.
I am not saying Any of This has Any Relevance in todays world.
I am not saying Any of This has Any Relevance in todays world.
The current political issues in America is a whole other subject, but history is history.
Now MaCain was obviously not just making some historical comment, he was catering to a current interest group.
So the subject of the article is relevant.
I would even venture to say that the only reason why this separation of state and church is even a subject is because historically the state and the christian church were very close in America, but today in your country there are people who want to move toward a more secular government, and there are church groups resisting that change.
Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s, and hope that Caeser doesn’t want too much.
There are times when I am struck by the ‘bubble’ phenomenon of both church and state. Both have inflated via hierarchic elitism and are in effect imploding conceptually. The surfactant having been populi beguiled by the aesthetic of accumulation of all sorts.
In Christianity, the normative teachings were for personal alignment with the divine and are reflected in all of the revealed traditions. One is counseled on seeing through the fearful and how to be just in order to journey in balance. What is rarely spoken of is the cumulative strength of individual practice which results in capacity building. It is not a matter of being good or bad. Its a matter of engaging evolution.
The notion that under our clothes we are beasts is balderdash of a Constantinian order. To paraphrase an ancient Islamic maxim, if you seek human nature look higher! An ancient Mayan greeting is “In Lakhe” - roughly translated means ‘I am another yourself’
It is interesting that the presence of what are now world religions began to blossom at a time when oral transmission was being supplanted with the written word which, if my understanding is correct, was used to keep records of accounts for accumulation of goods.
Plato regrded the written word as “pharmacon”, both the poison and the remedy. I increasingly wonder if his addressing this was in classic rhetorical style a call to attention to the oral which requires MEMORY.
Indigenous peoples have been and still are subjected to systematic erasure of oral tradition. Fortunately anthropologists have been awakening to the dynamics of forest peoples in SA and elsewhere who are documented as integrating ecological stewardship in a fundamentally SOCIAL paradigm. These are the teachers we need today!
There are movements for differentiated educational models that value the cultural base of these Indigenous cultures. Unfortunately these haven’t made their way into US curicula - yet.
The one question our Founders never addressed: what if We The People changed our minds? What if we put it to a vote, and the majority cast for The United Christian States of Godmerica? And what if, say, James Dobson ran on the Godmerica Party ticket and won by a landslide? (Are you an enemy of God?)
And what if that happened in ‘08 before We The Other People even realized what the hell was going on?
If I remember history, many of the early colonists came to the shores of America, to flee religious persecutions. Many came from European nations where it was not permitted to practice ones religious practices, due to “state sponsored religion.”
Catholics from the British Isles and Protestants in France suffered terribly then. These are just 2 examples. I believe that separation of church and state means freedom of/from religion. That was the desire of our founders and should still be the desires of Americans.
Author and scholar James Carroll is right on about how the Founding Fathers feared the dangers of Christian or religious nationalism. James Carroll, former Catholic Paulist priest and anti-war activist, has always been a very credible voice in critiquing the errors and abuses of institutional Christianity. To anyone who doubts this, I suggest they read James Carroll’s renowned book, “Constantine’s Sword”.
In the last paragraph of his article, James Carroll makes known his belief that Jesus Christ lived and died in resistance to the Roman Empire. Only until recently, this point has been rarely acknowledged by the Christian religious establishment because since Roman Emperor Constantine, the church has chosen its’ own vision of Empire.
Kivals, in his usual perceptive manner, makes an excellent point about the incompatibility of Christianity and unbridled capitalism and the church’s war with the West against “Godless” Communism.
Having read all of Carroll’s books, I am sure he could provide great depth to Kival’s point of view. The evil of unbridled capitalism has not been overlooked by more than 100 years of Catholic social thought and a current-day movement of progressive Catholics.
I too would be interested in James Carrol’s viewpoint, and other scholars as well, on the fatefull complicity of Christianity with Western capitalism in the war against Godless Communism. This is a most relevent point today, as the Western culture of corporaate consumer capitalism is proving to be, though in a different way, just as Godless as Communism.
So Jesus lived and died in resistance to the Roman Empire and rejeted violence. And this we know “for certain”. How do we know this to be for certain I ask?
Kernal: “Christianity is a force for good when it is kept in the churches and homes where it belongs and the beliefs are applied indirectly to our society. When it is attempted to be forced into schools and government entities, it only causes trouble for them and also for Christianity.”
But it is just as often a force for evil. Children at school bring what they’ve learned at home with them, the notions, the words, the concepts. This continues into adulthood and work. There is no indirect application. If you believe that there is one god in human history, and that the mysteries of the universe are as simple as one book, your foundation is a box. You’ll never understand the outside world while you’re stuck in that box.
I’m with you Mr.d.re the “…for certain”.Increasingly,we read of the search for the historical Jesus and the conclusions that seem to say the evidence is scant.Nothing for thirty years and reports of his last three years written up about fifty years after the “events”.
I agree with and try to practise the basic precepts of Christianity,but these moral and ethical ideas did not originate with Jesus,but would have evolved over many thousands of years.I am sure your founding fathers had similar thoughts and thus framed the constitution in a way that was inclusive to all.
Stilba: “If you believe that there is one god in human history, and that the mysteries of the universe are as simple as one book, your foundation is a box. You’ll never understand the outside world while you’re stuck in that box.”
Yes, and if you believe in your heart that Christ is who he said he was, and “ask, seek and knock”, the “book” will come alive to you and give you both discernment and peace, even in the “box”.
Christianity is not now, nor has it ever been a force for evil. Imposters, rulers, regimes, churches, and even American Presidents using a ruse of Christianity to accomplish political, economic, and conformity objectives are the substance of the evil. They always have been. Christ, the Christ of the word Christianity, no way, no how, didn’t happen, won’t happen, can’t happen.
Christianity has been used, abused, and laid as the reason for doing too many evil and corrupt things in this world, from wars, to capitalism, to conquering other nations, or subjecting them to imperialism that has no basis in Christianity. It is all smoke and mirrors, and sad that those who govern us and then commit these barbaric acts claim it for a higher purpose, or is the Christian way.
2 points.
1) there is a body of evidence from India that Jesus traveled the silk route to study in the high lamisaries, and that many of his teachings are Buddist in nature. This is fact wether you like it or not.
2) all my life I can remember the MSM making a point of announcing on their nightly broadcasts Monday afternoon that the president had attended divine services a XYZ church on Sunday.
This was true for Ike, JFK, tricky Dick, Ford Carter GHW Bush, and Clinton! Reagan ( who always touted ‘his’ Christian foundation ) NEVER went to church once in 8 years. The current occupant of the White House has also not been to church except once ( where the pastor upbraided him for his lack of “Christian values” ) The MSM has carefully avoided this fact through both of those administrations: and whenever I try to point it out to Repug budddies
I get the old WC Fields “get away kid you bother me” attitude.
There seems to be a “cult of personality” around both of these idiots.
Forever is right. Bush’s “faith” is a sham, and here’s why I think so: 1. He never attends church. 2. He does not tithe, or even close. 3. Karl Rove openly mocked fundamentalists in the White House, something a sycophant like him never would have done had his boss been one.
What do the words “Christian”, “War”, “Killing”, “Torture”, have in common? Nothing. Therefore, we are not a Christian nation. Simple as that. Someday the so-called Christians who are in support of this war and this President are going to be in for a big surprise. And it ain’t gonna be nothin nice.
I have to thank some of you for your incredibly insightful comments.
DanielDavid, Ken Mitchell.
oldgoat - I learned something from what you wrote. Thanks!
tech2 said:
Today there is a great debate in America regarding religion and the state, FINE.
But in a purely historical sense, please James Carroll, pick up a history book. Back in 1700’s, whether on the European continent or in any European colony, religion was part of politics.
One thing your founding father’s established in your constitution were mechanisms to try and prevent the protestant/catholic wars, and other minority christian sect persecutions that were common in Europe. ALMOST everyone in 1700’s in Europe and all the colonies were “CHRISTIAN”.
pac sez: “tech”2 apparently got his history book from a zealous christian propaganda press. Many of the founding fathers were not christian. This was the age of Enlightenment, the age of science. Many of the Noblemen in Europe were not of christian faith.
Famous Quotes Regarding Freedom Of Religion:
“The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine.” George Washington
“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion …” from the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by John Adams, June 10, 1797.
“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 the 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, in his historic Danbury letter, January 1, 1802
“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?” James Madison, in “Memorial and Remonstrance”, 1785
“The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of church and state.” James Madison, March 2, 1819
Many of the founding fathers like George Washington and Ben Frankliin were Freemasons. Franklin suspected in his recently published letters that there is no God. Freemasons pledged that they believed in a divine power, but felt that more religious conviction was reserved to the individual. Now if the middle east believed this, there would be the peace that traditional Americans like me are envoking a return to.
Please, lets keep those hoaky religions and zealous holy wars out of our governments (before they get us all killed.)
Thank you.
But there’s more:
“The national government … will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.” Adolf Hitler
pacplyer - Thanks for all the great quotes! I have Christian friends who still believe this country was founded as a Christian nation, and this gives me lots of real facts to pass on.
In addition, for those who say many colonists came to America to escape religious persecution, this is (from what I’ve read) correct. However, it was not that they wanted to establish freedom of religion. Rather, they wanted to establish freedom for their own religion. In New England in particular, the Puritans were strict in enforcing adherence to their own beliefs and went so far as to ban Quakers and other practitioners. The witch trials are only one example.
As I said above, I have read this in many places, but there may be other posters here with different information, and I welcome comments to the contrary so I can do further research.
When George Washington died he did not ask for a minister. His final act was to take his own pulse. How like the Enlightenment mind!
Pacplyer,
If we were in a debate, I would conciede two points:
1) In the Age of Enlightenment, there were many men who called themselves “Christians” but were just playing lip service to a something that was a huge part of society (That includes The Catholic Church, the Anglican Church as well as the early evangelical sects like Quakers etc….)
2)Moreover, if you take the American Evangelical Christian definition of a “Christian”, Then, by that definition, there were many people of the 1700’s that were not Christian by that definition.
But in the 1700’s
1)the Catholic Church, the Church of England, etc… were dominate forces in society. Included in this would be the major Reformation churches like Lutheran.
2) That America attracted many of the persecuted religious sects from Europe, with a promise of freedom of worship, and protection under the law.
If you went back to the 1700’s you would see German Lutherans, English Anglicans, French and Italian Catholics, Slavic Greek Orthodox, etc.. etc.. etc.. all emigrating to an incredible place where, unlike back in Europe all these groups were trying to kill each other, but in America, they were Free and they were neighbours. I venture to guess that you will search the historical record far and wide, before you find any reference to professed atheist immigrants.
This is history as I understand it, but history is open to interpretation, but the problem of interpreting history only comes up when people try and use history to justify their present day actions.
THE DANGER SIGN is when modern political interests try and use history as justification for actions.
When I see people arguing about HISTORY while in a politcal or social debate, I know they are actually arguing about a modern day issue, with one group trying to justify their position by one particular interpretation of history.
Which is why I think progressives and secular humanist have a very strong point in that many men of the Age of Enlightnment were “Christians” al la 1700’s norms. But they may not be Christian a la the 21st Century Evangelical American Christian definition.
Nevertheless, the historical record is clear that in the 1700’s the Christianity of the time was a dominate social force in Europe and in every colony touched by the Europeans. All native cultures were subject to its philosophy sometimes through compassion, sometimes through force.
P.S. here are some GW quotes from American Christian sites:
“You do well to wish to learn our arts and our ways of life and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.
(-George Washington to Delware Indian Chiefs)”
“The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”
(-George Washington to Thomas Nelson)
“back in Europe all these groups were trying to kill each other”
Yes, the early settlers were free to practice their religion and live in peace. While preaching love and tolerance they were killing the natives who were in the way of white European progress. Freedom of religion unless, like the natives they did not believe in the white mans God.
Of course Indians would be happier worshiping Jesus, the other option was death.
“Yes, the early settlers were free to practice their religion and live in peace. While preaching love and tolerance they were killing the natives who were in the way of white European progress”
…and killing them (and their African captives) even if they became Christians themselves!
When President Bush needed the Catholic vote to win his second term, he gave his Presidential medal of honor to Poe John Paul II. Yet when the church needed him to stop the killing of a sick woman by the name of Theresa in the state of Florida he washed his hands and turned it over to our justice system. This quickly became old news as then the Pope died. There was George with an American contingent of Former Presidents to honor the Pope.
The truth of the matter is that the world waits for Jesus Christ to come and rule the world. Many rich republicans actually believe that they are going to heaven along with him. Christ was very specific in letting a rich man know what to do. When Christ comes, and the world doesn’t know, he may already be here. Freedom will be a thing of the past, it will have been traded for obedience to God. The Bush vision of a Democratic world, is exactly as it is right now. For it belongs too much to the people who may believe in God for their own convenience. Religion as we know it now will also become a thing of the past, for their is too much room for hypocrisy. Government and God will become one in a Theocratic state.