It's Sunday

Excerpts from a review of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American by Andrew L. Seidel:

As a historian, I confess to a certain amusement when I hear the Judeo-Christian tradition praised as the source of our concern for human rights. In fact, the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense. They were notorious not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression but for enthusiastic justifications of slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, genocide.

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The threat of Christian nationalism, which frequently promotes white supremacy, racism, sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and bigotry, poses serious risks to our constitutional democracy. Seidel has effectively exposed and unreservedly debunked the myth that America was founded as a Christian (or later Judeo-Christian) nation. Indeed, he has made a powerful case that the fundamental principles on which Christianity is based are entirely antithetical to the Constitution and to the government it established.

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Seidel pauses to devote a separate chapter to the fall-back argument of Christian nationalists that the moral, if not legal, foundation of America is Christianity. He argues that “America is quintessentially a human achievement” with credit going, not to God, but to the genius of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and thousands of others. Seidel rejects the “insidious rationale” that “only Christians are moral.” He cites the findings of Phil Zuckerman in an innovative 2009 study published in Sociology Compass: the least religious countries are the most peaceful and prosperous; have the lowest rates of violent crime and homicide, corruption, and intolerance against racial and ethnic minorities; the highest quality of life; and greatest protection of women’s rights and political and civil liberties. Within the United States, those states that are the most religious have the highest rates of poverty, murder, violent crime, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, and STDs; and the lowest percentage of college-educated adults.

Seidel next addresses the Christian nationalist argument that it is the Declaration of Independence (with four references to God, the Creator, the Supreme Judge, and divine Providence) which proves that America was founded as a Christian nation. Seidel begins by reminding us that while the Declaration declared independence — dissolving the colonies’ ties to Great Britain — it did not create the government of the United States; that was accomplished by the subsequent Constitution, which, as he has already convincingly established, did not create a Christian nation.

But Seidel goes further. He argues that the “Declaration of Independence is an anti-Christian document with snippets of religious-sounding language as window dressing.” This is one of Seidel’s most original insights. “The Christian bible stands directly opposed to the Declaration’s central ideas, including that it is ‘the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [their government], and to institute a new Government.” This revolutionary idea runs directly contrary to Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 13: 1–2):

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

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Seidel points out that the biblical principle that holds that governments are “established by God” is directly contrary to the very text of the Declaration which declares that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.”

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“When the framers, like James Madison, surveyed history,” Seidel writes, “they eschewed theocracy and intolerance, condemning the ‘torrents of blood’ spilled in the name of religion.” Jefferson “looked back on the ‘millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, [who] have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.’” Seidel concludes this analysis by observing that “[a]fter surveying this bloody history, the founders decided to build a wall that would forever separate church and state. They disestablished religion and abolished religious tests for public office. They invented the secular state.”

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The Christian nationalist campaign to subjugate the Constitution to religious dogma has clear and present consequences as the Trump administration is demonstrating in spades. As this review was being written, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to allow a 40-foot Christian cross, commemorating the veterans of World War I, to remain on public property at public expense at a busy intersection in Blandenburg, Maryland (American Legion v. American Humanist Association). Conceding that the “cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol,” Justice Samuel Alito Jr., relying on “history” and “tradition,” wrote for the majority that the “passage of time gives rise to a strong presumption of constitutionality.” Did history, tradition, and the passage of time make racial and gender discrimination constitutional? In a sharply worded dissent, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that the decision “places Christianity above other faiths.” Politically and culturally Christian nationalists have convinced not only five conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents (including two by Trump), but two moderate justices, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, appointed by Democratic presidents, to uphold an admitted 40-foot Christian symbol erected on public property and maintained at public expense, thereby placing “Christianity above other faiths.” That’s a big victory for Christian nationalists.

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Christian nationalists “have successfully persuaded too many Americans” — and one might add, too many Supreme Court justices — “to abandon our heritage, to spurn our secular foundations in favor of their myth.” “It is time to reclaim that heritage and refute these myths,” Seidel writes, and, citing John Kennedy, “We need to remind Americans that our Constitution demands absolute separation between church and state.” “We must raise hell when the wall of separation between state and church is breached,” he pleads. “We must, as Madison warned, take ‘alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.’”

  LA Review of Books

This is an interesting review of what is no doubt an interesting book. In one part, each of the ten commandments is shown to be contradicted by the Constitution. There's lots more. Check it out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.