Our Godless Constitution

[shanek]

Excellent article:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050221&s=allen

It is hard to believe that George Bush has ever read the works of George Orwell, but he seems, somehow, to have grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned best--and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him--is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent.

Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God. The omission was too obvious to have been anything but deliberate, in spite of Alexander Hamilton's flippant responses when asked about it: According to one account, he said that the new nation was not in need of "foreign aid"; according to another, he simply said "we forgot." But as Hamilton's biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton never forgot anything important.

In the eighty-five essays that make up The Federalist, God is mentioned only twice (both times by Madison, who uses the word, as Gore Vidal has remarked, in the "only Heaven knows" sense). In the Declaration of Independence, He gets two brief nods: a reference to "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God," and the famous line about men being "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." More blatant official references to a deity date from long after the founding period: "In God We Trust" did not appear on our coinage until the Civil War, and "under God" was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy hysteria in 1954 [see Elisabeth Sifton, "The Battle Over the Pledge," April 5, 2004].

The Founding Fathers were not religious men, and they fought hard to erect, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "a wall of separation between church and state." John Adams opined that if they were not restrained by legal measures, Puritans--the fundamentalists of their day--would "whip and crop, and pillory and roast." The historical epoch had afforded these men ample opportunity to observe the corruption to which established priesthoods were liable, as well as "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers," as Jefferson wrote, "civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time."

 

[Charlie Monoxide]

I'm not sure if our exulted leader even read a book (that's a Laura thing). I am pretty that he believes his convictions of the US being founded on "christian" principles.

The strategy of repeating a lie (christian principles) or implying an untruth (Saddam was partly responsible for 9/11) is a Karl Rove thing.

Charlie (free us from the tyranny of the god-boys) Monoxide

 

[Phil]

Sweet! Thanks for posting the link.

Gees, if I hear one more person claiming the US was founded on Christian principles . . .

 

[toddjh]

What I love is the way some people point to the fact that the Constitution says "in the year of our lord" when specifying the date. I suppose if they had written that it was a Thursday, that would mean the country was founded on the principles of Norse mythology.

Jeremy

 

[shanek]

What I love is the way some people point to the fact that the Constitution says "in the year of our lord" when specifying the date. I suppose if they had written that it was a Thursday, that would mean the country was founded on the principles of Norse mythology.

The Constitution did originally say that Congress first meets on a Monday, so maybe they were Lunar worshippers?

It does except Sundays from the ten days the President has to return a bill...maybe they were Sun worshippers?

 

[c0rbin]

I cringe everytime I hear the words "founded on Christian principles." I have no problem with someone suggesting that the Constitution and Christianity share similar principals, but going beyond that is inaccurate, contradictory, and retrograde thinking.

 

[aerocontrols]

One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles.

This seems to be the thesis of the article.

Is it a fact that this is a statment that the Administration repeats again and again in order to convince people of its truth?

 

[Bjorn]

Misunderestimated in 2000.
Unredefeated in 2004.

Great sig - how come I didn't notice earlier?

 

[Ladewig]

I vehemently disagree!

... grasped a few Orwellian precepts. The lesson the President has learned best--and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him--is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.

The Orwellian lesson that George Bush has learned best is the manipulation of language for political purposes. Thus, we are given the "Clear Skies Initiative," which requires that the skies are cleaned up sometime in the next 15 years (although some are suggesting pushing the deadline further back).

 

[nelsondogg]

What I love is the way some people point to the fact that the Constitution says "in the year of our lord" when specifying the date. I suppose if they had written that it was a Thursday, that would mean the country was founded on the principles of Norse mythology.

Jeremy

I think January is mentioned somewhere in one of the ammendments. Maybe we should change in God we trust on our coinage to in Janus we trust. Both sides can be heads!

 

[Magyar]

[ I have no problem with someone suggesting that the Constitution and Christianity share similar principals, but going beyond that is inaccurate, contradictory, and retrograde thinking. [/B][/QUOTE]


Didn't the pope declare that the constitution was a heretical document BECAUSE it declaired all men equal?

This notion is NOT a traditional Catholic docrine ( I don't know enough about English Protestants or Lutharan )! The pope declaired this to be against god because it questioned the authority of the church and the power of the Papacy.
If memory served there was a whole (I forgot the word correct word - edict - fromthe pope on the evils of the constitution.
I might be wrong here but as far as I know there is NO Christian sect pre-1800s that believed in the equality of men.
Wasn't the Abolishionist(sp) movement the first to trully mean all men?

 

[Bentspoon]

Ben's correction

Further evidence of the founding father's disposition with regard 'to the founding principles of America" was when, I believe it was Jefferson, wrote, "we hold these truths to be sacred ....." then Ben Franklin came by and boldly crossed out the word "sacred" and substituted "to be self evident"
I think this original manuscript with the big crossout is in the Smithsonian.

Heard this on a PBS special

Bentspoon

By the way - is there any question whether W has read a book? The obvious answer is "no". Reading is very tedious and time consuming when you are trying to read in, what amounts to, a foreign language.

 

[Luke T.]

I never tire of quoting the following two passage from Democracy in America written by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1832. Maybe because I think every American should read the whole book, and sooner or later, someone else from this forum will.

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country. My desire to discover the causes of this phenomenon increased from day to day. In order to satisfy it I questioned the members of all the different sects; and I more especially sought the society of the clergy, who are the depositaries of the different persuasions, and who are more especially interested in their duration. As a member of the Roman Catholic Church I was more particularly brought into contact with several of its priests, with whom I became intimately acquainted. To each of these men I expressed my astonishment and I explained my doubts; I found that they differed upon matters of detail alone; and that they mainly attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country to the separation of Church and State. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet with a single individual, of the clergy or of the laity, who was not of the same opinion upon this point.

And though he did not intend it as such, the next passage serves as a fateful warning to the modern day U.S.:

Such is not the natural state of men with regard to religion at the present day; and some extraordinary or incidental cause must be at work in France to prevent the human mind from following its original propensities and to drive it beyond the limits at which it ought naturally to stop. I am intimately convinced that this extraordinary and incidental cause is the close connection of politics and religion. The unbelievers of Europe attack the Christians as their political opponents, rather than as their religious adversaries; they hate the Christian religion as the opinion of a party, much more than as an error of belief; and they reject the clergy less because they are the representatives of the Divinity than because they are the allies of authority.

In Europe, Christianity has been intimately united to the powers of the earth. Those powers are now in decay, and it is, as it were, buried under their ruins. The living body of religion has been bound down to the dead corpse of superannuated polity: cut but the bonds which restrain it, and that which is alive will rise once more.

 

[shanek]

I might be wrong here but as far as I know there is NO Christian sect pre-1800s that believed in the equality of men.

I believe the Quakers did, but I wouldn't swear to it.

 

[shanek]

Re: Ben's correction

Further evidence of the founding father's disposition with regard 'to the founding principles of America" was when, I believe it was Jefferson, wrote, "we hold these truths to be sacred ....." then Ben Franklin came by and boldly crossed out the word "sacred" and substituted "to be self evident"
I think this original manuscript with the big crossout is in the Smithsonian.

I have a copy. It says "sacred and invioble" which is scratched out to be replaced with "self-evident." It doesn't say who made the change, but Franklin makes a change elsewhere and puts his name to it, and the handwriting is different, so it's apparently not Franklin. It might be Adams, he made a lot of changes, or it might be Jefferson self-editing.

 

[Gwyn ap Nudd]

This notion is NOT a traditional Catholic docrine ( I don't know enough about English Protestants or Lutharan )! The pope declaired this to be against god because it questioned the authority of the church and the power of the Papacy.
If memory served there was a whole (I forgot the word correct word - edict - fromthe pope on the evils of the constitution.

I'd have to look it up to see if there was actually one published on this issue, but the word you are looking for, the official name of these kinds of proclamations by the Pope, is "bull."

 

[ceo_esq]

Didn't the pope declare that the constitution was a heretical document BECAUSE it declaired all men equal?

This notion is NOT a traditional Catholic docrine ( I don't know enough about English Protestants or Lutharan )! The pope declaired this to be against god because it questioned the authority of the church and the power of the Papacy.
If memory served there was a whole (I forgot the word correct word - edict - fromthe pope on the evils of the constitution.

Some corroborating evidence would be greatly appreciated. Circumstantial indications suggest to me that this story is unlikely to be true.

For one thing, I can locate no record of any pronouncement by Pius VI (pope from 1775 to 1799) resembling what you describe.

For another thing, John Carroll of Maryland (handpicked by Pius VI as the first U.S. Catholic bishop) represented to Congress the need for guarantees of religious liberty in the new Constitution. Indeed, Carroll (together with his brother Daniel, who actually signed the Constitution) is often attributed partial credit for the presence of the Constitution's "No Religious Test" Clause and related clauses. It seems improbable that the Vatican would issue a bull condemning a document in which the pope's own "man on the ground" in the United States had collaborated, or indeed that Daniel Carroll (given his brother's special clerical status) would have signed his name to the document and lobbied for its ratification if there were a realistic chance that it was headed for a collision with the pope.

At the same time, I can find no obvious basis in late 18th-century Catholic thought or doctrine for a hypothetical papal objection to the Constitution, except possibly an objection to the extension in Article I, Sec. 9 of the slave trade through 1808, which the Catholic Church had already condemned. But that would have been an objection based on more or less the opposite grounds from the one you're suggesting.

I might be wrong here but as far as I know there is NO Christian sect pre-1800s that believed in the equality of men.
Wasn't the Abolishionist(sp) movement the first to trully mean all men?

I think you ought to clarify what you mean by "the equality of men". After all, the notion of equality enshrined in the original Constitution is not exactly the same notion that generally prevails today (for example, as we know, the original Constitution condones both domestic slavery and the external slave trade). And there are both spiritual and political senses in which the notion of equality can be considered. What exactly did you have in mind in your previous statement? When we know that, perhaps we can answer your question.

I suspect that you will be surprised by the answer, however.

 

[chulbert]

Re: Re: Ben's correction

I have a copy. It says "sacred and invioble" which is scratched out to be replaced with "self-evident." It doesn't say who made the change, but Franklin makes a change elsewhere and puts his name to it, and the handwriting is different, so it's apparently not Franklin. It might be Adams, he made a lot of changes, or it might be Jefferson self-editing.

I'm having trouble finding a reference to this on the 'net. I don't doubt the accuracy, I'd just love to see a picture if possible.

 

[ceo_esq]

I cringe everytime I hear the words "founded on Christian principles."

At some point I think it would be useful to discuss what is potentially meant by the notion that the United States was (or, conversely, was not) "founded on Christian principles". In my view, the statement The United States was founded on Christian principles can reasonably be employed to convey a variety of meanings, some of which render the statement patently false and some of which might render the statement arguably true, at least partially.

I note that along the spectrum of plausible meanings of the phrase The United States was founded on Christian principles, the only ones likely to be adequately rebutted by scouring the Constitution for references to God are pretty narrowly clustered at one end.

In previous discussions in these pages over the related question of the relationship between American law and Judeo-Christian legal principles (which some of you may recall), I have raised a similar point. In either context, I think it's imprudent to approach the question with an excessively reductive reliance on the Constitution; such an approach tends to collapse the distinction between the text of that document on the one hand, and far broader and richer concepts such as "American law" or the "American nation" on the other hand (duly noting, of course, that both predate the Constitution in a significant sense).

 

[crimresearch]

Originally posted by Magyar
I might be wrong here but as far as I know there is NO Christian sect pre-1800s that believed in the equality of men.
Wasn't the Abolishionist(sp) movement the first to trully mean all men?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As mentioned, the Quakers had rejected slavery early (mid to late 1700s), in keeping with their belief that there is that of God in all people.

Maybe not unanimously or perfectly, but in a manner that stood out from others.