Debunking D’Souza, Part 3: Christianity and the Founding
We, the People of the United States [recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior and Lord of all], in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The following year, they submitted a slightly different version:
We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the inalienable rights and the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves, our posterity, and all the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This went on from the late 1700s to the late 1900s; the last attempt to add a Christian nation amendment to the Constitution was in 1980. So the opposition to the Constitution at the time was largely Christian. What of the advocacy of it?
4. If the Constitution is based on Christian principles, why did the men who wrote it, advocated and explained its meaning to the people during the ratification debates ever say so? We have the Federalist Papers, written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to explain each provision of the Constitution. In those essays they explain the origin of many of those provisions and there is not a single reference to the Bible or to Christian theology. Given that the Federalist Papers were written to explain and defend the provisions of the Constitution to a predominately Christian populace, it would certainly have helped their cause to cite Biblical support for those ideas; they could not, because none exists. The men who wrote the Constitution referred to many sources, most of them Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, Montesquieu, Algernon Sydney and others, and also to Cicero, Plato and other Greek and Roman thinkers. The entire process was an exercise in the use of reason, as John Adams made clear in an essay called A Defense of the Constitution of the United States:
The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses…
Once again, D’Souza is shown to have ignored nearly all of the relevant history in order to make a blatantly dishonest point.
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Reginald Selkirk:
May 8th, 2012 at 12:13 pm
“The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”
That doesn’t resemble anything in Christianity.
keithb:
May 8th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
“There is not a single example of a Christian country, from the time of Constantine’s conversion and the ascendance of Christianity as the religion of the Roman empire to all of the governments of Europe, that had anything resembling freedom of religion or conscience.”
Well, the Dutch – as described in Tuchman’s _The First Salute_ – come pretty close.
John Hinkle:
May 8th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
D’Souza’s reply:
Well yeah, that’s a lot of stuff you said there, using a lot of fancy words. But you know what? If you were to subtract the influence of Christianity from the west, what would be left? If you were to subtract it from America, no founding, no Declaration of Independence. That’s what! So there!
The Lorax:
May 8th, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Excellent post, and lovely sources. You really can’t spell it out any clearer than that, especially with regards to changing the wording of the Constitution.
christophburschka:
May 8th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
How quintessentially Christian.
tommykey:
May 8th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
There is one American Constitution that mentioned God in its Preamble:
We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.
Of course, they were the ones fighting to preserve the institution of slavery.
footface:
May 8th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
That’s all you got? A pile of evidence and citations and a coherent argument based on fact?
matty1:
May 8th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Beggar and Negro used to be religions?
tommykey:
May 8th, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Further to my comment @ #6, invoking God clearly didn’t help the Confederacy win the war.
Michael Heath:
May 8th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Dinesh D’Souza is falsely laying claim to a legacy his type were the enemies of exactly like some of his ilk, e.g., Sean Hannity and Glen Beck, falsely claim they’re from the legacy of those who passed civil rights legislation in the late-1950s and 1960s.
The primary set of Christian framers’ approach, including Franklin and Jefferson, utilized human reason channeled through enlightenment thinking which arrived at the promotion of a secular government. That’s in opposition of orthodox Christians of that time, and conservative Christians today, who premise their position on holy dogma and divine revelation which has them demanding we submit to their idea of God whose sovereign over our government and our people.
These two completely different, and competing, systemic approaches is the primary reason today’s science-literate freethinkers have much in common with the theistic rationalists of that day while conservative Christians are stuck making arguments using the same failed dependence on dogma, revelation, and now – lies given how much we empirically understand about reality. They remain opposed to the very type of thinking Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, and Hamilton used in spite of its success then and now. And in spite of the fact Mr. D’Souza and all fundamentalists and evangelicals enjoy the fruits of such thinking via the political liberty and technological innovation it provided – while remaining fiercely opposed to such thinking.
Do any conservative Christian so-called colleges and universities do scientific research?
otrame:
May 8th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Thoroughly OT, but I had a history professor that insisted that Antoine Jomini lost the Civil War; that if the Jomini had never been taught as the ultimate authority on “How Napoleon Did It” in West Point while all those generals were there, then George Washington’s methods might have been taken seriously and the South would have hunkered down and fought a purely defensive war and they would have worn out the North’s will to fight pretty quickly. But since Jomini told them that you win wars by winning battles, they fought battles. Washington (and Sam Houston, for that matter) knew that when you were out-gunned, out-supplied, and out-populated, your army was your country and you should spend every man like precious gold. Lee threw men away to win battles. He won a lot of battles and in do so killed his army and his country.
I don’t think it is quite as simple as that, because the “gentlemen” of the south would have hated fighting such a war and treated Lee like dirt when he actually tried it, early on, but it is an interesting idea that one French historian could have had that much effect on the course of American history.
____
As for the OP, I’m with footface, Ed. I don’t know why you expect to be taken seriously if your are going to go around citing facts and that crap.
It does remind me that I’ve been meaning to re-read Beeman’s Plain, Honest Men, which is a day-by-day history of the Constitutional Convention, with a short history of the ratification. It is an amazingly compelling story that I recommend.
DaveL:
May 8th, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Actually, much of the work of enlightenment philosophers consisted of finding (or rather, constructing) arguments for exactly that. The idea of natural equality between men goes back at least to classical times and pagan philosophers like Aristotle. For example, in Locke’s 2nd Treatise on Civil Government, the beginning of chapter 2 consists of a very Aristotelian appeal to the natural state of man. Nor were these origins unknown to the defenders of the Divine Right of Kings, as can be seen in the 2nd chapter of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha.
So yes, one can certainly find many arguments from that period for equal unalienable rights based in Christian theology. However, they clearly do not represent the genesis of a new idea from Christian roots. Rather, they are attempts to make an old pagan idea palatable to a Christian society.
A “compatibility patch”, as it were.
otrame:
May 8th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Ack!!!
…if you are not your are.
Damn it.
'Tis Himself:
May 8th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
The separation of church and state dates back to Friedrich Barbarossa’s Drang nach Südden and his struggles with Pope Alexander III over primacy in Europe. The post-Roman collapse Europeans had been trying since Charlemagne to re-establish a Christian empire, Roman style, by hadn’t quite got it right. One of the major questions about this empire was who should ultimately be the supreme ruler, the secular emperor who achieved his position through conquest and blood lines, or the Pope? In other words, should ultimate power rest with the church or the state. Should there be a difference between the two? With Barbarossa’s failed attempts to bring Italy under his sway, the two remained separate. The Protestant Reformation led to two centuries of warfare between Catholics and Protestants, culminating in the big finale of the Thirty Years War, leaving a lot of people in Europe wondering if religion was a good idea or not.
This was the mindset of the first English settlers in the Americas. The English Civil War, Cromwell’s tyranny, and the “Bloodless Revolution” of 1688 left a deep impression on English colonists. They created a movement called Deism. The Deists; beliefs were that though they believed, often strongly, in god, they distrusted religions as imperfect human attempts to define and understand god. They looked on the Catholic Church as a bloated, corrupt bureaucracy that wanted power and Earthly wealth. They were committed Protestants who believed that Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church was absolutely necessary but they also saw the resulting Church of England, the Anglicans, as having become just as corrupt as the Catholics. The lesson they drew from the Anglican experience was that religion mixed with government inevitably led to the defilement of both. This is a source of confusion for many modern American religious extremists who can’t seem to bridge the understanding that the American Founding Fathers being devoted to god (except for some atheists like Ben Franklin) and yet distrusting religion. American Christian fundamentalists love to quote religious citations from the Founding Fathers without knowing the context of these remarks.
The American Constitution was framed with a strict separation between state and religion. It is not anti-religious but it says that while religion has a place in society, that place cannot be connected with the government. Anyone can practice any religion or lack thereof, but they cannot force anyone else to practice that religion and the government cannot endorse or support any particular religion.
American religious zealots have a convoluted logical that says they should be able to express their religion in any way they want, including putting symbols on government property, disregarding the Constitution and local laws. If they can’t impose their religious views on everyone else then their religious rights are being abridged. Since their religion says they must proselytize, any attempt to stop them from doing so, all laws and the Constitution be damned, is against their rights.
The point about separation of church and state that seems to be missing is that it’s not about majorities, it’s about all of society. Clearly, even if we are a minority, there are those of us who do not want religion imposed on us and especially don’t want government to aid in the imposition. The zealots don’t get it and, what’s worse, don’t want to get it.
Pierce R. Butler:
May 8th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
tommykey @ # 6: … invoking God clearly didn’t help the Confederacy win the war.
Of course not: Lincoln’s guys had chariots of iron, lots of ‘em.
Chiroptera:
May 8th, 2012 at 5:14 pm
…2dly. Mahometans, who ridicule the Trinity….
Really? In 1788, that was the most serious complaint against the Muslims?
Ah, simpler times.
slc1:
May 8th, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Re otrame @ #11
A number of historians have raised the issue of Jomini as being influential to both sides, in particular, T. Harry Williams, “Lincoln and his Generals”. In particular, a professor at West Point, Dennis Mahan (the father of the naval strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan), who was a student of Jomini’s writings, was most influential in influencing the thinking of the generals on both sides, all of whom were former students.
The most interesting proposal I have read was by the British military historian Major General J. F. C. Fuller who wrote a couple of books on the Civil War. He proposed that the strategy that had the best hope of success for the Confederacy was to form 2 armies.
One in the East that would pursue a Fabian strategy of retreating south to draw in federal forces and attack their extended supply lines. The other in the west that would fight offensively, using the vast space between the Appalachians and the Mississippi for maneuver. The trouble was that Robert E. Lee, who really only cared about events in Virginia, would never have gone along with such a strategy which would have resulted in the State of Virginia being under Federal control.
Thus evolved the Confederate strategy which was to defend everything everywhere together with offensive operations in the North with the expectation that a victory won there would cause the intervention of Britain and France in the war. The result was two invasions of Pennsylvania and Maryland that resulted in two tactical defeats at Sharpsburg and Gettysburg with resultant heavy causalities that the Confederacy could ill afford. Had more aggressive generals been in command of the Union armies at Sharpsburg and Gettysburg, those tactical defeats almost certainly been strategic defeats with Lee’s army cut to pieces.
Another problem for the Confederates was the incompetence of President Davis who, despite his extensive military experience, West Point graduate, Mexican War veteran, Secretary of War in the Fillmore administration, turned out to be a dud as a military strategist. This was in contrast to his opposite number, Abraham Lincoln who had no military experience but turned out to be a great military strategist. As Fuller put it, in military matters, there is no substitute for a fine mind. Lincoln had a fine mind, Davis did not.
jamesredekop:
May 8th, 2012 at 9:58 pm
“If you were to subtract the influence of Christianity from the west, what would be left?”
More than would be left if you subtracted the influence of paganism in the form of the Greeks and Romans.
For that matter, if you accept the idea that the stagnation of Europe after the fall of the western Roman Empire can be laid at least partially at the feet of the Church, subtracting the influence of Christianity may leave you with 500 more years of progress than we have now…
Nemo:
May 8th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
Maybe in the bits about slavery, before they were stricken out?
Scott F:
May 9th, 2012 at 12:52 am
IANAHistorian, but my understanding is that one could reasonably argue that many of the original American colonies were found on religious principles; that many of the founding charters and constitutions of the original states had explicit references to God and His Son, and several of the Colonies had official state churches. But after the ratification of the US Constitution, these state constitutions were rewritten, or amended, to conform to the Federal charter, and the state-supported churches were thrown on their own resources.
Assuming this is reasonably accurate, one might reasonably posit that the individual States were founded on religious principles. But, the federal Nation most certainly was not.
My vague understanding was that part of the problem with trying to insert any kind of religious language into the Constitution was that no one could agree on what it should say. It was partly a states-rights issue, and no one State (or one denomination) wanted another State’s (or denomination’s) religious language to predominate. The only thing that everyone could safely, ultimately agree on was to have no religious language; to make the Constitution religiously neutral. And of course the Deists used these religious divisions among the States to push each side to the “middle of the road” solution.
Again, I don’t know how accurate this is, but it has a certain appeal.
reasonbeing:
May 9th, 2012 at 11:37 pm
Great post Ed. One of, if not the best blog I have read on this topic. You do a nice job asking concise questions that not only challenge D’Souza, but also shed light on various truths. Well done!