US Founded on Religion ?
I could argue that the US was not founded on scriptures, or the Christian Religion by pointing out the Treaty of Tripoli. The US was not founded on or by any one religion. It states: 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 Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] 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.
The Treaty of Tripoli (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary) was the first treaty concluded between the United States of America and Tripolitania, signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, and at Algiers (for a third-party witness) on January 3, 1797. It was submitted to the Senate by President John Adams, receiving ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797, and signed by Adams, taking effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797.
If you recall John Adams was one of the founding fathers. You can find the Ten commandments in any form of religion and or moral status. As history will also show the basis for the U.S. Constitution was The Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was a document signed amongst the thirteen original colonies that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution it’s drafting by a committee appointed by the Second Continental Congress began on July 12, 1776, and an approved version was sent to the states for ratification in late 1777. The formal ratification by all thirteen states was completed in early 1781.
Even when not yet ratified, the Articles provided domestic and international legitimacy for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe and deal with territorial issues and Native American relations. Nevertheless, the weakness of the government created by the Articles became a matter of concern for key nationalists. On March 4, 1789, a general government under the Articles was replaced with the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. The new Constitution provided for a much stronger federal government with a chief executive (the president), courts, and taxing powers.
If the U.S. was founded on the Christian religion, the Constitution would clearly say so — but it does not. Nowhere does the Constitution say: “The United States is a Christian Nation”, or anything even close to that. In fact, the words “Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, Creator, Divine, and God” are never mentioned in the Constitution — not even once. Nowhere in the Constitution is religion mentioned, except in exclusionary terms.
When the Founders wrote the nation’s Constitution, they specified that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” (Article 6, section 3) This provision was radical in its day — giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had.
None of the Founding Fathers were atheists. Most of the Founders were Deists, which is to say they thought the universe had a creator, but that he does not concern himself with the daily lives of humans, and does not directly communicate with humans, either by revelation or by sacred books. They spoke often of God, (Nature’s God or the God of Nature), but this was not the God of the bible. They did not deny that there was a person called Jesus and praised him for his benevolent teachings, but they flatly denied his divinity.
Some people speculate that if Charles Darwin had lived a century earlier, the Founding Fathers would have had a basis for accepting naturalistic origins of life, and they would have been atheists. We’ll never know, but by reading their own writings, it’s clear that most of them were opposed to the bible and the teachings of Christianity in particular.
If indeed the members of the First Continental Congress were all bible-believing Christians, would there ever have been a revolution at all? If you read 1 Samuel 15:23 it reads “For Rebellion is the Sin of Witchcraft.” This passage refers to humans rebelling against god, a statement that establishes the precedence of unconditional subservience which is further illustrated, very explicitly, by the following two passages:
1 Peter 2:13: “For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.”
Paul wrote in Romans 13:1: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resist authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”
Would our Founding Fathers have initiated a rebellion if they thought it was a sin equal to witchcraft (a crime punishable by death)? The bible gives clear instructions to Christians on how to behave when ruled under a monarchy, as the Founders clearly were. The Founders obviously did not heed what was written in the bible. If they were, in fact, good Christians, there would never have been an American Revolution.
Compare the above passages with what is written in the Declaration of Independence: “When a long train of abuses and usurpation… evinces a design to reduce (the people) under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…”
Christians offer up the Pilgrims as an example of our nation’s Christian founding. That is sheer ignorance on their part. The Pilgrims weren’t the ones who crafted the Constitution that governs our nation! They weren’t the ones who rebelled against England. The Pilgrims fled from horrible religious persecution in England only to practice the SAME HORRIBLE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION here. The “religious freedom” so often spoken of in regards to the pilgrims was espoused by them only when they were the victims.
It was not based on any principle of fairness — it was a belief born of weakness, to be forgotten in their moment of power. Christian Colonists branded on-Christians on the forehead with red-hot irons, bore them through their tongues, confiscated their property and threw them in jail, hanged them and burned them at the stake — THAT is what happens when Christians have their way!
I keep hearing in many groups, a lot of Patriotic groups that voiced their opinion to “stand away from” or “separate from” the non-Christian members. This is a direct example of what the founding fathers wanted to fix. the Constitution that did away with Christian persecution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” That means people can freely exercise whatever religious belief they wish, Christian or not.
Thanks to the Constitution, Christians can no longer persecute and kill those who do not agree with them. American historian Richard B. Morris, in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, identified the following seven figures as the “key” Founding Fathers:
John Adams
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
John Jay
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
George Washington
Many documents were made by each Founding Father as to their point of view on Religion. The Following are just a few from each Founding Father
John Adams:
“As I understand the Christian religion, it was and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?” -letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816
“The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahoos brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.” — letter to John Taylor
Benjamin Franklin:
“I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works … I mean real good works … not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing … or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.” — Works, Vol. VII, p. 75
“If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England.”
“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches,” -in Poor Richard’s Almanac
Thomas Jefferson
“The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation is ever dangerous. Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to right or left might place Him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the Being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle Him in the web of the law. He was justifiable, therefore, in avoiding these by evasions, by sophisms, by misconstructions and misapplications of scraps of the prophets, and in defending Himself with these their own weapons, as sufficient, ad hominem, at least. That Jesus did not mean to impose Himself on mankind as the Son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in the lore.” — Thomas Jefferson’s letter to William Short, August 4, 1820
“But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in its true light, as no imposter himself, but a great reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a materialist; he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.” — letter to William Short, April 13, 1820; Definition of a Materialist
I included these passages from what I could find while having a long debate on the origins of the United States and if indeed it was a nation founded on the Christian religion. In my findings, I can not assert this fact. I can only assert that the Founding Fathers were a mix of Christians and Diestist and all agreed on distancing the United States from being a Religion run Nation so that all men can be free to do as they feel is right.
They define “GOD” as a universal being and in nature nothing more. The Republic to which the United States was founded on made sure that all men were free. The pledge of allegiance did not even include the word “God” it did not appear until 1954, at President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s urging, the Congress legislated that “under God” be added, making the pledge read:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
It did not appear on our money until a law was passed in July 1956 making “IN GOD WE TRUST” the national motto and then it was added to the money between 1957 to 1966.
Be for this the wording was “In God is our Trust” that originated in “The Star-Spangled Banner” and was the battle cry for the 125th Pennsylvania Infantry at the battle of Antietam in 1862 during the civil war according to Ted Alexander, Chief Historian at Antietam National Battlefield.
It does not appear that religion or what is argued Christian Religion was the foundation of the United States. Just men with faith in a higher power and we all can agree that is called “God” and the idea of God changes from Religion to Religion, culture to culture.
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