The Myth of a Christian Founding
“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”
— John F. Kennedy
From “the beginning, and to some extent ever since Americans have interpreted their history as having religious meaning,” wrote Robert Bellah.[1] Yet this narrative of America being founded on Christian, or even more problematic, Judeo-Christian values[2], is essentially a myth born out of the early 19th century, created and retold for the purpose of anointing the founding, and the nation, with a higher, transcendent meaning. However, this myth is not only exclusionary but downright unAmerican.[3] For instance, Christian and American have come to be almost interchangeable terms, whereas Muslim, Arab, Atheist, LGBTQ, etc. has come to define the “other” to the exclusive — “American.” The myth of a Christian founding in some ways reflects this linguistic phenomenon and perpetuates it. Treating fellow Americans as less deserving the blessings of liberty is Christian Nationalism’s raison d’etre and must be challenged. That starts with reclaiming the past from a revisionist history that seeks to root modern Christianity at the center of the founding.
Myths provide explanations for events not personally remembered, and they legitimize the past while providing a unifying narrative. All societies have myths. The problem is that this myth is exclusionary and justifies the intolerance of people Christian Nationalists deem unChristian and therefore, unAmerican.
New England became the cradle for principles of civic and religious freedom that informed the nation’s development. Daniel Webster helped create this narrative in an 1820 oration, “The First Settlement of New England.” However, the Puritans' flight to America to escape religious persecution is grossly overstated. In the early 1600s, puritanism was still a reforming impulse within the Church of England, with its adherents embracing varying degrees of Calvinism. By the time of the Great Migration (1630s), Puritans were still not a separate religious group but remained a movement within the Church of England, and most stayed in England, where Archbishop Laud’s persecution of religious dissenters was “halfhearted” and “conspicuously inefficient.”[4] In fact, Puritans traveled freely between Boston and London throughout this period. It was not until 1660, with the collapse of the Puritan Commonwealth and the Restoration of the Crown, that Puritans found themselves isolated and forced to re-evaluate their mission. While persecution of religious dissenters undoubtedly took place in England during this time, the large number of people who migrated to New England migrated not for religious reasons but to improve their economic lot. Few thought of migrating there for religious freedom. Moreover, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut were not welcoming places for nonconformists.[5]
Instead of modeling a new government on the tiny theocracies of New England, the framers looked to the former Dutch colony of New York and Huguenot, Quaker, and Presbyterian Pennsylvania as models of religious toleration to avoid religious factionalism. Madison believed that “the zeal for different opinions concerning religion divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.”[6] Above all, the framers were influenced by John Locke and Montesquieu, quoted everywhere in the colonies leading up to the Revolution and who were reinforced by Whig writers, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who opposed corruption and privilege but also argued that a person’s religion was a private affair. Irrespective of whether political leaders were religious or not, and most were not, the general consensus by 1790 was that matters of religious belief and practice were outside of the cognizance of government.
Colonial America had not been settled out of a search for religious liberty, but by the early 19th century, it had stumbled into that principle. Nor was the country founded on Christian principles. To assert that it was is to take the framers out of the context in which they lived and unduly ascribe modern religiosity onto them. The reality of the founders, like the Roman stoics they emulated, is hard to imitate and far away from our understanding. Emulating the founders is more easily achievable when all a politician has to do is pray.
[1] Green, Steven. Inventing A Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 15.
[2] Judeo-Christian, as a term was coined sometime during the First World War and popularized after World War II, when the atrocities of the Nazis were discovered in Nazi-occupied Europe. President Eisenhower was the first president to use the term to describe Western Civilization and later President Ronald Reagan frequently emphasized Judeo-Christian values as necessary ingredients in the fight against Communism.
[3] Seidel, Andrew. The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2019.
[4] Green, Steven. Inventing A Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 25.
[5] Id.
[6] Id. at 53
