The Salt Lake Tribune

Get Facts Straight Before Calling a Nation Christian Sunday, September 1, 2002 BY DANIEL J. WEBSTER

Stop it. Just quit. All these letters and commentaries about "under God" and the Pledge of Allegiance and the founding fathers being Christian and this being a Christian nation have just got to stop. Even a Utah sculptor revises history depicting three founding fathers kneeling at prayer, a scene historians call unthinkable. If you are going to argue something, get the facts right. If you want to claim that this should be a Christian nation or that you believe God should be included in the pledge, the Star-Spangled Banner, prayed to in all schools, then be up front and say that's what you are trying to do. Don't invoke the memory of those who worked so hard to keep religion and government separate. Don't claim that because the founders were "Christian" that gives Christians today some sort of preferential status in the country. When this controversy broke out about the pledge I went back to my seminary textbook. Edwin Scott Gaustad in A Religious History of America (HarperCollins, 1990) tells a fascinating account of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry. In 1777, then Virginia Gov. Jefferson proposed a "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom." It would ensure that no one religion would have government approval in the Commonwealth. Henry countered with his own "Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" which would have acknowledged no one denomination but would recognize Christianity as the official state-sanctioned religion. With Jefferson's move to France as ambassador for the new nation, the cause was picked up by Madison. He argued that no religion should have any established position. Henry made his case before the delegates. As word of this effort spread, Baptists and Presbyterians opposed it. Some thought it a ruse that would eventually favor the Anglicans who were a majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Madison said that not only should there be freedom of religion in the commonwealth, there should also be freedom from religion. In 1786, Madison won. It set the stage a year later for the crafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. No religion would have a favored status as far as the government of this new nation would be concerned. As for calling this a Christian nation, that puzzles me. I suspect it would also puzzle George Barna. He has been researching religious social trends for more than a decade. Interviewed in Christianity Today (Aug. 5), he laments that most "churchgoers didn't seem to have any real understanding of the Bible's distinctive message; many practicing Christians believed that God helps those who help themselves." The conclusion he reaches, he told interviewer Tim Stafford, is that "a morally relativistic American culture was shaping Christians more than Christians were shaping the culture." If this country were a Christian nation, its citizens and government would be working tirelessly to make sure no one went to bed hungry tonight and that everyone would have a home. Universal health care would be a reality and not just a political debate. If you are curious about scriptural foundations for these points, start with the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25. Then go to Matthew 22 where the lawyer tried to trick Jesus asking him which was the most important commandment. "Love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself," he retorted. Jesus' response to that question is clearly Jewish. He quotes the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18). He didn't make up anything new. What is often called the "Greatest Commandment" is not uniquely Christian. What has been called the "Golden Rule" attributed to Jesus (Luke 6:31) can be found in some form in most major world religions. It is not found in much of what this country has been doing in domestic and foreign policy for too many years. Call it a democratic nation. Call it a republic, if you like. Call it the land of the free. Please don't call it a Christian nation. _________ The Rev. Daniel J. Webster

-- lbj (lbj@mindspring.com), September 04, 2002

Answers

Though I'm presently too sleepy at this point to investigate all of the above claims, I will say they are all ultimately immaterial to the question of our present course of action.

All of them, except for one: this notion of "freedom _from_ religion." Such an argument has a fatal flaw: atheism, irreligion, and agnosticism, being themselves totally incompatible with most other belief systems, are themselves subject to the premise of freedom of religion.

Thus, I should say, all people in this country have the right to the freedom from irreligon. Otherwise, irreligion becomes, ironically, an established religion.

Now, to the question of whether this country is, or ever was, a Christian nation? My first thought in response is, "does it matter?" Does it lessen our charge as Christians to proclaim Christ from our rooftops, and to help guide this nation--and all nations--to Christ? Separation of Church and State has become a mantra that needs to be honestly reexamined--an impossible feat, considering the impassioned hatred instilled in our youngest children of the fictional Christianity of atheist-written textbooks, and the absence in all of our schools of any education in theology--general or otherwise--that would lead away from the vast infection of ignorance that plagues us now.

A Christian Nation? No, I think not--but I challenge any person to argue that it oughtn't be, without resorting to emotionally charged fictions about all the witch burnings that would result.

-- Skoobouy (skoobouy@hotmail.com), September 05, 2002.