Did the Founding Fathers want America to be a Christian nation? Is the Pope Hindu?
He told me he doesn't even want it. (Image via Wikipedia)
Let’s blast yet another nutty right-wing concept to smithereens, shall we? I know there are thousands of them to slog through, with more being invented every day, but we must be resolute.
The Founding Fathers wanted America to be a Christian nation.
This is false for at least three different reasons (which are so obvious to any intelligent, educated person I shouldn’t even have to write this piece.)
1. If the Founding Fathers had wanted America to be a Christian nation, they would’ve said so. Plainly. Unambiguously. Right up front in the Constitution, you know, the supreme-law-of-the-land document: “Domestic tranquility! Three branches of government! Christian nation!” That’s what they would’ve said. Because it’s kind of a big deal, not something you forget to mention.
2. On most issues, the Founding Fathers didn’t speak with one voice. They disagreed on almost everything. They bickered and rolled their eyes and compromised. So to say “the Founding Fathers wanted this or that” is always a lie. Unless maybe you say, “The Founding Fathers wanted Americans to grow tobacco and not have a king.”
3. Who cares what the Founding Fathers maybe sort of possibly cryptically wanted? We’ve changed plenty of things we do know they definitely, openly wanted, because they (thank you, guys) gave us the means to change things as the times changed. We abolished slavery. We gave women the right to vote. We renamed the War Department the Defense Department because we discovered the art of public relations. The Founding Fathers thought men looked good in wigs and women in bustles. We don’t so we don’t wear them. In short, We do not have to do what we think the Founding Fathers wanted. Even if somehow we were able to text-message the Founding Fathers and found out that every last one of them really wanted the U.S. to be a theocracy with an ayatollah at its head and a statue of Jesus in every home, we still wouldn’t have to do it.
What set off this diatribe is an article in the NYT Sunday Magazine headlined “Founding Fathers” which quickly went to No. 1 on the Most Popular list. Like all NYT Sunday Magazine articles, the piece is too long and frequently boring. It’s about the efforts of a flock of morons in Texas who want their children (and everyone else’s) to be taught religious propaganda instead of American history and so are campaigning to slant the schoolbooks. And of course they think the Founding Fathers would have been on their side.
I doubt it.
But I don’t care.
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Lewis, you are too awesome!!! Seriously! What a great piece.
But you really should have consulted Sarah Palin on this before posting; as she is the premiere expert on the founding fathers. Ha!
If Roger Williams could text from the grave, he would totally give you a “Right on!” for this article.
I love you…keep it up!
-whit
Hi Lewis,
Your article made it to the Browser Blog!
http://thebrowser.com/blogs
Tim
Your first point is Point Number One —
Thinking the Founders somehow just forgot to mention the goal of a “Christian Nation” in the basic document AND all the writing that swirled around it means taking advice from folks who skipped a most basic idea while going into such terrific and thoughtful detail about everything else, including things that put us right off these days.
In that light I can only think that either the Founders were stupid, or those who argue they wanted a Christian Nation are stupid.
Pretty sure history shows which horn of that dilemma has the pointy end.
(Big fan of Point Three, “You Ain’t the Boss of Me,” too.)
Our Founding Fathers took a great deal of time and pain to writed down their reasonings. For example; in The Federalist Papers the framers of our Constitution stated, by examle, they used their extensive knowledge of the history of governments to create the consttution.
None of them cited any religion as a basis for their reasoning. If you read the peronal writings of our Founding Fathers, particarly toward the end of their lives when they had noting to lose, that they didn’t believe in a superior being. Just as today; it’s good business to have people believe that they do.