“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” —John Adams, 1798
“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own. According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.
“More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man’s religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.” —James Madison, 1792
Before I turn to the substance of this essay, which concerns the establishment of a secular constitutional republic whose creed tolerates religious belief while permitting the absence of such beliefs in the lives of its citizens, with the specter of Christian Nationalism as one of the present concerns regarding the future of this arrangement, I want to say a few things about the anthropological-sociological view of religion. In addition to my duties in my tenure home of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, I am also on the faculty of the Sociology and Anthropology program. My training is in sociology (also psychology and anthropology), and I have published and lectured in the sociology of religion for many years. More broadly, my overall approach is political sociology, which involves the study of ideological systems.
Recently, on X (Twitter), I have been engaged in a debate about the religious character of gender ideology. The doctrine of the authentic self, the non-falsifiable construct of gender identity, the ritual of physical transitioning from one gender to another, objectively an impossible transformation, and much more, require gender ideology’s classification as a religious faith (see my recent Affirmation, the Authentic Self Doctrine, and Rule by Assumption). As the reader will see, the classification is accomplished by straightforwardly applying the social science standpoint, but also the standard definition of religion to the ideology in question. However, as I have pointed out in previous essays, this is a religious faith that enjoys the backing of governments and corporations, powerful entities that impose the beliefs and practices of gender ideology regardless of whether persons subscribe to the religion (see, e.g., See NIH and the Tyranny of Compelled Speech).
The imposition of gender ideology, seen in the requirement that people avoid “deadnaming” those who have “transitioned” to their “authentic self,” as well as the use of pronouns incongruent with and thus denying the gender of the congregant, in general the compelled involvement of every citizen in the “affirmation” of the individual in his delusion, or his community’s illusion, to use Freud’s observation in his The Future of an Illusion, is a clear violation of the rights of individuals in the United States to be free from impositions of conscience, thought, speech, and association, rights articulated in the First Amendment, as well as in international law. This violation of our fundamental rights can occur because of the political-ideological denial that gender ideology is a religion but is instead a valid scientific system (which is plainly not).
This fallacy is reinforced by the involvement of a corrupt medical-industrial complex, a corporate web of institutions and organizations (including academic, chemical manufacturing, clinical psychology, and medical associations) generating billions of dollars in profit for shareholders and exorbitant salaries for administrators and physicians at the expense of vulnerable people, including children. I have written quite a lot on this and will soon roll out more essays on this topic (see, e.g., Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex; Thomas Szasz, Medical Freedom, and the Tyranny of Gender Ideology; Simulated Sexual Identities: Trans as Bad Copy; Disordering Bodies for Disordered Minds).
What is religion, then? The term originates from the Latin words religio, which means respect for what is sacred, and religare, which means “to bind.” Thus the term at its core indicates an obligation to the sacred; in practice, religion encompasses diverse systems of belief and practice that revolve around what social groups consider sacred or spiritual. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim captures the essence of such systems in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, published in 1915, when he defines religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things.” These systems “set apart” people and things from others, and in doing so “unite into a single moral community, called a church, all those who adhere to them.” For Durkheim, religion is about community; binding people together (social cohesion), prescribing and proscribing speech and action (social control), and providing meaning and motive (social purpose) for people during transitions and tragedies .
By applying the methods of science to the study of society, Durkheim shows that the source of religious morality refracts the collective conscience of society and that the cohesive bonds of the social order result from common values in a society (this was Ludwig Feuerbach’s insight in his 1841 book The Essence of Christianity, the catalyst for Karl Marx in developing his materialist conception of history). Durkheim understands that these values need to be maintained to secure dependable and enduring social stability—at the same time he understands that the religious pluralism of Western civilization poses a problem for social solidarity. In his 1893 The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim argues that a cohesive set of cultural beliefs and moral values is crucial for societal integration and solidarity; throughout his career, he expresses concerns about the potential for decreased social solidarity in diverse, modern societies. Durkheim observes that as societies become more complex, with increased divisioning and specialization, traditional sources of moral unity weaken.
To return for a moment to the problem of gender ideology, those who resist the obvious religious designation often do so because of a stereotypical view of what religion is. They do not see in their beliefs appeal to a god or gods—and they miss seeing the angels as such (see my essays Resisting the Imposition of Non-Existing Things and Step Away from the Crazy). Thus, the scope of religious formation is reduced to a cartoonish singularity, typically signaled by adherence to those religions descended from the Jewish faith (although Islam, because of its third world status, finds a special place in the their hearts, hence the slogan “Queers for Palestine”). Admitting the scope of religion produces a different conclusion. For some, religion is associated with places of worship with a god at the focus; for others, it involves practices like meditation; others view it as a guiding concept in their daily lives, such as the concepts of dharma. Despite these varied perspectives, there is a common understanding that religion encompasses a system of beliefs, values, and practices centered around what an individual deems sacred or spiritually significant. One should not allow appeals to atheism to fool them. There are many self-proclaimed atheists who possess profoundly religious personalities.
Throughout history and across the planet, figures have employed religious narratives, symbols, and traditions to impart greater meaning to life, explore the mysteries of the universe, and lead people to certain ends, often ends that are quite profitable for spiritual leader. Nearly every known culture embraces some form of religion, typically practiced openly within a community. Religious practices can encompass various elements such as feasts and festivals, worship of one or more deities, marriage and funeral ceremonies, expressions of music and art, initiatory and meditative rites, acts of sacrifice or service, and other cultural facets. Anthropologists and sociologists thus conceptualize religion as a structured and cohesive system encompassing actions, beliefs, and norms that revolve around fundamental social needs and values. Religion is recognized as a cultural phenomenon present to some degree in all human society and down through time.
One of chief features of religious systems is the ritualization of the transitioning of persons from one status to another, a liminality marked by a ceremony that often makes reference to the divine, that is, to supernatural or transcendent things, which are, from a scientific standpoint, impossible or unknowable things. Humans are enchanted by such things, using them to sublimate vulgar features of their animality or giving themselves a higher purpose. Marriage is an obvious example. To be sure, there are individuals who simply obtain a marriage certificate from their town’s courthouse and have it witnessed by a justice of the peace, but we all recognize that, for many others, there’s an obligation to participate in an elaborate rite of passage, known in the literature as the “status elevation ceremony,” which is consecrated by appeal to transcendent entities or forces. Funeral rites constitute another example. The specific customs vary between cultures and even within different religious affiliations, but despite variation, certain common elements persist in ceremonies marking an individual’s death: the announcement of passing, the handling of the body, the final disposition, and the inclusion of specific ceremonies or rituals throughout the process.
In our studies of religion, we anthropologists and sociologists recognize that religious experience is accompanied by a profound conviction or sensation of being connected to a divine entity. Religious beliefs encompass the specific ideas deemed true by members of a particular faith, such as the doctrine of salvation in Christianity, reincarnation in Buddhism and Hinduism, the presence of the thetan in the human body in Scientology, or the doctrine of the authentic gendered self in gender ideology. Religious rituals involve actions and practices expected or mandated within a specific group. Here individuals are forbidden to speak about certain things and required to speak in certain ways.
One hallmark of religion is the singling out of those who resist doctrine, ritual, and scripture, marking them off from the group as apostates (those who leave the religion), heretics (those who challenge the religion), and infidels (those who do not subscribe to the religion). Those who utter forbidden speech are labeled as blasphemers. These indicators of religious force are often coded in other labels, seen in references to “bigots,” “fascists,” “racists,” and so forth. Sometimes the code reveals its religious character by referencing the faith in some way, e.g., “Islamophobe” or “transphobe.” Punishing the non-adherent is a central feature of religious belief, which is why it is so vital to remind people of the importance of the secular foundation of the US republic.
In summary, religion has four elements: beliefs, mythology, practices, and social organization. Beliefs are the ideas and values the make up the doctrine and its motivations. Mythology concerns the sacred stories, including etiological tales. Practices are the rituals and rites of passage, the status elevation (and degradation) ceremonies, and speech requirements. Social organization is not only the community of congregants but also the institutional frame in which the religion is legitimized and sustained. Successive generations are socialized in the institutional frame. Now onto the substance of today’s essay.
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A few days ago, a Baphomet statue, a Satanic Temple display, installed at the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines, was vandalized. Michael Cassidy, a former US Navy fighter pilot, recently defeated in a Mississippi statehouse election, is accused of causing the damage. He was arrested, charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief, and released. According to a Facebook post by the Satanic Temple on Thursday, the Baphomet statue was “destroyed beyond repair,” although remnants of the installation still exist.
The incident sent Christian zealots seeking an argument that would allow them to celebrate Cassidy’s actions without betraying their devotion to the constitutional republic to which they’d loudly sworn allegiance—not to mention risking negating their complaints about Antifa/BLM defacing monuments and toppling statues. Criticism from conservatives including presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (whose campaign has really been a disappointment, I must interject). Matt Walsh’s crack at the problem (I rather like Walsh, so his monologue on that day was disappointing) was to perpetrate the same fallacy he so effectively condemned with his “What is a woman?” question. “Good is good and bad is bad,” he said. What are those things? He never says, offering only elaborations that spiraled down into ever greater depths of circularity.
Others, beside themselves, found the December 2021 Harvard Law Review note “Blasphemy and the Original Meaning of the First Amendment.” “Until well into the twentieth century, American law recognized blasphemy as proscribable speech,” the note begins. “The blackletter rule was clear. Constitutional liberty entailed a right to articulate views on religion, but not a right to commit blasphemy— the offense of ‘maliciously reviling God,’ which encompassed ‘profane ridicule of Christ.’” (There’s goes Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.)
English common law had indeed punished blasphemy. But did the Founders carry over everything from the Motherland? Apparently even this. “Looking to this precedent, nineteenth-century American appellate courts consistently upheld proscriptions on blasphemy, drawing a line between punishable blasphemy and protected religious speech.” “At the close of the nineteenth century,” the note continues, “the US Supreme Court still assumed that the First Amendment did not ‘permit the publication of … blasphemous … articles.’ … Even on the eve of American entry into World War II, the Tenth Circuit upheld an anti-blasphemy ordinance against a facial First Amendment challenge.”
The note then announces the great free speech awakening of the post-WWII period, the period that delivered civil rights for blacks and women and homosexuals: “Only in the postwar period did the doctrine promulgated by appellate courts begin to shift. In Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, the US Supreme Court invoked the Free Speech Clause to invalidate a prior restraint on ‘sacrilegious’ films. Burstyn did not directly hold anti-blasphemy laws unconstitutional, but its obiter dicta gave aid and comfort to the laws’ enemies. And although two state appellate courts sustained blasphemy proscriptions after Burstyn, a third struck down a state anti-blasphemy law under the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. Most recently, a federal district court invalidated a state blasphemy statute under the Free Speech Clause and the Establishment Clause.”
“Present-day scholars often assume that anti-blasphemy laws are unconstitutional, celebrating the absence of such laws as a core First Amendment principle.” Given the tone and structure of argument, it feels like the next sentence should be: “It is not so.” But the note is wrong because its premise is wrong. It’s not that the post-WWII era discovered a right to religious liberty that protected the right of individuals to engage in speech acts the majority found objectionable; that right, as I will show, is inherent in the foundational law of the nation. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that it took more than a century and a half to realize the promise of religious liberty and free thought in prevailing precedent (which is to suggest how fragile that realization is).
Given this, how is it that there are Christians who profess their allegiance to the American Republic who oppose this? This is what we should be celebrating: standing at the threshold of breaking the chains on our minds that blasphemy represents—not the criminal action of some bigot who won’t instead insist that the public square remove all religious symbols (and we know he wouldn’t make such an insistence because he picked the Baphomet installation to vandalize and not the Nativity—that is, he is a self-appointed censor). But no. They like it that at least one or a small committee for lawyers find that “none of the constitutional clauses currently thought to make anti-blasphemy laws unconstitutional—Free Exercise, Free Speech, Establishment—originally prohibited blasphemy prosecutions. In other words, the original public meaning of the First Amendment, whether in 1791 or in 1868, allowed for criminalizing blasphemy.”
Curiously, smartly perhaps, the zealots typical quote those suspect in their commitment to Christianity. They focus on George Washington, James Madison, and John Adams—while avoiding Thomas Jefferson, dismissing Thomas Paine, and ignoring Benjamin Franklin, in an attempt to show the Christian bona fides of the most important of the Founders. This finds the first president, Washington, a modern-day instantiation of the Roman statesman and military leader Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, and the fourth president, Madison, the principal author of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, as the most virtuous fathers, with the second president, John Adams, enjoying a quote.
You will see in a moment the problem with the Adams quote (and it is a problem of his religious affiliation), but more broadly, the attitude expressed betrays the doubt zealots have that the Christians figures they single out share with them the same vision. What the focus on the recalcitrant and the skeptic and the Unitarian does is distract from the obvious fact that most of the Founders were not only Christian, but that they went along with the establishment of a secular republic. There is an important lesson in all of this (and it would behoove the gender ideologues to pay attention here): one can enjoy his faith while leaving others out of it.
Among those who who signed the Declaration of Independence were Congregationalists, Anglicans (Church of England), Presbyterians, and those of the Dutch Reformed and Lutheran traditions. Deists Jefferson and Franklin are notable among the major players. Adams played a major role, too. These were the big three. Maryland’s Charles Carroll was the sole Catholic among the signers. Also notable: there were no Quaker signers (this owing to pacifist principles which precluded answering or agreeing to a call to arms such as the Declaration of Independence expressed). As for the Constitution, there were Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans among the signers. This time a Quaker was present: John Dickinson.
Recalling the epigraph at the top, it’s good that Adams, could separate his opinion concerning the religious character of those worthy of our constitution from the constitution he swore an oath to defend as president, a constitution that explicitly eschews requiring any declaration of faith (which I prove below), the first amendment to which segregates church and state. Others will never mind about that, of course. This quote by Adams, they will tell you, is definitive proof that ours is a “Christian nation.” These are the Christian nationalists, and they pose a growing threat to the future of this great American Experiment.
But to whom was Adams’ statement addressed and when was it formed? It was to the Officers of the First Brigade, Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts in the context of the Quasi War against the French, a formative moment in the Republic’s history, the letter penned on October 11, 1798. These are remarks of encouragement to a god-fearing people. It was not uncommon for political figures then (and to some extent today) to dress their troop rallying in the language of God and Providence and Whatnot. Oftentimes men need something above themselves to fight for.
None other than that “filthy little atheist” (President Teddy Roosevelt’s characterization of), America’s greatest pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, wrote in The American Crisis, “I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.”
George Washington had Paine’s words read aloud to his soldiers at McConkey’s Ferry on the Delaware River (among them were John Marshall, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, and Aaron Burr). Whatever an admitted infidel’s faith in God Almighty could possibly be (see the man’s scandalous Age of Reason), Paine could not have had any in the reality of devils. His appeal to such supernatural forces was meant to inspire not proselytize, as his words in fact did: Washington’s troops powered through the Christmas Day Nor’easter and routed the Hessian garrison at Trenton.
However you wish to take them, Adams’ words do no violence to the truths that Trenton and other battles won, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights that established the American Republic, were for religious and irreligious men alike. To be sure, many of those who put down on paper the fundamental laws of the republic were Christian (mostly Protestants of various sects), but there were also deists and atheists among them—likely more than would admit it. Franklin was almost certainly an atheist, at most a deist who oozed Paine-level skepticism. He thought religion useful if it promoted virtue; but jettisoned theological belief. Several denied the divinity of Jesus and the miracles he allegedly performed.
One also has to read between the lines with the Founders, as their audiences were often a bit less enlightened Tham they were—much like the Christian nationalists who have taken to social media of late. As an atheist navigating the Christian world in the buckle of the Bible Belt, I know the pressure to modulate one’s tone about such matters. But the fact that some of the founders rejected the supernatural and the divinity of Christ (Jefferson cut from the Bible all references to miracles), as well as the sublimation of human rights in such terms as “Creator” and “Nature’s God,” rhetorical sterilizations betrayed by the more direct “Laws of Nature” (referencing here the Declaration, penned by Jefferson), tell us they were pragmatically atheist.
That’s why, after the supreme law of the Constitution requiring all federal and state legislators and officers to swear or affirm to support the Constitution, Article VI specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Even then, not content with the explicitly secular character of the Constitution (there is no mention of God or Christianity anywhere in the document), the people demanded a bill of rights to protect them from the federal government and from governments closer to them. Madison and crew gave them one, the first article of which explicitly protects religious liberty, a right that necessarily includes the nonbeliever: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The idea that the Founders were thinking, “We don’t care what religion you believe as long as you believe in one” is so absurd as to require no further comment except for the Christian nationalist spin that the First Amendment actually prohibits the government from choosing any one Christian sect to be the state church not that it allows for religious expression beyond what James Madison declared to the “the best and purist [sic] religion,” namely Christianity.
When this was put to me on X (Twitter), my off-the-cuff remark was, You mean that same man who ensured the Virginia Declaration of Rights did not elevate any faith over all others by changing the language from “fullest toleration” of religion to the “free exercise of religion”? The same man who said, “The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man.” That man? But, again, to whom was this statement addressed and when was it formed? Moreover, as you can see by the sic erat scriptum note, the quote is not even accurate?
This oft-botched quote is taken from the conclusion of a letter that Madison wrote to Reverend Jasper Adams in response to a request for his opinion on the reverend’s sermon “The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States.” It was penned September 1833—long after the Constitution became operative in 1789. Madison was eighty-three years old. In the letter, Madison observes that religious desire appears, despite exceptions here and there, as something common to man. He then quickly moves to “the simple question to be decided”: “whether a support of the best & finest religion, the Christian Religion itself ought not, so far at least as pecuniary means are involved, to be provided by the Government, rather than be left to the voluntary provision of those who profess it.” As, is often the case, context changes everything. Madison point: Should the government provide for the financing of religion. Or should religion finance itself. I don’t think I have to tell how the principal author of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights comes down on the question, but I will anyway: religion shall finance itself.
But let’s not leave the letter yet, because Madison shows the reverend his work and, in doing so, definitively settles the matter. “And in this question,” he writes, “experience will be an admitted umpire the more adequate as the connexion between Government & Religion, has existed in such various degrees & forms, & now can be compared with examples where the connexion has been entirely dissolved.” Madison then provides a historical-comparative analysis of the connection, noting the motherland’s fraught relationship with religious entanglement and how “[i]t remained for North America to bring the great & interesting subject to a fair, & finally, to a decisive test.”
He saw the American Republic as a great experiment; the religion question was the central question. “It is true that the New England States have not discontinued establishments of Religion formed under very peculiar circumstances,” he explains; “but they have by Successive relaxations, advanced towards the prevailing example; & without any evidence of disadvantage, either to Religion, or to good government.” See here that Madison has in mind the ideal: progressive and ultimately final disentanglement of church and state. “But the existing character, distinguished as it is by its religious features, & this lapse of time, now more than fifty years, since the legal support of Religion was withdrawn, sufficiently prove, that it does not need the support of Government. And it will scarcely be contended that Government has suffered by the exemption of Religion from its cognizance, or its pecuniary aid.” Put another way, government has not suffered by removing religion not only from its laws and operations but even from its awareness.
Madison employs the principle of charity in argumentation that the Christian nationalist misconstrues in his zealousness as affirmation of the reverend’s argument, but it is not so. “Whilst I thus frankly express my view of the subject presented in your sermon, I must do you the justice to observe, that you have very ably maintained yours.” He continues in this vein. “I must admit, moreover, that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation, between the rights of Religion & the Civil authority, with such distinctness, as to avoid collisions & doubts on unessential points.” He then lowers the boom: “The tendency to a usurpation on one side, or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded against by an entire abstinence of the Government from interference, in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, & protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others.”
That Madison finds Christianity to be “the best & finest religion” is an expression of opinion, one that as an atheist I happen to share (if we’re talking about the secular spirit of Protestantism), has nothing to do with his insistence as both a representative in Virginia and for the federal government that, as his comrade Thomas Jefferson put so well in his letter to the Danbury Baptist church (which I will discuss a moment; see also The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom), that government and religion become and remain disentangled. Moreover, in the letter offered as proof of Christian nationalism, Madison clearly takes the side in opposition to that form of nationalism. Madison’s nationalism is a civic and secular one.
The myth of “Christian America” moreover neglects the sociological facts at the Founding. As Rodney Stark and Roger Finke’s show in their careful empirical study of America’s relationship with Christianity, The Churching of America, far from a righteous nation falling away from God, as the zealots claim, America has been a country increasingly governed by religious sentiment; the United States wasn’t as nearly as religious in the early years of its history as commonly believed. In addition to the godless Constitution and the First Amendment, Stark and Finke note that, in 1796, Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State under President George Washington, negotiated the Treaty of Tripoli between the United States of America and modern-day Libya. Article 11 of the treaty states that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” The treaty was ratified by a unanimous vote of the Senate in 1797, and signed by President John Adams. Reread that so you catch it. It’s a big deal.
In his aforementioned letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut, on account of their concern for the dominance of the Congregationalist Church of Connecticut, Thomas Jefferson, then president, wrote, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
I want to stress that Stark and Finke find that religious vitality increased in the United States during the nineteenth century rather than at its founding. The authors contend that the competitive religious environment in America, with various religious groups vying for followers, contributed to the growth and vitality of religion in the country. Over time, a significant shift occurred. It’s noteworthy here that the initial version of the pledge of allegiance lacked the expression “under God.” In 1954, prompted by President Eisenhower, Congress passed a law incorporating “under God” into the Pledge. This addition, readers might be surprised to learn, stemmed from a Catholic tradition, particularly the Knights of Columbus, and later became widespread. Upon approving the legislation, Eisenhower remarked, “From this point onward, millions of our school children will daily declare, in every city, town, village, and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” He emphasized the reaffirmation of religious faith’s transcendence in America’s heritage and future.
Historian Kevin Kruse suggests that beneath the decision to modify the Pledge was an attempt to associate Christianity with capitalism. America, a capitalist nation, seeking to contrast itself with the “godless communism” of the Soviet Union, positioning itself as a Christian nation against the atheism of the Soviet Union. This influence would extend beyond the pledge, as the motto “In God We Trust,” which replaced “E pluribus unum” in 1956, became a mandatory inscription on paper money in 1957. The religious right gained momentum during the 1970s and 1980s. America today remains a profoundly religious country. If you are an atheist or an unaffiliated believer, you can thank the Founders for establishing the principle of secularism that keeps you free of most religious imposition, gender ideology presently excepted (which needs to change, obviously).
Jefferson and Madison’s attitude is the liberal attitude. Yes, Virginia, liberals founded this country. Some of them were Christians. Others were atheists and deists. The meaning of the First Amendment hasn’t changed in principle. Rather it was fully realized over time as the Court incorporated the states. The Harvard note is wrong. Blasphemy laws have always violated the First Amendment in principle. That states proscribed speech in the past only means state and local power was not properly constrained by the fundamental rights articulated by the US Bill of Rights. This has largely been rectified.
John Adams son, John Quincy, took his oath for president on a secular law book—not the Bible. He, like his father, was a Unitarian. Unitarianism, for those who don’t know, is a non-creedal, non-doctrinal religion that affirms the individual’s freedom of belief. The joke in the Christian community is that unitarianism is essentially a euphemism for atheist or deist. This is what the First Amendment protects: freedom of conscience. When Adams said what the Christian nationalist amplifies he was talking about virtue among men of conscience. Deism is important to the founding because, by locating rights in “Nature’s God,” the founders put our fundamental rights beyond the control of man thus making them unalienable. This forces the government to defend our rights.
One of the rights government is compelled to defend is religious freedom, which by definition requires freedom from religion, since, obviously, a man cannot be free to practice his faith or no faith at all if he is not free from the demands of the faiths of others. (This is so basic it’s concerning that it even needs saying.) This is why Islam is incompatible with freedom: it believes political and juridical authority comes from Allah to be administered by religious clerics. America is founded on an entirely different premise. So central is secularism to the United States Republic that the Constitution explicitly states that no office holder can be required to swear allegiance to any god (hence John Quincy taking his oath on a book of secular law), Article VI stating that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The Constitution is the supreme law of the country. It is a secular constitution for a secular nation.
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You haven’t read Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason? If he believed in a god at all it was nature’s god, not Abraham’s. “But Paine asked to be buried in a Quaker cemetery!” Yes, but he was buried on his farm in New Rochelle. His request to be buried on Quaker ground was for this reason: his father was a Quaker. But because the Quakers were already suspected of deism, they denied Paine’s request to avoid confirming those suspicions.
This is for sure: the Founders were liberal men of the Enlightenment who founded a secular republic set down in documents that reduced god to nature (which god could only be—that and a social construction), forbid the requirement of religious oaths, and disentangled religion and government. To argue otherwise is to reject the foundation of the republic. Folks are free to do that, of course, but they can’t have their cake and eat it, too. “In proscribing blasphemy, nineteenth-century Americans did not flout constitutional guarantees of free speech, free exercise, and non-establishment. Rather, they conceptualized those guarantees in a way that permitted anti-blasphemy laws.” Wrong.
These Christian nationalists, if they really want to make a claim on patriotism, need to get their heads on straight about the secular character of the American Republic. To be sure, Protestantism played a role in the development of the Enlightenment, and the Republic is the result of the Enlightenment, but this is not a Christian nation. It’s bad enough that we have to fight clerical fascist (the Islamist) abroad. Now we have to fight clerical fascist (the Christian nationalist) at home.
freedom and reason 