Given the continuing spate of "religious liberty" laws that we should really begin calling "religious privilege" laws it is important to debunk the right-wing fiction that the Founders and Framers all intended religion to have a favored place in the United States, and believed strongly that there was no "republican virtue" without Christianity.
This idea is being perpetrated locally by the so-called "First State Institute on the Constitution" -- a favorite of the DE GOP -- which charges students $50 a shot to be indoctrinated with the views of Christian extremist Michael Peroutka, among whose favorite quotes (while running for MD Attorney General) is
“Two standards ... determine whether something is lawful, [first] is whether or not it meets the constitutional limitations of government and [second] is whether it is harmonious with God’s law.”
But what DID the Framers and Founders actually say about Christianity and the State?
NOT what you've been told by conservatives or the current Supreme Court ...
GEORGE WASHINGTON and JOHN ADAMS
From the Treaty of Tripoli (1797) which Washington supervised and John Adams enacted as President:
“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 Musselmen,--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan 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.”
GEORGE WASHINGTON and GOUVERNOR MORRIS
From Thomas Jefferson's diary, 1799, reflecting on Washington's religious views and those of Gouvernor Morris (financial strategist of the Revolution and influential delegate at the Constitutional Convention who chaired the Committee of Style):
“When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the Government, it was observed in their consultation, that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address, as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so.
“However,” Jefferson noted to his diary, “the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. ... [Washington] never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers, except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the States, when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of ‘the benign influence of the Christian religion.’ I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets [in Washington’s confidence] and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that [Christian] system than he himself did."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
In his autobiographical piece "Toward the Mystery":
“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”
JAMES MADISON
Letter to Edward Livingston, 1822:
“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”
And in the same letter on the proposal to appoint and pay a chaplain for the Congress:
“In the strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. ...The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles.”
His letter to Benjamin Rush in 1800, objecting to the privileging of Christianity above other religions:
“Where the preamble [to the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom] declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read, ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”
His notes on Locke and Shaftsbury in 1776 regarding his opposition to ANY religious exemption from civil laws:
"whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth … cannot be forbidden to him for religious uses; & whatsoever is prejudicial to the commonwealth in their ordinary uses & therefore prohibited by the laws, ought not to be permitted to churches in their sacred rites. for instance, it is unlawful in the ordinary course of things or in a private house to murder a child. it should not be permitted any sect then to sacrifice children: it is ordinarily lawful (or temporarily lawful) to kill calves or lambs. they may therefore be religiously sacrificed. but if the good of the state required a temporary suspension of killing lambs (as during a siege); sacrifice of them may then be rightfully suspended also… if any thing pass in a religious meeting seditiously & contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner & no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market."
JOHN ADAMS
The oft-quoted champion of conservatives, slowly changed his view of religion over the years, and wrote to Jefferson in 1822 that virtually all religions were determined to become universal at obvious cost to others:
“Hope springs eternal. Eight millions of Jews hope for a Messiah more powerful and glorious than Moses, David, or Solomon; who is to make them as powerful as he pleases. Some hundreds of millions of Mussulmans expect another prophet more powerful than Mahomet, who is to spread Islamism over the whole earth. Hundreds of millions of Christians expect and hope for a millennium in which Jesus is to reign for a thousand years over the whole world before it is burnt up. The Hindoos expect another and final incarnation of Vishnu, who is to do great and wonderful things, I know not what. You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society, and vast amelioration in the condition of mankind. ... Our faith may be supported by more rational arguments than any of the former.”
THOMAS PAINE
c. 1791:
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
So there you have the actual truth of it -- the leaders of the Constitutional Convention and ALL four of the first US Presidents, and more ... all opposed favoritism being shown to Christianity or any other religion in civil government under the US Constitution ... and all explicitly denied the legitimacy of religious privilege laws such as those we see advocated by the supposed "originalists" of the right wing.
Sources:
Glad you are spreading the truth again. Unfortunately most of the "Christers" cretins won't bother to read this and will go about spreading the gospel taught by like baby Jerry et al.
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