Was America built on the basis of Christianity?

[ltwin]

Could you add your knowledge with respect to the Articles of Confederation?

As far as I know, it doesn’t address religion at all nor was it particularly influenced by it. It’s simply an agreement between states.

 

[dochawk]

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was explicitly founded on the basis of religious freedom by William Penn, a Quaker.

Indeed . . . but the exception that makes the rule

The establishment clause of the Constitution only applied to the Federal Government originally. State governments were always considered free to establish state churches, and in fact several continued to do so into the 1800s.

In fact, four states did so long after the Civil War and the 14th Amendment.

Under our Constitutional jurisprudence, the 14th does not apply across the board to the Bill of Rights, but only to those parts “fundamental to the concept of structured liberty.” Thus a fair trial applies, but the right to a jury trial in a state proceeding only if the crime is punishable by more than six months, for example. The free expression of the 1st Amendment is fundamental, but the lack of a state church is not, and interpreting it so does violence to our concept of the rule of law [whether or not it is a good idea has absolutely nothing to do with whether the Constitution allows or prohibits it.]

And even for the Federal government, it was more a matter of Federal neutrality between, for example, the Anglicans and Congregationalists. The idea that the Congress could not advance generic Christianity (or at least Protestantism) would have shocked the Deists, Unitarians, Jews, and Catholics among the Founding Fathers (there was at least one of each of the latter two!).

The very first official thing that the First Congress did was to hire a chaplain . . .

As far as I know, it doesn’t address religion at all nor was it particularly influenced by it. It’s simply an agreement between states.

This. The Congress couldn’t even get out of its own way under the Articles, not even to stop the illegal amendments we call “The Constitution”!

The only thing it was even vaguely successful at was governing the western territory, and even that only because it was outside of any state . . . it lost an entire third of its standing army in a single battle! (and the 700 [before battle] may well have been less than any state at the time . . .)

hawk

 

[ltwin]

The Congress couldn’t even get out of its own way under the Articles, not even to stop the illegal amendments we call “The Constitution”!

That’s because everyone realized the Confederation Congress sucked. Even the Continental Army was on the verge of a military coup because they weren’t being paid, until George Washington stepped in to save the government.

But its replacement with the Constitution wasn’t illegal, at least according to the theories of sovereignty evolving in America at the time. The sovereignty was held by the people, who are empowered to change their government at any time through conventions.

Now, the Articles do require unanimous approval of all the states to amend it, but that isn’t what the Philadelphia Convention did (because it would have been impossible). They said let’s create an entirely new government (which the states could technically do because the Confederation was in essence only an alliance that the states could leave or ignore as they pleased). It was sorta like an American version of the European Union, except the EU actually has power. However, the similarity is that the individual EU members ultimately remain sovereign nations and can leave if they want (Brexit!!!).

In ratifying the Constitution, the Federalists successfully institutionalized the idea that sovereignty was really held by the people (We the People . . .) who delegate power to both the state and the federal governments. However, we the people retain the right to change our government at any time through conventions–which is why we have the Article 5 Convention option in the Constitution that could completely rewrite the constitution if it was ever enacted.

 

[ltwin]

In fact, four states did so long after the Civil War and the 14th Amendment.

In Massachusetts, the only reason the Congregationalist church was disestablished was because too many congregations were becoming Unitarian and the Trinitarian Congregationalists left to start their own conservative churches but they didn’t want to pay taxes to the Unitarian churches. This created enough popular support to get rid of church taxes in 1833. No one really had a problem with a state church, they just had a problem with the Unitarian takeover of the state churches.

 

[dochawk]

And that’s the real problem with state churches outside an overwhelmingly homogenous religious population . . . sure, you might get it, but it also could be the other guys that get it!

 

[Padres1969]

In God We Trust wasn’t added to US coins until the Civil War and wasn’t added to paper money and made the US motto until the Communist hysteria in the mid 20th century. E Pluribus Unum was And remains the unofficial motto of the US since the 1780’s.

And no the US wasn’t built as a Christian nation. Some of the founding fathers were practicing Christians. But most were fallen away and were proponents of the Enlightenment ideas surrounding Deism to varying degrees.

 

[Scott84]

I would argue that America was founded more on Freemasonry. Many of the key founding fathers were Freemasons, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Freemasons also.

Look at the Declaration of Independence. It used very secular language for the day. Not one time is the word “God” used, but only some vague reference to a “Creator”, which can mean anything.

Also, Washington DC is filled with references to Freemasonry with monuments and the layout of the city.

So, no, the United States was not founded or built on the basis of Christianity. Despite what the Bible thumpers would have you believe.

 

[ltwin]

And no the US wasn’t built as a Christian nation.

It really didn’t need to be because at the founding it was a Christian nation–in the sense that virtually everyone was Christian by default, particularly some variety of Protestant. Even the deists and rationalists were still usually members of some kind of church. George Washington is often considered a deist, but, if he was, he was also an Episcopalian who attended church regularly all of his life.

 

[ltwin]

I would argue that America was founded more on Freemasonry.

Yes, many Founding Fathers were Freemasons, and there was in the 1800s a hysteria over Freemasonry (we had an entire single issue political party formed, the Anti-Masonic Party). But can you cite any historian who actually believes Freemasonry provided the intellectual or ideological origins of the United States?