One Nation Under God and In God we Trust

My wife, today, passed me an e-chain-message about how this nation was founded on Christian principles, why the Ten Commandments should be displayed in governmental buildings, and why the Pledge of Allegiance should contain the phrase, “under God.” The message begins with a description of how many places the Ten Commandments are displayed within our Supreme Court building, goes on to quote some historical figures such as Madison, Patrick Henry, and John Jay. In between, it mentions that fifty-two of the fifty-five “founders” of the Constitution were members of standard orthodox churches.

What can one make of all this?

It is, of course, a confused example of the fallacy known as non sequitur.

And the following observations are significant.

1. The word “Christianity” appears nowhere in the Constitution.

2. If the citation above is correct, three “founders” of the Constitution were not members of standard orthodox churches.

3. The Supreme Court building is laden with symbolic references to many things not Christian.

The Constitution is a political document which lays out how the government is to be constituted. The fact that both adherents and non-adherents of standard orthodox churches took part in its writing and ratification is significant. The question can certainly be asked, if so many of these “founders” were founding a Christian nation, why didn’t they put that into the Constitution? Was it, perhaps, because they realized that there is a vast difference between what people believe and how a nation should be governed? I doubt that anyone could argue that these founding Christians left the word “Christianity” out of the Constitution by accident.

Then there are the many references to the Ten Commandments displayed within the Supreme Court building. But there are references to these things too: The Three Fates, a Greco-Roman pagan figure; the four elements: air, earth, fire, and water, the thesis of the Greek philosopher Thales; Moses, Confucius, and Solon, a Jew, a Chinese, and a Greek pagan; the trial scene from the shield of Achilles, a Roman praetor publishing an edict; Julian and a pupil; Justinian publishing the Corpus Juris, all pagans; King John sealing the Magna Carta; The Chancellor publishing the first Statute of Westminister; Lord Coke barring King James from sitting as a Judge; and Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Story, no religious references there. Menes, Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus, Solon, Draco, Confucius and Augustus, more pre-Christian era figures, and finally, Napoleon, John Marshall, William Blackstone, Hugo Grotius, Saint Louis, King John, Charlemagne, Mohammed and Justinian.

Say what, Mohammed? but not Jesus Christ. The namesake of Christianity didn’t make any of these lists, but Mohammed did? How does that support the claim that this nation was founded on Christian principles?

If the truth shall set us free, those Christian fundamentalists will enslave us all.