Secularizing America

OF ALL THE MANY highly questionable and outright false characteristics and beliefs prevalent among American Christians, perhaps the most strikingly erroneous is the nearly universally held false belief that the United States was founded on "Christian principles", was intended to be a "Christian" nation, and that it has always been and remains a Christian nation. A quick glance at the constitution, in which the word "God" does not appear, reveals otherwise. What does appear is the first amendment, according to which church and state are separate. Letters written between Madison, the constitution's main auther, and Thomas Jefferson, who taught Madison how to write constitutions, also demonstrate the founder's intention of establishing a secular republic. They agreed that an "inpregnable wall" must be erected and maintained between church and state. Most of the other founders, including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, enthusiastically agreed. The American system of government was designed on the principles of political theorist-philosopher John Locke and the principles of the enlightenment, which revered science. All this is thoroughly elucidated in Harvard historian Mathew Stewart's seminal work "Nature's God: The heretical Origins of the American Republic". As the title explicitly implies, the principles upon which the country were founded were non religious, deliberately scientific, to the point of being heretical. The point is not arguable; there is no way to reasonably argue that the United States was ever intended to be nor ever was an officialy "Christian" nation. In fact, as Mathew Stewart points out, not only were the first six presidents of the United States non Christians,instead embracing a religiosity of the day popular among scientific minded intelletuals called "deism", Thomas Jefferson ws openly scornful in his writings toward what he called "our modern superstition", meaning the Christian faith, with its reliance upon miracles. His "Jefferson Bible", available in any university library or online, is Jefferson's version of how the Bible should have been written; based on fact, rather than myths and miracles. The qustion is why devout American Christians almost invariably insist on distorting, misinterpreting history to suit their preferred narrative. The answer is obvioius; "preferred narrative." How comforting it must be to believe that one's personal religion and one's country are inextricably intertwined philosophically, to be proudly patriotic and self righteously religious all in one! Patriotism, a kind of religious fervor in its own right, easily meshes with religious fervor. Another factor is that throughout American history, such a high percentage of Americans have embraced Christianity that it has been irrestibly tempting for them to believe that they own the country, that their majority religion enjoys a special, favored, official status, and that they enjoy a speical place in it, since, after all, almost all Americans were, historically, Christian. And indeed, a couple of generations ago fully eighty five percent of American citizens self identified as Christian. But that number is falling, and has been steadily falling for the past several decades. America is secularizing, not only in its formal non religious status, but in actual numbers. As recently as ten years ago sixty five percent of the American people were Christian; now, the number hovers at around fifty percent because the millennial and post millennial generations are much less religious than their ancestors, and the religious generations, including the baby boomers, are dying off. Even Christians, long accustomed to denying this reality, must at length come to terms with it.