God is not on our side: The religious right’s big lie about the founding of America

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/28/god_is_not_on_our_side_the_religious_rights_big_lie_about_the_founding_of_america/

SUNDAY, JUN 28, 2015 12:00 PM EDT

Reagan and others pushed the idea that we're a Christian nation chosen by divine providence. That's not the case

STEVEN K. GREEN

God is not on our side: The religious right's big lie about the founding of America


George W. Bush (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

Excerpted from "Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding"

One of the more popular and enduring accounts of America’s past is that of its religious founding. Belief that the British-American colonies were settled largely by religiously devout people in search of spiritual freedom, that the United States government was founded in part on religious principles, that the Founders intended to create a “Christian nation,” and that America is a specially chosen nation whose success has been directed by divine providence has resonated in the national psyche for generations. Versions of this account have existed since the founding era and have persisted through times of national distress, trial, and triumph. They represent a leading theme in our nation’s historical narrative, frequently intertwined with expressions of patriotism and American exceptionalism.

Opinion polls indicate that many Americans hold vague, if not explicit, ideas about the nation’s religious foundings. According to a 2008 study by the First Amendment Center, over 50 percent of Americans believe that the U.S Constitution created a Christian nation, notwithstanding its express prohibitions on religious establishments and religious tests for public office holding. A similar study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life revealed even higher numbers, noting that “Americans overwhelmingly consider the U.S. a Christian nation: Two-in-three (67%) characterize the nation this way.” Other studies indicate that a majority of Americans believe that the nation’s political life should be based on “Judeo-Christian principles,” if the nation’s founding principles are not already.

Assertions of the nation’s religious origins and of divine providence behind the crafting of the governing instruments are especially popular among politicians. In fact, religious declarations by elected officials are so common today that they have become routine, if not banal. Frequently, allusions of God’s providence are ambiguous and are used simply as a ceremonial flourish, obviating the need for further elaboration. President Ronald Reagan, who was not a devout churchgoer despite his support from the evangelical Religious Right, regularly alluded to the nation’s providential past, remarking in one speech, “Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe free?” One could argue that Reagan’s embrace of a providential past was uncritical, if not undisciplined: in his acceptance speech at the 1980 Republican National Convention, Reagan displayed his legendary disregard for consistency by declaring America to be “our portion of His creation” while praising the contributions of the deist Tom Paine! One particularly delicious statement is Dwight Eisenhower’s iconic remark that “our form of Government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is!” Usually, such rhetoric does little more than affirm a national “civil religion,” where the nation’s institutions and its destiny take on an indeterminate, quasi-sacred quality. Such utterances largely fulfill a unifying, ceremonial purpose.

Many politicians, however, have gone farther by advancing specific claims about America’s religious past and its significance for the present. At times, Reagan embraced a fuller notion of the myth. In a 1984 prayer breakfast, he declared that “faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation,” asserting that the Founders had affirmed this relationship. “Those who created our country,” Reagan remarked, “understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order.” The Founders viewed the government as “a form of moral order,” which found its basis in religion. Reagan was not alone among politicians on the conservative spectrum. In May 2010, former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin declared on Fox News that people should “[g]o back to what our founders and our founding documents meant. They’re quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments. It’s pretty simple.” And no modern politician drew more allusions to the nation’s religious heritage than did George W. Bush. A conservative evangelical, Bush frequently revealed his belief in America’s Christian origins, once affirming that “[o]ur country was founded by men and women who realized their dependence on God and were humbled by His providence and grace.” The Founders did more than simply acknowledge their obligation toward God, however; for Bush, America was specially chosen, “not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation” but because “God moves and chooses [us] as He wills.” For Bush, this history had practical applications for present policies, legitimizing his enlistment of religious organizations to operate government-funded social service programs from a “faith perspective” (i.e., the “Faith-Based Initiative”). It also supported an active religious (i.e., Christian) voice in the public realm: “The faith of our Founding Fathers established the precedent that prayers and national days of prayer are an honored part of our American way of life,” Bush insisted. As historian Richard T. Hughes has written about Bush, in his embrace of the myth, Bush “thoroughly confused the Christian view of reality with the purposes of the United States.”

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