“Whatever we once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers.”
“One of the greatest strengths of the United States’ is that it does not consider itself ‘a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
President Barack Hussein Obama
On Independence Day 2009 I would like to explore whether or not we can say that we are a “Christian nation.” In order to do so I am going to examine the components we might expect to find in a Christian nation. I hope to show that when it comes to the issue of whether or not these united States are a Christian nation the conclusions suggest that we are a mixed bag.
Exploring the issue of whether or not a nation is a Christian country is a bit more complex then exploring the issue of whether or not a person is a Christian. If we were to look at a individual we would look to see if they were Baptized and if they were members in good standing with a credible profession of faith in a true Church. However one can’t baptize a nation and a nation can’t be a member of good standing in a true church.
Setting parameters require us to admit that a Christian nation is not nor ever has been a nation where all the citizens are genuine Christians, nor is a Christian nation one where every single public official is a genuine Christian. Just as in a Christian church there will be tares among the wheat so in a Christian nation there will be tares.
So what should we look for when asking whether or not a nation is Christian?
I would submit the first thing to look for is whether or not a nation (a people) is Christian is whether or not the nation’s founding public documents recognize the sovereignty of God. This idea of a people covenanting with God is found throughout Scripture. The whole book of Deuteronomy is a document where the nation covenant with God before entering into the promised land. Another example we find is in II Kings 23 where King Josiah, recognizing how Israel had violated covenant, renews covenant with God as part of Israel’s repentance.
This kind of thinking sounds strange to our ears today but we need to recognize that this idea of covenanting with God was not strange to early America. As early as the Mayflower compact stretching through the Royal colonial charters and embracing the early colonial constitutions we have documents that explicitly, in one form or another, recognize the rule of the God of the Bible.
Here are but a few examples, (more examples can be accessed easily through google.)
Delaware Oath For Public Office
“I, _________, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”
NORTH CAROLINA, 1776:
ARTICLE 32. That no person, who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.”
“CONSTITUTION OF VERMONT — July 8, 1777
SECTION 9…And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz.
“I ____ do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the Rewarder of the good and Punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration, and own and profess the Protestant religion.”
By means of these official public documents these were clearly constituted as Christian nations.
In stark contrast to these explicit colonial statements the constitution of these united States is a document were the elements of Biblical covenanting are completely absent.
1.) In the US constitution there is no directly conscious and meaningful mention of the sovereign authority of God. Instead what we find is that the sovereign authority is lodged in “We the people.” It is as if “We the people,” are serving as both parties in the covenant. “We the people,” are both the sovereign authority and those submitting to the sovereign authority.
2.) In the US constitution it is expressly said that, “No religious test shall ever be required for any office of public trust under these United States….” This statement is a poison pill against the idea of covenanting and so weighs heavily against the idea that, in a DeJure sense, these united State was constituted as a Christian nation.
In my estimation eliminating the need for a religious test itself became a kind of subversive humanist religious test as the deletion of a overtly religious test created and reinforced the mindset that man could operate autonomously apart from God.
3.) In the US constitution there is no reference to God’s law as the standard by which men would be ruled.
This stands in contrast to such governing documents such as “Abstract Of The Laws Of New England.” What we find in the constitution instead of laws anchored in Scripture is the statement, “This Constitution and the laws of the the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme law of the land…” As in the previous two examples it is as if some form of humanism is the reigning religion.
So, when we consider the US Constitution we must conclude that while it is a covenant document the covenant parties are “We the people,” with “We the people.” This is completely subjective and it is a form of humanism and such a document would hardly, in a Dejure sense, constitute a people as Christian.
This lack in the US constitution of acknowledging the Sovereignty of God and His Christ was not lost on people who lived during that time.
The attention of Washington was called to this omission. After he was inaugurated, in 1789, as the first President under the Constitution, the Presbytery Eastward, in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, sent a Christian address to Washington, in which they say, “We should not have been alone in rejoicing to have seen some explicit acknowledgment of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He
has sent, inserted somewhere in the Magna Charta of our country.”
Now to be fair we must admit there are a couple incidental references to Christianity and the God of the Bible in the US Constitution.
1.) The US constitution was signed “In the year of our Lord.”
Now this isn’t insignificant when one considers that in the French revolution there was an attempt to create a completely new calendar. The fact that the Constitution recognizes God in this fashion is a small indicator that these were a Christian people.
2.) The Sabbath exception clause.
Some argue that as the constitution exempts the Lord’s Day in counting as a day to be included in the count of days before a President was required to sign legislation indicates that the constitution is a Christian document.
These two examples, in my estimation, prove only that the context in which the constitution was written and signed was Christian. It doesn’t prove, in a Dejure sense, that our covenant document is Christian or that we were established as a Christian nation.
Now, having conceded that we must realize that the nation and government that was formed by the constitution was a government that was extraordinarily restricted. The issues of social order, and religious identity were to be left to the new states — which is why the Federal government was not allowed to establish a religion. Questions of religious supremacy were to be handled by the individual states.
Still, in retrospect it must be said that the US constitution made an egregious error by not explicitly invoking the sovereignty of God. So when we consider the Dejure aspect of whether or not we were established as a Christian nation we would have to say that looking at our founding document does not give us a great deal of hope on the issue.
We have been emphasizing the Dejure sense as it concerns our being founded as a Christian nation. Now, I want to change gears to the Defacto sense of the issue. Dejure is a Latin phrase that means “concerning law”, as contrasted with de facto, which means “concerning fact”.
I am convinced that while the Dejure sense of our being founded as a Christian nation is in doubt there can be no doubt that in a defacto sense that we have been for most of our existence a Christian nation.
The evidence for this is overwhelming and as been exhaustively and thoroughly documented in Robert Morris’ “The Christian Life and Character Of The Civil Institutions Of The United States.” Also one should access Christianity & The Constitution,” by Eidsmoe.
Here are but a few examples,
“The people of the colonies … are, therefore, not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. Their governments are popular in a high degree. If any thing were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government, Religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion—always a principle of energy in this new people—is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants, and of that kind which is most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion, sir, not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. The dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our Northern colonies is a refinement on the spirit of the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations, agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the Northern Provinces. The colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the migrants was highest of all; and even the stream of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greater part, been composed of dissenters of their own countries, and have brought with them a temper and a character far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed. A fierce spirit of liberty has grown up; it has grown up with the growth of your people, and increased with the increase of their population and wealth—a spirit that, unhappily, meeting with an excess of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any idea of liberty, much less with theirs, has
kindled this flame which is ready to consume us.”Edmund Burke
Speech in British Parliament
Congress, the day before Washington was inaugurated, passed the following—
Resolved, That, after the oath shall be administered to the President, the Vice-President, and members of the Senate, the Speaker and members of the House of Representatives, will accompany him to St. Paul’s Chapel, to hear divine service performed by the Chaplains.
The first session of the first Congress was not suffered to pass without a solemn act of legislation recognizing the Christian religion. It was a national thanksgiving, proclaimed by the authority of Congress.
The Journals of Congress present the following record.
Sept. 25, 1789
Day of Thanksgiving
Mr. Boudinot said he could not think of letting the session pass without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining with one voice in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them. With this view he would move the following resolution—
Resolved, That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a constitution of government for their safety and happiness.
Mr. Sherman justified the practice of thanksgiving on any signal event, not only as a laudable one in itself, but as warranted by precedents in Holy Writ: for instance, the solemn thanksgiving
and rejoicing which took place in the time of Solomon after the building of the temple was a case in point. This example he thought worthy of imitation on the present occasion.
Countless more examples of this kind of thing can be found at,
http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=23909
All of this data indicates that there can be no doubt that in a defacto sense these united State were a Christian nation.
Part II — Are We A Christian Nation Today?
