Dr. Herb Silverman is the Founder of the Secular Coalition for America, the Founder of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, and the Founder of the Atheist/Humanist Alliance student group at the College of Charleston. He authored Complex variables (1975), Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt (2012) and An Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land: Selected Writings from the Bible Belt (2017). He co-authored The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America (2003) with Kimberley Blaker and Edward S. Buckner, Complex Variables with Applications (2007) with Saminathan Ponnusamy, and Short Reflections on Secularism (2019).
Here we talk about the revisionist attempts on American history.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Another issue comes in the form of the historical revisionists in the current period from Evangelical Christian fundamentalists who amount to selective literalists with the intent to ‘correct’ the American historical record – from their point of view – into an Evangelical Christian ethos and framework for looking at the world. How far back does regressive activism exist in America? How can this obscure the American record? How has the history of America been damaged by this form and branch of fundamentalism? How did American fundamentalism erase some traces of pre-American, Native American, history, permanently, to the detriment of the possible knowledge base of the Americas about human history? Who might count as the first Native American freethinker who went against the grain of the traditions of the Native American religions or ways of life with supernaturalisms assumed in them, though different as described? Who might count as the first American freethinker at or after the founding of the nation?
Dr. Herb Silverman: Why do
some Christian fundamentalists claim that our founders wanted America to be a
Christian nation? Most efforts to connect the United States with
Christianity rely on quotes and opinions from a few colonial-era
statesmen who professed a belief in Christianity, but their statements of
beliefs say nothing about Christianity as the source of the U.S. government.
Patrick Henry proposed
a tax to help sustain “some form of Christian worship” for the state
of Virginia, but Thomas Jefferson and other statesmen did not agree. In 1779,
Jefferson introduced a bill for the Statute for Religious Freedom which became
Virginia law. Jefferson designed this law to completely separate religion from
government. None of Patrick Henry’s Christian views ever got introduced into
law in Virginia or our national government.
Unambiguous
language from our founders really should settle this debate over whether
America is a Christian nation. In 1797, the Treaty of Tripoli was negotiated by
George Washington, signed by John Adams, and ratified unanimously by the
Senate. It stated in part: “The government of the United States is not in any
sense founded on the Christian religion.” I wonder what part of “not” that
Christian-nation advocates don’t understand.
There have
always been people who erroneously believe the Founders intended to establish a
Christian nation, but the framers were careful and thoughtful writers. Had they
wanted a Christian republic, it seems highly unlikely they would somehow have
forgotten to include their Christian intentions in the supreme law of the land.
And I challenge anyone to find the words “God” or “Jesus” in the U. S. Constitution.
In debates I’ve had with those who
think America was founded as a religious country, my opponents sometimes point
to words in the Declaration of Independence as evidence of religious intent.
However, the Declaration preceded the Constitution and does not represent the
law of the land. The Declaration was a call for rebellion against the British
Crown. The emphasis on people having inalienable rights was a way for our
founders to distinguish us from an empire that asserted the divine right of
kings. The Declaration mentions “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s
God,” and does not endorse Christianity or religion. “Nature’s” view of
God agrees with the Deist philosophy. Thomas Jefferson, author of the
Declaration, was a Deist and opposed to orthodox Christianity and the
supernatural.
Another argument I’ve heard supposedly
supporting religion in government is the constitutional requirement that
elected officials take an oath or affirmation before they can serve. Oaths are
not necessarily a call to God. At that time, kings would swear oaths by their
crowns and knights would swear oaths by their knighthood, so the concept of
swearing an oath to something other than God goes back a long time and was
well-known when the Constitution was adopted in 1787. Had our founders wanted
officeholders to invoke God, they could have worded the oath to accomplish that
objective. Instead, the oath or affirmation to uphold the Constitution contains
no reference to God, need not be administered on the Bible and need not even be
considered an oath. The option to either swear an oath or make an affirmation
was written into our Constitution for the purpose of including those who did
not feel comfortable swearing an oath to anything, let alone to God or some
other deity.
An even weaker argument is that the Constitution
was signed with the words “in the year of our Lord.” But that was a standard
way of dating important documents in the 18th century. Its use was
conventional, not religious, just as today we may use B.C. (Before Christ) or
A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin for “the year of our Lord”) without having
any religious intent.
While the federal government was not
a Christian nation, it didn’t initially prohibit states from establishing their
own state churches. Some early state constitutions limited holding public
office to Christians or even to the correct religious denomination. Such
provisions represented a more intolerant time in our history. States with
government-favored religions gradually began moving toward separating religion
and government, with the last state disestablishment occurring in Massachusetts
in 1833.
The best-known Freethinker Founder was Thomas Paine. He influenced
more early Americans than any other writer. In his pamphlet Common Sense, Paine made a case in clear and persuasive prose for independence from Great Britain,
using arguments that had not yet been given serious intellectual consideration.
Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to
encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government.
Common Sense was published at the
beginning of the American revolution, and in proportion to the population of
the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and
circulation of any book published in American history.
Nonetheless, Paine hasn’t received
the credit he deserves, being mostly ignored in American history. The reason is
because of his irreverentbook called
The Age of Reason. In it he says,
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the
Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church
that I know of. My own mind is my church.” And furthermore, “Of all the
systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory, more
repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called
Christianity.” Many contemporary politicians sympathized with the views of
Paine but didn’t openly support him for fear of the Religious Right of that
day.
Years later, President Theodore
Roosevelt referred to Paine as a “filthy little atheist” even though Paine
considered himself a deist. Thomas Jefferson, who was sympathetic to Paine, got
in trouble when he said, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are
twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” It is
only recently, with more open Freethinkers today, that Thomas Paine’s
accomplishments have been given the credit they deserve.
Another unknown leader in the
American Revolution was Philip Freneau, recognized as the poet of the American
Revolution, and America’s first atheist poet. See a fine article about him in Free Inquiry, August/September 2019.
Freneau’s definition of theology is “the study of nothing.” He also said that
the profession of priest is “little better
than that of a slothful Blockhead.” Freneau denied the existence of an
afterlife and viewed death as “a sleep that has no dreams.”
I know of no Native Americans promoting atheism,
perhaps because there is no doctrine that they are expected to believe or
follow. I think the belief that there are no gods began when theism began. On
the day that humans invented religion, other humans invented atheism.
A case can be made that the Christian brand of
fundamentalism today is a consequence of the Bible Belt mentality during the
Civil War. The Baptist denomination split as Baptists in the South broke away from
the North and formed the Southern Baptist Convention, so they could continue to
promote slavery within their religion. Slave owners did not want a religion
that would make them feel guilty about the source of their riches. Their
ministers preached a doctrine that their flock wanted to hear—the right of
white men to own slaves who owed obedience in return, and a message that
promoted the subjugation of women, Native Americans, and others. There are
certainly passages of the Bible that condone slavery, and none that oppose it.
The rich and powerful took their riches as a sign of God’s blessing on them.
They were not interested in social justice.
In their pursuit of worldly power and dominion, conservative American
churches today have thrown away the moral authority they once possessed. Now,
as their prestige declines and their membership ebbs, they pursue government
support. But as Benjamin Franklin said, “When
a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot
support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors
are obliged to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend,
of its being a bad one.”
Congress mandated “In God We Trust”
on all currency in 1955, and it was adopted as the national motto in 1956. The
original U.S. motto, chosen by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas
Jefferson, is E Pluribus Unum (Of
Many, One), celebrating diversity, not theocracy.
Although we don’t have an official
established religion, the Republican Party has tied Christianity tightly to a
narrowly partisan and conservative set of policy priorities. They’ve spent the
past several decades insisting that being Christian means politically opposing
LGBTQ rights, reproductive choice, and supporting war and tax cuts for the
rich. Many Christians want to bring back school-sponsored prayers and demand that sex education classes in public schools
teach “abstinence only” instead of preparing teens to avoid pregnancy and
disease.
You will not find any support in the
Bible for treating with respect those who have different or no religious
beliefs. Scientific advances are particular targets. When a science book is
found to be wrong, the mistake is corrected in subsequent books. But for
biblical literalists, if the scientific evidence contradicts the Bible, it is
the evidence that is thrown out.
In 2002, President George W. Bush said, “We
need commonsense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God.”
But “rights derived from God” is a belief, not an understanding, and judges are
supposed to make decisions based on the rule of law, not on their personal
religious beliefs. Similarly, President Trump recently said, “In America, we’ve always understood that our
rights come from God, not from government.” These are examples of government
leaders who want to turn our democracy into a theocracy. If Christian nation
advocates were ever to have their way, this would no longer be the
secular nation our founders so proudly formed.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Silverman.
Previous entries in the educational series:
“Philosophical and Historical Foundations of American Secularism 1 – Knowing History and Making History“
Photo by Kupono Kuwamura on Unsplash
