God's Nation
The United States of America has long been known as a pious country with references to God in phrases such as "In God We Trust" and "One nation under God." Many evangelicals consider these clichés to be affirmations that the United States was founded on Christian ideals. Some historians and scholars also debate that America's Founding Fathers' underlying reason for the First Amendment's notion of separation of church and state was to prevent their new nation from becoming a puppet of a church, as was the case of the Anglican Church in England. What many people do not know is that a great majority of the Founders were not practicing Christians, but followed much more freethinking philosophical schools. Many liberal Enlightenment ideals and free thought were actually the true ideologies of America's Founding Fathers, not Christianity.
At the time of the American Revolution, which happened towards the end of the Enlightenment, many new philosophies questioned or challenged the dogma of the Christian Church. One very common philosophy that many of the Founding Fathers considered themselves subscribers to was Deism. Deism is considered a natural religion that does not altogether deny the existence of God, but argues against divinity and supernaturalism. Deists believe that their belief in God should only be founded in nature and reason. Many of the Founding Fathers including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and James Madison all considered themselves Deists to some degree (Haught, 77-101). Some on the religious right have for years tried to dispel this truth with varying degrees of success.
One Founding Father and primary author of the Constitution, James Madison, was a s...
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... to be. The founding of our country had its roots in Enlightenment ideals which emphasized reason instead of faith. Political and religious institutions in the past decade have sought to align themselves with government powers in order to bring a moral authority to government affairs. Until these institutions realize and accept the true facts about America's founding, they will be destined to repeat the ceaseless strife on our own shores.
Works Cited
Haught, James A. 2000 Years of Disbelief. Prometheus Books, 1996.
Robertson, Pat. "Restore America to its Jeffersonian Ideals." PatRobertson.com. 3 March 2000.
Walker, Jim. "Little-Known U.S. Document Signed by President Adams Proclaims America's Government Is Secular." The Early America Review. Summer 1997. 23 Oct. 2005
Walker, Jim. "Thomas Jefferson on Christianity and Religion." NoBeliefs.com. 30 Oct. 2005
The Great Awakening was before the American Revolution, therefore the forefront in the minds of many colonists was religion. But, it also caused some tensions between religious ideologies. The American Revolutionary era was a period where the nation was finding an identity to unify with. Both George Washington and Jonathon Edwards, believed that religion was necessary for the stability of a nation. However, the way how Washington and Edwards accomplished their plans with religion were different. The differences between the two men show varying degrees of religious acceptance. Both men wanted religion in America, but only by their own definition of religious acceptance.
When it came down to the government during the convention of May 1776, instead of protecting our rights they had passed them down causing us to be under common law. If one had denied the Christian faith and went against everything it believed in, such as, “there are more Gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military,” (Jefferson 176). This is what most people had thought about if you did not follow their religion. Thomas Jefferson believed that the wall between church and state should be very high in order to keep out and prevent hostile situations. Using an example from today’s news, many people get uncomfortable in the United Stated with the Muslim religion because of the previous horrific events that led to many cruel deaths in our history. By this, the way that we look at these people is forever changed because of the incidents and who knows if we will ever not be hostile with one another because of it. If church and state hadn’t been separated we may have not become a true democracy from what our developing country was seeming to lead towards. More people would not be as accepting of each other, and not that they are still not today, but I feel as if it may
Thomas Paine, who believed in Deism, was an English-American poet who wrote The Age of Reason. This work contains a majority,if not all, of Paine’s beliefs. He begins by stating that everyone is entitled to his own opinion and no one should be denied this right. He specifically points to opinions on religion and other similar concerns. “He, who denies another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it” (Paine 94). He also believes in the existence of one God and equality for all.
Thomas Jefferson is most closely associated with deism than any other of America’s founders. The rise of deism began during a season of new discoveries, inventions, and beliefs that challenged the social norm. Deism was influenced by the enlightenment period and was a rational, law-governed faith that believed in a world created by a “watchmaker” (Onuf). Thomas Jefferson was so involved in deism that he even created his own Bible. Deism was its strongest during the mid-seventeenth centuries through the mid-nineteenth centuries, but there are still some Deists today.
[12] Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Draft (1799) reprinted at <http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/statute.htm> [10 December 2003]
America today still maintains the separation of church and state, an idea that was founded by some of the earliest colonists.... ... middle of paper ... ... William Penn, Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania, soon after wrote the Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges and Liberties, a constitution for the colony of Pennsylvania, which enabled the people to freely practice their religion of choice without fear of government punishment. American colonies were clearly established with the intent to all live together with Christian beliefs, but with so many interpretations and versions of the same religious scripture, freedom to practice whichever adaptation feels right became most important in colonial life. And as a safe haven for those who were persecuted in their home countries, America truly flourished as a place for the religiously tolerant.
Gaustad, Edwin S. The Religious History of America: The Heart of the American Story from Colonial Times to Today. N.p.: HarperOne, 2004. Print.
Fea, John. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.
With sounds of youthful laughter, conversations about the students’ weekends, and the shuffling of college ruled paper; students file into their classrooms and find their seats on a typical Monday morning. As the announcements travel throughout the school’s intercoms, the usual “Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance” becomes no longer usual but rather puzzling to some students. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.” Confusion passes through some of the student’s minds. With the reoccurrence of “God” in the backdrop of American life, the relationship between church and state has become of little to no matter for American citizens just as it has with American students. While congress makes no law respecting an establishment of religion, the term “freedom of religion” presents itself to no longer be the definition of “free”, while also having its effects on debates today. According to Burt Rieff, in Conflicting Rights and Religious Liberty, “Parents, school officials, politicians, and religious leaders entered the battle over defining the relationship between church and state, transforming constitutional issues into political, religious, and cultural debates” (Rieff). Throughout the 20th century, many have forgotten the meaning of religion and what its effects are on the people of today. With the nonconformist society in today’s culture, religion has placed itself in a category of insignificance. With the many controversies of the world, religion is at a stand still, and is proven to not be as important as it was in the past. Though the United States government is based on separation of church and state, the gover...
As James Madison, the fourth President of the United States said, “The religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is right of every man to exercise it as they may dictate” (Haynes, C...
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“Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.” Library of Congress. Accessed May 14, 2014. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel04.html.
The Constitution reflects our founder’s views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief. Some will argue religion, specifically Christianity, played a large role in the creation of this great nation’s government, the United States Constitution; however the facts reveal otherwise. The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, "the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated
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