U.S.A.: A Liberal Nation — not ‘Christian’
meaning people of all faiths — or none — can live here in peace
For as long as I have been alive (since 1952), there have been people in this nation who have insisted, with more or less ‘sound and fury’, that the U.S. is — or at least was founded to be — a ‘Christian’ nation. I beg to differ.
In the first place, what can the phrase, “a Christian nation,” possibly mean? Everyone in it is — or should be — must be a ‘Christian’?
(Now that I have stopped shivering with fear enough to be able to resume typing) based on which of the countless versions of being ‘Christian’ that exist? Does the phrase mean that the U.S. is to act in a ‘Christian’ way as a nation-state? Bedsides re-inviting the previous question, given the impossibility for any person to act consistently in a ‘Christian’ way, how in the world could a nation-state possibly even attempt such a thing? Does the phrase mean that the political and economic systems of the nation would be based on the teachings of Jesus — who, according to the Gospels, said not one word about either? In a truly Christian nation neither a political system nor an economic system would exist: it would be nothing but people doing good for one another, expecting nothing in return.
The best case anyone can make for the U.S. as a ‘Christian’ nation is that at the founding of this nation the teachings of Jesus formed an all-but-fully-universal moral ideal for the people (of European heritage) who were allowed to be citizens of it at that time concerning how they believed they should live their lives as individuals: govern themselves.
Those last two words do go to the actual ideas of the people who founded this nation: people should be free to live their lives however they choose as long as they are doing no harm — to include people with differing religious beliefs or no religious beliefs. Regarding self-governance in that sense, that freedom was the motivation and intention of the ‘Founding Fathers’.
The weakest student of the founding of this nation will know that, whatever the spiritual beliefs of any of the ‘Founders’, their only concern was to understand the what the structure and functioning of a just society would be. To that end they talked way more about liberty-as-justice than anything else. Understanding explicitly that the nation they were creating would be well short of that ideal at the time — indeed, that in reality it could never be completely attained — they laid the groundwork for a nation that could strive towards that ideal forevermore.
When the ‘Christian nation’ proponents do make their case, the whole of it rests on the fact of that universality of personal morality plus the reference to a “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson penned those words in that Declaration (assigned the task of writing a first draft of it by acclamation by the Continental Congress). He personified most strongly among the ‘Fathers’ the zeitgeist of that time and place.
If Jefferson were alive today, one thing we can know without any doubt is that he would not be a ‘Creationist’. He was, above all else, a student. He studied law, philosophy, and the physical world. He was an inveterate inventor, a practical engineer, and a scientist by nature, applying observation and deduction to any aspect of the natural world that captured his attention. The late 1700's were in fact the beginning of the ‘Golden Age’ of science culturally, when people were sure it could solve all problems.
In fact, Jefferson was one among many who thought that justice could be ‘scientific’ in the very broadest sense of that word. They — broadly, the ‘Enlightenment’ thinkers — looked at science and they saw universal truths. They saw that those truths were the result of secular reasoning, as opposed to sacral dogma. They were, as a result, ‘objective’.
Those thinkers set about to find the universal truth about justice. They equated ‘secular’ with ‘objective’, therefore ‘universal’.
The result was the invention of ideology. To date, three meta-ideologies have been developed: Liberalism, Marxism, and Fascism. Each has spawned narrower political ideologies, shaped for particular nations, that share the fundamental tenets of their conceptual progenitor.
The first meta-ideology was Liberalism. It actually goes back almost a full century more, to the intellectual output of John Locke (Two Treatises of Government: 1689). Locke had equality and liberty as the conceptual foundation of justice. It is worth noting for present purposes that he also emphasized people’s “independence” regarding one another, which Jefferson had in his draft of the Declaration, and a “Right” to property, but slaves as ‘property’ made that concept too complicated for that document, given the presence of abolitionists in the Congress.
Locke made explicit that for him ‘equality’ was a Biblical truth. Jefferson’s substitution of “Creator” for “God” was therefore an overt move away from the Bible.
So the U.S. was founded as Liberal nation. Self-proclaimed ‘Christians’ are free to live here and live their own lives according to their religious beliefs. They are even free to seek to have the governance of their communities, to include the nation as a whole, reflect their personal beliefs. They must yet understand, however, that there is nothing special about their beliefs: those are not in any way ‘more true’ than is anything anyone else believes.
To reiterate, the United Sates of America is a Liberal nation. Freedom to choose how to live life is the essence of Liberalism, including abortion, sexuality, or gender itself. What the Bible has to say about anything is relevant for people who do believe in the Bible and want to use it to order their lives. It is of no relevance whatsoever for anyone else.
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My many decades of studies have taught me that morality, which is always a matter of personal belief (even among atheists, with their secular beliefs — which can include believing in equality and liberty as the conceptual foundation of justice), is unnecessary for justice. if curious: “Can’t Get Any Simpler” (a “2 min read” here in Medium with links to more about it — with nothing I publish here behind the paywall)