The Far Right Continues to Try to Rewrite History

Perhaps it is because I was a history major in college and have read a great deal on the writings of the Founding fathers - particularly Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders from Virginia - but I never cease to be shocked at the manner in which Christianists and the crazy as a loon element of the GOP intentionally try to utterly reinvent the history of the nation's founding into something that never in fact existed. A report from Right Wing Watch on the pronouncements of Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty who persists in repeating the myth that the USA was founded upon Christianity brought this issue once again to mind. Here is a sample of Pawlenty's disingenuous blather:

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"If you go back and look at why and how this country was founded, people who envisioned America and the American dream first and foremost said we need to acknowledge and be grateful to God," the governor stated. "And it's reflected in our founding documents; it should be reflected in our daily lives, our political values, our political principles, and our own behavior. "It all starts with that," he emphasized. "That is the foundation upon which we build our house -- literally and figuratively."

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It all sounds fine and good except for the fact that it is totally untrue. But then the far right and Christianists and Mormons never let the truth get in the way of their agenda. Positive Liberty has a discourse on the issue of gay marriage that leads into and provides a good view of what the Founders really thought about intertwining religion and politics. They were dead set against it. Here is a sampling:

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[D]uring the Founding era, the population disputed how “real Christianity” was defined (as we do today). And if government were to be in the business of supporting “the Christian religion,” which in turn provided republican government with “indispensable support,” it would have to first define “Christianity.”

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James Madison, who remonstrated against government support for “Christianity generally,” [at the time the Virginia General Assembly was considering a bill that would have funded the teaching of Christianity which was ultimately defeated] understood the best solution when it came to intractable disputes was to get government out of the game and rather have it act as a neutral referee among competing “factions.” Madison believed if government had the authority to “take cognizance of” and hence define “religion” or “Christianity,” someone’s unalienable rights ultimately would be violated. As Madison wrote in the Memorial and Remonstrance:

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Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?

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Madison’s solution was to privitize religion:

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We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.

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Madison also went on to state much like Thomas Jefferson in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that neither the government nor other men had any right to impose religious belief on other citizens in very unequivocal language. Here are some further highlights:

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The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.

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Because if Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former.

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Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, . . .

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During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

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It doesn't get much more clearly stated than this, yet on a daily basis the Christianists, Mormons, and other religious extremists - like the supporters of Proposition 8 - trample upon the founding principles of this nation and seek to subvert the elegant design of the Founding Fathers. Would that some of the talking heads in the main stream media would call them out on this issue and flat out rebuke them.