Michael E. Buckner and Edward M. Buckner

THE US IS A FREE COUNTRY, NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION

THE BASIC ARGUMENT

THE UNITED STATES IS and ought to be a free country, not a Christian nation. Whatever anyone says or thinks, it cannot be both. Nations, including the US, have to choose either to endorse and support a religion or to be free. We're going to explain here exactly why the choice is necessary and why the only defensible choice is to be free. Everyone, including deeply religious Christians, should agree with us. And that's not arrogance on our part, nor is it foolish one-sidedness—so let us first explain our optimism: Why should readers—some of you are probably Christians, maybe even fundamentalists—why should you listen to a pair of secular humanists (we're son and father, by the way), much less decide that we're right? (After all, there are far more Christians in the US than there are secular humanists.) You should agree with us on this for two reasons: First, you rightly pride yourselves, we bet, on being bright and open-minded, sincere searchers for the truth, as well as strong, freedom-loving, patriotic Americans (readers from elsewhere are hereby invited to be patriotic to their own nation); and second, we really are right about this.

American history supports this view, showing conclusively that we are not a Christian nation. And, as many well-documented quotations demonstrate, America's founders supported religious liberty and understood that the government's support of any religion undermines religious freedom.

There are many “myths”—false things that many people think they know about separation of religion and government—that need to be countered. But anyone who wants to claim that our government should support Christianity (or any other religion) must explain away American history, contradict our decidedly unchristian form of government, and, finally and most crucially, demonstrate that separation of church and state is not in everyone's best interest.

THE HISTORY PART OF OUR ARGUMENT

You might think that a country can be a “Christian nation,” that it can do without “separation of church and state,” and still be free, even for non-Christians. After all, some European states have vestigial establishments of religion, but no one is persecuted in England, for example, for not supporting the Church of England. But the actual history of the entanglement of religion and the state should disabuse anyone of that view. It was less than eighty years from the Emperor Constantine's proclamation that Christians were to have freedom of worship in the Roman Empire to Emperor Theodosius’ proclamation that no one else did. Thereafter, for 1,300 years, Christian rulers engaged in crusades against “heathens,” heretics, and most notoriously, Muslims; carried out forced conversions of entire populations; sought to control the Church or were controlled by it; tortured and executed “witches”; and set up special courts to hunt down religious dissenters (the notorious “inquisitions”). When major theological divisions among Christians appeared, persecution turned into war and massacre, from the bloody thirteenth-century Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of southern France, to the French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century and the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of the French Protestants by French Catholics, to the Thirty Years’ War between Catholic and Protestant princes that practically depopulated large areas of Germany in the seventeenth century.

An infamous example of Protestant evil, an example given by Thomas Jefferson, is the execution of Michael Servetus.

The Catholic Inquisition is well-known for its persecutions, but the Protestants were no better. An infamous example of Protestant evil, an example given by Thomas Jefferson, is the execution of Michael Servetus. A Spanish physician, Servetus wrote that the doctrine of the Trinity makes no sense, that it contradicts the idea that there is only one God. Servetus was condemned to die by the Catholic Inquisition, but he wasn't present, so they couldn't kill him. He had fled to Protestant Switzerland, expecting to be protected there. Instead, the city leaders in Geneva, with the approval of John Calvin (one of the great fathers of Protestant thought) and other Protestant leaders across Europe, had Servetus burned alive (with green wood to give him longer to repent) in 1553.

When not persecuting their fellow Christians for practicing the wrong kind of Christianity, Christians would often turn against the adherents of Christianity's parent religion, Judaism. In 1290 Edward I of England decreed that every Jew in England be expelled from the kingdom (they weren't officially allowed to return for over 360 years). In 1306 King Philip “the Fair” followed suit in France. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella did the same for Spain. European Christians sometimes did worse than merely forcing their Jewish brethren from their homes; during the Crusades, Christians massacred Jews by the thousands, incited by the “blood libel”—false stories that the Jews were carrying out sacrifices of Christian infants—and by rumors that the Jews had secret rites in which they ritually desecrated the sacred objects of the Christian religion. The American colonies did not escape this terrible history of religious persecution. The Puritans came to America to have freedom to practice their religion, then persecuted Quakers. Nineteen “witches” were hanged (in Salem); other people had holes bored in their tongues for “blasphemy” in colonial Massachusetts. In Virginia just before the Revolution, Episcopalians (who were then in charge) threw Baptist preachers in jail for the “crime” of telling people to read the Bible for themselves. There were bright spots, though. The Baptist preacher Roger Williams led the colony of Rhode Island to champion religious freedom for all—and called for separation of church and state. Quaker Pennsylvania was also an early champion of religious tolerance. Intended as a haven for Catholics (persecuted in Protestant England), Maryland allowed for at least a limited form of religious toleration. By the eve of the American Revolution, many in the thirteen colonies were ready to reject not only European views on government but also views on the relationship of Christianity to the state, which had existed for centuries in Christian Europe. Angered and horrified by the legal persecution of Baptist preachers in his native Virginia, James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” wrote in 1774: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.”

The Puritans came to America to have freedom to practice their religion, then persecuted Quakers.

As for those vestigial establishments in Europe, that's what they are: the last vestiges of a dying past of religious persecution. After the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants in England alternated in martyring each other for practicing their respective forms of Christianity; even as late as the nineteenth century, Britain discriminated against both Catholics and Protestant “dissenters” from the Established Church, who couldn't be elected to Parliament and weren't permitted to attend the great universities in Oxford and Cambridge. Although the nineteenth century saw an end to such practices, centuries of British religious policy in Ireland helped lay the foundation for the sectarian violence that plagued that country for much of the twentieth century. The last remnants of religious establishmentarianism no longer lead to violence or injustice in Britain only because Britain's Jews, Catholics, and dissenting Protestants have struggled for generations to render establishment a quaint and toothless relic. Britain's example hardly recommends religious establishment as a path to civic peace.

With these words, the founders of the US swept away nearly 1,500 years of European Christian political thought.

Because the Declaration of Independence does refer to God (albeit with the term “Creator”), the religious right loves to quote from it, but we can't be blind to the fact that the Declaration was a radical document. In fact, its theory of government, though not atheistic or secular humanist, was literally revolutionary:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Constitution, invoking the authority of “We the people,” doesn't even pay lip service to any divine authority.

With these words, the founders of the US swept away nearly 1,500 years of European Christian political thought: ideas of aristocracy, that some tiny segment of the people should be specially privileged above the rest; the “Divine Right of Kings,” that some men are anointed by God to rule; and that the sole duty of the people is to obey their betters.

Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States is godless: the word “God” (like the words “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Christianity,” “Bible,” or even “Creator”) simply does not appear anywhere in our country's fundamental legal document. The Constitution, invoking the authority of “We the people,” doesn't even pay lip service to any divine authority. The only mention of religion in the original seven articles of the Constitution is to proclaim, in Article VI, that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

The date of the Constitution at its end includes a standard Christian dating convention used on all formal documents at the time, and there is a reference to Sunday not counting as a workday for some purposes, and affirmations are declared to be acceptable substitutes for swearing, but nowhere in the body of the Constitution is there anything substantial based on any religious beliefs.

Benjamin Franklin suggested to the delegates at the Constitutional Convention that they bring in clergy to help get them past some hard disagreements, but the delegates tabled Franklin's motion and never voted on it. And this was the same Benjamin Franklin, by the way, who wrote in a letter to Richard Price, on October 9, 1780: “When a Religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its Professors are obliged to call for help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

When the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, it went even further: Congress was forbidden to pass any laws prohibiting the free exercise of any religion. Earlier colonial charters, such as Maryland's 1649 Toleration Act, had provided that anyone “professing to believe in Jesus Christ” was to be permitted to freely exercise his or her religion—but anyone denying the Christian religion was to be put to death. The Founders realized that toleration is not good enough; what they rightly demanded was religious liberty. As George Washington said, in a 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was by the indulgence of one class of the people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that those who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it, on all occasions, their effectual support.

Earlier colonial charters, such as Maryland's 1649 Toleration Act, had provided that anyone “professing to believe in Jesus Christ” was to be permitted to freely exercise his or her religion—but anyone denying the Christian religion was to be put to death.

Although most Americans unquestioningly accept the First Amendment's protection for the free exercise of religion, the other half of the First Amendment's edict on religion and government, the establishment clause or “separation of church and state,” is more controversial. Despite what some would have you believe, there is no question that the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were unhesitatingly in favor of keeping government and religion separate. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1782 book, Notes on the State of Virginia: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But 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.” In his 1787 work, Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, John Adams declared:

Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

And James Madison, in an 1822 letter, plainly called not merely for refraining from establishing any particular denomination but for separating religion and government entirely: “And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov't will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

To sum up the history of all this and add one more telling bit of historical evidence, remember this sequence, ending in 1797: In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was issued and the Revolutionary War officially began. Eleven years later, after mounting frustration with the weak alliance of states under the Articles of Confederation, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed on the US Constitution, which was then ratified in 1789.

“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov't will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

—James Madison

By November 1796, the US was near the end of George Washington's second term, and America was having problems with Muslim terrorists—seriously. These terrorists were attacking American ships in the Mediterranean, killing sailors, and stealing cargo. George Washington sent a diplomat, Joel Barlow, to see if he could appease the leaders and pirates of several Muslim countries. The leader of one of these nations, Jussof Bashaw Mahomet, the Bey of Tripoli—then a nation where Libya is now—signed a short treaty with Barlow on November 4, 1796.

The First Amendment—which says you may worship whatever God or gods you choose, in whatever manner your conscience demands, or believe in and worship no gods of any sort if that's where your reason guides you—stands in contrast to the First Commandment's dictate: “No other gods before me.”

It took months to get the document back to the US, and by the time it arrived, John Adams was President. Adams sent the treaty to the Senate for consideration in May 1797, well over 200 years ago. The treaty was read aloud in the Senate, English copies of the treaty were printed and distributed to all Senators, and in a few weeks a committee recommended ratification.

In a rare unanimous vote, every member of the Senate who was present voted to approve it, and the Senate sent the treaty to the President. None of the careers of any of the men who voted in favor of that treaty was hurt by his support. (Many were re-elected, some became state governors, and one became Speaker of the House.) On June 10, 1797, Adams signed the treaty and declared it to be the official law of the land. Several major newspapers of the time carried the full text of the treaty, sometimes on the front page. You can hold one of those newspapers in your hands at the Library of Congress and see microfilm of several others.

It was a weak treaty, one in which the US tried to buy off the Muslims with tribute, rope, tar, money, and so on—and the treaty didn't succeed in stopping the terrorism, even temporarily. There is no record that the treaty stirred up controversy in its day, though Thomas Jefferson, who had recently been the Secretary of State, reportedly objected to the appeasement. President Jefferson, only about four years later, had to send the US Navy and Marines to the Mediterranean and wage war to get the terrorism stopped.

But what does all that have to do with this essay? The eleventh article of that treaty, written (very likely) by John Barlow, a former chaplain, is profoundly interesting. It says (emphasis added):

As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,... it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever produce an interruption of harmony existing between the two countries.

The treaty, superseded a few years later, is of no lasting importance to our history, laws, nor, obviously, to our relationship with Muslim countries. It isn't needed to demonstrate that the framers of the Constitution did not set up a Christian government or intend to—the Constitution itself does that clearly. But the language of the treaty demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that in the years soon after the US was officially started, everyone understood that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

THE “NOT CHRISTIAN” PART OF THE ARGUMENT

Our history and the documented words of the founders and of the governing documents clearly show that American government was not designed to be Christian. But perhaps even more difficult for those who claim that the US is a Christian nation is the severe conflict between biblical Christianity and American government and society as it is now organized.

Not only was the Declaration of Independence politically radical, it was radical in religious terms, as well. We've already discussed how the Declaration explicitly denied the old doctrines of aristocracy and the “Divine Right of Kings”:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

These words weren't just a challenge to the power of kings; they also went against the plain text of the Bible:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

[Romans 13:1-7, New International Version—the version of the Bible used for all quotations in this essay.]

And the First Amendment's proclamation that there be no law abridging the free exercise of religion is a far cry from the demands of biblical law:

If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again. [Deuteronomy 13:6-11]

The First Amendment—which says you may worship whatever God or gods you choose, in whatever manner your conscience demands, or believe in and worship no gods of any sort if that's where your reason guides you—stands in contrast to the First Commandment's dictate: “No other gods before me.” Of course, Christians (and Jews) are still free to follow the First Commandment as a matter of individual conscience, but biblical laws (or Koranic ones) that would enforce one view of God over all others on pain of death can never be implemented in the United States—as long as we safeguard the unbiblical heritage of liberty bequeathed by the Founding Fathers.

The United States, with its refusal to have an official religion or national God, didn't start out very biblical, and it's gotten less biblical as time has gone on—which is a good thing in the view of nearly all Americans. One of the greatest blots on our history was the shameful legacy of some 250 years of treating other human beings as property, from colonial Jamestown right up until our bloodiest war, the Civil War. But after four years of bloodshed, the nation finally proclaimed in the Thirteenth Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” More generations of struggle allowed us to finally make good on the promises of equal rights for all Americans that were made after the Civil War. But ending slavery certainly wasn't the biblical thing to do. The Bible never condemns slavery, in either the Old Testament or the New; at most, the Bible calls for masters to treat their slaves kindly (Ephesians 6:9)—while calling for slaves to humbly obey their masters, as they would God himself (Ephesians 6:5-8). As for actually freeing all the slaves:

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

[Leviticus 25:44-46]

By the twentieth century, America had finally become a nation that acknowledged, in the Nineteenth Amendment, that men and women should be equal citizens: “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” We have women as governors, as senators and representatives, as secretaries of state and ambassadors, and as corporate executives. Most Americans probably accept as a matter of course that someday the President will be a woman. But the Bible says: “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12). So much for Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice—and Ann Coulter!

THE “‘MYTHS’ THAT NEED CORRECTING” PART OF THE ARGUMENT

There are many half-truths or outright falsehoods about separation of church and state and about America's Constitution, symbols, and history that get repeated frequently.

1. Some say that church-state separation is anti-religious or anti-Christian, either by design or in effect. This is almost the direct opposite of the truth: The secular, nonreligious government of the US has stood the test of time, protecting religious liberty and the freely chosen religious beliefs of all Americans specifically by keeping the government out of the business of making religious decisions for any of America's citizens. The framers of the Constitution slammed the door on mixing government and religion not because they hated religion or Christianity (though some of them may have). They didn't slam that door only because they feared that strife over religious differences could destroy the nation (though many did have such fears, and the fears were well-founded, historically). What they most feared, because history repeatedly demonstrated to them the sound basis for fearing it, was that liberty would be lost, that power would become concentrated and individual liberty lost, that both the national government and religion would be corrupted, if the two were entangled. (Some states did have, until 1833, established churches and no separation. Massachusetts was the last such state. The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 makes the rights of US citizens more important and prohibits any future religious establishment by a state.) The framers were not anti-Christian or anti-religious, and they did not produce an anti-Christian or anti-religious Constitution—they were pro-freedom. And therefore this is a free country, for Christians and everyone else—and not a Christian nation!

Some religious leaders, today and in the earliest days of the American republic, spoke out in favor of separation. The Baptists in colonial America, who were certainly deeply religious Christians—led by men like John Leland and Isaac Backus—were strong supporters of separation of church and state. The Baptists of today, including the Southern Baptists, whom you might think oppose separation of church and state, are also officially very much on the side of religious liberty and the need for separation. The “Baptist Faith and Message,” the official statement of the Southern Baptist Convention, is primarily a declaration of Christian, biblical principles. But it includes, in a section called “Religious Liberty,” these sentences (emphasis added):

Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others. Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work. The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends. The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind. The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion.

2. Some say that, in public schools, separation means keeping Christian students from praying or saying grace before their lunches or from reading their Bibles in school. This is completely false. As the bumper sticker says, “As long as there are algebra tests, there will be prayer in schools.” Sincere believers in prayer—all of them that we know, at least—deny that anyone can keep anyone else from praying, especially if they pray in the way that Matthew 6:5-6 reports that Jesus told followers to pray: privately. All that is prohibited by separation is forced government-sponsored prayer. The First Amendment means that a Catholic or Muslim teacher cannot decide how or when or whether a Baptist or a Methodist student should pray—but there is and should be no restriction put on a student other than the obvious one that he cannot disrupt teaching or force other students to pray. If any teacher or principal has ever punished a student for praying before her lunch, the teacher or principal is the one who violated the First Amendment, not the student. (By the way, most, if not all, of the stories circulating about such incidents are fabrications.)

The great American hero, civil rights martyr, and Protestant minister Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he knelt in prayer awaiting arrest during a protest in 1962, said of the Supreme Court school prayer decision (rendered a few weeks earlier): “Its prayer decision was sound and good, reaffirming something that is basic in our Constitution, namely separation of church and state.”

3. Many claim that the words of the Ten Commandments are posted in the US Supreme Court Building and that it is therefore hypocritical for the Court not to allow them to be posted in schools or other courtrooms. Though often repeated, this is a false claim. We've been in the Supreme Court chambers ourselves and walked, carefully, all around the outside of the building, too. There are sculptural allusions, several of them, to Moses, just as there are to Confucius and Hammurabi and Napoleon and Muhammad and many others—but in every case these figures are presented as lawgivers —some religious, some not. In no case are the words of the Ten Commandments presented in English (there are a few Hebrew-looking fragments and some Roman numerals that could be interpreted as referring to the Ten Commandments or, more likely, to the Bill of Rights).

If government buildings—courtrooms or classrooms—did post and endorse the Ten Commandments, the very first one would directly oppose the First Amendment. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” is a clear religious rule for Christians and Jews to follow, but if government is allowed to endorse or oppose it, government becomes the authority on religious truth, instead of each American citizen.

4. According to some people, the fact that our official national motto and all our money declare, “In God We Trust,” is proof that the US is an official Christian nation. This is not true, and it's not what the founders wanted, either. The phrase didn't appear on coins until 1864 (due to religious fervor triggered by the Civil War) or on paper currency until 1957 (due to religious fervor triggered by the Cold War). The courts have ruled that the motto is constitutional only because, they say, it does not refer to Christianity or any specific religion.

The founders had a chance to choose a religious motto as our national motto, and they rejected it. They chose instead the motto that was our exclusive motto until 1956: “E Pluribus Unum,” or, “Out of the Many, One.”

The Baptists in colonial America, who were certainly deeply religious Christians—led by men like John Leland and Isaac Backus—were strong supporters of separation of church and state.

5. There are many “Christian” quotations that claim to demonstrate that the founders intended to establish a Christian government. The gross insult to the founders that this suggests is usually overlooked—that they wanted to create a Christian government but were too stupid or careless to remember to actually provide for this in the documents they wrote and approved. What matters is not whether these founders or leaders were Christian, as indeed many were, but whether they wanted to create a Christian government. Some historical Americans really did want that—but they lost the fight, and for very good reasons.

When someone shows you quotations in support of any idea, read carefully—if the point of a quotation offered is that some former leader is religious or specifically a strong Christian, it will not be relevant to this dispute. Some of the quotations from those who claim this is a Christian nation are suspect (fabricated or quoted out of context), but what matters is what we, as Americans, must do to protect religious liberty, not just what one of the framers said or wrote.

As one example—of many—of a phony quotation from a key founder, consider the claim that James Madison said or wrote, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments.” This bogus quotation appeared in David Barton's 1989 book The Myth of Separation.

If a nationwide vote were taken this fall, and 99 percent of US voters disagreed with you on a religious matter, would that change your mind?

Barton gave, in a footnote, two sources for the quotation: Harold K. Lane's Liberty! Cry Liberty! (Boston: Lamb and Lamb Tractarian Society, 1939) and Fredrick Nyneyer's First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association (South Holland Libertarian Press, 1958). Both are obscure, twentieth-century publications from tiny Christian publishers. The latter publication got the quote off a Christian calendar. It's impossible to determine where Lane got the quote because no copies of Liberty! Cry Liberty! can be found. [Editor's note: The WorldCat database, which lists the holdings of over 10,000 libraries around the world—more than one billion items in all—doesn't show a single copy. A specific search of the Library of Congress’ holdings also yields a goose egg. Nor is a used copy available via Amazon or the giant ABE Books website, in which 13,500 used/antiquarian book-sellers from around the world list their inventories.]

Madison almost certainly never wrote or said that, regardless of how many alleged sources are cited. We have to ask questions like, Is it consistent with other things we know that he wrote or said? Is there any specific written evidence from a primary source for the quotation? If so, is the context in which it is found consistent with the apparent meaning of the quotation? No such quotation has ever been found among any of James Madison's writings. None of the biographers of Madison, past or present, has ever run across such a quotation, and most if not all would love to know where this false quotation originated. Despite the detective work of fundamentalist Christians, nonbelievers, and others, no one has been able to trace the quote back to any source earlier than Lane's unobtainable 1939 book. Apparently, David Barton did not check the work of the secondary sources he quoted, and he now admits that the quotation is “unconfirmed.” The late Robert S. Alley, who was a distinguished historian at the University of Richmond, wrote of his unsuccessful attempt to track down the origin of the Madison quotation and about the implausibility of it as a Madison statement. (See “Public Education and the Public Good,” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Summer 1995, pages 316-18.)

Similar things can be said of another widely circulated quotation: “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”—George Washington (according, at one time, to David Barton). But no one can find this quotation in Washington's papers, nor is it consistent with everything else we know about Washington. Be on guard against false quotations, no matter which side of an argument they support.

There's also the old saw that “separation of church and state” only appears in the Soviet Constitution, not in the US Constitution—another form of “misquoting.” Separation of church and state did appear in the various constitutions of the USSR—so did freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly. Too bad the Communists didn't actually live up to their constitution. The government persecuting religious believers has no more to do with true separation of church and state than one of those banana republic “elections,” where the president is re-elected with 99.9 percent of the vote, has to do with free elections in a true democracy. The words are in some US state constitutions, but the concept was originally developed in the First Amendment.

THE “OUGHT TO BE FREE” PART OF THE ARGUMENT

History makes clear that there are many false claims related to separation of church and state. The documents and quotations from the founders of American government support this, as well. But whatever the history or opinions of the framers, why should anyone support freedom instead of their own religious beliefs? Were the founders right to create a free country instead of a Christian nation?

Anyone who wants to claim that our government should support any religion must show you why any of four very basic points don't stand. If he defeats any of these four closely related claims, convinces you that any of the four does not hold up, then and only then can he begin to build a case that this ought to be a Christian nation.

First: Not all American citizens hold the same opinions on religion.

Second: Human judgment is imperfect.

Third: Religious truth cannot be determined by votes or by force.

And fourth and finally: Freedom, especially religious liberty, is worth having and protecting.

Not all American citizens hold the same opinions on religion and on important matters related to religion (like whether or not there is a God and, if so, what its nature is, or how or when or whether to worship God, or what God says to us about how to live). This is not related to the question of whether you think your own religious ideas are the right ones—probably everyone thinks that he or she is right when it comes to religion. But clearly not all citizens have the same beliefs on important religious matters.

Human judgment is imperfect. For Catholics, the Pope is sometimes an exception, with regards to official matters of doctrine, but even Catholics, like all the rest of us, don't believe that human voters and human legislators always know what God wants us to do. The Bible is quite clear on this point: “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” as it says in the beginning of Matthew, chapter 7, and dozens of other biblical passages make it clear that human judgment is not always reliable. Please keep in mind, whether you believe in God or not, this is not a declaration about whether God's judgment is perfect—only whether humanity's is.

Religious truth cannot be determined by votes or by force. In America, as in other genuinely free nations, neither a majority of citizens nor the government acting on the majority's behalf can make religious decisions for individuals. If you think you might disagree with idea #3, ask yourself: If a nationwide vote were taken this fall, and 99 percent of US voters disagreed with you on a religious matter, would that change your mind? If 99 percent of the citizens wanted this country to adopt Catholicism or Methodism or Islam or atheism as the “right” religious point of view, would you accept their decision?

Would that convince you? And it's not just voting, it's the law itself, the power of government, that we're talking about here. Remember Abdul Rahman, the poor citizen in Afghanistan who was arrested, faced the danger of being executed, and finally had to flee to another country in early 2006, all for the crime of changing his religious beliefs? Would you change your beliefs or be kept from changing them—could you even change what you really believe—if the law required you to?

There really is no middle ground here: Either governments have the power to make religious decisions for citizens, or governments lack that power. In 1785 James Madison wrote a petition against using Virginia taxpayer money to support Christians of all denominations. In that petition—signed by enough Virginians to get the legislation killed—Madison wrote:

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? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute threepence only of his property for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

Freedom, especially religious liberty, is worth having and protecting. This seems self-evident to most of us, regardless of which religious beliefs we hold. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to Benjamin Rush in 1803: “It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.”

That's it—that's really our whole argument. If all four of these ideas are correct, there is no doubt that we need to keep church and state separate, that we have to insist, as the framers of the Constitution did, that religion is far too important to mix it up with governmental power. If governments, any governments, get to control religious decisions for any of us, religious liberty cannot be guaranteed for anyone.

If you thought that America is or ought to be a Christian nation, what you thought was wrong. The reason it is not and ought not, can be summed up in one sentence: To guarantee your own religious liberty, you have to help protect everyone else's, too.