Not a “Christian nation” Declaration

By Ken Burrows

Those who promote the fiction that America was founded as a “Christian nation” have to regularly face the fact that our premier governing document, the Constitution, was made secular by design. So they often turn to the Declaration of Independence, pointing out its references to Creator, Nature’s God, Supreme Judge, and Divine Providence as evidence of its “Christian” basis.

But do these terms confirm or even suggest an intent by the Founders to create a Christian nation? Far from it, says constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel. He argues instead that many Judeo-Christian tenets are actually opposed to the Declaration’s essence and to principles on which the country was founded. He provides evidence for his argument in his meticulously researched book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is UN-AMERICAN.

For one thing, Seidel notes, the Declaration is primarily a document of rebellion against authority and for self-government. He contrasts this with the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans in which he called for everyone to be subject to governing authorities “for there is no authority except that which God has established.” Paul was crystal clear that temporal rulers must be obeyed. Seidel concludes: “If Jefferson and the other revolutionaries had been devout Christians, they never would have rebelled, the Declaration would never have been written.”

As for the Declaration’s references to God concepts, Seidel reminds us that many key Founders were not Christians but rather Deists. They believed in a creator of some kind, a divine providence, but to them “Nature’s God” was a Deistic principle, not a Christian God. Seidel cites an instance in which Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams about Nature’s God, remarking that “of the nature of this being we know nothing.” That differs dramatically from the certitude about “God” that undergirds Christian belief.

Before he penned the Declaration, Jefferson had written that people’s rights are derived “from the laws of nature.” This is often understood to mean that rights have their source in humanity itself—in our very nature. Seidel’s research shows that Jefferson in his first draft of the Declaration wrote that all men are created equal “and from that equal creation they derive rights inherent.” No creator mentioned here because rights are derived inherently. Seidel further notes that “Church authorities declared natural law as ordained by ‘Nature’s God’ to be heretical” rather than being a Christian concept. For these authorities, natural law that centered on humanity was considered atheistic. So, Seidel writes, “If the theological scholars of Jefferson’s generation thought invoking ‘Nature’s God’ was ‘arrant atheism,’ we can safely conclude that Jefferson’s usage was not Judeo-Christian.”

Finally, Seidel poses the question: If the Declaration was meant to be a Christian-based document, why didn’t the drafters and signers say so explicitly? The text has no specifically Christian language. Even when referring to “Creator,” the wording does not read “our Creator,” which would have implied a shared religious identity, but rather “their Creator,” keeping it unspecified and individualistic for “all men” who are created equal. This again reflects Deistic thinking, not Christian belief. University of Chicago constitutional scholar Geoffrey Stone affirms Seidel’s thesis. He is quoted as saying that by using terminology such as Nature’s God or Divine Providence, the Declaration “carefully and quite consciously eschewed any invocation of the Christian religion.”

Published in the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs Freethought Views advertorial in the Colorado Springs Independent on October 2, 2019 with the quotation below.

Pious fiction is still fiction.

--- Matthew Arnold