The US is a Secular Democracy

Ok – so, if you weren’t aware of it, there a people who consider themselves to be Christian soldiers in America who are fighting a religious war against secularism.  Whenever you hear someone say – America is a Christian Nation and that our nation is under attack, you are listening to someone who either views themselves as a Christian warrior, or is influenced by this form of paranoid Christianity.

It should be obvious to anyone who has read our Constitution (conveniently linked here in case you haven’t), that America was not founded as a Christian Nation and that our laws are not based on biblical laws.

Why?  Well, the fact that our Constitution does not say we are a Christian nation is your first clue. It starts with the words “we the people.”  Nowhere in the document is Christianity mentioned.  The only mention of religion is where it says – there will be no religious test for office in Article VI.  And it isn’t like this was an oversight or simple omission. 

The fact our government did not mention Christianity was something that was debated widely at the time.  It simply wasn’t heard of to found a country without an official religion. This is something we have the newspapers of the time to prove. Americans in 1787 debated whether or not to include a mention of Christianity into our founding document and decided against it.  Because, they wanted to be a secular democracy and not a democratically elected Christian Theocracy – more on that later.

Now, compare the conspicuous absence of any mention of Christianity in our Constitution with other governing documents of the time.  Like say the Charter of Massachusetts, which says that the purpose and principle end of the state is to be religiously governed so that they can win the natives over to Christianity (paraphrased as the language is old and cumbersome – but check it out here – the end of the 7th paragraph).

Again, the absence of such language in our Constitution is direct evidence our founders did not intend for us to be governed as a democratically elected Christian theocracy. That had been tried and the results were terrible. It was Massachusetts after all that gave us the Salem Witch Trials a mere 70 years after they were founded as a Christian state.

If you still don’t believe that America was not meant to be secular, then consider our Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments made to our Constitution. If our nation was founded on Biblical law – as many today claim, then the Bill of Rights could not possibly have been ratified.

The Bible is very specific about certain things, specifically the 10 Commandments.  The first 4 commandments in the 10 of the Bible involve not worshipping any other gods but the God of the Bible, and if you do, lots of bad things will happen to you.  It takes 4 of the 10 commandments to cover this one topic, no worshipping of other gods.  It is apparently very important to Him.

So … why would a people heavily influenced by Christianity and intending to be governed according to Biblical law write the following: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?”  Why would a group of people who thought that hell fire would rain down on them and their progeny for four generations specifically write into law the right to worship any god you want?  The answer is that they wouldn’t!

Remember, these are the first words in the First Amendment! It isn’t that they were only intending for people to worship the Christian god or that the only people in our country at the time were Christians.  Because, they weren’t.

The simple fact of the matter is that people for whom this matters write this really important aspect of their faith into law.  They don’t leave it to chance. Our forefathers and mothers wrote the exact opposite into law.  You can worship whomever you want or no one if you want.  It doesn’t matter to the government and the government is not allowed to interfere.

If the absence of any mention of Christianity in our Constitution doesn’t convince you that we weren’t founded as a Christian nation, the first Amendment should.  If we were founded on Biblical principles, Biblical principles would have been written into our laws.  They not only weren’t written in, principles that directly violate Biblical ones were.