On July 4th this week, Hobby Lobby took out a full page ad in the New York Times with the headline "In God We Trust." It contained a number of quotations which seem to be an attempt to promote the idea that the United States of America is a "Christian nation."
To see the ad, click HERE.
Here is my alternate version:
E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One)
Presidents / Founding Fathers
"We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition ... In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States."
- George Washington, Commander-in-Chief in the American Revolution; Signer of the Constitution; First President of the United States
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in 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."
- John Adams, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; One of Two Signers of the Bill of Rights; Second President of the United States
"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society."
- Thomas Jefferson, Signer and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence; Third President of the United States
"The civil government ... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State....And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together... The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
- James Madison, Principal author, U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights (aka; "Father of the Constitution"); Fouth President of the United States
"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, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
- Benjamin Franklin, Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Statesman, Diplomat, Scientist, Printer...
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity."
- Thomas Paine, Author of Common Sense; Key American patriotic writer
U.S. Constitution and Treaties
"The senators and representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
- Article VI, Section 3, The Constitution of the United States
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the freedom of press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
- Amendment 1, The Constitution of the United States
"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..."
- First part of Article 11, Treaty of Peace and Friendship between The United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, negotiated during the Washington administration, concluded on November 4, 1796, unanimously ratified by the Senate in June, 1797, and signed by John Adams on June 10, 1797
U.S. Supreme Court Rulings
"The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government, can openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organization or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State.'"
- Justice Hugo Black, U. S. Supreme Court, Everson v. Board of Education, 1947
"We find that the basic Constitutional principle of absolute separation was violated when the State of Illinois, speaking through its Supreme Court, sustained the school authorities of Champaign in sponsoring and effectively furthering religious beliefs by its educational arrangement. Separation means separation, not something less. Jefferson's metaphor in describing the relation between church and state speaks of a 'wall of separation,' not of a fine line easily overstepped. The public school is at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny. In no activity of the state is it more vital to keep out divisive forces than in its schools, to avoid confusing, not to say fusing, what the Constitution sought to keep strictly apart. 'The great American principle of eternal separation," Elihu Root's phrase bears repetition, is one of the vital reliances of our Constitutional system for assuring unities among our people stronger than our diversities. It is the Court's duty to enforce this principle in its full integrity. We renew our conviction that 'we have staked the very existence of our country on the faith that complete separation between the state and religion is best for the state and best for religion.'"
- Justice Felix Frankfurter, U. S. Supreme Court, in McCollum v. Board of Education, the 1948 decision that forbid public schools in Illinois from commingling sectarian and secular instruction
"First, this Court has decisively settled that the First Amendment's mandate that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' has been made wholly applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment.... Second, this Court has rejected unequivocally the contention that the Establishment Clause forbids only governmental preference of one religion over another."
- Justice Tom C. Clark, majority opinion, U. S. Supreme Court, School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963)
"The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion."
- John Paul Stevens, majority opinion, U. S. Supreme Court, Wallace v. Jaffree, June 4, 1985
Supreme Court Justices
"It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, thus exemplified in our domestic, as well as in foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject. The situation, too, of the different states equally proclaimed the policy, as well as the necessity of such an exclusion. In some of the states episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in other presbyterians; in others, congregationalists; in other, quakers; in others again, there was close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible, that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it has not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition (as we have seen) of all religious tests. Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship."
- Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, "Father of American Jurisprudence," Placed on the Court by President James Madison
"Protecting religious freedoms may be more important in the late twentieth century than it was when the Bill of Rights was ratified. We live in a pluralistic society, with people of widely divergent religious backgrounds or with none at all. Government cannot endorse beliefs of one group without sending a clear message to non-adherents that they are outsiders."
- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a speech to a Philadelphia conference on religion in public life, May 1991
Some Other National Political Leaders Since the Revolutionary Era
"I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."
- John F. Kennedy, 35th U.S. President, speech to the Greater Houston ministerial Association during the Presidential campaign, 1960
"If any provision of the Constitution can be said to be more precious than the others, it is the provision of the First Amendment; which undertakes to separate church and state by keeping government's hands out of religion and by denying to any and all religious denominations any advantage from getting control of public policy or the public purse. This is so because the history of nations makes this truth manifest: When religion controls government, political freedom dies; and when government controls religion, religious freedom perishes."
- Sam J. Ervin, Jr., U.S. Senator from North Carolina, in Church & State, February 1985
"Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives."
- Barry Goldwater, American politician, in a speech, 1981
Foreigners
"I questioned the faithful of all communions; I particularly sought the society of clergymen, who are the depositories of the various creeds and have a personal interest in their survival ... all thought the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that."
- Alexis de Tocqueville, writing of his travels in America in 1830
"What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honor, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience."
- John Stuart Mill, "Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion"
Jesus
"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"
- Jesus, according to Matthew 22:21
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."
- Jesus, according to Matthew 6:5-6
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Thanks to Ed and Michael Buckner for some of the quotes listed above (click HERE to read many more quotes compiled by them).
Click HERE to read some of the more extreme comments by key Founders that I could have used.
To directly address one idea promoted in the ad regarding Christianity being part of the Common Law, here is what Jefferson had to say about that:
"...For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time, to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna Charta, which terminates the period of the common law, or Lex non Scripta, and commences that of the statute law, or Lex Scripta. This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years,during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it. If it ever was adopted, therefore, into the common law, it must have been between the introduction of Christianity and the date of the Magna Charta. But of the laws of this period we have a tolerable collection by Lambard and Wilkins, probably not perfect, but neither very defective; and if any one chooses to build a doctrine on any law of-that period, supposed to have been lost, it is incumbent on him to prove it to have existed, and what were its contents. These were so far alterations of the common law, and became themselves a part of it. But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the Introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of: the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
"What a conspiracy this, between Church and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all!"
For more detail, see Is Christianity part of English Common Law?
