After reading Jacob Brooks’ article “Founding fathers set a good example,” anyone who has a decent understanding of our country’s founding will find outright lies that are believed by too many people in this country. Let’s get this straight once and for all; this country was not founded on the Bible, or more specifically, uniquely Biblical principles. The Founding Fathers built this country on our Constitution, not “an open-minded evangelical Christian/Puritan worldview” (anyone who thinks the Puritans were open-minded needs a history lesson. They were in fact, very intolerant of anyone with differing beliefs. Witch trials anyone?) Reading the Constitution, one would be hard-pressed to find all of the Biblical principals that Mr. Brooks says there are (why aren’t they mentioned if they were so important?). If we look at the First Commandment and First Amendment we get totally contradictory ideas. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and freedom of religion (and yes, that includes freedom from religion) don’t mesh very well, do they? Not a very good start.
Mr. Brooks says that America received freedom due to Biblical influence. Funny, then, that for well over 1,000 years there was no democracy of any kind where Christianity reigned supreme. Freedom never came from a nation that had the Bible as its foundation for law. This is because when the Bible was the basis of law, the God of the Bible had to be obeyed above the laws of man. Kings took the divine role of enforcing God’s will on Earth along with the Church. Biblical law was applied and those aptly named ‘Christian nations’ were very cruel places. If you look more recently at the 13 colonies you would find that many had state religions and the consequence for professing yourself to be an unbeliever was death. See why the Founding Fathers consciously left any mention of God, the Bible, or Christianity out of our Constitution?
The Founding Fathers were mainly, in fact, liberal Christians (Unitarians for example) and some Deists along with others including Christians that were more conservative. They were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and as such looked to reason instead of superstition. This is why the Bible is not cited as the basis of our laws. It must be said that they were certainly not perfect. For example, when they said, ‘all men are created equal’ it did not apply to women and was ignored when it came to minorities.
Too often, we speak of the Founding Fathers as if they were one entity, but in reality they differed on many issues and I am certain that not everyone got their ideas included in the Constitution. Compromise had to be made. This is why it is futile to quote the Founding Fathers about this. Even though some spoke about how important Christianity was they did not put that in the Constitution. There were some that even spoke strongly against Christianity, but we do not see that in the Constitution either. In fact, it wasn’t until we left religion out of our Constitution, specifically Christianity, that the 1st (technically) free nation came into existence, The United States of America. If we were to follow the Bible as the foundation of our country we would revert back to the Dark Ages sooner or later. The Constitution, without mentioning any God, has allowed religion to be practiced freely and flourish in this country. I wish people could just accept that instead of trying to re-write history.
Keith MorrisSeniorSpanish
