DIALOGUE WITH ATHEISM
“Founding Fathers: Atheists, Deists, or Believers?”
Part III
This brings us to the contemporary scene and the role of religion in American life and politics. However, let us first take a brief look at the Biblical texts. Romans 13 was written by St. Paul around 56 A.D. Himself a Roman citizen who benefited from his citizenship, Paul advocated submission to the state. State authorities were placed there by God for our good. But would he say that about Stalin or
Hitler?
Revelation 18 was written about 95 or 96 A.D., about 40 years after the book of Romans. Revelation reflects a time when Christians were persecuted and killed by Rome because Christianity was regarded as an illegal religion. The great harlot mentioned is the Roman Empire. And Revelation advises Christians to rejoice at the time she will be destroyed by the judgments of God. Thus, in the New Testament, you have two opposite views of the state.
It all changed in 311 A.D. and 313 A.D. when Emperor Constantine issued his Edicts of Milan and Toleration making Christianity a legal religion. Constantine’s additional decrees, along with those of other Emperors, gradually made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.
In that context we must first assert the overwhelming influence of religion, especially Christianity, in the development of America. Judaism has had some influence, but since 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived to establish a religious colony based on the religious Mayflower Compact, to the late 1900’s, Christianity was the predominant religious influence – not Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Sikhism, or Animism or Islam or even Judaism – but Christianity.
Despite the skepticism of some of the Founding Fathers toward the tyranny of religion on the human mind, Christianity has on the other hand freed people from the shackles of superstition and ignorance. Indeed, until the Civil War began in 1861, approximately 107 of the 137 colleges and universities in America were church founded and related.
America’s oldest, Harvard, was founded in 1636 by Congregationalists as was Yale in 1701 because Harvard was becoming too liberal! Presbyterians founded Princeton, Episcopalians started Columbia University, and so on. All of them, religious schools originally, were devoted to freeing the mind from ignorance.
Most of all our recent leaders have been religious men. Lyndon Johnson was Disciples of Christ, Jimmy Carter was Baptist, and John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic president. Nixon was a Quaker, Clinton a Methodist, Bush the first an Episcopalian, George W. a “born again” Methodist, Obama is United Church of Christ, and so on. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and one time Presidential candidate, said he would like to found the U.S. Constitution on the Bible. However, he did not say which part. Did he mean the part, for example, which advocates stoning of heretics?
That’s what separation of church and state wishes to protect – the freedom to disagree theologically without making it a civil offense as in theocracies such as those of established state churches in Europe and in Islam which naturally combines mosque and state and imposes Shariah or Islamic religious law derived from the Koran. Theological dissent in such a society can result in imprisonment, punishment or death. Witness the fanatical enforcement of Muslim law and customs by the Taliban and the Wahabi Muslims based in Saudi Arabia and the ISIS fanatics.
Or consider the fatwa, the religious decree and death warrant issued by the
Ayatollah Khomeini, onetime supreme religious and political leader of Iran. It was against Salman Rushdie for his publishing of The Satanic Verses, referring to a passage in the Koran thought to be critical of Muhammad.
Thus, with our founding fathers we would advocate no union of church and state which derived historically from Constantine’s move to make Christianity the state religion. On the other hand, we descry those who would tear apart the fabric of our civilization by a denial of the many Biblical and western values that have made our nation great.
(to be continued)
