John Brummett: Christian Ideals, not policy
Mail continues to drip in to express shock, horror, dismay and outright fury that I would dare write of my agreement with President Obama's assertion that the United States is not a Christian nation.
So in honor of America's glorious freedom and independence on this special day, I wish to revisit the matter.
That is to say that I'd like to reiterate how right Obama and I are and how vital it is to our nation that everyone understand and honor how right we are.
Actually, this is not a matter of agreeing with an opinion. It's a matter of simple, powerful, compelling fact.
The First Amendment of our Constitution says that America is not a state-religion country, but a free-religion one. You'd best be glad of that. State-religion countries historically face dissent and strife and abuse and killing.
In the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797, President John Adams, a president highly regarded enough to get a big famous book written about him and a multi-part HBO series telecast on him, had us saying as follows:
"As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character or enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
It was Adams' good fortune not to have had any Fox News during his time, though he did face other pestilence.
Seriously: What in the world are you people arguing about?
Actually, I know. You grudgingly understand that we do not write Christian religious adherence into our law. But you insist that we can call ourselves a Christian nation and should do so, I suspect you believe, because your God would want or command us to do so. That's because we plainly were founded on what you like to call "Judeo-Christian principles."
Sure, OK. Great.
I could cite values embraced in other religions as formative in the proudly ennobling principles of our free, brave and democratic republic; but, indeed, Judeo ones are in there big-time and Christian ones are in there big-time, too. We're not supposed to kill or steal or bear false witness or covet our neighbor's wife or any Argentine firecrackers.
Perhaps you also are confused over what might seem a contradiction: Ours is a country with a constitutionally mandated secular government, but with an unusually fervent religious culture and society. We go to church much more than Western Europeans.
But that is no contradiction at all. It is instead a vivid testament to our freedom. You'll tend to embrace something more if it's chosen by you rather than for you.
You're wondering why we have all these religious holidays Jesus' supposed birthday, a day to give thanks if we're not a Christian nation. It's because we're a predominately Christian society that, as I readily agreed a few paragraphs ago, has a predominately Christian heritage.
But that is different from a Christian nation.
So you ask why we say "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "in God we trust" on our currency. That's because people came along well after our national founding and added those little gems. But it doesn't make us governmentally Christian.
God is a concept that transcends the Christian one. When the founders famously wrote that we were created equal, they were assuming someone or something did the creating. But that's not a mandate that anyone worship this creator by an official definition or in any government-prescribed way.
So in honor of this Fourth of July, let's all put out the flag, pop a firecracker, eat a hot dog and, on the morrow, go to the church or temple or synagogue or Eastern meditative session of our choice, or no religious assembly at all.
Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.