“The Framers derived an independent government out of Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great Britain. Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about Christianity. The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free expression of any belief. The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture.”
— Jim Walker, “Little-Known U.S. Document Signed By President Adams Proclaims America’s Government Is Secular,” Early America Review, Summer 1997.
Thanks for this cartoon. Rightardia has been railing against this evangelical lie for along time. If the US were a Christian nation, you would find the words God, Jesus or Christian in the US Constitution. The First Amendment is also called the Establishment Clause and it led to the doctrine of the separation of church. There are least 50 Supreme and federal court cases that back up the separation of church and state.
The Catholic church tired the same ploy when the EU was formed. It wanted special mention for contributions of Christianity to Europe. The French got that ‘special mention’ out of the EU because the French have a history of secular government. The French were, of course, the biggest contributors to the American revolution. The Catholic church also forgot about the 1000 year Dark Ages heritage and its Inquisition that ended in the 1830s.
Thanks again for this cartoon!
Thanks to you, Eric. It bugs me no end when the ‘newsbots’ — even those not on Fox — prattle on about the ‘rich Christian heritage’ that founded our country, or some such blather. Unless you attended Messiah College, Liberty University or one of those other discredited Looney-Tunes Bible bins, you must have absorbed enough American history — even in high school — to understand this country wasn’t founded by a bunch of evangelical Christians and wasn’t intended to spread the faith to the world via our armed forces.
One of the craziest things that some wingnuts have leaned on to ‘prove’ that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation was the use by some Founders of the common 18th-century construction “In the year of our Lord” before writing a date. Sweet Jesus — this is like saying if you write ‘2009 A.D.’ it proves you must be a Christian!