Was the U.S. really founded on Judeo-Christian principles?

[begin_within]

McCain resurrected that line again tonight in his interview on "60 Minutes." Is this really true?

[tblue]

1. They only add "Judeo" so they don't sound like the KKK.

Good question you ask. Absolutely not.

[supernova]

2. No, it was founded on principles

from the Enlightenment, notably the idea that man is a rational being capable of self-governing if given the opportunity to have a steady diet of accurate information.

[Naturyl]

3. Nope.

This is a flat-out lie trotted out to score points with evangelicals.

[donco6]

4. Not what today's "Christian" would call J/D principles.

The Founding Fathers were children of the Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson was very skeptical of any of the "supernatural" aspects of Christianity, even going so far as to annotate his own bible with a pair of scissors.

There's tons written on this. In short, though, as much as the RW Christian fundagelicals of today would wish it were so, no, the country was not founded on Judeo/Christian principles.

[johnaries]

5. NO. It was founded on Enlightenment principles. nt

[MannyGoldstein]

7. The Freemasons As Much As Anything n/t

[JDPriestly]

23. Good point. I forgot about that. You are very right.

[mikehiggins]

25. I love throwing the Freemasons into the mix whenever people

start that Judeo/Christian crap. How do people think the prohibition against Church/State stuff got into the COnstitution? Did the 1700's version of Dobson and the rest just sit down over some nice lemonade and decide that everyone had a right to their own religion? Uh, sure.

Another question I like to bring up is whether the Brits threw the War in order to help set up a Masonic nation (a new order). It sets these clowns spitting to think that Cornwallis and Washington might have met in Lodge and decided how to make it look like all those mistakes were, well, mistakes.

The World Turned Upside Down is the song my Catholic school nuns claimed was played by the Brits band while the surrender was taking place. How very Masonic an idea for a time when Divine Right was still a matter of common beleif.

[MannyGoldstein]

6. According To John Adams And Congress, No. Here's The Proof:

From the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by Congress and endorsed by President John Adams:

"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 of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, 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."

McCain is as stupid as he is untruthful.

[vanderBeth]

9. Now show that to McCain.

[The Brethren]

16. Excellent quote.

[melody]

24. Here's another Adams quote on that, reiterated on another document

>This nation of ours was not founded on Christian principles.

McCain should read the letters between Adams and Jefferson to get a real sense of what our founding fathers actually intended.

[MannyGoldstein]

26. Those Were Incredible Letters!

A contest to see who could dis Christianity more.

[Avalux]

8. No!! He said that to make his base happy.

It's not true - our founding fathers wanted a country free of religious shackles.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. Partially, but mostly on greco-roman principles.

The judeo-christian bullshit's only merit is that as western european civilization incorporates judeo-christian religious and philosophical traditions, then of course our republic and its enlightenment enfused founders inherited those traditions. The enlightenment was a refutation of the existing theocracy based monarchal system and its uniformity of thought and stagnant intellectual, cultural, artistic, and scientific practices, and a re-establishment of the free thinking philosophical traditions of the golden age of greco-roman civilization, a tradition of open and rational inquiry suppressed by the same christian social system that our neo-theocrats want to claim as the foundation of our republic.

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Here is one opinion on that...Our Founding Fathers were not Christians.

One of the most common statements from the "Religious Right" is that they want this country to "return to the Christian principles on which it was founded". However, a little research into American history will show that this statement is a lie. The men responsible for building the foundation of the United States had little use for Christianity, and many were strongly opposed to it. They were men of The Enlightenment, not men of Christianity. They were Deists who did not believe the bible was true.

When the Founders wrote the nation's Constitution, they specified that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article 6, section 3) This provision was radical in its day-- giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no single religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention religion, except in exclusionary terms. The words "Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, and God" are never mentioned in the Constitution-- not once.

The Declaration of Independence gives us important insight into the opinions of the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the power of the government is derived from the governed. Up until that time, it was claimed that kings ruled nations by the authority of God. The Declaration was a radical departure from the idea of divine authority.

The 1796 treaty with Tripoli states that the United States was "in no sense founded on the Christian religion" (see below). This was not an idle statement, meant to satisfy muslims-- they believed it and meant it. This treaty was written under the presidency of George Washington and signed under the presidency of John Adams.

None of the Founding Fathers were atheists. Most of the Founders were Deists, which is to say they thought the universe had a creator, but that he does not concern himself with the daily lives of humans, and does not directly communicate with humans, either by revelation or by sacred books. They spoke often of God, (Nature's God or the God of Nature), but this was not the God of the bible. They did not deny that there was a person called Jesus, and praised him for his benevolent teachings, but they flatly denied his divinity. Some people speculate that if Charles Darwin had lived a century earlier, the Founding Fathers would have had a basis for accepting naturalistic origins of life, and they would have been atheists. Most of them were stoutly opposed to the bible, and the teachings of Christianity in particular.
<snip>

More at...
http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html

[glowing]

12. No, some where Christians in the room, but NO, they are not mainly

Judeo-christian principals.... Do a history lesson ont the founding fathers... and you will see that a person like George Bush would have been disposed of long before they entered the sacred halls of power.. they would not tolerate an idiot and would have called it to him in his face, and then called duels at Noon.

[PDJane]

13. Founded on Enlightenment principles.........

with a large helping of genocide and slavery.

The hypocrisy started early.

[Hekate]

33. Do the Founders' feet of clay negate the sublimity of their words in shaping this nation?

Or do their sublime thoughts and words call every succeeding generation to interpret the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of rights anew, for the necessities of each new era?

I think it is the latter. In fact, I profoundly believe it. The Constitution is a living document, not tablets of stone. Otherwise slaves would still be slaves, and women would still have (as one of the early suffragists put it) rights only on par with slaves, children, and idiots.

Those of us alive in this time are called to do a great work as well, and that is to restore our Constitutional rights to this nation and to further expand on the meaning of those rights. If we fail in that, this time all will be lost.

One of the reasons I support Barack Obama is the speech I heard him give in Los Angeles over a year and a half ago. His interpretation of our history as Americans was very much in accord with mine, as I have developed it over a lifetime longer than his own.

Hekate

[Beregond2]

14. Yes, in the sense that the principle of all men being

equal before the law stems from the Judeao/Christian principle that all men are equal before God. Also the principle that the moral foundation of the law is the protection of the innocent. The Enlightenment restated these ideas as "natural law," but they are the same in essence.

[Lyric]

28. And there was never a religion that believed in those things

before Judaism or Christianity?...

[Beregond2]

32. No one said that.

But that doesn't alter the fact that they are central beliefs in both Judaism and Christianity, nor that those religions were profound influences on western civilization.

[MrScorpio]

15. No way - Just size up the Ten Commandments up against the Bill of Rights

This: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; Do not have any other gods before me."

Vs. This: "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 press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

An order to worship the God of Abraham and Isaac vs. the freedom to worship as one sees fit.

Any cursory exam of the two would show that they pretty much oppose each other

[Richard Steele]

17. Nope. Jefferson said so himself, more than a few times.

The "Founding Fathers" were far from %100 Christian,
and even those who self-identified as such would find
little in common with the "Evangelical" folks who are
running around pretending to be "Traditional" today.

That whole "Evangelical" thing is very vey NEW as far as Christian Sects go;
was invented around the 1850's, IIRC;
and it was a very FRINGE movement for its first few generations.

[melody]

29. One of them is buried in a crypt beneath a Unitarian church

A church where they conduct gay marriage ceremonies and where they prayed for the lives of the Unitarians struck down by the idiot not long ago. (John Adams, of course) He and Jefferson exchanged many letters about how "Unitarianism" was the future and how they hoped the whole virgin birth, etc. element of the story of Jesus would soon become a thing of the past.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

18. John McCain is a moron. No, it wasn't. In fact, 3 signers of the Decl. of Independence were Deists.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station
to which the laws of nature
and of nature's God
entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

He was not talking about a Christian God. He was using his principals of Deism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

Deism is the theistic belief that a supreme God exists and created the physical universe, but shall not intervene in its normal operation. It is related to a religious philosophy and movement that claims to derive the existence and nature of God from reason. It takes no position on what God may do outside the universe. That is in contrast to fideism which is found in many forms of Christianity<1>, Islamic and Judaic teachings, which hold that religion relies on revelation in sacred scriptures or the testimony of other people as well as reasoning.

Deists typically reject most supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and tend to assert that God does not intervene with the affairs of human life and the natural laws of the universe. What organized religions see as divine revelation and holy books, most deists see as interpretations made by other humans, rather than as authoritative sources. Deists believe that God's greatest gift to humanity is not religion, but the ability to reason.

Deism became prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Age of Enlightenment, especially in the United Kingdom, France and the United States, mostly among those raised as Christians who found they could not believe in either a triune God, the divinity of Jesus, miracles, or the inerrancy of scriptures, but who did believe in one god. Initially it did not form any congregations, but in time deism led to the development of other religious groups, such as Unitarianism, which later developed into Unitarian Universalism. It continues to this day in the form of classical deism and modern deism.

Ben Franklin and one other signer of the Declaration of Independence were Deists too.

[TlalocW]

19. In a sense yes; in a sense no

The founding fathers were everything from being of an agnostic/atheist bent to more stricter religious types with a lot of them being Deists - basically, they believed God created everything but doesn't intercede as He's happy to let everything run its course, and I think they realized what with the variety of religious types they were, they couldn't bring in God to it because let's face, people are happy to kill each other over whether Jesus said "a" or "the" in a sermon. Freedom of and from religion is guaranteed in the first amendment, and the Constitution states that no religious test is necessary to hold office.

Where people start thinking that the country is based on Judeo-Christian principles is that the majority of people in the country are Christian so a law against murder is made, they think, "Well, of course! That's in the 10 Commandments!" And then there are the assholes like Palin at every level of government who try to foist their religion onto the law books in order to make America a "Christian" country, and like it or not, they're pretty successful as it's unpopular to fight against an unjust law that's supposedly based on the majority's popularity. Thus Madeline Murray O'Hare is still hated by religious conservatives because she felt that prayer shouldn't be forced on kids in public schools, etc.

TlalocW

[alittlelark]

20. No.... The same ppl say it was founded on Capitalism. Not True.

'Wealth of Nations' was published in 1776, but our forefathers had no chance to read it during their Revolution. I doubt a copy came ashore for years. It is never mentioned.


PS - Adam Smiths Capitalism bears NO resemblance to the aberration we see here in this country.

[LiberalFighter]

21. The founding of the United States did not occur until the Revolution.

And why did the colonies protest and declare war against England? It wasn't about religion.

It was taxes!!! Remember the Boston Tea Party?

It was about equal representation!!!

Even the Colonies were not all about religion being the basis for their settling. It was about making money for England and the Companies. Remember the Charters?

Why were the Kings and Queens giving their approval and financial support to the explorations? Gold. A shorter route to the East Indies.

[JDPriestly]

22. It was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment which

were based on a combination of the classical ideals of the Greeks and Romans as well as what we now call Judeo-Christian ideas. Jefferson and Adams were very opposed to the influence of the Catholic Church. Most of the Founding Fathers were raised in Christian religious traditions. I would include Unitarians in that although Unitarians and Christians of today might not. There were a few Jewish people among the first citizens of the United States. Nearly everyone was Christian.

I read the following in a biography of Madison by Robert A. Rutland (James Madiso The Founding Father). Madison was running for Congress in Virginia, an Episcopal population, but Madison's district had a lot of Baptists. The Baptists were a minority relition at that time and therefore interested in 'freedom of conscience.' Madison's brother was a Baptist minister and let his friends know that his brother, James Madison would support constitutional assurances of 'the rights of conscience.' Madison, who was to contribute most of the work on the draft proposal for the Bill of Rights therefore became a strong proponent for religious freedom and separation of church and state.

Here is the text of Thomas Jefferson's The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom
1786

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no powers equal to our own and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html

So, yes, religion, especially the Judeo-Christian relgious traditions have traditionally played an important role in the lives of Americans as individuals, the principle of separation of those religious traditions and religions from the political sphere in our country is basic to our system of government and our culture. So, yes, but . . . .

[MsTryska]

27. that'd be a negatory, bob.

it was founded on universalist unitarian principles.

[ITsec]

30. No. And the last time somebody told me that...

I dared them to find anywhere in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or Declaration of Independence the words "Christian", "Christ", "Jesus", "Savior", "Bible", "Yahweh", or "Jehovah". They're not there.

The only reference to a Deity are the words "Nature's God", or "Creator". They're generic descriptions, to encompass any or all religions, not just Christianity.

Article 6, Section 3 of the Constitution also states; "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Which is what pisses me off the most when this country has endless discussions of which candidate is or is not a Christian, or Muslim, or Mormon, or whatever. According to the Constitution, IT SHALL NOT MATTER.

[mmonk]

31. Nope. No mention of it in the Constitution.