A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO A SECULARIST’S VIEWS ON AMERICA
by Kyle DesJarlais
2008

According to Charles Haynes, “…the United States is not now nor has ever been a Christian nation in any official or legal sense of the term.” This scholar’s article is entitled “The First Amendment: What part of ‘secular nation’ do we not understand?”

In his article, Mr. Haynes continually uses the War in Iraq as a context for his statements about America’s religious standing. He cites the findings of the First Amendment Center’s (FAC) national survey called “State of the First Amendment 2007”. ‘Disturbing’ findings of the FAC are that many Americans believe the Bible should be taught in public schools, that teachers should lead prayers in schools, that schools should adopt Christian holiday programs, that “our nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation”, and that “the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation.”

At the beginning of the article, Mr. Haynes states a falsehood to buttress his secular position when he says, “Many Americans want to create a Christian nation at home.” He appears to defend the authority of the United States Constitution when he points out that prayer, Christian holidays and Bible teaching in the public schools are unconstitutional according to current law.

Mr. Haynes not only does not state any statute against these actions but also reveals his deficient knowledge of the Constitution. If he is referring to cases such as Everson v. Board of Education, Mr. Haynes erroneously states that these judicial decisions are that current law. According to the Constitution, the legislative branch is the only branch vested with lawmaking power and the courts are responsible to interpret the law through judicial opinions, which are only opinions. Despite the fact that the author appears to know the Constitution, he does not seem to be aware that it is the Department of Education, the government schools and the War in Iraq that are unconstitutional.

Mr. Haynes asks, “Would Americans support the creation of an Iraqi state where the majority Shiites imposed their prayers, religious celebrations and scriptures on all Iraqi schoolchildren?” He goes on to say, “…only a secular democracy in Iraq with no established faith will guarantee religious freedom—and end sectarian strife.” As a secularist, Mr. Haynes cannot define freedom properly, for freedom has no single definition in a pluralistic nation.

Freedom is subjective in a pluralistic nation, reflecting the whims and fancies of the citizenry. To a Muslim, freedom may consist in waging jihad on the infidel Americans by crashing planes into the World Trade Center and launching other terrorist attacks. All nations must choose to recognize one of two options as their source of law; they will either choose the sovereign Creator God and His unchanging law or several fallible men with their changing law. Mr. Haynes never explains how the Founding Fathers defined religion when they inserted the religious test clause in the Constitution and penned the First Amendment. According to the First Amendment, religion was used to refer to a particular Christian denomination.
Interestingly, while the First Amendment’s language was being decided on, Congress was drafting a resolution for a day of public thanksgiving to God. President George Washington accepted this resolution and America’s Christian God was acknowledged. It would seem strange if the same men who prayed and thanked God would try and prohibit the acknowledgment of that God at the same time.

According to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, religion “consists in the performance of the duties we owe directly to God from a principal of obedience to his will.” Interestingly, three out of five of the definitions specifically define religion as Christianity and the fourth definition states that the general term ‘religion’ may refer to false religions such as Islam or to the true religion of Christianity.

George Washington’s Farewell Address states that “religion and morality are indispensible supports” to government. Mr. Haynes is not qualified to define religion using the modern meaning because the Founders did not define their words using modern meanings, but rather the meanings of their time and culture. This culture was explicitly Christian, as will be shown in the next points. The purpose of the religious test clause in Article VI was to deal with the Christian denominational controversy by not making a test for political candidates based upon denominational beliefs. The purpose of the establishment clause in the First Amendment was to deny to the federal government the power to establish a particular Christian denomination as the state church.

The author (Haynes) states that “…the U.S. Constitution nowhere mentions God or Christianity” as proof that the Constitution does not establish a Christian nation. He also uses the fact that religion is only referred to in Article VI and the First Amendment in order to prohibit religious tests and state-imposed religion. The religious test clause and the First Amendment do not prohibit the federal government from operating on a specific Christian worldview but rather prohibit the federal government from involving itself in denominational controversies.
In order to establish whether or not Mr. Haynes’ contention that the Constitution does not establish a Christian nation is correct, let us examine some interesting points:

• The subscription clause to the Constitution is signed “In the Year of our Lord. This reference to the Lord was actually an oath in the name of Jesus Christ.
• The reference to our Lord links the Constitution to the Bible.
• The Constitution bases the nation’s birthday upon the Declaration of Independence’s date of July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence is thus the true preamble to the Constitution. The Declaration makes numerous references to the God of the Bible.
• By using the Christian calendar rather than the pagan calendar that the French Revolution used, the Founders were owning the God of the Bible
• The Constitution honors Christian Sabbath laws.
• The Constitution also specifically incorporates the Christian common law.
• The Treaty of Paris which officially recognized America’s independence from Great Britain was signed “In the name of the most Holy and undivided Trinity.”

Mr. Haynes again uses the comparison between American Christianity and Iraqi Islam. Christianity is not built on violence and forcibly converting the heathen, whereas Islam is devoted to both of these. This is an improper comparison on Mr. Haynes’ part. He also tells us that “the lessons of history are that when a majority uses the government to promote the majority religion, conflict and oppression inevitably follow.”

While it may be true that oppression occurs when the government promotes a false religion, this is not true of Christianity. Conflict has always and will always be the result of differing worldviews fighting for supremacy. There is no neutrality amongst opposing faiths, for no law order can long remain if it allows opposing sides to attack its foundations.
Mr. Haynes falsely asserts that the Founders kept religious liberty beyond the reach of the majority vote; rather, the states kept the federal government from establishing a certain Christian denomination as a national church.
Mr. Haynes falsely concluded that the United States was not and is not a Christian nation which means he must ignore 400 years of American history and the words of the men who frames the U.S. Constitution. Americans will continue to lose their freedoms until they stop rejecting the God of their fathers.

(Special thanks to Doug Phillips and Chief Justice Roy Moore for their stalwart defense of our nation’s Christian heritage and for their providing me with some of the facts in this article through their teaching at the Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy.)