"The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is
Un-American" by Andrew Seidel
The first chapter is a prelude to what the book is about it. The
start is pretty funny as he quotes known pederast Oscar Wilde
saying how harmful the Bible is.
Now to Andrew's credit he does start off with a very interesting
case of dispute with the 10 Commandments on public property.
Now from a biblical scholarship perspective the 10
Commandments were ethical principles meant to establish a
working relationship between Jews and YHWH.
As biblical scholar Delbert Hillers "Covenant: The History Of A
Biblical Idea" says
"There is no evidence that any collection of Near Eastern laws
functioned as a written code that was applied by a strict method
of exegesis to individual cases. As far as we can tell, these bodies
of laws served educational purposes and gave expression to what
was regarded as just in typical casesm but they left considerable
latitude to local courts for determining the right in individual
suits. They aided local courts without controlling them."
They in of themselves are not legal codes, as evidence by the fact
there aren't penalties for breaking them in the texts themselves.
Basically speaking the principles were to be taken into account
when making laws.
Strictly speaking Abrahamicists in general all rely on the
commandments to one extent or another. Now Andrew when
getting on Judeo Christian principles points out the obvious that
Judaism and Christianity are different religions.
He sees that as some sort of point against the notion that there
are shared principles between Jews and Christians. To point out a
obvious fact, Jesus was a Jew. Jesus believed in the importance of
the Old Testament and you can't fully understand and appreciate
the New Testament without the Old Testament. In that sense it
makes perfect sense to talk about the similarities of the two and
shared principles.
Things like we are created in God's image thus have human
dignity, are individuals with creative capacity, the universe is an
understandable place where we ought to be able to use reason to
figure it out, and that men are sinful so they need to be restricted
are all things Abrahamists can point to.
As nonbeliever historian Tom Holland points out the notion of
human rights comes from Christianity. None of these things are
self evident as there are plenty of people that deny that humans
have anymore dignity than any other animal on this planet and
many cultures have lived and some still live without the
assumption that the universe is understandable.
On page 4 he blunders on saying that the navity scene is just a
Christian thing. Well no Islam believes in a virgin birth and that
comes with the navity scene. I've always said that if Christians
want to get away with having a navity statue in public they just
need to paint the statues brown, give them big beards and claim
its an Islam navity scene. No Leftist will touch it with 40 foot pole.
The problem with separationists is not the fact that they want
religion and government separate, but its that they often tend to
worship the government aspect of it and see the government as
some benevolent entity that is only bad because some religious
people happen to be involved with it.
Christianity came up with secularism in a way. I argue by accident
due to the fact Constaine was not a Theologian and simply did the
unheard of thing at the time of letting the Church do its own thing
and let him have minimal involvement with it.
The church separated the spirtual from the worldly with the
former being a matter of the church and the worldly being a
matter of the government.
Now there are instances where church and government interests
overlap, such as the fact both entities care about the wellbeing of
their followers/citizens.
The million dollar question is what is the best course of action to
insure that given these shared interests of the government and
the church that will allow people to flourish while respecting the
differences of purposes of these two institutions?
I think that personally while there certainly are incidents where
religion and more specifically religious people overstep their
bounds in the the US I think also there is a lot of fearmongering
on the Left where they simply say things like "The theocracy is
coming!!" even though that would mean purposefully putting
priests of a religion in charge of the government so as to rule by
their deity.
Not even most people deemed "Christian Nationistalists" by the
Left subscribe to that. Even the loon Christian righter RJ
Rushdoony himself supported the separation of church and state
at a national level.
I have no problem as a Deist myself saying Christian philosophy
has influenced the United States because Christians have made
up a majority of the population so of course it would. If the US
was historically filled with Hindus instead I'd expect Hindu
philosophy and values of Hindus to be prominent.
What is funny is that people on the Left have a habit of treating a
presidental election that they lose as a sort of cancer diagnosis
where you have to question exactly what got to that
predictament.
This causes them funny enough to miss the most obvious
answers. Trump got elected for the same reason Obama got
elected i.e people liked his political message more than his
opponents.
By demonizing fair political criticism's on things like immigration
and abortion by calling it sexist or racist you've sort of gotten
people to create a backlash against that dogma which if anything
could contribute to Trump being elected.
He correctly points out few expected Trump to win and that had
something to do with the fact pretty much all the polls were
biased in favor of Hillary or at the very least went with
methodologies that didn't allow for them to predict voting
attitudes of certain people. Many people who say they hate
Trump didn't vote while many who loved Trump did.
Now I agree with Andrew about keeping religion out of the public
school system although my reasons are different than his. The
secular public school system is a dumpster fire and in my opinion
Christians shouldn't want to be associated with it.
Everything it touches turns to shit and so logically if it touches
religion, religion itself will turn to shit. Even as a Christian I
believed this debate was stupid. Atheists and Christians are
fighting over who gets the honor of picking up the dog turd that is
the secular public school system off the road.
I have no problem as a libertarian with businesses advertising
they are Christians and making decisions in their businesses that
reflect that. Very often people believes that Christian
conservatives are part of some supervillian organization.
In reality many are just asking that their property rights and their
freedom of association with people are respected. If gay people
are so interested in having gay people being able to order cake for
their gay wedding or that they get hired at restaurants they need
to start their own businesses and compete with these bigoted
religious bakeries.
Think about it logically, if a business discriminates against
minorities than they will logically make less money than a
business that doesn't and if it keeps up they will either have to
change their policies or go out of business.
Having children or taking care of children isn't a right, its a
privilege that not everyone can do nor should do. Refusing service
is not the same thing as actively harming you, its merely
withdrawing support. Many of times these things are based on
natural law ethics which in of themselves doesn't need religion.
I agree with Andrew on page 11 about David Barton being a
historical revisionist loon. That man knows nothing about history.
I further agree with Andrew that patriotism has no set religion
and I believe that anyone who cares about the future of their
country can be called a patriot.
I find funny that Andrew gets on Trump for being harsh on
immigrantion when he's deported less than Obama and many of
the policies Trump advocates for go back to Obama.
The "Muslim ban" he refers to isn't that as it is only applicable to
a handful of Muslim countries (8 % of the Muslim population) and
many of these countries can get themselves off the ban by stop
funding terrorists.
On page 16 Andrew goes into a common pro separationist talking
points such as the Treaty Of Tripoli and the apparant godless
constitution.
Pointing out that the Constitution is godless is as significant as
pointing out the warranty on my toaster is godless. Its true but
insignificantly so as the founders believed matters of religion
were to be a state by state issue.
In regards to the Treaty of Tripoli the context explains it all. The
US ships were no longer protected by Great Britian and so were
being attacked by Barbary pirates.
The whole "The government is not founded on a Christian nation"
simply meant that the United States government wasn't a
theocracy, not that the social and political network wasn't
founded on Christian principles.
It wasn't meant to be taken as a statement on Church state
relationship but was just stating the relationship being the US and
the pirates. The document was redone 8 years later with that
phrase taken out so it wasn't seen as that important.
Andrew goes into the last pages of this chapter talking about how
Christianity is apparantly un American, which I'm sure as he goes
on he'll get more detailed on. I'll be going over my ideas on the
matter.
I find it funny he suggests that religion is absent from
constitutional identity when any and all documents can't be
separated from the culture they were written in. If your identity is
based on a document you will by consequence be married to that
culture.
He also talks as if religious people aren't constantly reminded that
slave owners were religious or used what they felt were religious
justifications for slavery. I'm not even a Christian and I get told
that on a nearly daily basis.
As Tom Holland notes in his book Dominion Christians were really
the first to speak out against slavery, long before America was
even a thought. The Quakers were a notable bunch who opposed
slavery as well. Using the Bible to promote racism is a bit
anachronistic as ancient people didn't think in terms of race.
Why? Largely because they weren't technologically advanced
enough to travel like say guys like Columbus were. Racism as we
know it is largely a product of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment reinforced the idea of the belief that all
humans were equal and by consequence with their selfish desire
to oppress people had to come up with classifications for people
to say they weren't humans.
That's not to say that ancient people weren't bigoted, they
certainly were, its just out of everything they irrationally hated
each other for racism wasn't one of them.
Andrew seems to subscribe to this very weird belief that religion
has been historically seen as immune to criticism and that this
holds in the US. Christianity has since its inception been criticized
by Pagans, Jews and other Christians alike and have adjusted
according to those criticisms.
The appearance of immunity to criticism these days in my opinion
comes from the Enlightenment and the want to avoid another
war on religion.
Now I myself have discussed the matter of the founders with men
more qualified in the area like Mark David Hall and I've done my
own quote series. My review won't be me saying Andrew is Un
American or that he's stupid as I don't believe that.
I share the message of wanting to represent history rightly and
that along with noting my political views is what the review is for.
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Part 1 The Founders, Independence, And The Colonies is the first
part of this book and the beginning section talks the religion of
the Founders.
He starts off with how Washington was mythologized by writers
shortly after his death, which is true and is actually pretty
common with famous people.
Andrew uses the Second Great Awakening to say that the
Founding generation wasn't all that religious. However this is
illogical. What was revived was active participation in religious
activities and a more emotional approach rather than a rational
one.
The Second Great Awakening was a break away from Calvinism
and into a more Arminian mindset. The religiousity was great
either way, it was just the mode of expressing said religiousity
that changed.
Now back to Washington. He is correct to say that Washington
was a very private man, although historians debate the
religiousity of George. There are conflicting reports with
Washington's communion having.
Of course it is right to point out his Anglician upbringing
contributed to his lack of reference to Jesus, as that was common
of the time, even amongst very devout people.
Andrew is once again right to point out that it isn't necessarily the
case that if all the Founders were Christians that they used
principles of their religion to shape the nation, although this goes
both ways.
Even if all the Founders were Atheists or Deists that wouldn't stop
them from using religious moral principles to shape America.
They could've done so in order to win favor with the sizable
religious population, regardless if they personally believed in it or
not.
I do believe having religious beliefs, while they may not make up
EVERY aspect of your life, they can shape important moments in
your life and give you a framework by which you deal with things.
A person who believes in an afterlife in my opinion will generally
view the world differently than someone who doesn't. So one
must make sure not to say its entirely irrelevant wither or not
they believed in a God, but rather simply its not necessarily the
case that it was the most important factor in certain moments.
Andrew goes into the separation of Church and State, which I've
done a lot of videos on myself. The concern more was to keep
government out of religion as it was a constant worry that
government would establish a national church, which the people
had ran from.
It was also worried government would ruin the Church as it would
become more focused on wordly things than spiritual matters,
which isn't entirely off base when you consider the irreligiousity
in places that have State Churches.
There is freedom from religion in the sense that the government
can't create a state church and force you to worship at it. The "So
Help Me God" statement for oaths was ommitted more so to
ensure a religious test wasn't being given.
Politicians could still say it if they wanted to, it just wasn't
mandatory. George Washington himself invoked God in his
inaugural oath and many have argued the God invoked doesn't
have to be of any religion.
Robert Ingersoll was wrong to say they left God out because to
include it would leave man out as it was pretty common thought
then that God providentally did things. To care about God was to
care about his creatures, which was an idea even Deists like
Thomas Paine believed in.
The idea of the separation of Church and State isn't an
Enlightenment sort of deal. A notion of it goes back to the Bible
when it was recorded that Jesus said "to give to Caesar the things
that are Casar's" and similarly that his world wasn't of this world.
What the Enlightenment did in many instances was repackage
ideas that were already around into a new form, similar to what
Christians did. Enlightenment Thinkers and Christians in general
innovated these ideas, which deserves respect of its own.
People invent stuff all the time but nothing comes of it.
Innovators deserve more respect than they get as they take ideas
that may not be theirs and they repackaged them in such a way
that they can benefit people.
To Earlier Christians the separation was of the spirtual and the
worldly, while the Enlightenment Thinkers took that and
expressed it more concretely. He gives the famous "True, False,
Useful" quote from Edward Gibbons.
Now while Edward was a good author his book on this makes a lot
of blunders history wise (Such as his take on the burning of
Alexandria) and he was known to be Anti Catholic, so this source
really shouldn't be their go to. The Founders already experienced
state churches to know their results.
It may also be said to focus exclusively on Jefferson and Madison
is not to do justice to the rest of the Founders. When you go
outside of them you find the rest of the Founders didn't have a
desire to strictly separate Church and State in the type of way
Separationists lay out.
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References
1. Provan,Iain. "If God Is Good Why Does His Seem Bad? Dr. Iain
Provan - Dig and Delve 2016." YouTube. YouTube,3 Jan. 2017.
Print
2.Hillers,Delbert Roy. Covenant: The History Of A Biblical Idea.
Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1969, Print.
3. Olson, Aaron. "Episode 086: An Interview With Tom Halland
Pt.1. "Essential Church. Essential Church, 29 Apr.2020. Web. 23
May 2020
4. Asbrige, Thomas S. The Crusades: The Authoritative History Of
The War For The Holy Land. New York: Ecco, 2011. Print.
5. TektonTV. "Famous Fundy Atheist Legends 9: The Treaty Of
Tripoli." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 26 July 2013. Web.
1 July 2019.