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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2015
WHAT ARE THEY READING?
Oregon law professor debunks
‘myth’ of religious founding
By PATRICK WEBB
Special to The Daily Astorian
T
he kerfuffle over the
Kentucky county clerk
who refused to issue
marriage licenses to gay cou-
ples for religious reasons has
rekindled the argument about
America’s origins.
Republican presidential can-
didates and others who rushed
to her defense used the argu-
ment that the “United States is
a nation founded on Christian
principles” and today’s society
Steven K. Green
would be better “returning” to
them.
Author Steven K. Green has
a different viewpoint, as the title of his latest book proclaims.
“Inventing a Christian America” has the subtitle, “The Myth of
the Religious Founding.”
Green is a professor of law and history at Willamette University
in Salem. His previous books have covered church-state relations,
the concept of religious freedom and Supreme Court decisions.
Carefully argued
In his work published earlier this year, Green offers a care-
fully argued route to understanding what was in the minds of
those who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution, men who hired a chaplain to inspire their deliber-
ations, then kept faith out of the finished documents.
“People are not wrong to consider the evidence of religious
influences in the nation’s founding; nor should these influences
ever be diminished or ignored,” he writes. But people should
not place them in a kind of grand narrative.
“So long as proponents of America’s Christian origins fail to
see the narrative as a myth, they will be unable to appreciate the
true import of America’s religious heritage.”
In chapters rich in historical detail and perspective, Green
describes how the much-revered Founding Fathers were believ-
ers, almost to a man. But the creative minds who fashioned a
successful revolution against the tyranny of an English mon-
arch had tasted religious intolerance in the colonies. They had
seen what fledgling colonial jurisdictions became when one
dominant Christian faction sought to dominate all others with
discrimination or persecution.
So these enlightened men acknowledged a “supreme being,”
but worked hard to keep him out of the governing process.
Firm rebuttal
And Green gives a polite but firm rebuttal to those who try to
give the founding a higher, transcendent meaning.
These include U.S. Air Force attorney Gary Amos, who
wrote “Defending the Declaration,” in 1989, in which he
claimed, “every key term in the Declaration of Independence
had its roots in the Bible, Christian theology and the Western
Christian intellectual tradition.”
As evidence such views persist, Green points to more re-
cent comments, like Iowa GOP congressman Steve King’s 2013
‘The idea of America’s
religiously inspired founding
was a consciously created
myth.’
Steven K. Green
author, ‘Inventing a Christian America:
The Myth of the Religious Founding.’
quote that, “our Founding Fathers were moved about on this
continent by God like men on a chess board.”
Green — and Thomas Jefferson — would beg to differ.
“Jefferson was a devotee of the Enlightenment and its em-
phasis on rational thought,” writes Green. “An admirer of Fran-
cis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke, Jefferson believed
that reason — not revelation revealed through scripture or
church doctrine — was the means to achieve human knowl-
edge, including truth.”
Jefferson noted Pennsylvania and New York were examples
of colonies which did not establish a state religion, yet religion
still flourished. “Liberty of conscience was the only viable alter-
native to ensure that religious differences did not undermine the
important task of forging a new, united nation,” Green writes.
Myth persists
But the “myth” of a Christian bias persists.
“Central to the idea of America’s religious founding are
additional claims that Christian ideals and principles, whether
they are termed Calvinist, evangelical or simply Protestant, laid
the foundation for the revolutionary propulsion and inspired the
founders in the drafting of the instruments of governance.”
So Green pores over the two most revered documents in
American history in search of deity.
The Declaration of Independence contains four references to
a supreme being. All have an Enlightenment “feel,” Green says.
• “all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable rights;”
• giving colonists, “the separate and equal station of which
the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them;”
• an appeal “to the supreme judge of the world;”
• “a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.”
In contrast, the Constitution of the United States contains no
references to God or faith, except to order that “no religious test
shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public
trust under the United States.” (It was signed “in the year of
our lord” and it exempts Sundays from the time allowed when
vetoing a bill, but Green dismisses these as simply 18th-century
traditions.)
Lack of First Amendment analysis
Green appears to relish quoting the contemporaneous reac-
tions to the “no religious test” clause in detail, but the one weak
area in this work is the lack of analysis of the First Amendment
to the Constitution, which separates church and state: “Con-
gress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” He sidesteps, instead
referring readers to other texts.
“Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious
Founding.”
So where did the Christian “myth” — as Green labels it —
come from?
The answer is Americans in the first three decades of the
1800s, who lived through a period of two significant religious
revivals. He argues that they sought to rewrite history to fit their
image of what they believed America should be, a version of a
“chosen” people creating a model Christian society.
“The idea of America’s religiously inspired founding was a
consciously created myth constructed by the second generation
of Americans in their quest to forge a national identity, one that
would reinforce their ideals and aspirations for the new nation,”
Green writes.
Many bestowed laudable traits on the Pilgrims, fleeing re-
ligious oppression in England to create a refuge for dissenters
in the New World. The Puritans who followed have been paint-
ed like Israelites who fled Egypt, “replicating the exodus to a
promised land.” and their religious intolerance is overlooked or
glossed over.
In conclusion, Green argues that many embrace the “myth”
because it allows them to enjoy a simplified but elevated view
of the founding. “Today, people from many walks of life, not
solely religious conservatives, desire a grand and uncomplicat-
ed story about the nation’s beginnings.”
He writes that the United States is not alone in winning dem-
ocratic self-governance, but merely doing so does not make it
distinct. “Aligning America’s origins with God’s providential
plan for humankind does.”
Patrick Webb is a North Coast writer and former manag-
ing editor of The Daily Astorian. His 1998 master’s thesis at
the University of Nebraska highlighted how newspapers write
about religion.
BOOK REVIEW
“Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious
Founding,” by Steven K. Green.
Oxford University Press, 295 pages, 2015
Carson blames ‘PC culture’ for Muslim comment flap
‘They don’t even care if you
agree with them as long as
you sit down and shut up.
By DAN SEWELL and
JULIE CARR-SMYTH
Associated Press
CEDARVILLE,
Ohio
— Republican presidential
candidate Ben Carson has
blamed “P.C. culture” for
the political fallout over his
statement against electing a
Muslim president.
Carson told reporters in
Ohio that his view is that
anyone wanting to be pres-
ident must embrace the
Constitution and American
principles. He added that he
would oppose a Christian for
president who wanted to es-
tablish a theocracy.
Asked how his campaign
can recover from the contro-
versy, the retired neurosur-
geon replied: “The only way
we fix that is fix the P.C. cul-
ture in our country,” referring
to political correctness.
“We fix America, and we
get people who actually start
listening ... and stop trying
to fit everything into a P.C.
FREE
PUBLISHED THE FIRST FRIDAY
OF EACH MONTH
January 2015
Ben Carson
Republican presidential candidate, on progressives
Carlos Osorio/AP Photo
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, a Republican candidate for president, addresses
supporters at Spring Arbor University in Spring Arbor, Michigan, on Wednesday.
model,” he said.
Carson’s remarks came
amid a backlash over his
comments last weekend that
ess
Chronicling the Joy of Busin
in the Columbia-Pacific
Region
Muslims shouldn’t serve in
the presidency. In an inter-
view with Fox News, Carson
then retreated slightly, saying
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NEWS
County makes a splash
he would be open to a mod-
erate Muslim who denounced
radical Islam as a White
House candidate. But he also
said he stood by his origi-
nal comments, saying the
country cannot elect people
“whose faith might interfere
with carrying out the duties
of the Constitution.”
The Constitution clear-
ly states “no religious test
shall ever be required as a
qualification to any office or
public trust under the United
States.”
On Tuesday in Ohio, Car-
son called the Muslim presi-
dent question “a theoretical
issue” that’s distracting from
important national and inter-
national problems, from U.S.
income inequality to the Syr-
ian refugee crisis.
Carson received a stand-
ing ovation at Cedarville
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NEWS
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BOAT OF THE MONTH
The Sadie out of South Bend,
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University, a Bible-based
college near Dayton, when
he said political progressives
are leading this push for po-
litical correctness in an effort
to stifle those who disagree
with them.
“They don’t even care if
you agree with them as long
as you sit down and shut
up,” he said to rousing ap-
plause.
Carson said Thomas Jef-
ferson would “stroke out and
die” if he saw how expansive
the U.S. government has be-
come. He urged evangelicals
to use their personal “spheres
of influence” to get family
and friends to express their
beliefs and to get out and
vote.
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