History disputes the idea that this is a nation under covenant with God. Were it so, the founding fathers would have all been Christians in the true sense. And they would have established belief in and obedience to Jesus Christ as the primary criterion for holding elective or appointed office (Many of the state constitutions did include references to God and to Jesus Christ; somehow, these references were "overlooked" in the federal documents--see below.)
But some ask, "What about the Mayflower Compact?" We cannot dispute that some of the early settlers in this country were Christians, at least nominally. And the Mayflower Compact did form a body politic, one of the purposes of which was to honor the king of England. But just because they had as one purpose to advance the Christian faith does not mean they meant to do so by establishing an independent Christian government. On the contrary, the Mayflower Compact specifically reaffirmed their loyalty to the king of England.
Nor were these all religious refugees on the Mayflower. True, some of those aboard the Mayflower were Protestant Separatists who had fled England to Holland to escape persecution from the Reformed Anglican Church prelates, but the principals were men commissioned to further the business of the Virginia Company. The Mayflower Compact was an afterthought designed to keep the colony intact after they were blown off course from their intended landing at the mouth of the Hudson River, having landed instead at what later became Massachusetts. When they set sail, it was not part of their original intent to draft the Mayflower Compact and form a Christian colony under its terms.
Although the document that the Mayflower passengers drew up did have some influence on the charters of a few colonies prior to the Revolutionary War, it had no official bearing on the federal government or on any of the colonies or states created either prior to or after the American Revolution. If we are going to call America a Christian nation we must see if its founding body, the Continental Congress, purposed to establish it as such. Did that body, in fact, covenant with God to form this nation?
When the Continental Congress drafted the Declaration of Independence and later, the Congress formed under the Articles of Confederation drafted the Constitution of the United States of America, no mention was made of Jesus Christ. Rather, the only references to deity in the Declaration of Independence were to "God"; none are in the Constitution. In fact, many of the framers of these documents were anti-Christian, being comprised of Masons and deists of many persuasions.
God does not enter into covenants that do not invoke the name of His Son, so there exists no covenant between the Father and the federal government of the United States, or with any state government. Had the constitutions of all these governments, including the federal government, named faith in Jesus Christ as the principle criterion for holding any elective or appointed office, this would have had to be done in the name of Jesus Christ with full understanding of the true Biblical character of His role as Savior and Lord. This the founders of this nation of sovereign states failed to do. [See Editor's Note below.]
It is apparent that the Western European influences that shaped America were part of what had become known as "Christendom." But a culture based on the idea of "Christendom" does not of itself constitute a culture based on Scripture or an inviolable covenant with God. The history of Christendom is an ugly history fraught with tyranny and the enslavement of those who are less "enlightened." If God gave the knowledge and means to subdue the earth and take dominion in the name of Jesus Christ, then that privilege has been terribly abused. If, on the other hand, Satan gave that knowledge and means, his purposes have certainly been accomplished. The fruit of Western Civilization, in spite of its enlightened accomplishments, demonstrates that no attempt to institute the Kingdom of God on earth before Jesus returns can succeed. So the idea of a covenant between America and God is pure fantasy.
Nevertheless, the "Christian America" myth lives on. We again return to the previous question, if America was truly founded as an explicitly Christian nation (as is continually proclaimed by "Christian" activists such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, Chuck Colson, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, Bill Gothard, etc.), then why do we find no mention whatsoever of Jesus Christ in America's founding documents?--not in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution of the United States! In fact, the Constitution does not even make a single reference to God! (When Alexander Hamilton was asked why the Constitution fails to mention God, he allegedly replied, "We forgot.") And the reference to God in the Declaration of Independence is merely "Nature's God," a God that is vague and subordinated to natural laws that everyone should know through common sense, i.e., "self-evident" truths.
Moreover, the Bible is never mentioned nor alluded to in either document! Nor is God or Jesus Christ mentioned in the hundreds of pages of the Federalist Papers (the "working documents" of the founding fathers). In fact, the United States was the first Western Nation to omit explicitly Christian symbolism, such as the cross, from its flag and other national symbols.
Further incidental evidence of the founders' own views is the statement from a treaty with the Islamic nation of Tripoli in 1797. This treaty was negotiated under Washington, ratified by the Senate, and signed by President John Adams. The telling part is a description of religion in America: "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 tranquility of Musselmen [i.e., Muslims] ..., 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" (The Search for Christian America, p. 131). Strange stuff for a nation that some like to say was founded as a "Christian" nation! But myths die hard, if ever.
[Unless otherwise noted, the material above was adapted and/or excerpted from Vengeance Is Ours: The Church in Dominion, pp. 220-221.]
[Editor's Note: In all fairness, the states' "fathers" seemed to be more up front with their "Christianity," even though these same men appeared to be ashamed of the Name of Christ when it came to the federal establishment. The colonial charters of Virginia, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, Connecticut, Carolina, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Georgia did acknowledge the Christian religion. The settlers at Rhode Island subscribed to this compact: "We, whose names are underwritten, do hereby solemnly, in the presence of Jehovah, incorporate ourselves into a body politic; and as he shall help, will submit our persons, lives, and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and to all those perfect and absolute laws of his, given us in his holy Word of truth, to be judged and guided thereby." Twelve of the thirteen original state constitutions contained explicit acknowledgments of God and Christianity. (The 1776 Constitution of South Carolina even provided that no person should be eligible to the Senate or House of Representatives unless "he be of the Protestant religion.") The exception, Virginia, revised its constitution's preamble in 1870, adding "invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God." At least 42 of the state constitutions contain some acknowledgment of God in their preambles. Article 22 of the Constitution of Delaware (1776) required all officers to profess "faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore; and I do acknowledge the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration." The fundamental orders of Connecticut (1638-39) contained these words, "to mayntayne and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus, which we now profess, as also the disciplyne of the churches, which according to the truth of the said gospell is now practiced amongst us." Yet somehow, none of this rhetoric made it into the federal documents.]
The Puritans' "Christian" Agenda?
One of the opinions most persistently and widely held among American evangelicals today is that America had essentially Christian origins. They rest heavily on an appeal to the Puritan heritage as the most influential Reformation tradition shaping American culture. If it were shown that the Puritans who settled America did not establish truly Christian cultural principles that were in some important ways perpetuated, then a strong suspicion might be raised that the entire case for a now-lost Christian America rests on rather nebulous foundations. (See: The Search for Christian America, p. 28.)
The fact is, the Puritans were the forerunners of today's Kingdom/Dominion/Reconstructionist teaching. The Puritans believed that they were carrying to America true Christianity as decreed by God, especially as written in the Old Testament. They believed too that they were on a divine mission to America, a place specially appointed by God to be the "New Israel," a theocratic "city upon a hill."
John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay, assumed that he could transfer the principles of nationhood found in ancient Israel to the Massachusetts Bay Company. This led the Puritans to interpret Scripture in an ultimately pretentious way that gave their own state and society the exalted status of a New Israel. Old Testament law was directly, if not exclusively, incorporated into the legal systems of New England. The Massachusetts "Body of Liberties" of 1641 stated that "if any man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other god, but the lord god, he shall be put to death." Death was also prescribed for witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, sodomy, homosexuality, adultery, and kidnapping. Old Testament texts were copied directly into the New England law books. The most notorious cases of major miscarriage of justice in New England were the Salem witchcraft executions. (See: The Search for Christian America, pp. 34-35.)
The Puritans viewed themselves as God's special people, replacing national Israel. Nowhere do the dangers of this assumption become more clear than in the Puritans' treatment of the native Americans. Since the Puritans considered themselves God's chosen people, they concluded that they had the right to take the land from the "heathen" Indians. The American Indians were the "new Canaanites" in America's "Promised Land." The fruit of Puritan theology was brutal. They saw their mission as convert these "Canaanites" to Christianity; failing that, it was acceptable to slaughter them in the name of Christ.
For example, the Puritan massacres of the Pequot Indian tribe on May 26, 1637, and again on July 14, 1637, were deemed by the Puritans to be directed by God--Captain John Mason declared, "God laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies" (Segal and Stinenback, Puritans, Indians, and Manifest Destiny, pp. 111-112, 134-135). Converting the pagans for God was acceptable to the Puritans, but killing the pagans for the Lord was also acceptable!
Defenders of the Puritans claim that it was the hostility of the Pequots that led to their unfortunate demise. But the Pequots were one of the most tranquil tribes in New England. History reveals that their "hostility" did not manifest itself until they were hunted like animals. For argument sake, let's say that the Pequots were the instigators of hostilities, virtual savages if you will (which they were not). Does this justify hunting them down, slaughtering the men, women, and children in their sleep, and then doing it again six weeks later to finish the job!? (Not exactly "battlefield" victories!) Moreover, the Puritans claimed it was in obedience to God that these pagans were slaughtered!
Here the reasoning of the Puritans defies logic and a sense of common decency, let alone Christian principles. Captain John Underhill also wrote of the Pequot slaughter: "Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents ... We have sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings." What an incredible testimony for one claiming to be a Christian!
There is a book titled NEW ENGLAND FRONTIER: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675 by Alden T. Vaughan. It was originally published in 1965 (Little Brown & Company, Boston/Toronto), and revised as recently as 1995. Vaughan, an admitted friend of the Puritan colony, makes a well documented case for the efforts of the Pilgrims (Separatists) and early Puritans to win the Indians to Christ.
The book contains three chapters detailing the Puritans successful missionary endeavors during those early years. For example, the first Bible printed in the Western world was the Indian Algonquin Scripture. Harvard University (1636) was founded not only to train whites to become ministers of the Gospel, but there was also for a time a training program for young Indian men to minister to their people. At least six Boston area communities, thriving today, were started by Christian Indians. Martha's Vineyard once was the site of Indian Christian congregations through the missionary endeavors of the Mayhew family. Dartmouth University had its beginning through the efforts of a Connecticut Puritan to train Indian young men to preach the Gospel.
But Vaughan's book also reveals just how brutal the Puritans were in their dealings with the Indians--specifically, Chapter V, "The Pequot War, 1637." What is amazing about the account in this chapter is the frankness with which the author recounts the events and the Puritans part in them. The carnage and the Puritan justification for participation therein is quite revealing--self-defense is one thing, but outright purposeful slaughter is, to say the least, questionable Christian behavior (from 1965 edition):
(1) The so-called Christian response of "merciless revenge" was carried out "vigorously" by Captain John Endicott--"Dissatisfied by the paucity of Indian casualties, the English soldiers heartlessly 'destroyed some of their dogs instead of men.'" (pp. 127-128);
(2) The Puritans demanded and accepted, as signs of loyalty and sincerity from allied Indian tribes, the body parts of their common enemies (pp. 132, 141) (see also p. 142, where the Puritans viewed these indications of loyalty as a sign from God and an answer to prayer);
(3) When embarking on an expedition of Indian hunting, the Puritans entreatied the Lord to direct them in their pillage and slaughter (p. 143);
(4) Concerning the Indians, the Puritans viewed themselves as the enforcers of "law and order" due to their view of themselves as God's "New World Zion," a reconstructionist view of history, to say the least (p. 136) (see also p. 138, where the Indians are viewed as "Satan's horde," thus justifying their slaughter);
(5) The Puritans were not content to merely kill their perceived enemies; they saw fit to murder and savagely mutilate them--they literally "tore him [a captured Pequot] limb from limb. Captain Underhill ended the victim's agony with a pistol shot. The body was then roasted and eaten by the Mohegans." (p. 141);
(6) In one of the Pequot massacres of 1637, not only was the Indian village set on fire, those men, women, and children not fortunate enough to be burned to death were gunned down as they tried to escape the flames. Captain Mason "gave full credit to God" for the slaughter, while Captain Underhill claimed the Pequots had sinned against God and man, and thus, "We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings"! (pp. 144-145);
(7) Not content to take prisoners, the Puritans "exterminate[d] the remnant"; those they were unable to capture themselves, they delegated the killing to civilians, requiring the heads of the targeted Indians as evidence of their deaths (p. 148) (see also p. 149);
(8) Pequots not slaughtered were taken captive and sold into slavery to friendly Indian tribes (p. 150).
Some teach that one cannot know the motives of the Puritans nor judge their hearts. But the Puritan's own words and actions are devastating to their claims of practicing Biblical Christianity. This we can judge (John 7:24). The Bible is clear that one's actions are an indication of heart condition. It is difficult to imagine what could be going on in the hearts of a professing Christian people that would drive them to murder other human beings, and then claim that God directed them to do it!
The actions of the Puritans toward the Indians are an excellent indication of how reconstructionist eschatology will lead one into ungodly behavior--one's eschatology will always affect one's worldview. The Puritans misguided view of God's calling for them led them into a worldview alien to that of the apostle Paul's--i.e., to be sojourners and peacemakers.
Notes on "Christian" America & Its "Christian" Founders
A Myth that Won't DieThe facts of history show that early America does not deserve to be considered uniquely, distinctly or even predominantly Christian. There is no lost golden age to which American Christians may return. In addition, a careful study of history will also show that evangelicals themselves were often partly to blame for the spread of secularism in contemporary American life. ... We do not want to contend that Christian values have been absent from American history. On the contrary, there has been much commendable Christian belief, practice, and influence in the history of the United States and the colonies which formed the new country. Their presence, we agree, justifies a picture of the United States as a singularly religious country. ... And we feel that its history is liberally sprinkled with genuine Christian influences radiating from lives of exemplary belief. However, we still wish to call into question the assumption that just because many Christians have done many Christian deeds in America, the country enjoys simply a "Christian heritage." There are too many problems with this assumption. (The Search for Christian America, pp. 17-19.)
Marshalling an impressive array of census statistics, they [the authors] argue that, contrary to popular misconception, religiosity was fairly weak in Colonial America. About 17% of the colonists belonged to churches. If this proposition is true, then the oft-repeated claim that our forefathers were religious believers, is simply untrue. Moreover, the claim that moral purity accompanied religious piety at the founding of this nation is a myth. Nor were so-called traditional family values in dominance. For example, the authors cite data that one in three births from 1761-1800 occurred within less than nine months of marriage, despite harsh laws against fornication. They also say that the taverns in Boston were more jammed on Saturday night than the churches were on Sunday morning. [The Church in America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark (1992).]
When we look at the Puritans of the 1600s, do we emphasize only their sincere desire to establish Christian colonies, and their manifest desire to live by the rule of Scripture? Or do we focus rather on the stealing of Indian lands, and their habit of displacing and murdering these Indians wherever it was convenient? Again, do we place more emphasis on the Massachusetts Puritans' desire to worship God freely in the new world, or their persecution (and, in four cases, execution) of Quakers who also wished to be free to worship God in Massachusetts? ... Do we praise American patriots for wanting to be free of Parliament's restraints upon their freedom, or condemn them for taking away freedom of speech and press from their opponents? Likewise, do we praise American patriots for their defense of "natural law" and "unalienable right," or condemn them for failing to heed Paul's injunction in Romans 13 to honor their legitimate rulers? ... American patriots began to speak about the republican political principles of the Revolution as if these had an almost saving power. Many Christian patriots regarded Americans who were loyal to Great Britain or who wanted to stay out of the conflict as much more that just politically mistaken. They were rather "accursed of God." Then in the early years of the United States, most Christian bodies took the basically secular principles of the American Revolution as the guiding light for organizing churches, interpreting the Bible, and expressing the Christian faith. (The Search for Christian America, pp. 19-20.)
Few Americans know that Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to John Adams (April 11, 1823)-- "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." Or know that Jefferson wrote many sneers at "priestcraft"--that he was denounced as a "howling atheist"--and that his famous vow of "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," which is engraved in his memorial in Washington, D.C., was written of the clergy. Or know that Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason (1794)--"All national institutions of churches whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. ... My own mind is my own church." Abraham Lincoln never joined a church, and once wrote a skeptical treatise, which friends burned in a stove, to save him from wrecking his political career.
Ethan Allen was one of the most prominent Deists in early America and an ardent opponent of the divinity of Christ and the supernatural character of Scripture. ... Ben Franklin saw Christ as primarily a moral teacher and true religion as an expression of perfectible human nature. George Washington's faith was also deeply moral and profoundly humane, but not particularly Christian--his religion was a social performance. He attended his parish church only about ten times a year in the decade before the Revolution. The God of the founding fathers was a benevolent deity, ... This God had made the world an orderly and understandable place. He had created mankind with great skill and imbued him with nearly infinite potential. They were utterly convinced that human exertion and goodwill could make America a nearly ideal place. They were not, in any traditional sense, Christian. They had found in God what they most admired in men. ... They did incorporate into their politics many elements compatible with Christianity. It should not be surprising that most of the founding fathers paid some attention to Scripture, for they lived at a time when educated people in the Atlantic community had a broad knowledge of the Bible. ... Yet, John Adams spoke of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation and of the deity of Christ, as "this awful blasphemy" which it was necessary to get rid of. (The Search for Christian America, pp. 67-75)
Ben Franklin the anti-Semite: in an address before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787--"In whatever country Jews have settled in any great numbers, they have lowered its moral tone, depreciated its commercial integrity, have segregated themselves and have not been assimilated, have sneered at and tried to undermine the Christian religion, have built up a state within a state, and have, when opposed, tried to strangle that country to death financially. If you do not exclude them from the United States in the Constitution, in less than 200 years they will have swarmed in such great numbers that they will dominate and devour the land and change our form of government. If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our descendants will be working in the fields to furnish the substance while they will be in the counting house rubbing their hands. I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews for all time, your children will curse you in your graves. Jews, gentlemen, are Asiatics; they will never be otherwise."
