The Founding Myth Read online

  The entire book is on solid legal ground because of Seidel’s experience as an attorney fighting attempts to introduce religion into public institutions—from the promotion of Bible-reading in public schools to attempts by many right-wing religious groups to obtain public funds for faith-based institutions. The author recounts the legal issues in a lively, lucid fashion accessible to readers unfamiliar with the fine points of either the Bible or the Constitution. Above all, he makes the vital point that when faith is politically weaponized, religion itself is “weakened and tainted.” He recalls Benjamin’s Franklin’s argument—as incisive today as it was more than 200 years ago—that when “a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support [it], so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

  Amen.

  — SUSAN JACOBY

  August 1, 2018

  Preface

  I met Andrew Seidel in 2010. He came to a speech I gave at Metro State College in Denver, where I told my personal “preacher to atheist” story and described the work of the Freedom From Religion Foundation to keep state and church separate. Andrew remembers that I compared Christian nationalists to those territorial animals who mark off their boundaries, howling “The capitol is ours! The statehouse is ours! City halls, police departments, public schools—the whole country is ours!”

  After the speech, Andrew introduced himself. I remembered his name because he had been a winner of FFRF’s 2010 Graduate Student Essay Contest on “Why we need to get God out of government.” He had written about the danger of mixing government and religion.

  We met for breakfast the next morning, and I quickly saw that Andrew is one smart and interesting guy. He had been a Grand Canyon guide—ask him how many basketballs it would take to fill that vast gulf—and had done legal work with environmental law clinics working to take down polluters. But he spent most of the breakfast asking me about FFRF. I didn’t realize until later that he was conducting a job interview in reverse.

  We were all so impressed with Andrew that about a year later, we hired him. He and his wife, Liz Cavell—also a lawyer—moved to Wisconsin. Andrew started work on October 31, 2011 (Halloween, appropriately enough). Liz joined FFRF’s legal department about a year later.

  FFRF prefers to solve most problems without going to court. In 2018, our legal staff sent out more than 1,000 complaint letters to public officials around the country, resulting in more than 300 victories.

  But we do file lawsuits. We usually have about a dozen cases in the works at any time in various stages of development in state and federal courts. We litigate over religious symbols on government property (mostly Ten Commandments, Christian crosses, and nativity scenes), religion in public schools, taxpayer money to repair churches, prayer at public meetings, chaplaincies, and other violations of the First Amendment. We are currently suing the IRS in two different cases involving preferential benefits to ministers and religious organizations. In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, we racked up an impressive record of sixteen victories (decisions or positive settlements) and only two losses. Andrew was a big part of that.

  As I write this, one of those losses is on appeal, and it involves me personally. When a member of Congress asked the chaplain of the US House of Representatives to invite me to open Congress with a secular invocation as a guest chaplain, the congressman was told no. Since an atheist does not believe in a Higher Power, I am not qualified to solemnize the workings of government, though the Supreme Court has said otherwise. Andrew Seidel and FFRF attorney Sam Grover conceived the case and worked on it along with outside litigators. The district court in Barker v. Conroy ruled on procedural grounds that we could not sue the chaplain because although I was indeed injured, the violation of my constitutional rights was not “traceable” to the chaplain. He is simply following the orders of Congress.

  Believing that the House of Representatives should be representative, we appealed. In October 2018, Andrew gave the oral arguments in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and he did a masterful job. Andrew has always advocated deep research, and it showed. As the judges hammered him with questions, he calmly replied with facts, history, legal precedent, specific citations, and clear logic. All those weeks of preparation, including two arduous moot courts, paid off handsomely. His fondness for research and preparation show in this book.

  Andrew is now FFRF’s Director of Strategic Response, a jack-of-all-legal-trades, and, on top of this workload, he has persistently been writing and researching for this book—a project he started before we knew him. When it was taking shape, I suggested it could be called America is not a Christian nation: And it’s a good thing it isn’t! Because that is exactly what Andrew has proved in The Founding Myth.

  — DAN BARKER

  Co-president, Freedom From Religion Foundation

  Illustration by Gustave Doré, Moses Breaks the Tables of the Law,1866.

  Introduction: Prelude to an Argument

  “When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything equal to it.”

  — Oscar Wilde3

  God bequeathed the Ten Commandments to Moses, or so the story goes. It’s a tale believed by millions of pious churchgoing Americans, including former judge James Taylor of Hawkins County, Tennessee. Taylor also believes that America was founded on those commandments and that America’s “founders were religious people whose faith influenced the creation of this nation, its laws, and its institutions of government.”4

  Elected to higher office in 2011, Judge Taylor ached to use his new power to proclaim these great truths. He insisted that the Ten Commandments be displayed in his courthouse. The holy exhibit would edify citizens and show that Judeo-Christian principles shaped the development of American law and government. It would demonstrate that his religion birthed America. Taylor commissioned a Ten Commandments plaque, elegantly lettered and struck in bronze; it read as shown in this replica:

  Not shy about using a public office to promote his personal religion, Taylor promised to showcase other items of civic piety, including the national motto, “In God We Trust”; the Pledge of Allegiance (“one nation, under God”); and a picture of Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge. But the commandments were to be the centerpiece. The complete message was unmistakable: Judeo-Christian principles influenced America’s creation, its laws, and its government.5

  This widespread belief is unexamined and, like Judge Taylor’s plaque, unable to withstand scrutiny. Look closely at the wording on that plaque. Taylor lists nine commandments, not ten, omitting the adultery stricture. He also mislabeled his ninth commandment as the eleventh—XI. Hypocritically, Taylor pocketed donations meant to finance the commandments display and had stolen money from his clients. One former staffer filed a $3 million sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against the married Taylor.6 All told, Taylor pled guilty to multiple felony theft charges, was sentenced to four years in prison, had to pay $71,783 in restitution and serve six hundred hours of community service, and was disbarred.7

  Taylor struggled to obey his beloved commandments, but that does not necessarily mean that he was wrong about their influence. Was he right? Do the Ten Commandments, “In God We Trust,” Washington’s prayer, and the other evidence show that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles?

  What Are Judeo-Christian Principles?

  Taylor’s claim that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles is common—so much so that people accept it as true without asking simple questions: What is a Judeo-Christian principle? Where do Judeo-Christian principles come from? Are they handed down from on high, like the Ten Commandments? The few attempts to answer these questions are unsatisfying because they are often as vague as the term “Judeo-Christian principles” itself. One reason the “nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles” claim has not been fu
lly examined is that the vagueness of the term insulates that claim from scrutiny.

  The term “Judeo-Christian” is difficult to pin down because it is something of a fabrication.8 From a scholarly standpoint, as noted in a 1992 Newsweek article, “the idea of a single ‘Judeo-Christian tradition’ is a made-in-America myth.”9 One Jewish theologian stated the problem plainly: “Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism.”10 “Judeo-Christian” is slippery because it is more a political invention than a scholarly description. It originated at the close of World War II when Christian exclusivity was too threatening. After “the Nazi death camps, a phrase like ‘our Christian civilization’ seemed ominously exclusive,” explained Prof. Mark Silk.11 But the term didn’t gain prominence until the fight against communism, during which some religion, any religion, was better than atheistic communism. Eisenhower was probably the first president to use the term, explaining to a Soviet general in 1952 that the American “form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept.”12

  These indistinct principles can be sharpened somewhat by looking to the books that embody Judeo-Christianity: the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, and the Christian Bible, or New Testament. Taylor, the “nine commandments judge,” and others who claim that America is “founded on Judeo-Christian principles” confirm this approach. For instance, when running for president, Woodrow Wilson said, “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”13 President Harry Truman stated, on more than one occasion, that “the fundamental basis of all government is in this Bible right here, and it started with Moses on the Mount,” and “the fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and Saint Matthew, from Isaiah and Saint Paul.”14 The ill-defined term becomes clearer in light of these statements; Judeo-Christian principles can be derived from Mosaic Law, such as the Ten Commandments, and the rest of the bible.

  The term has the benefit of sounding inclusive to a broad audience while actually speaking directly to conservative Christians who hear only the second part of the term, “Christian.” Robert Davi, the actor, Bond villain, and frequent contributor to the conservative website Breitbart.com, gave this game away. Writing about the imaginary “War on Christmas,” Davi argued that removing a nativity scene from government property is part of “a systematic attack on Judeo-Christian values that our country was founded on.”15 Davi surely knows that the nativity scene features the birth of Jesus as savior, something Judaism rejects. The nativity is Christian, not Judeo-Christian.

  It’s not just celebrities who inadvertently admit the singular, not dual, nature of the term. The Judeo-Christian Voter Guide website16 provides local guides and resources, but, prior to the 2016 election, they were nearly all Christian. In the state with the highest number and percentage of Jewish citizens, New York,17 the state voter guide linked to groups such as the Christian Coalition and the American Family Association, whose goal is “to be a champion of Christian activism.”18 It did not link to a single Jewish group. The site even had an identical twin, the “Christian Voter Guide” website, which was the same in every respect except that it lacked that crumb of inclusion: “Judeo-.”19 The Family Research Council (FRC), whose “mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview,” was once featured heavily on these two sites.20 Tony Perkins, the head of the FRC, inadvertently showed the irrelevance of the “Judeo-” in “Judeo-Christian” when chastising the Daughters of the American Revolution for telling its members not to pray in Jesus’s name (a claim the group denied): “This signals a dramatic change in the strong Judeo-Christian roots of the DAR. After all, this is a service group meant to perpetuate the memory of the American Revolution and the values for which we fought. Like it or not, those values and our nation’s identity were rooted in the Christian tradition.”21 One sentence later, Perkins’s inclusive affectation had evaporated.

  John McCain was a bit more honest when he claimed that “this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles,”22 but McCain’s more honest phrasing is less inviting. “Judeo-” is a sop, a fig leaf, tossed about to avoid controversy and complaint. It is simply a morsel of inclusion offered to soften the edge of an exclusionary, Christian movement.

  That exclusionary movement is Christian nationalism. As a modern American movement, it is fully described by Michelle Goldberg in her 2006 book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.23 Christian nationalists are historical revisionists bent on “restoring” America to the Judeo-Christian principles on which they wish it were founded. They believe that secular America is a myth, and under the guise of restoration they seek to press religion into every crevice of the government. They not only think it appropriate for the government to favor one religion over others, but also believe America was designed to favor Christianity. To them, America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles, and promoting that belief is a religious duty.24

  History had proven to the framers of the US Constitution that religion is divisive. They separated religion from government to avoid the mistakes of past regimes. “The Framers and the citizens of their time intended…to guard against the civic divisiveness that follows when the government weighs in on one side of religious debate; nothing does a better job of roiling society,” wrote the Supreme Court in 2005 when examining the origins of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.25 Christian nationalism’s fabricated history conceals an important historical truth: that religion and government are best kept on either side of an impregnable wall, as the founders intended. This book seeks to expose that fabricated history and tell the greater truths.

  Is Christian Nationalism Really a Problem? Is It Influential?

  It is because of Christian nationalism that “President Donald Trump” is a phrase that reflects reality and not reality television. Before Trump, Christian nationalism tended toward the corrupt and inept. It was an odd, impotent curiosity. But the 2016 election changed that. Trump won because of Christian nationalism. The movement is still based on lies and myths, but a Christian nationalist was elected president of the United States, and he was elected because of, not in spite of, his Christian nationalism.

  The single most accurate predictor of whether a person voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election was not religion, wealth, education, or even political party; it was believing the United States is and should be a Christian nation.26 Researchers studied this connection and were able to control for other characteristics to ensure that Christian nationalism was not simply a proxy for other forms of intolerance or other variables related to vote choice.27 They concluded, “The more someone believed the United States is—and should be—a Christian nation, the more likely they were to vote for Trump.”28

  Trump rode a wave of Christian nationalism, fostered by fables and myths about America’s founding, to the most powerful office in the world. “Once Christian nationalism was taken into account,” the researchers explained, “other religious measures had no direct effect on how likely someone was to vote for Trump. These measures of religion mattered only if they made someone more likely to see the United States as a Christian nation.”29 Put another way, “Christian nationalism provides a metanarrative for a religiously distinct national identity.” 30 That identity depends on the historical myths exposed in this book. Those myths are the glue that unites the Christian part of this identity with the American part of the identity. Without the bond provided by these myths, the identity and political power begin to crumble.

  Christian nationalism is, at least in this sense, more important than religion, political party, or any other factor in American life.

  ONLY AFTER THE SHOCK of the 2016 presidential election subsided could w
e begin to fully understand the power of Christian nationalism. During the election and before, Christian nationalists themselves underestimated their power. Few expected Trump to win, let alone win because of his Christian nationalism. Christian nationalists had caught the presidential tiger by the tail and were unprepared. Playing catch-up, in February 2016 a loose coalition of conservative religious groups and Christian nationalists launched “Project Blitz,” a curious sobriquet given its historical connotations. The goal was to elevate “traditional Judeo-Christian religious values” and “to reclaim and properly define the narrative which supports such beliefs.”31

  Project Blitz encapsulates the problem Christian nationalism poses. First, it seeks to alter our history, values, and national identity. Then it codifies Christian privilege in the law, favoring Christians above others. Finally, it legally disfavors the nonreligious, non-Christians, and minorities such as the LGBTQ community, by, for instance, permitting discrimination against them in places of public accommodation or in employment.

  This legislative push, ongoing as this book goes to press, includes three categories of bills that reflect these steps, all of which promote Christian nationalist myths and lies. The first category centers on “Our Country’s Religious Heritage.” These bills “recognize the place of Christian principles in our nation’s history and heritage [and] deal broadly with our national motto, history, and civics, including their Judeo-Christian dimensions.”32 They attempt to prove what Judge Taylor’s nine commandments display was meant to prove, that “religion, and particularly our Judeo-Christian heritage, have played a large part in the founding and history of this country.”33 The second category, which includes measures such as a proclamation recognizing Christian Heritage Week, “focus[es] more on our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage,” though more on the Christian and less on the Judeo.34