God in the Constitution

This is a great refutation of the concept of America being a “Christian” country. Don’t you think that if it were such a thing they would have at least mentioned God once in the Constitution?

Yeah, well, they didn’t. Not once.

This piece talks about how many confuse the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence, which mentions a “Creator”.

The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document; it is not the U.S. Constitution. Foes of the principle of separation of church and state often refer to the word “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence as proof that the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended for the United States to be ruled by a sovereign being.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States Constitution was written and ratified by elected officials representing a coalition of Enlightenment rationalists and evangelical Christians who were deeply concerned about entanglements between religion and government.

Then there’s this reference from Legacy of Freedom:

What the Religious Right doesn’t tell people, and what, tragically, many Americans apparently don’t know, is that when it comes to determining what the laws of the United States mean, the only document that matters is the Constitution. The Constitution, a completely secular document, contains no references to God, Jesus or Christianity.

It says absolutely nothing about the United States being officially Christian. The Religious Right’s constant appeals to documents like the Declaration of Independence, which contains a deistic reference to “the Creator,” cloud the issue and make some people believe their rights spring from these other documents.

A few other points from The Godless Constitution, a book written by to history and government professors at Cornell:

• The preamble of the Constitution invokes the people of the United States. It does not invoke any sort of God

• The Constitution forbids any religious test to hold office. A godless person is just as eligible as a godly one! (Article 6, Paragraph 3)

• At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin strongly suggested on June 28 that the convention have prayers said there. Evangelists take this as proof that the convention then went on with prayers. But, in fact, the convention did not accept the suggestion, and the convention went on without prayers.

Anyway, it’s an interesting read for those who frequently find themselves debating the Church-State issue.

Links

[ Separation of Church and State | theocracywatch.org ]