Promoting the Myth of a Christian America

The Christian Heritage of the United States: A Forgotten Narrative

In today’s rapidly changing America, it is important to revisit the foundations upon which America was built. Americans once universally recognized the protestant Christian origins of this nation, yet today the spurious myths around so-called “deism” and “separation of church and state” have made serious inroads into the American narrative. Even the Christian character of undoubtedly godly men like George Washington and Patrick Henry has been cast aside by the revisionism of leftist ideologues and political pundits. It is disheartening to witness the extent to which historical figures who embraced the Biblical faith and shaped our nation’s values are now subject to reinterpretation and distortion. I’ve even met families whose college-aged children refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving, influenced by a skewed perspective that portrays the pilgrims as inherently evil.

Is this the result of a new historic study? Has new information about these men been revealed to tarnish their once illustrious legacy of freedom? Has some previously suppressed biography been revealed to the world? No.

Instead we live in a time dominated by the storytelling of paganism, where myth–not truth or history– dominates the halls of our schools and universities. The pre-Christian shamans have returned in the post-Christian world with the same myths, rituals, and often in similar garb. Only now human sacrifice is called abortion and ritual mutilation is called gender-affirming health care. They still pray to mother earth and offer her their alms—now called carbon offsets— with the same hope that their gifts to the government might change the weather. The modern mind saturated by so-called reason, swallows the same pernicious animistic folklore that Christianity once vanquished. Or as Chesterton put it, “Superstition recurs in all ages, and especially in rationalistic ages.” ^a When the conquering Christian worldview is neglected, the pagans take back their lost ground.

It is this religious undercurrent that shapes and forms the “acceptable” narrative of American history now taught in our mainline institutions. To the modern pagan, history is therefore not a neutral study of documented facts, not an exploration of written records and artifacts, but the bullying of data into religious categories and narratives. The modern pagan does not have “mere history”, the permanent kind you can put on a timeline or catalogue in an encyclopedia. Instead he must tell myths in terms of his religion’s worldview categories: then lens of Marxism and the exploitation of the labor, the lens of feminism and the exploitation of women, the lens of colonialism and the exploitation of the indigenous, the lens of queer sexuality and the oppression of the heteronormative, the lens of naturalism and the exploitation of our natural environment, and so on for every obscure category one might imagine. Each lens a myth by which reality might be translated through, each lens with its own class of priestly professors and ivy league temple. Cornelius Van Til described the direction of non-Biblical thinking as integration downward into the void. 

The Myth of a Christian American

A goal of the new pagan storytelling is to replace one particularly pernicious myth: America was founded as a Christian nation.

“If…one is asking whether the Founding Fathers relied on Protestant Christian principles in drafting the essential documents and in organizing the new governments, then the answer is a resounding ‘no.'” writes Steven Green, author of “Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding.” In his opinion, America’s founding principle’s “reflect the overwhelming influence of Enlightenment, Whig, and classical republican theories.”

But is he right? The roots of American history go deep and certainly do touch down into and through the sources that Green mentions, but they also go down much deeper. Dr. Rushdoony often reminded us in his work that the American Revolution was a return to what he called, “Protestant feudal restoration” and that American’s “origins are Christian and Augustinian, deeply rooted in Reformation, medieval, and patristic history.” ^b

The Christian heritage of the United States, which is often and intentionally overshadowed, quietly resides in plain sight. Like the poised and unassuming coiled Gadsden snake, its motto of “don’t tread on me” serves as a warning to those who dare to challenge her truth. While this history may be ignored by some, its potent venomous bite exposes the truth. Here we will explore two undeniable evidences for a Christian America: the religious requirements for office and the influence of Christianity on the Constitution.

Religious Requirements for Public Office

Throughout the United States’ early years, religious requirements for holding office and voting were commonplace. Professor Alan Brownstein of the UC Davis School writes, “…many Americans in the late 1700s and early 1800s apparently did not view religious tests and religious freedom as inherently contradictory.” ^c This is largely because the idea of religious freedom was understood as freedom within Christendom, not freedom from Christianity. One had the religious freedom to be a Anglican, Congregationalist, or Presbyterian, etc. but voting and holding public office was limited to professing and most often Protestant Christians. How can this be? Doesn’t the First Amendment bar the intersection of civil government and religion? Here is where the myth can be tested against reality. Did the established churches end with the advent of the First Amendment? No. And no such separation of Christianity, or church, and the state existed anywhere in the United States before, or, for some generations, after, the ratification of this amendment.

What we do see is religious and specifically Christian requirements for citizenship, for voting rights, to sit on a jury or serve as a witness to a court, on top of numerous civil laws and judicial rulings based in Biblical law. One did not have to confess John Locke, but rather swear upon a Bible containing John the Apostle. The religious fight of the American Revolution was a return to the Western feudal foundations of the Magna Carta. The very first clause of Magna Carta hints to this religious foundation when it states that: “the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired.” and we should hear echoes of the same in America’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The 1784 Bill of Rights for the State of New Hampshire is great example, which give direct support to the claims above. Before the Revolution, New Hampshire religious life was dominated by Congregationalists, the tradition of the colony’s Puritan founders.

Article VI reads, “As morality and piety, rightly grounded on evangelical principles, will give the best and greatest security to government, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to due subjection; and as the knowledge of these, is most likely to be propagated through a society by the institution of the public worship of the Deity, and of public instruction in morality and religion; therefore, to promote those important purposes, the people of this state have a right to impower, and do hereby fully impower the legislature to authorize from time to time, the several towns, parishes, bodies-corporate, or religious societies within this state, to make adequate provision at their own expence, for the support and maintenance of public protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality” [emphasis added]

Serving in public offices such as President, House, and Senate were also specifically limited to Protestant Christians: one provision reads, “That no person shall be capable of being elected a senator, who is not of the protestant religion,” [emphasis added] and another “The President shall be chosen annually; and no person shall be eligible to this office… unless he shall be of the Protestant religion.” [emphasis added]^d

These “protestant” requirements remained in the 1804 edition, decades later still survived many revision attempts, and it isn’t until the end of the 19th century that Protestant becomes “Christian” to allow Roman Catholics. Today, the New Hampshire government has a little note next to their online version of their now neutered Bill of Rights that simply reads “amended… to remove obsolete sectarian references.” These Christian requirements have been systematically removed, erasing the Christian heritage from the public consciousness, but were once common to the fabric of all of the founding colonies and the birth of our nation.

The Constitution: A Christian Worldview Document

While there are those who argue that the Constitution, lacking explicit references to Christianity, is evidence against a Christian nation argument, it is crucial to acknowledge the significant impact of Christian principles on its formation. The Constitution’s checks and balances system, for example, is rooted in the founders’ understanding of the fallen nature of humanity, which led them to restrict governmental power. This concept stems from the distinct perspective on human nature and original sin found in Western Christianity, particularly in Protestant, Calvinist, and Augustinian traditions. It is important to note that the idea of the Republic, as outlined in the Constitution, differs from that of Roman history, as it revolves around the central notion of sin and total depravity.

And though terms may be similar in “senate” and “republic” the worldview behind the Constitution is not derived from Roman philosophy. Augustine’s Christian view of a fallen human nature is not like what we find in the classical Greek and Roman world. Plato’s “Protagoras” presents an illuminating dialogue between Socrates and Protagoras on the origins of sin. Socrates asserts, “…when people make erroneous choices between pleasures and pains—that is, between good and evil—their mistake is due to a lack of knowledge…” The classical thinkers believed we lacked knowledge to do good, but were good by nature. Christians know we are bad.

It is accurate, as noted by Steven Green, that there is a connection between the Enlightenment and this understanding of human nature, but it is not directly linked to the American Revolution. Enlightenment thinkers embraced pre-Christian paganism as they rejected the Christian notion of the Fall. Both ancient pagans and Enlightenment thinkers perceived humans as inherently free. This concept is evident in Locke’s “tabula rasa” and later echoed in Rousseau’s famous phrase, “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” In an article for the Imaginative Conservative, Louis Markos traces the influence of Plato to the enlightenment thinker Rousseau and then down the subsequent path leading to the French Revolution, an event greatly inspired by Rousseau’s own writings. ^e The American Revolution was not of the Enlightenment.

“To see Locke as the philosopher of the American Revolution is to misread history. ” writes Rushdoony, “Where Locke defended liberty and property, he was widely quoted; where he championed majoritarianism, he was bypassed. The Americans, at every point, culled passages from widely divergent authorities to buttress each particular position without any departure from their own.” ^f

Contrary to classical notions of man-centered republicanism or it’s enlightenment rebirth in the social contract theory, American constitutionalism was historic Christian Feudalism for a Christian society, based on the Biblical concept of the limitation and division of all powers and the denial of divinity to the human order. The Constitution was the product and liberty tradition of free Christian Englishmen.

The deliberate absence of explicit references to Christianity in the Constitution was not intended to exclude Christian identity. On the contrary, the philosophical foundation of the American system is rooted in the Christian worldview. The primary aim was to prevent the federal government from interfering with existing state and local churches. The states, which already embraced Christian principles in their legal frameworks, staunchly safeguarded their own religious autonomy. Again, an idea that can be traced back to English Christian tradition rather than enlightenment philosophy. Americans having staved off the British Parliament, re-lived the 13th century conflict with King John, and sought to restore the “Great Charter of Freedoms” for the Englishmen in the New World.

A New Story

Thus the constitution serves as a link in the chain of Christendom’s progress for human freedom – one that goes from Calvary to Glastonbury ^g through Lindisfarne and Canterbury, one defended by great kings like Alfred and great bishops like Anselm.

We must promote the Myth of Christian America and tell our children how they have received an inheritance in the historical legacy of English spirituality and common law. We must tell this story to counter to myths of the new pagans. Echoing the words of John Winthrop as he embarked to the New World:

“Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

A Model of Christian Charity

1. Everlasting Man, Part 1, Chapter 6  (back)
2. This Independent Republic, pg. xiii  (back)
3. The No Religious Test Clause, National Constitution Center  (back)
4. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Federal_and_state_constitutions_v4.djvu/547  (back)
5. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/10/platos-big-mistake-knowledge-is-virtue.html  (back)
6. This Independent Republic, pg. 18  (back)
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Arimathea  (back)

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