On more than one occasion (such as yesterday) I have engaged in debate over the
beliefs that America was founded as a Christian nation and that there is only
one true god.
I believe both propositions are wrong.
I’ll take the second one first. It is undeniable that there
are many more gods than one worshiped by people around the world. There are at
least 14 religions worth mentioning, including Baha'i, Buddhism, Christianity,
Confucianism, Druidism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism,
Taoism, Wicca and Zoroastrianism. Add Satanism if you wish.
Each one has its own god or gods that people worship and its
own set of beliefs, and each one is just as sacred to its followers as any of
the others.
As to the first point, I think people confuse the
establishment of the earliest colonies in America with the eventual founding of
the republic. In his book, The Founding
Fathers and the Place of Religion in America, Frank Lambert points out that
the Puritans and Pilgrims who came here in the 1600s to escape religious
persecution did, indeed, intend to organize a Christian nation, and did so for
a time within their own colonies.
However, when George Washington was sworn in as the first
president of the Unites States 150 or so years later, he took an oath to “preserve,
protect and defend” a Constitution that made no reference to any god or divine
providence, citing “the people of the United States” as its sole authority.
“Instead of building a Christian Commonwealth, the supreme
law of the land established a secular state,” Lambert wrote. This is backed up by the opening clause
of the first Constitutional amendment which clearly states, “Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.”
Regarding school prayer specifically, in 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Engel v. Vitale
that “any kind of prayer, composed by public school districts, even
nondenominational prayer, is unconstitutional government sponsorship of
religion.” Several subsequent Supreme Court rulings (see list below) have upheld and expanded
the separation of church and state.
The issue is bound to come up again before long because
Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, is said to
favor returning prayer to the schools. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do
know this: No court to my knowledge has ever ruled that any student, teacher, administrator,
janitor, bus driver, cafeteria worker or visiting family member cannot pray in
school as often as he or she likes, regardless of religious affiliation, as
long as it’s done privately, the prayer being a solemn missive between the
individual and god.
Isn’t that what prayer is supposed to be? So why should the whole class get to listen?
To see a list of Supreme Court decisions, click on the following link, go to the Contents box and click on the entry at 1.5 "Religion in Public Education."
For more on the history of religion in America, click the
link below to read an interesting article from Smithsonian Magazine.
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