I took a look at Lyon’s piece. I found it rather amusing that he feels the country is based on the Bible, not the Torah. I wonder if he knows what the Torah is?

Sometime back I wrote a post called “It is fun to use history for Evil” in response to similar claims about America’s Christian founding. The people to whom I responded dug up pre-revolutionary documents to support their case. Of course, they failed to mention that we revolted against the government that granted those charters.

Freedom of religion that does not include freedom from religion is a selfcontradiction and a hoax. Either we are a free people as we have declared, or we are not and one sect or some collection of them have the keys to our chains.

I agree

Thanks for mentioning the Treaty of Tripoli. I wasn’t familiar with that one. A good fact to know.

I don’t think your letter needs much tweaking, but I often point out when theocrats call America a “Christian nation” they’re employing the logical fallacy equivocation. America is a Christian nation by demographics only. It is not a Christian nation legally. As you note, America was expressly set up not to be a theocracy. Theocrats already have equal rights under the law. What they seek is a privileged position.

Since his definition is one who “definitely and personally receives the Lord Jesus Christ as our savior.” He has disqualified not only the deists but also the Christians. The theology of “personally receiving” Jesus has only been around since the 1920s or 30s. The puritans were Anglicans as were most of the earliest settlers and many of the founders. Many other were (gasp!) Roman Catholics. They would say they had become Christian at their (mostly infant) Baptism. Only the tiniest minority of these early Americans would have made adult professions of faith *at all*.

That’s a good point

Also, look at the following statement: “the constitution would not have ratified if there had not been a bill of rights based on the premise that God gives you those rights not the government.” In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The Constitution explicit says the government’s power comes, not from God, but from the governed. Lyons may want to read that document sometime instead of the Christian Revisionist version of it.

You have two terms going–rights and power–these are not the same thing. You need to finesse this argument in terms of where rights originate, and who holds them; and what power is, who holds power, and by whom and to whom that power is delegated.

Perhaps the controversy can be avoided by saying: the constitution does not say god gives anyone rights. Instead it says we the people give the government its powers, not the other way around.

I guess my issue is Lyons says the constitution is premised on the idea that god gave us rights, not the government. Hemant says it’s the opposite (which would be that government gave us the rights, not god), which also isn’t true. The constitution is simply silent on where those rights come from. As people, we just have them, and we have chosen to cede some of them to the government. God isn’t even part of the equation.