I was browsing at Barnes and Noble yesterday and noticed a number of books that professed to prove that America was not founded in Christian values at all, but had lived a pagan history until just recently…and One Nation Under God is founded in capitalism.
Hmmm…. Really? What I found was interestingly similar to charts that pharmaceuticals like to use to prove that vaccines have been the pivotal cure for various diseases. Those charts present a very calculated picture of time that gives the false impression that the vaccines created the remission when in fact the remission had started and nearly ended before the vaccine came into use! These books are using the same sort of tactic in taking a small picture of time to create a view of 600 years in America. A random sampling if you will – 1000 people represent the will of 300 million.
At the forefront of the discussions were two phrases; God Bless America and In God We Trust. By dissecting the origins of these two phrases, the authors were attempting to lay claim that God in America is a recent phenomena created in the 1950’s by capitalists for the purpose of justifying wealth. WOW!
History, by definition, is an evolution of time. To pluck out a period of forty or fifty years and attempt to show that God was only introduced to America recently – is well absurd. Phrases are coined – all the time! Shakespeare coined some 150 different phrases. That does not mean the symbolism behind the phrase never existed until the point in time the phrase was coined!
What these books appear to miss is the true history:
Samuel Chase, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, born in 1741 said: “By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.”
John Quincy Adams, President of the US, born 1767 stated: “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration…the American people were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.”
Christopher Columbus was a deeply spiritual man, devoted to Christianity, who wanted to spread the Word across the lands in 1492 – more than 600 years ago.
But it’s more than that, it is about the fear of a phrase. It is about the misinterpretation of the separation of church and state and the protection of religious liberty, not ‘from’ the state, but ‘from’ persecution!
According to the US Treasury, the phrase and ideology of using the phrase, In God We Trust, began as an outpouring after the Civil War. There was no capitalist agenda in 1861 when the idea was first proposed by Secretary Salmon Chase of the US Treasury. His response to the request to incorporate In God We Trust on money:
“Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.”
The notion being referenced is the idea that ‘corporate America created Christian America’. By highlighting some heavy weight business moguls who attended a church that lauded and idolized money hardly paints a picture of our history. What it does accomplish is to prove that the author has a complete lack of knowledge of Christianity. To claim that a church that does not follow the Bible is Christian in it’s teachings – is a slight of hand magic act. But these books would like to manipulate Truth to correspond to an agenda to sell books and thus create for themselves – that evil idol – money.
One such author stated, “…Perhaps because it is everywhere, we assume it has been from the beginning.” He is referring to the slogans. The point is – it doesn’t matter when the slogan began! It only matters that we followed it, embrace it and gave it faith and Truth.
He goes on to say, “But the founding fathers didn’t create the ceremonies and slogans that come to mind when we consider whether this is a Christian nation. Our grandfathers did.”
Well, I don’t know about you but my grandfather was not alive in 1861… but more to the point, slogans and ceremonies are not the ‘basis of religion’. God is the basis, and God has been cited and recited for thousands of years! To reduce religion to ceremonies and slogans is an odd axiom from which to incite some sort of denouncement. It is not – logical…
Perhaps we should create atheism as a product of Hollywood, a fantasy world. Or Islam as a product of oil.
The inference that ‘under God’ as an addition to The Pledge of Allegiance incorporated as of 1951 was a capitalist venture is absurd! It had one purpose, to unite in a faith after losing so many in war. It was a sign of grief and loss and a stand for something far greater. Adopted as a result of resolution imposed by The Knights of Columbus, they sought to affirm identity and honor the voyage of, and the man, Christopher Columbus who was a devout Christian.
Stories can spin. Sometimes pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are forced to fit when they aren’t the correct match. And sometimes, those attempting to fit a mismatched piece have an agenda all their own…
You are right in saying that the idea of the religious american background being influenced solely for capitalistic purposes is backwards. In fact, around the 50’s (I think it was around that time, maybe later) people in charge of the public education system decided to change the way American history had been taught (Providential history) to another view, called Economic American History (or something like that). This system of teaching only focused on the economic side of history rather than how it should be taught and examined; Providentially. That is, examining how God has influenced history. For example, if you were to ask someone what the main grievance listed in the Declaration of Independence, many would say, “Taxation without Representation”, because that is how they’ve been taught. Which was one of the grievances, but certainly not the biggest one, which was religious liberty.
I hope that made sense I’m terrible at writing my thoughts
Here! Here! I like the way you think!