Religion meets politics

As I've noted many times before, the founding fathers weren't particularly religious. As the primary religion in the American colonies was Anglican, that meant that the predominant religion accepted the monarchy. Because the monarch is the head of the Anglican Church. 

That certainly didn't fit with the ideals of this fledgling nation, which was trying to free itself from the ties to England. 

And that's an important part of how our nation was founded. The Declaration of Independence speaks of "the creator" as a very ambiguous thing. And they do note that there is "divine providence" in the action, which suggests a higher power. But they don't otherwise mention god, and certainly not Christianity. 

The constitution makes no reference to god. At all. There is a notation in article vii that reads "in the year of our lord" 

done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names

But keep in mind that the British had imposed the gregorian calendar on all its territories. It has a "starting point" related to the assumed birthdate of Jesus. Any days before that are "BC," or "Before Christ." And anything after are "AD," or "Anno Domini" which is loosely translated to "after the coming of god."

The plucky americans kept the calendar and the nomenclature for convenience. So "year of our lord" is a holdover from that, specifically. 

And with no other mentions of god, it's a stretch to fit Christianity into that. Though certainly some people try and do so.  

Moreover, it was decided to make the semi-official motto of these new United States e pluribus unum which you may recognize as a Latin phrase (Latin being commonly used in documents pertaining to state, in many British territories). It means "out of many, one."

You may also realize that this is the basic tenet of the declaration that "we the people" are the nation. Not a king. Not a type of tyrant. We. All of us.   

Now a quick aside: The pledge of allegiance that we all know and recite, didn't get written until after the civil war. It was 1892 when we started pledging allegiance to the republic. And it did NOT contain the phrase "under god" in its original form. 

But along came the Cold War in the 1950s. The red scare. There were communists everywhere, according to some. And we couldn't let the Russians take over our nation. So there were a series of witch hunts. 

And a serious discussion about how we could differentiate ourselves from *them* got underway … one way was through religion. The communists didn't believe in god and therefore, if the United States made references to god, we could assure ourselves that the red menace wouldn't affect our way of life. Silly as that sounds. 

So in 1956, the pledge of allegiance was changed to add "under god" to it. It's a small, subtle change. But in context, really relevant. 

They also adopted an official motto that reads "in god we trust," and stopped using "e pluribus unum" in most official capacities. 

Until then, no one much cared about religion in the way we think of it today. Yes, people were religious. And yes there were debates about church and state. But the constitution typically won out because it didn't mention god. 

But, with legislation and the stroke of a pen, we started down a long path of religion infiltrating our system of government. People assume that "under god" refers to Christianity. But of course it does not specifically do that. 

And our founding fathers never intended for this to happen. 

Reference: the constitution 

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#7

Reference: the Declaration of Independence 

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript