It's NOT "We the people... of God"

Godless Constitution: Constitutional Law without Gods or Religion

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Before presenting the facts as to why the Constitution is NOT a "Christian" document, nor was it based on Christian morals, ethics, etc. here is a definition of those who insist otherwise, the Christian Right:
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The Christian right (also known as the religious right and the evangelical bloc) is a term used predominantly in the United States of America to describe a spectrum of right-wing Christian political and social movements and organizations characterized by their strong support of conservative social and political values.

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The politically active social movement of the Christian right includes individuals from a wide variety of conservative theological beliefs, ranging from traditional movements within Baptist, Mormon, and Calvinist organizations to groups within Lutheranism, Calvinism and Catholicism that are more theologically conservative than the denominations as a whole.

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The Christian right is contrasted with the Christian left, a spectrum of left-wing Christian political and social movements which largely embrace public policies of social justice.

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The Christian Right is a movement that has been difficult to define due to the heterogeneity of the movement. Although views are virtually unanimous on certain issues such as abortion, some contrasting viewpoints can be found among people who identify themselves as members of the Christian Right. For example, there is dissent regarding issues such as capital punishment and global warming.

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God, the Constitution, and the Christian Right:
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The Christian Right regularly claims that America is a “Christian Nation” and was founded on Christian principles. If this is the case, then those principles should be identifiable in America’s founding legal document, the Constitution. If the Constitution explicitly reflects Christian principles and doctrines, then the Christian Right is correct that America was founded on Christianity; otherwise, their claims are wishful thinking at best. So where are God and religion in the Constitution?
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No Religious Tests:
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Article VI says: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." In practice this prohibition was often violated, and even today there are unenforceable prohibitions in state constitutions against atheists holding public office. If America is a Christian Nation, why weren't public offices limited to Christians, or even particular types of Christians? Why weren't public offices limited solely to monotheists or to theists?
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Sundays Excepted Clause:
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Some take hope from Article 1, Section 7, Clause 2 which gives the president an extra day to deal with a bill from Congress if the 10th day falls on Sunday — known as the "Sundays Excepted Clause." Is this an establishment of the Christian sabbath and thus of Christianity? No, it was a recognition of the fact that many Christians wouldn't work on this day and that an extra day may be needed. It must be noted that at this time, the government continued to deliver mail on Sundays.
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In the Year of Our Lord?:
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At the end of the Constitution, the date is prefaced with "in the year of our Lord." Is this an expression of the fundamental role played by Jesus and Christianity in the Constitution? No, this was just the standard dating convention. It's no more significant than using BC and AD when writing dates now. At most, it's an example of the cultural importance of Christianity at the time; it's not a sign of the political or philosophical importance of Christianity to the Constitution.
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Myth:
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The Constitution refers to Christianity and Jesus.
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Response:
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Accommodationists and others opposed to the separation of church and state sometimes argue that government support and defense of Christianity is justified because the American Constitution refers to Christianity: in Article VII, the Constitution is dated with the words "the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven." What relevance does this point have for the debate over religious liberty? Absolutely none. This was simply the dating convention, not an ideological statement.

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Yes, the authors and signers of the Constitution relied upon a dating system which marks as its beginning the birth of the founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ. Yes, it was custom at the time of the Constitution to set forth dates by writing them out in long hand and to use the phrase "the Year of our Lord." It would have been odd for the document to be dated any other way.

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None of this would allow us to conclude that any or all of the authors and signers were Christian (though they were), much less that they considered Jesus Christ their "Lord" or that they regarded him as somehow the sovereign over the government. Quite the opposite, in fact: the Constitution is designed to ensure the sovereignty of the people, not of any religious figure.

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Moreover, if the use of this phrase was designed to communicate a favored status for Christianity, why use such an obscure method coming at the very end of the document? Had the authors wished to establish Christianity as a partner with the American government, or even to send the message that Christianity occupied some foundation or inspirational role for the government, they could have done so much more explicitly and in dozens of more substantive ways. However, they did not — and that silence speaks very loudly.

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Days, Months, Years
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In addition, if a Christian really wants to argue that the use of Christian dating implies a Christian basis to the government, they're in a lot of trouble because the names of the months and days have pagan rather than Christian origins. Although even conservative Christians today don't give this a second thought, it was evidently a source of some consternation of Quakers who refused to use the pagan-based names.

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Nevertheless, the authors of the Constitution refused to employ the Quaker numerical system and chose instead to stick with the standard pagan names for days and months — just as they used the standard Christian way of marking the year. This suggests that the authors really didn't read much into such naming conventions, effectively undermining the argument that the phrase "Year of our Lord" has any significance worth discussing.

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Ultimately, anyone using a dating method to argue against church/state separation generally or against the secular nature of the Constitution in particular is engaged in a transparently desperate exercise. It's the sort of argument that a person reaches for only after absolutely every other option has been shut down or if they are so completely ignorant that they just can't recognize the difference between reasonable and unreasonable arguments.

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Oaths and Affirmations:
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The Constitution requires elected official take oaths or affirmations before serving; was this understood as an example of the importance of swearing an oath to God? No — if it was meant to get people to swear an oath to God because only theists could be trusted, the Constitution would have said so (and would not have banned religious tests for public office). Oaths can be taken on more than the Bible and God; the choice of using an affirmation signals that religious oaths were not privileged.
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First Amendment: Free Exercise:
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The first amendment to the Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. It does not protect just the free exercise of Christianity nor does it suggest that Christianity and Christians should be have special protections and privileges. The authors used the term "religion," meaning that all religions have exactly the same status before the law and the government. If they had thought that Christianity were special, they'd have said so; instead, they treated it like every other religion.
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First Amendment: No Establishment:
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The first amendment to the Constitution also prohibits the government from "establishing" any religion. The meaning of "establishment" is hotly debated and some insist that it merely means that the government can't create a national religion. This reading is too narrow and would make the clause all but meaningless. To have relevance, it must mean that the government can't favor, endorse, promote, or support any religions just as it can't hinder any: it must remain as neutral as possible.
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We the People:
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The American Constitution begins with the phrase "We the People," and its significance cannot be overlooked. This establishes that sovereign power rests with the people and that all government power and authority derives from the consent of the people. It's a repudiation of older Eurpean ideas that governments are established by God and derive their power or authority from God (for example, the divine right of kings). It's also thus a repudiation of the Christian Right's arguments today.
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The American Constitution is Godless, Religionless:
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No matter how hard conservative apologists for the Christian Right try, they cannot locate endorsements of religion, God, theism, or Christianity in the Constitution. At no point does the Constitution exhibit anything less than a fully secular, godless character. The American Constitution was a novel experiment in the creation of a secular government on the basis of popular sovereignty and democratic principles. All of this would be undermined by the Christian Right.
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God, Deism, and the Authors of a Secular Constitution:
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The authors of the American Constitution were not atheists, though some might be regarded as little more than atheists by self-righteous religious moralizers today. Many of the authors were deists. Among those who were Christian, few seem to have held same sort of religious beliefs common with conservative evangelicals in America today. The Christian Right would claim them as religious brethren, but the two groups are far too dissimilar for that.
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Why does the Christian Right seek to make a big deal out of the religious beliefs of the authors of the Constitution, though? They seem to think that if these men can be identified as devout Christians, then it follows that the Constitution is a Christian document which embodies Christian principles and doctrines (as defined by the Christian Right, of course). This does not follow, however. A Christian is every bit as capable of creating a godless, secular document as an atheist is.
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Indeed, the fact that many of these men were devout Christians (even if not in the way that the Christian Right imagines) bolsters the case of contemporary secularists because it makes the absence of overt religious and Christian language all the more glaring. If they had mostly been atheists, the non-religious language would be expected and unremarkable. Yet because they were religious and steeped in Christian education, the absence of Christian language and references must be read as both deliberate and purposeful.
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What might that purpose have been? To establish a secular government, untainted by the many problems which sectarian divisions, religious violence, and Christian bigotry had inflicted on European nations. For the most part the authors of the Constitution succeeded. Why does the Christian Right work so hard to undermine and undo what America's founders accomplished?
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Christianity vs. The Constitution - Christian Principles in the Constitution?

It's a Myth that the Constitution Reflects Christian Principles, Morals

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Myth:
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The Constitution reflects Christian principles and morals.
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Response:
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Opponents of church/state separation sometimes claim that the Constitution embodies or reflects fundamental Christian morals and principles. Their point seems to be that we should regard the Constitution as a Christian document, not as a secular document. Since the Constitution is the foundation of the American government, the implication is that American government is Christian in nature, not secular, and so it's only right if Christian beliefs are promoted by the state. Is any of this true?
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Although the argument seems to flow relatively smoothly, the opening premise stands on very shaky ground. For one thing, it is clear that there is no obvious and unequivocal statement in the Constitution which specifies the importance or even relevance of Christian principles or morals — at no point is Christianity in any way singled out as a basis for any provision, principle, or institution. Therefore, anyone who wants to argue that Christianity is indeed present in that text must provide well supported and reasonable interpretations.
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Biblical vs. Constitutional Government
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One of the most common interpretations offered by opponents of church/state separation is that the government structures created by the Constitution reflect governing principles outlined in the Bible. For example, it is argued that the tripartite separation of powers and system of checks and balances was derived from Isaiah 33:22, "For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King; he will save us." Such a link, however, seems like little more than wishful thinking — there is just no good reason to imagine that any of the authors read that verse and felt inspired to dived the American government into legislative, judicial and executive branches.
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The fact of the matter is, the Bible does not provide for any specific form of government outside of, perhaps, a monarchy — exactly the system of government which the founders of America fought to separate themselves from (and even then, the example of the monarchy is only in the Old Testament, not the Christian New Testament). Any attempt to link biblical passages with the Constitution requires a great deal of imagination and a considerable dependence upon metaphor. Curiously, such an argument is often offered by fundamentalists who tend to rely heavily on literalist rather than metaphorical interpretations of the Bible.
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The Constitution also does not embody the Ten Commandments in any way, another common argument from those who claim that the Constitution is linked to Christianity. As a matter of fact, it should be pointed out that the first two of the Ten Commandments are effectively repudiated because the Constitutional protection of religious freedom allows people to worship various gods, not to mention make and worship graven images.
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Another problem with the claim that the Constitution embodies Christian principles lies in Article VI, which stipulates that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." If the authors of the Constitution did indeed wish to create a document designed to favor Christianity, why would religious tests (common in the colonies at the time) be specifically forbidden?
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Complaints About a Secular Constitution
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The Constitution is, in fact, unusually secular for the time when it was written. That this was very obvious to the people at the time can be seen in the fact that so many Christian preachers stood up and attacked it specifically because it lacked any overt protection or promotion of Christianity. A favorite target seems to have been the prohibition of any religious tests for public offices — many Christian leaders wanted religious tests on the national level as well as the state level.
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Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, in their book The Godless Constitution, quote an article widely reprinted at the time which complained that, without religious tests, the following would have a say in politics: "1st. Quakers, who will make the blacks saucy, and at the same time deprive us of the means of defence - 2dly. Mahometans, who ridicule the Trinity - 3dly. Deists, abominable wretches - 4thly. Negroes, the seed of Cain - 5thly. Beggars, who when set on horseback will ride to the devil - 6thly. Jews etc. etc."
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Kramnick and Moore quote a number of others who wrote in newspapers at the time; many reflect the above concern with Quakers whose pacifism and anti-slavery stance seems to have given many the sort of shudders which are today reserved for the most extreme "cults." Writers complained about how the authors of the Constitution showed "general disregard of" and "cold indifference towards religion."
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One person observed that the "Constitution is destical in principle, and in all probability the composers had no thought of God in all their conclusions." What a difference two centuries make: this is exactly the argument made by separationists today while fundamentalist Christians, the theological and intellectual heirs of the quoted individual, vigorously argue exactly the opposite. So conservative Christians complained that the Constitution was too secular when it was being voted on, but now that they are stuck with it contemporary conservative Christians argue that their religion and beliefs are actually embedded in the text after all.
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In closing, I would like to note that I did not write any of this myself. Someone far more educated and specializing in knowing the Constitution backward & forward did. And while I myself am an atheist, I do not have a problem with others of society worshiping their gods. What I DO have a problem with is misinformation.
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For most adults who believe in falsities such as the Constitution being based on Christianity, it's not because they are unintelligent but rather misinformed, probably since childhood when other Christian adults told them so. After all, I believed my dad could fly when I was a child until I later learned the facts on aerodynamics vs. my father's human limitations.
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Christians, just like Muslims & Jews & Hindus, etc. pick & choose what they like & dislike with their religion & religious documents to fit their lifestyles, just as we atheists do. But I hope that the theists, like we atheists, can accept facts when faced with proof.
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My goal with this post is not to put down Christians. I want to educate those who have never been informed before now so that they don't continue to distribute this religious urban legend.
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Happy voting day!