Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a “Christian party in politics.” Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed “Christian amendment” to the Constitution to declare the nation’s fealty to Jesus. Theodore Roosevelt defended William Howard Taft, a Unitarian, from religious attacks by supporters of William Jennings Bryan.
The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation ”” that all men are created equal ”” in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.
In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.
The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. Mr. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.
This is an excellent piece with which I agree. St. John 6:44 reminds us that noone comes to Jesus unless the Father draws him. There are many today who would rewrite this verse to read that noone comes to Jesus unless the legislature draws him.
i too think this is an excellent article. thanks for posting it.
I wish this were more broadly driven into the political conservatism realm as well as into the “religious right”. Our beliefs have been co-opted by those who have no compunction to use them either as a flogging tool against Christians in general or as a rallying cry for political agendas which when traced back to their roots go against Christian teaching and morality. There is no political expediency that should divert us from our calling in Christ Jesus to be obedient to His teaching and the admonitions of the apostolic faithful in Scripture. The ends still do not justify the means.
“Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a ‘Christian party in politics'”
President Jackson defied evangelical clergy by ordering post offices to open on Sunday, the only day of the week when working people had free time. The clergy had fits but a majority of voters sided with Jackson.