Introducing a new contributor to our site…Hrafnkell Haraldsson. He has written a great piece debunking the notion of a “Christian america”.

Mythical America

by Hrafnkell Haraldsson

We’ve heard it all said a hundred times – that America is a Christian nation, that it was founded as a Christian nation, that the Founding Fathers were Bible-believing, God-fearing Christian men, that there is no Wall of Separation between Church and State.

The only problem is, none of it is true.

And the 18^th century’s own Evangelicals signed off on the system of government those very secular-minded Founding Fathers established.

Back in the 18^th century, you see, people were a lot closer to the events that shaped the new nation. They had close personal experience with the dangers of Church and State meddling in each other’s business. They knew what it was to be persecuted, not by a secular government but by a government under the control of another denomination.

They wanted protection. From each other.

And our new system of government, promised by the Declaration of Independence and come to fruition in the Constitution, gave them what they asked for.

Of course, none of these facts have stopped our own century’s Evangelicals from telling an entirely different story, one founded not in fact, not in history, but in wishful thinking, in history as it should have been – but wasn’t.

And they have big money backing them up. They have glossy websites, glossy publications, book clubs, brochures, even entire series’ of books, including the “Politically Incorrect Guide to…” series, which would be better named, “Factually Inaccurate Guide” or “Historically Inaccurate Guide.”

These books play to the base. Like any works of apologia – and that is what they are – they comfort believers, convincing them, reassuring them, that all is well, that the lies they’ve been told are safe to believe – and to go on believing.

But this mythical Christian America has no more solid a foundation than Creation Science – both are contradictions in terms.

It is true that most of the citizens of the new United States were Christians of one kind or another, many of them, especially following the successful conclusion of the War for Independence, refugees from oppressive religious environments in the Old World. They came here precisely because there WAS separation between church and state, precisely because here, they could be free of government-sponsored religion.

The problem for today’s Evangelicals is that the government itself was secular in nature, founded by men grounded in science and reason and disciples – and products – of the Age of European Enlightenment.

These men had the opportunity to form any sort of government they wished. ANY. They could have made a monarchy of our new nation – it was considered and the idea dismissed. They could have established a theocracy – but no one gave that idea any thought at all. It was never even a possibility. The motto of the new nation was, significantly, “E Pluribus Unum” – Out of Many, One. It was not, equally significantly, “In God We Trust.”

Instead, they gave us a nation founded on ancient principles of democracy, a product of ancient polytheistic Greece, and freedom of speech and thought – also products of the ancient polytheistic world – and human rights, a product of the European Enlightenment so heartily condemned by the Church. Nothing in the new nation was based on biblical principles. The Founding Fathers took more from the Iroquois Federation than they did Old Testament Israel.

There too, facts have not stopped today’s Evangelicals, who ardently insist that our nation was founded on Biblical principles. I would like to inquire where in ancient Israel there existed ideas of Democracy and Free Speech and thought. In ancient Israel, free thought and free speech got you stoned. Nor was there Democracy; there was monarchy and theocracy. There were no human rights. Exercising human rights would get you stoned. It was a society built on exclusion and enforced behavior. There was no liberty anywhere in sight.

So what we have today as the heart and soul of the Republican Base is a Mythical America, an American history of the imagination, one of wishful thinking but not of fact. Just as is much of the Bible, this Mythical America is pious history.

Look at some of the assertions made by the Mythicists:

• The American “revolutionaries” were actually conservatives
• The Puritans didn’t steal Indian lands
• The Bible promotes human freedom
• The enemies of the Bible are enemies of true reason and tolerance
• The Bible made modern science possible (which is why it started in the Middle Ages)
• The Middle Ages were the real “Age of Reason”
• The “Enlightenment” yielded tyranny and war.

It is no surprise that these “talking points” are aped on social networking sites, on FOX News and anywhere else conservatives gather. They’re said as if they’re true. The specious reasoning that goes behind them is repeated as if it even made sense (which it doesn’t).

• The revolutionaries were liberals. They founded our nation on the liberal principles of the European Enlightenment – not upon the conservative principles of the Old World.
• The Puritans did steal Indian lands. Shamelessly.
• The Bible nowhere promotes human freedom.  Evangelicals can repeat the myth of Christian egalitarianism and slavery all they want but the truth is, Christianity did not promote egalitarianism and it did not free the slaves.
• The statement that enemies of the Bible are enemies of reason and tolerance proves itself wrong.
• Science did not start in the Middle Ages. It started in the ancient polytheistic world – and, significantly, not in Biblical Israel but in Greece, which promoted freedom of thought and speech. When science saw the light of day again, it was not because of Christianity, but despite it, as the historical record clearly demonstrates.
• The Middle Ages were not the Age of Reason. One has only to look at the rampant superstition, the crusades, the wars against heretics, the inquisition, the witch-burnings, the anti-Jewish pogroms, the forced conversion of Pagan peoples in Northern and Eastern Europe…no, not much Reason but a whole lot of slaughter in God’s name.
• The Enlightenment did not stop war, but it did not yield war as a consequence. It did, however, put a stop to crusades, wars against heretics, the inquisition, witch-burnings, and rampant anti-Jewish pogroms. It was not quite able to stop forced conversion of Pagan peoples but at least we stopped slaughtering them in “God’s” name.

Our society is diverse and free to a degree that has never been possible before in history. Diversity and plurality are a blessing. But to the Evangelicals, it is a threat. It threatens the status quo. It threatens them with loss of power and loss of influence. The more diverse our society becomes, the more resistant they become. The more reactionary they become. They become more intolerant, more hateful, and more inclined to use fear as a weapon to browbeat others into servitude to “their” Bible.

And the more inclined they are to embrace an imaginary, Mythical America.  As a result, we are introduced to ideas that have no basis in historical fact, like the points discussed briefly above. We have conservative Christians making blind, unsupported assertions about this Mythical America as though it really existed, without a thought being given to the facts.

And why bother with the facts when talking points are so handy – when apologetic works abound, demonstrating these myths to be fact and denouncing fact as myth? It’s all very comforting to them, and all very damaging, not only for them, but for all of us. They want to impose on the United States a return to the 13^th century, to that imaginary “Age of Reason” they talk about, when they – and they alone – were free to do what they wanted – to everyone else. And let not a word be raised in protest.

Because as you all by now know, they can damn and condemn and it’s their God-given right, but should anyone raise a word in protest, it’s a “war against Christianity” or “hate” or “intolerance.” Because it isn’t freedom they really want. It’s the privileging of their myth, of their own beliefs, at the expense of everyone else. It’s the freedom to persecute, without apology or thought, everyone different from them, and like their 13^th century brethren, justify it in their god’s name.

Well done…and many thanks for your work!

But America didn’t exist in the 13^th century. It could not have existed in the 13^th century. It took a genuine Age of Reason to make America possible, and going back to the 13^th century would skip right over it. It’s pretty obvious to anyone living in an evidence-based world, but as the Politically Incorrect guide series of books make clear, their interest isn’t in evidence – it’s in wishful thinking.