The proto-Religious Right attacked Thomas Jefferson

The Christian Right forever claims that our nation was founded on biblical principles to be a Christian nation. If it had been, surely Christians of Thomas Jefferson's and George Washington's day would not have blasted the U.S. Constitution and its creators. But they did.

They recognized that America's founders wanted the nation to be a secular enterprise, and many Christians were dismayed by that. Sadly, falsehoods to the contrary--spread by the Christian Right's leaders and its increasingly influential media and philanthropic machine--persist.

Pat Robertson, a Goliath of the Christian Right, on The 700 Club, December 30, 1981 said:

The Constitution of the United States...is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society.

He and all the Christian Right's leaders still say the same things in 2006 that they did in the 1980's, and are teaching a whole new generation of young Americans to echo their disingenuous arguments.

One of our nation's most important founders, Thomas Jefferson, might be particularly alarmed by this development. The Constitution was born in no small part of rationalism and other Enlightenment concepts cherished by deists like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and John Adams. The Enlightenment was very skeptical about religion (and all manner of clergy). Jefferson must have thought such Enlightenment concepts secure--ultimately untouchable. After all, the governing document of the United States, our Constitution, as a reflection of the Enlightenment, nowhere mentions or endorses God, Jesus, the bible, or Christianity. In fact, in Article 6 it prohibits religious tests for public office.

But the invincibility of such thinking is no longer the case. The highly secular concepts dear to Jefferson are secure no longer. They are not embraced by our President, many judges, much of Congress, and perhaps a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. They are in danger of being forgotten and replaced by something altogether different, something anathema to the rational citizen, something in line with the religious enemies of Thomas Jefferson and of the Constitution in Jefferson's own day.

Do the below incidents more reflect the spirit of the U.S. Constitution or the anti-Constitutional spirit of Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, James Kennedy, and others of the Christian Right?

+On July 4th, 1798, President of Yale, Rev. Timothy Dwight, preached that Christians dare not support "the philosophers, the atheists and the deists" in the coming election, including Thomas Jefferson, who was running for President. Dwight proclaimed that "our churches may become temples of reason" should Jefferson win the election. (see The Godless Constitution, by Isaac Kramnick & R. Laurance Moore.)

+Rev. David Caldwell on July 30, 1788, stated that the Constitution's abolition of religious tests (religious qualifications, or tests, were common in Europe) was, heaven forbid, "an invitation for Jews and pagans of every kind to come among us." (See " Original Intent," by Susan Jacoby in Mother Jones magazine. Also see here.)

+Rev. William Linn, a Dutch Reformed minister, authored an anti-Jefferson tract in 1800 complaining about Jefferson's "disbelief of the Holy Scriptures; or...his rejection of the Christian Religion and open profession of Deism." (this and all subsequent quotes, see The Godless Constitution.)

+Dr. John Mason preached that Jefferson was "a confirmed infidel."

+The New England Palladium wrote: "Should the infidel Jefferson be elected to the Presidency, the seal of death is that moment set on our holy religion...some infamous prostitute, under the title of Reason will preside...."

What did Jefferson say of these attackers? He had harsh words that resonate as strongly today as they did in his own lifetime. He wrote that the religious conservatives of his day were:

"most tyrannical and ambitious.... They pant to re-establish by law, that holy inquisition, which they can now only infuse into public opinion."

But it may be the sentiment of one Maryland representative to the Constitutional Convention (1787), Luther Martin, that is most telling.

He wrote that some delegates at the convention thought it would be "at least decent" for there to be in law a "distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism."

The term Martin used for these delegates and their beliefs?

"Unfashionable."

But that they still were.