Edward & Michael Buckner, “In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty”, www.PrometheusBooks.com (2012) approx.: 211 pp. (On my Kindle)

The authors present convincing arguments that it is extremely important to our freedom in the U.S. that the country remain, as the founders intended and designed, a secular country (secular means “not religious”—it does not necessarily mean “antireligious”. Hundreds of documents throughout this book support the idea that the framers quite deliberately established a secular government.  The book also answers whether the founders were right to create a free country rather than a Christian nation.  It is not new that politicians have to contend with accusations that their religious convictions are questionable.  Against complaints that the writers of the Constitution did not invoke God, John Adams replied, “It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods.”  This book covers the two-centuries-long debate over religion and secularism in America. 

My Notes:

Loc 104:  The Treaty of was concluded between the United States of America and Tripolitania, signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796.  It received unanimous Senate ratification and was signed by Adams, taking effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797.  The treaty has attracted later attention because the English version included a clause about religion in the United States.

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Sarah Palin asserts that Americans’ rights “don’t come from man; they come from God.”  Similarly, Newt Gingrich in 2009 stated that only in the U.S. does citizenship start with our creator.”

Loc 165:  Our Constitution is famous for valuable ideas—such as individual freedom, separation of powers, freedom of religion, free speech, civilian control of the military, freedom of the press, and democratic elections—but none of these are Christian.  Some—religious liberty and democratic elections, for example—are even directly opposed to biblical principles.

Loc 206:  The Declaration of Independence was politically radical as well as radical in religious terms in that the Declaration explicitly denied the old doctrines of “Divine Right of Kings” and aristocracy.  It was a radical break with Judeo-Christian traditions that went back thousands of years.  Government, it asserts, derives its powers not from the will of God but from the consent of the governed.  In contrast, the Bible states:

Romans 13:1-7: Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.  The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted…

 And the First Amendments proclamation that there be no law abridging the free exercise of religion is a far cry from the demands of biblical law:

Deuteronomy 13:6-11:  If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’…You must certainly put them to death.

 The First Amendment—which says you may worship whatever god or gods you believe in, …stands in stark contrast.

Loc 436: Most Americans probably accept as a matter of course that someday our president will be a woman.  But the Bible says that “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.  I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:11-12)

Loc 495: It was during the era of Senator McCarthy that saw both the addition of “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and the formal adoption of “In God We trust” as the national motto.

Loc 861:  The political climate in the U.S. is such that there remains real doubt as to whether any candidate will effectively support the quintessentially American point of view: secularism and liberty, not pluralism and tolerance.  Tolerance implies the power to approve or disapprove.

Loc 923:  Catholic Charities reports that well over half its income (62 percent) derives from “Government Revenue”.  This raises the question of how an organization can call itself a “Catholic” charity, and insist that it be allowed to maintain its identity as a Catholic Christian religiously based institution, when well over half of its budget comes from tax dollars.

Loc 1120:  The only mention of religion in the original seven articles of the Constitution (there are only seven) is to proclaim, in Article VI, that “no religious Test shall ever by required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Loc 1156:  Although most Americans unquestioningly accept the First Amendment’s protection for the free exercise of religion, the other half of the Amendment’s edict on religion and government, the establishment clause or “separation of church and state,” is more controversial.

Loc 1285:  In his 1864 Syllabus of Errors, Pope Pius IX not only sternly condemned the idea that the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church and attacked nonsectarian public schools; he also demanded that Catholicism must be “the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” and attacked the very idea of free exercise of religion, ending with a sweeping repudiation of “progress, liberalism and modern civilization.”  This is the same Pope who in 1870 claimed infallibility.

Loc 1338:  Deism was a rationalist, monotheistic faith associated with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment in Europe; deism had no creeds or dogmas, but in general deists, while believing in God as Creator of the Universe and even as author of moral laws, rejected belief in miracles and considered reason and experience rather than revelation and faith to be the proper sources of religious truth.  The modern Unitarians are probably the closest heirs to the deists of Jefferson’s day.

Loc 1560:  The acceptance of slavery in the Bible is not limited to the Old Testament.  It is clear in the New Testament command that slaves submit to their masters, not only to the “good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh” (1 Peter 2:18).  And the Bible never condemns slavery. 

Loc 1571:  Following the Civil War, the biblically correct institution of slavery was done away with by the Thirteenth Amendment (1865).  The Thirteenth Amendment was followed by the crucial Fourteenth Amendment (1868), which established that:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Loc 1628:  C. Davis estimates “that in the 250 years of peak slave-trading by the Barbary corsairs, from 1530 to 1780, at least one million, and perhaps as many as one and one-quarter million, white Christians were enslaved in Islamic North Africa.” 

Loc 2155:  Americans United for Separation of Church and State have a website:  www.au.org