Letter to the LNP Editor; text as submitted August 2, 2024
It is said that everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. Entertaining diverse opinions encourages creative solutions to complex challenges. Dangers arise, however, when stated opinions are based on false data. In today’s political climate careful fact checking is essential in choosing the information on which one bases one’s opinions.
One false, and increasingly pernicious, claim made in far too many opinion pieces is that our country was founded as and intended to be a Christian nation. This is simply not true. The First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” but for some theocratic advocates this is not enough.
The simplest fact check of this claim is to cite Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which was negotiated under President George Washington, ratified by the U.S. Senate, and signed by President John Adams. It begins “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion …”
To state otherwise endangers the civil liberties of any who do not share the particular kind of Christian belief being imposed. But the claim also threatens the Christian faith itself by depicting it to the public as bigoted, abusive, and authoritarian. More and more Americans, especially youth, are rejecting all Christianity because they see it as hateful and oppressive. For the sake of both our Constitutional Democracy and the Gospel of Jesus, the falsehoods about both must stop.
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