I often hear pundits make this claim yet they never attempt to back it up. Is it true?
I cannot find any uniquely Judeo-Christian values in the Constitution or the Declaration. The values in the latter tend to be hedonistic if anything (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness).
Can the argument be made for such?
The Constitution is secular – freedom of religion, no religious test to hold office, etc.
The society embraced Christian values, as nearly all citizens were Christians. Faith, Hope, Charity were pretty much universally held to be the highest moral values.
But one quickly finds sectarian differences… Is “Hard Work” a Christian value, or merely a “Western” value? How universal was the Calvinist view of mankind as intrinsically sinful? Some would have said yes…but many would have said no. The Quakers and the Calvinists, both Christian, would have seen many things very differently.
By and large, the claim “America was founded on Christian Values” is a slogan used by those who do not favor separation of church and state. It’s a shibboleth of the conservative Christian Right, designed to return to the days of mandatory school prayer. And so, to that degree, not only no, but hell no.
Trinopus
“Convert or kill all unbelievers” is a Christian value that America was certainly founded on. Just ask the Native Americans, or the blacks kidnapped from Africa and force-fed Christianity. “Women are less than human” is another Christian value America embraced for a very long time. Another would be “we are the chosen people of God and anyone who opposes us is a servant of Satan”.
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Bullshit. Missionaries and evangelicals fought against the slave trade and things like the Trail of Tears.
Again considering other cultures in 1800 were binding women’s feet and stuffing them in harems, the US was fairly enlightened to say the least.
There are no uniquely Judeo-Christian values. More or less every society throughout history considered killing and theft bad, babies good, and so on.
Anyway, your first instinct is correct: the US was founded as a republic, which is pretty much antithetical to Christian thought for most of history.
I challenge you to cite the “convert or kill” in the Tanakh or the Christian Bible.
I challenge you to cite the “convert or kill” in the founding documents of the US.
There have probably been more explicitly Christian Republics than in any other religion in history, even if you count the pantheistic religions as one big lump. Italy alone had them by the dozen.
No it is not. The Hebrew state before the establishment of the monarchy was a republic. The Puritans desired a republic and got one, the Dutch Calvinists established a republic, and John Calvin’s Geneva was a republic.
And supported them as well.
First; the Bible just goes with “kill”; “convert” is a later option. And second, what does that have to do with anything? “Christian values” are those values believed in and practiced by Christians, most of which don’t have a great deal to do with the Bible, and most of which originate well after it was written.
There is no doubt Judeo-Christian values existed in the US during that time period. The question was about the founding as that would be forward looking. It appears that the US was intended to be a fully secular nation. As all here no doubt know, there is a movement to create historical falsehoods by certain political factions.
Mostly kill, they are easy to find.
Exodus 22:20
Exodus 31:14
Exodus 32:27-29
Lev 25:44-46
Num 14:43-45
Num 33:50-52
Deu 3:6
Deu 13:6-10
Deu 7:2
Deu 12:30
Deu 13:1-5
Deu 17:2-7
Kings 3:19-25
2 chron 28:6
I thought they were Deists?
:dubious:
If there was a contest to select the most perfect theocratic dictatorship in history… that would be John Calvin’s Geneva.
But, yeah, “republic” sounds real cool and worthy.
Wait, are we defining “Christian values” by the stuff in the Bible, which explicitly commands the subjugation of women, or the cultures that tend towards Christianity, which may at different times enforce or forget the subjugation of women stuff as is convenient? Because treating women as second class citizens certainly does seem to be explicit.
As for this topic, I’ve heard some extremely stupid arguments along the lines of “of course we should keep the ten commandments at every courthouse! Our entire system of laws is based on Christianity! Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, those are right from the ten commandments!”
Because, right, societies couldn’t figure out on their own that not making a law against murder and theft would be bad. It took the enlightenment of Christianity to bring us to that point. Our entire system of laws is based on Christianity. I mean, everything from how to zone commercial districts to tax laws for offshore businesses to car airbag regulations come right from the Bible.
It seems to me that Christian values came from other sorces as well. Buddaha Golden rule came 500 years BC, and that pretty much sums up the last 7 commandments. Too many Christians today give lip service, but ignore a lot of what they were taught that Jesus taught,like:" sell what you have and give it to the poor,then come and follow me" “Be good to your enemies, etc.” today it has a pick and choose philosophy for many. If all Christians lived as they were taught how Jesus was said to live, we would have no wars or little need for police men, jails etc…
Are you sure you don’t mean humanistic? Hedonism means pursuit of pleasure as one’s main goal in life; and that’s not what Jefferson meant by “happiness.”
I said “most of history”. Don’t take it personally; it was pretty much antithetical to all religious thought for most of history.
Geneva wasn’t a “republic”. It had a democratically elected city government, which existed long before Calvin got there.
Some were, though even they were rather heavily Christian Deists. But righ among the Founding Fathers you have ministers and preachers alongside lawyers and soldiers.
The thing about the Religious Right is they’re ignorant. Proudly so in general, but they aren’t even competent at theology.
A simple amateur like me … “Render unto Caesar …” and they’re outclassed.
This is nowhere close to true. In many primitive and ancient societies, killing or theft or both were permitted in some or all cases. Sometimes they were institutionalized. As for babies always being considered good, not even close. To give one example, in Ancient Greece and Rome in Pagan times, it was legal for the male head of household to kill his wife, kids, slaves, or anyone else in the household. Infanticide was also common. If you read Plato, Aristotle, and other leading intellects of those civilizations, you’ll seem them advocating killing children who are deemed physically or mentally inferior for the sake of improving the race.
This all ended when Christianity took over western civilization. Infanticide was outlawed and laws were changed to give women and children the right to live and more personal freedoms. So, as those values persisted in western civilization directly through to the United States at its founding, the United States certainly did incorporate values that began with Christianity.
Isn’t a democratically elected government a republic?