OK, what principles do you think America abides by, and how would you describe their connections with Christianity?
The problem is that Christianity lays claim to a large number of principles that also can be found elsewhere-to establish a connection between the founding of this country and Christianity you would have to show exclusive connections between the two.
edited to add: This statement of yours-“As I said, American secularism is arguably a “Christian Principle” and certainly is deeply influenced by America’s specific religious context.” Shows that any and every principle on Earth can arguably be claimed by Christians, depending of who is reading and interpreting what passage.
Claiming secularism to be a “Christian principle” is certainly one of the strangest things I’ve ever read.
A definitively Christian principle would be something, you know, identifiably Christian… believe in the Abrahamic God, in the divinity of Christ, in the possibility of salvation of the soul, stuff like that.
I should clarify that while I think saying the US was founded on Christian principles is fair (though it needs heavy contextualization), I don’t agree with what people like Sarah Palin want this statement to justify today. For me, this claim just recognizes the context of what was happening at the time of the founding. Christianity played a really big role (while not the only role, it did affect pretty much everything). It still plays a really big role. Even in areas that are not immediately obvious. We stand on the shoulders of giants, etc.
Christianity does share much in common with other religions in its principles but the thought that goes into explaining those principles, and the way these principles are applied, have different histories and vary between and within religions. Pacifism is a Christian principle. It is also a Buddhist principle. The ways it is a Christian principle are different than the ways it is a Buddhist principle.
I don’t think a “exclusive connection” has to be established, just a connection. I think in the case of the founders and America generally, Christian influences dwarf others. But they do not overwhelm them and those other influences should also be noted.
To your edited point: I think the Christian influences that went into defining and applying American secularism are really strong and can be shown. I will say though, that if Christians go through the effort of formulating or adopting some principle and claiming it as Christian, then sure, it’s Christian. Two principles can contradict each other and still both be Christian.
I specified American secularism. Though secularism itself is a concept that is really really tied to Western modernity and Christianity, even in the non-Western Christian places where it was exported (often at gunpoint).
If we ask, what is religion? What is the role of the state in guiding action? How are different religious groups to relate to each other and to the state? Is the state a religious actor?
All of these questions and more have different answers, and you can see how secularism is different in America vs. India vs. Kazakhstan vs. China etc. The way Americans do secularism and think about religion owes itself tremendously to America’s religious history, which is dominated by specific forms of Christianity. Still, I have to admit that non-Christian influences did play some roles, and play an increasing larger role today, so perhaps a more accurate phrasing is needed. What would you suggest that mentions the huge role that forms of Christianity played and plays without erasing other contributions or preventing non-Christians today from staking ownership in American secularism?
I think it’s important to remember that many of the Founding Fathers weren’t hardcore Christians. As was prominent among Enlightenment intellectuals, they believed in a “clockwork” God that set the universe in motion but otherwise stayed on the sidelines. This was crucial to their philosophy that man controlled his own destiny and not the puppeteering of a deity. To that extent, America was never intended to a “Christian” nation but rather a nation of Christians.
[QUOTE=Qin Shi Huangdi]
less you are an absolute pacifist “thou shalt not murder” does not equal “thou shalt not kill” (and the former is obviously meant by the Sixth Commandment).
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Nitpick: The word “murder” means “wrongful killing”, so murder is wrong by definition. Can’t get more universal than that.
I agree, and Japan is just 1% Christian but has the lowest crime rate of all countries. At least it is what I have read and during the great earthquake The people of Japan helped each other , the businesses lowered their prices an there wares, was no( if any) Looting, not like here when we had a tornado etc. . Christians today act no better than the people they look down on.
As pointed out by CJJ, ‘thou shalt do no murder’ is nearly tautological, since murder is wrongful killing by definition. If this commandment is to mean anything, it needs to set a general, ‘prima facie’ presumption that killing a human being is wrong, and that special cases to the contrary are just that- special cases, concessions to the fact we live in an imperfect world. Things like killing in a just war or just revolution, tyrannicide, the death penalty (for the gravest of grave crimes), abortion for legitimate medical reasons, might be tolerable, but only as special exceptions to a general rule.
Another way of saying this is that the ten commandments are supposed to be ‘meta-law’, setting a sort of standard that human laws should strive to aspire to. Maybe that’s why people like Jerome in his Vulgate, and the KJV translators, chose ‘thou shalt not kill’, the more general reading, as opposed to ‘thou shalt not murder.’
Traditionally, life by the Hebrews and early Christians was considered to start with the first breath (as supported throughout the Bible). Modern Christians have redefined that based on modern notions.
I wasn’t saying that was a Christian principle the United States embodied into law, but rather that “thou shalt not kill (under any circumstances” has not been espoused by a majority of Christians (the Mennonites notwithstanding)
Such an interpretation makes much sense to me. Similarly the Seventh Commandment has been seen as covering all varieties of sexual immorality.
No, secularism and Western modernity are both deeply anti-Christian concepts. Both have been established (to the degree they are) by fighting against Christianity every step of the way.
It’s only after they lose that the Christians suddenly start pretending that they supported the new cultural standards all along and were the originating force for them instead of the opposing force.
If one looks back at our founding father you can understand why we have separation of church and state, they knew that when the state rules Religion or Religion runs the state the problems it causes. Even Christians do not all believe the same things, and many Christians were burned at the stake because some other Christians disagreed.
This is a very good point. Western secularism grew in response to the intolerance of Reformation-era Christian states and their sectarian wars.
In this light, to claim that secularism is a “Christian” principle because it grew in opposition to Christian obnoxiousness is much like calling the United Nations a fascist project.
“Because of, because opposed to.”
Who’s Christian principles? The Westboro baptists? David Koresh’s? The Tea Party’s? Even the KKK cites the bible in their rants!
You’re going to have to be more specific I think.
This is true to a large extent, although then one must ask the question of why Islamic civilization never developed a similar strand of secularism.
To answer that question, one must look at the strands of Christianity which were dominant in the United States at the time which were the offshoots of Reformed/Calvinist Protestantism (Presbyterianism and Congregationalism) along with Anglicanism.
Anyone?
Well, since you asked… Seriously, there can’t be any one answer to this, as there are so many differing (many contradictory!) Christian principles!
The framers probably had in mind a fairly broad system of toleration for other religious views. Jews, Quakers, abstract deists, even freethinkers, would be free to believe what they want.
One Christian principle is “Render unto Caesar what it Caesar’s.” Some few Christian extremists say that everything is God’s, and thus the dictum has no meaning. But most accept that alternate beliefs are to be defended.
Not all local Christians participated in the scourging of the Mormons from their homes.
It’s an “alternate history” kind of question. What would a true U.S. Theocracy look like? Would Nehemiah Scudder be executing people in large numbers…or would it just be a return to the lesser infringements of 1920’s blue laws? Would Jews be rounded up and killed…or revered as the Chosen People whence arose the Christ? There simply isn’t any way to say.
What exactly are you postulating?
A) That the Constitution is exactly the same, but the founding fathers wrote elsewhere that they founded the USA on CP?
B) The Constitution is the same except they added a statement to the effect that the USA was founded on CP, but the 1st Amendment is exactly the same?
C) The Constitution states that the USA was founded on CP, and the 1st Amendment is different somehow?
I’d agree with your last point especially and actually enlarge it a bit - Some founders did specifically envision an equal place in the US for non-Christians as well. And other prominent supporters of religious disestablishment were evangelicals who thought that identifying something so worldly as a government as “Christian” was idolatrous and sinful. How times change.
I’d also re-emphasize that whatever the specific beliefs of the founders, their lives and contexts were steeped in Christianity. They, and generations before them, engaged with specifically Christian texts, communities, references, histories and viewpoints constantly. And it really, really showed.
[QUOTE=SmartAlecCat]
Traditionally, life by the Hebrews and early Christians was considered to start with the first breath (as supported throughout the Bible). Modern Christians have redefined that based on modern notions.
[/QUOTE]
When life begins (and what exactly that means) is a somewhat different topic. Christian exhortations discouraging abortion go back to the first century CE.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
No, secularism and Western modernity are both deeply anti-Christian concepts. Both have been established (to the degree they are) by fighting against Christianity every step of the way.
It’s only after they lose that the Christians suddenly start pretending that they supported the new cultural standards all along and were the originating force for them instead of the opposing force.
[/QUOTE]
I sympathize with your annoyance at religious people that try to claim that things we like (and that took centuries of fighting to get even in part) such as gender equality or democracy were in the religion all along, like some kind of prize at the bottom of a cereal box. However, I don’t think I am doing that for two reasons:
First, I think the intellectual history of these ideas is relatively clear and the connections are deep and strong. A lot of scholarship has been done in this area by people like Saba Mahmood and been very well received.
Second, by associating secularism and Western modernity with Christianity, I am not supporting them. I am criticizing them. Secularism and modernity, internationally, have all too often been the rallying cries for extreme oppression, dictatorship, colonialism and imperialism. A lot of the reason why is because they continue to rely on assumptions (like, what religion is) that are unmoored from their original (Western and Christian) contexts and left frozen and unchallenged. The labels on the box have been changed but we’re still playing the same game.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
This is a very good point. Western secularism grew in response to the intolerance of Reformation-era Christian states and their sectarian wars.
In this light, to claim that secularism is a “Christian” principle because it grew in opposition to Christian obnoxiousness is much like calling the United Nations a fascist project.
“Because of, because opposed to.”
[/QUOTE]
Christian debates about religion and the temporal (secular) world, their relationship, and what that meant for governments and citizens started with the earliest Christians and their relationship to Roman society and state. They evolved as Christianity grew and gained political power during and after the Empire. They developed amid the struggles between Popes and Kings, and in the East between the Orthodox bishops and the Byzantines. By the time of the Reformation (which again, was Christian against Christian (with, sadly, most everyone against the Jews)) there was already a huge and distinct intellectual tradition to build on.
Saying that secularism grew in response to Reformation era Christian obnoxiousness (who were the non-Christians who negotiated Westphalia?) obscures a lot of history.
[QUOTE=Qin Shi Huangdi]
This is true to a large extent, although then one must ask the question of why Islamic civilization never developed a similar strand of secularism.
[/QUOTE]
Classical Islam had many institutions that split power into different areas of society. For example, Islamic scholars were, as a rule, not the people who did policy, and parallel courts existed run by Kings and such that could overrule the Islamic law courts. So people who advocate for secular states in the Muslim world (that we wouldn’t always recognize as American-style secularists) have history to draw on. Still, using the word “secular” to apply to Islam before colonialism will get you chewed out by most Islamic studies professors. Why? Because the foundational ideas that undergird secularism were not classical Islamic ones. Islam has its own intellectual currents dealing with these questions. Trying to make sense of Islamic history with words like “secular” has led to a lot of harmful policy and scholarship over the years.
To all: Here’s another principle that we could say American was founded on, and has been inseparable from American Christianity: Racism.