CHRISTIAN NATION

Q: Even though the Constitution never mentions Christianity, or God, or the Bible, is it fair, nevertheless, to say that the Constitution is based upon the principles of Christianity and the Bible or that those principles are implied in the Constitution?

A: Mark, the question you ask is extremely important because it deals with the very heart of what our nation is all about in regard to religion, as well as to what a written constitution means.

You are undoubtedly aware of citizens within America who are telling us that America is a Christian nation based upon Christian principles. Their argument is totally false. The Constitution is based upon a principle which says that what is in writing is the supreme law of the land, means what it says, and says what it means. That is what a written contract or compact or agreement is all about. If we accept the false proposition that the Constitution means things it does not say or are not written down, what kind of document is that? It might as well be a blank piece of paper onto which every person writes whatever he or she chooses. No, it is not a blank piece of paper!

The sum and substance of the Constitution is that what is written is acceptable, not what is not written. If the Founding Fathers had wanted a founding document which meant something other than what they wrote, they would have written it differently and said what they meant. The Founding Fathers were not dumb. They wrote what they meant, and what they wrote expresses exactly which principles they accepted and which, by their absence, they rejected. The "Christian nation" proposition is obviously not a part of the Constitution for the United States of America. If the Founding Fathers had wanted such a proposition in the Constitution, they would have written it into the document.

The Constitution is not a document to be understood in terms of what someone wants to make it imply, it is written to be understood in terms of exactly what it says--which is the essence, significance, purpose, intent, and meaning of a written constitution. The "Christian Nation" argument is a total distortion and deserves to be labeled as such. The same can be said of those quotations from Supreme Court Justices who were not at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, who therefore are not Founding Fathers, and who subsequently have expressed, in conflict with the Constitution, their personal opinions about America being a Christian nation.

America is a nation where citizens of no religious faith or of all religious faiths are welcome to freely participate in its social and political functions as Americans. In America there is to be ãno religious test,ä and it is that principle which the Founding Fathers deliberately and specifically wrote into the Constitution.