“Are laws themselves superseded by God?” I asked [Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore] in an interview on my radio program in 2011. “I think you’re correct in saying that,” he answered. “This is a Christian nation by the fact that 90% of the churches in America are Christian churches and it’s certainly founded upon Christian principles. The supreme law of the land is the Constitution of the United States which recognizes many of those principles. Our freedom to believe what we want comes from God. When it comes from God, no man or no court, can take it away. That’s a God-given right under the Declaration of Independence, which is law itself.”
The argument that America is a Christian nation never ceases to amaze me. That it’s more often than not advanced by those who’ve long since forgotten that America was founded by people fleeing religious persecution in their native England is distressing but not surprising. Along with this lapse of collective memory, there’s also the whole “separation of Church and State” thing, which the Founding Fathers considered crucial to the long-term survival of the nation. Never mind the 1st Amendment’s Establishment clause, which proscribes Congress from passing laws favoring the interests of one religion over that of others, and that precedent and tradition has extended this prohibition to government at all levels. America is a Christian nation, and we should all live by God’s laws.
The question (and problem) is simple: Who gets to interpret and apply “God’s laws?”
The truth is that this is NOT a Christian nation; rather, it’s a secular nation with a large Christian minority. As I’ve written in this space many times before, that’s no small distinction. The Founding Fathers were committed to eliminating religious tyranny in government, and so was born the separation of Church and State. Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists and the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli both state explicitly that American governance is not based on the Christian religion. The words “separation of Church and State” never appear in the Constitution (a favorite argument of the American Taliban), but they don’t need to. History and the Establishment Clause sufficiently establish the principle that American governance is, and should remain, secular in nature.
Despite what Justice Moore believes (and he really should know better), laws themselves are NOT superseded by God. When you start traveling that path, the question quickly becomes “Whose God?” Being something defined by faith, “God” means many things to many people. A big reason for the myriad wars and genocides conducted in the name of religion over the course of human history is the fight over whose flavor of God will be granted dominion. Isn’t it interesting that those advocating for mixing politics and religion always seem to assume their version of God, whose attitudes conveniently mirror their own fears and prejudices, will be the final authority? Moore’s angry, mean-spirited, intolerant God is not one I, nor I suspect most Americans, would want to have dominion over me. Therein lies the problem with the conviction that “God’s laws” supersede those of mere men. Your God may be an angry, mean-spirited, vindictive son of a bitch, but he/she/it may be something entirely different
Those who decry “government tyranny” very often seem to be among the first to advocate for mixing God and government, which has at the very least proven to be a stunningly effective recipe for tyranny. Then again, it’s not tyranny when you’re imposing your views and your flavor of God on others, is it? It’s only tyranny when you’re on the receiving end.
More people have perished over the course of human history because of religion than any other outside factor. You’d think that intelligent, lucid people- even the highly religious ones- would be thankful for a legal system based on the rule of law and not religious dictates. The problem with mixing God and government is that eventually someone else will get it into their head that their flavor of Supreme Being is the One, Truly, and Only…and yours is heretical and worthy only of death. THAT’S tyranny.
