Ever since the explosion of fundamentalist Christianity in the 1980s and 1990s, the religious right has tried ceaselessly to pass laws and shape government policy in ways that give their beliefs an unduly elevated status.

These attempts have rightfully provoked a great deal of resistance from most

Americans, prompting an effort among fundamentalists to make their actions seem legitimate and in correspondence with American history and jurisprudence. In short, they argue that separation of church and state is a farce and that religion (i.e., their religion and only their religion) can and should mix with politics. But have no doubt about it - their reasoning is just as flawed as their intentions are foolish.

At the foundation of their attempt to inject religion into our government is the argument that America's Founding Fathers were devout Christians who sought to create a Christian nation. The only problem with this is that it's just not true. Pat Robertson's and Jerry Falwell's rantings aside, the major founders of this country were not Christian in any useful sense of the term.

Thomas Paine, who penned Common Sense and wrote of the "times that try men's souls," explicitly rejected Christianity and considered himself a deist. By his own admission, Benjamin Franklin considered himself a deist as well.

John Adams was of the Unitarian faith, while James Madison was a deist who blamed Christianity for propagating "superstition, bigotry, and persecution." Likewise, Thomas Jefferson embraced deism over Christianity, even calling the Book of Revelations "the ravings of a maniac."

Nor did these men want the United States to be a Christian state by any stretch of the imagination. For example, they purposely designed the constitution to be a thoroughly secular document without any reference to Jesus, God, or any divinity whatsoever. Not only did this secular constitution bar the establishment of religion, but as James Madison explained, it marked the "essential distinction between civil and religious function." George Washington, furthermore, reinforced this principle when he approved the Treaty of Tripoli, which declares that "the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." So, the next time you hear the religious right talk about how our government was founded on religion, just know that they are profaning, not embracing, the spirit in which our nation was actually founded.

The wonderful thing about our government is that even if the founders of this country had privately wanted the state to be infused with religion, it still would not matter. After all, deceased men do not rule us from the grave. Rather, we rule ourselves through the secular constitution that they created. And that's the gospel truth!

So, the United States was not founded as a Christian state, nor were its major founders Christian, nor would it matter if they were. Ours is a very secular tradition - one that we should not let today's ilk of fundamentalists foolishly throw away. Let us review why.

First of all, our country is an increasingly diverse place and is home to growing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, not to mention people who simply don't practice religion. Thus, attempts by the religious right to have the government unofficially sponsor their religion by putting up the Ten Commandments in courthouses and by letting public schools sponsor prayer bear the hallmarks of insensitivity and selfishness. Those who embrace the religion sponsored by their public school or local courthouse would feel an undue sense of superiority, while anyone with different religious beliefs would feel like an outcast and a second-class citizen. The whole point of separation of church and state is to eliminate this type of divisiveness.

As illustrated by the recent struggles endured by Oklahomans and Kansans just to keep evolution in public schools, separation of church and state is also the only way of freeing politics from the divisive and backward impulses of the religious right. I don't care if you call it creation "science," Intelligent Design, or whatever - creationism is not a science.

Like school-sponsored prayer, it is simply another divisive attempt by the religious right to force their beliefs on everyone around them. The same thing goes for their attempts to ban pornography, to limit divorces, and to continue state-sponsored discrimination of gays in the military. The point of these examples is to show that when government is used to promote the religious values of any group, the civil liberties of others are often infringed upon.

Finally, there is the practical downside of mixing religion in politics, which is that religious pandering is simply a political cop-out and a substitute for action. After Columbine, for example, the GOP refused to pass sensible gun control and instead just passed a bill allowing public schools to hang up the Ten Commandments. This allowed the GOP to cynically claim to conservatives that they were doing something to protect students, although I doubt hanging up the Ten Commandments will prevent future tragedy.

Overall, the idea that government should rest upon and promote religious values is a worn out and discredited idea long since abandoned by most Western countries. In any instance where religion has served as the basis for political rule, it has only contributed to the misery and oppression of humankind. Let us therefore hope that future elections send those who would mix religion and politics back to where they rightfully belong: the trash heap of history.

Scott Carr is a history senior. His column appears every other Wednesday.


To learn more about the debate over the separation of church and state visit http://members.tripod.com/~candst/.
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