Editor’s Note: Christian Nationalists often argue “our rights do not come from government; they come from God,” and then cite the Declaration of Independence, specifically some of its godly language. AU’s own VP of Strategic Communications Andrew L. Seidel dismantled these claims in his 2019 book The Founding Myth (Union Square & Co.). Church & State presents these excerpts: you may find the arguments and history useful in the coming months as misinformation is shared around the nation’s 250th birthday. Visit your local library and grab the book for a more comprehensive rebuttal, including an analysis of the language in the draft Declaration and so much more.
“. . . the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God . . .
. . . their Creator . . .
. . . the Supreme Judge of the world . . .
. . . divine Providence . . . ”
– Declaration of Independence
The Declaration repudiates [the claim of a nation founded upon] Judeo-Christian values in its purpose, principles, and even taken as a whole. But because it contains quasi-religious language, Christian Nationalists cite it regularly. As shown above, the Declaration makes four references that supposedly support the Judeo-Christian principles myth. …
Not a single reference mentions Jesus Christ, Yahweh, or a specifically Christian god. The references specify, at most, a broad deism or, possibly, a narrow theism in the “Supreme Judge” reference. Deism is the belief that a god or supernatural being created the universe but has played no role in events since, rather like a watchmaker who made the universe and set it in motion; deism has no organized or structured religion — it is simply this one belief. Theism is a belief that a god or gods play an active role in current events, tinkering with the watch’s gears, perhaps even after we die. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin and the Continental Congress could have chosen to root the entitlements, endowments, appeals, and protections in Jesus Christ or any other specific god, but they did not. Instead, they carefully selected references that do not specify any religious denomination or sectarian belief. These were deliberate men who knew they were drafting a monumental and historic document; they chose their words carefully. As University of Chicago constitutional scholar Geoffrey Stone put it, “in acknowledging Nature’s God, the Creator, and Divine Providence, the Declaration carefully and quite consciously eschewed any invocation of the Christian religion.”
That the four references are broad may actually explain why Christian Nationalists claim them as their own. Naturally, readers with such a worldview assume that the Declaration is referring to their god, especially since a claim to hold the ultimate, exclusive truth necessarily entails a belief that that truth is superior to others. But sectarian claims to these references are unsupported by the Declaration’s language.
The references are not biblical. At the time, there were about eleven major English versions of bibles that the founders could have borrowed verbiage from. Two of the phrases, “divine Providence” and “Nature’s God,” do not appear in any of those bibles. Nor does the phrase “Supreme Judge of the World,” though the bible does occasionally speak of its god as a judge. More likely, this juridical phrase came from John Locke, who used “Supreme Judge of all Men” to refer to the biblical god in his Second Treatise of Government (1690), something the founders certainly read. And, of course, the Judeo-Christian god is described as a creator — in Genesis and at least five times outside the Genesis story — but every religion that describes a creator-god and deism is defined solely by a belief in a cosmic creator-god. Scholars can argue forever about whether the references are deist or theist, but we can all be sure that they are not Christian.
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Church authorities declared natural law as ordained by “Nature’s God” to be heretical. They had been saying so for decades. Churches and theologians raged against the enlightened thinkers who would influence the founders: Bruno, Pierre Gassendi, Lucilio Vanini, Galileo, René Descartes, Spinoza, Shaftesbury, and even Locke, to name a few. Priests condemned as “new Epicureans” those who believed that “there is no other divinity or sovereign power in the world except NATURE,” that “God is Nature, and Nature is God.”
Natural law centered on humanity was so foreign and antithetical to Christianity that the church considered it atheism. Royal Chaplain Richard Bentley of Trinity College at Cambridge opposed “the modern disguised Deists … [who] cover the most arrant atheism under the mask and shadow of a deity, by which they understand no more than some eternal inanimate matter, some universal nature, and soul of the world.” If the theological scholars of Jefferson’s generation thought invoking “Nature’s God” was “arrant atheism,” we can safely conclude that Jefferson’s usage was not Judeo-Christian. The laws were not the biblical god’s — they were Nature’s, fixed from the beginning, physically impossible to transgress, and discoverable through the application of reason and science. …
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Even the word “Creator” is not unique to Christianity. Nearly all religions, even deists, have a creator-god. In fact, that’s all deists have. Given the phrase’s proximity to Nature’s God, we can be fairly certain that the framers were referring to natural laws and forces. This clause is either invoking a concept that is not Judeo-Christian or, with the simple and elegant use of the word “their” [Creator], recognizing the right to freedom of thought and belief that Jefferson protected in the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom. Perhaps both. Neither supports the Judeo-Christian foundation myth. …
The founders understood that human rights are more powerful, absolute, and universal than god-given rights. God-given rights depend on geography, varying drastically for residents of Indiana, India, and Iran. God-given rights depend on those claiming to speak for god, as shown by Mohammad, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s interpretations of their respective gods’ will. Women and LGBTQ folks have fewer rights in almost every religion because of god’s will. The abolition of slavery, women’s rights, the end of segregation, marriage equality — progress in each was opposed by those claiming to know god’s mind and executing god’s will. Human or natural rights are far less susceptible to the whim of preachers. Simply by virtue of being human, of being born, you have certain inherent, inalienable rights.
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The third and fourth references [“Supreme Judge of the World” and “divine Providence”] are similarly not specific to Judeo-Christianity or any other religion. Nor can they be found in bibles contemporary to the founding. Like the second reference, these were added during the drafting process and are not integral to the intellectual or philosophical structure of the Declaration’s underlying principles. They are poetic, more akin to Thomas Paine’s assertion that King George can “unfeelingly” hear of the “slaughter” of Americans and “composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul,” though less moving. And however poetic, the references are not Christian. Although some scholars think these mentions are more specific to a particular religion, they do “not definitively identify this God as uniquely Christian,” as evangelical Christian and historian John Fea notes. …
As a justification to a candid world, the [Declaration’s] writers were wise to choose language that would take advantage of the majority’s religiosity but still remain wholly nonsectarian. The language drew in a broader audience instead of alienating those who would be made outsiders by its expressing a religious preference. One historian labels this “equivocal religiosity” and asserts that it is specifically “designed to be acceptable to deists and orthodox believers alike.”
When the Continental Congress relied on “divine Providence,” they did so to make a pledge. But they did not pledge to that god – they pledged to each other. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. There is something stirring about the group of rebels pledging all they had and all they were to one another and not to a supernatural deity. They acted on Franklin’s exhortation to “Join, or Die” and supported Henry’s demand for liberty or death, and they rebelled against the most powerful nation on earth together. The strength of 56 of the most brilliant minds on a continent were bent toward one object: self-government. Their honor — their word — was sacred, not their religion.