Sacred Myths
July 4, 2020
Thomas Paine
FROM “The American Revolution, Part II: Who Wrote the Declaration of Independence?” James Perloff:
I once heard a pastor preach a sermon on the Fourth of July. He quoted the beginning of the Declaration, laying emphasis on certain words in an effort to authenticate that America’s Founding Fathers were Christians:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . .
As the phrases “Nature’s God” and “Creator” were quoted, congregation members were oohing and aahing in a sort of mental swoon. But I knew the writer was [Thomas] Paine, a self-proclaimed enemy of Christianity. Here are Paine quotes that demonstrate what he really meant by “Nature’s God” and “Creator”:
When, therefore, we look through nature up to nature’s God, we are in the right road of happiness, but when we trust to books as the Word of God, and confide in them as revealed religion, we are afloat on the ocean of uncertainty, and shatter into contending factions.¹²
But when I see throughout the greatest part of this book [the Bible] scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.¹³
As the pastor continued his “patriot” sermon, I heard such a litany of misrepresentations about America that rage built incrementally within me, until I finally walked out the door. I knew the pastor meant well, but Jesus Christ said he came to tell us the truth, and my tolerance for falsehood has a low breaking point.
Unfortunately, what this pastor was saying is very common in American evangelical churches, who subscribe to what might be called the “David Barton” view of the Founding Fathers. (Barton has made a career out of portraying them as Christians.)
