Freethought-Now

Following a numbing week of speeches viciously denouncing “the godless,” President Trump, during his July 4 address in the nation’s stormy capital, made the laughable mistake of mixing up the Declaration of Independence with . . . the Book of Genesis!

“And as our Declaration of Independence tells us, we are all made in the image of one Almighty God,” Trump absurdly declared.

No, President Trump, that religious claim is found not in the Declaration but in the bible, specifically Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

The “godless” really took a beating from Trump in his efforts to turn the celebration of our nation’s founding into a Cold War-style Christian revival. In a pandering talk before his base at the Faith & Freedom Coalition about a week ago, Trump’s rhetoric actually outdid Sen. Joe McCarthy in painting Democrats as “godless communists.” Trump appeared to actively conflate godlessness with terrorism, wildly commenting: “They will close your churches in this country. They go communist … They will kill your people. … They have to end religion because their ideology doesn’t work if you have strong religion. … This is the greatest threat to our country since its founding, in my opinion, 250 years ago.” [Greater than the Civil War, the Depression, Pearl Harbor, etc.?]

He continued his defamatory rant against the nonreligious during his photo-op speech on July 3 in front of Mount Rushmore. The wannabee emperor who consistently fails to recognize that the point of the American Revolution was to throw out the king, ignorantly opined: “Americans did not bow before a king or a government, but kneeled only before Almighty God.”

During Trump’s July 4th speech, he ironically put in a kind word for the Constitution (especially the Second Amendment). “We will always be the best. Our founders not only won our liberty, they secured it with the most righteous political document ever conceived. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.”

Why ironic? Because the true genius of the Constitution that governs our nation lies in the fact that it is entirely … godless. Thereby preserving freedom of conscience by keeping dogma out of government.

During Trump’s speech before the Faith & Freedom Coalition, he insisted that “our founders invoked the Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence — four times,” as proof that America is “one nation under God.” I won’t go into detail here about why these four passing references to deity in the Declaration do not make America “one nation under God,” since I wrote an entire op-ed about it that you can read here.

But, even though the Declaration of Independence is a political, not a religious statement, suffice it to say that it doesn’t really matter what the Declaration says, since we live under that beautifully secular Constitution.

Ridiculous as Trump’s assertions about “the godless” are, they are intended to scapegoat nonbelievers and muzzle or silence any criticism of religion and Christian nationalism. And that’s why it’s imperative to keep speaking out about the dangers of religious authoritarianism. Dumb as it was for Trump to conflate the Declaration of Independence with Genesis, his words epitomize Christian nationalism: they merge the American identity with zealous Christianity.

By the way, were I a Christian nationalist, I might wonder whether all that Sturm und Drang on the National Mall on July 4, full of lightning bolts that evacuated crowds and delayed Trump’s speech, might have been a big divine thumbs-down.

Disclaimer: The views in this column are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The post No, Mr. President, the Declaration of Independence is not the bible appeared first on Freethought Now.