Being formed by Christians does not a Christian nation make

George Washington life mask, by Houdon (National Portrait Gallery)

      George Washington planted vineyards and also ran a distillery. Thomas Jefferson was a passionate wine collector, sometimes called “America’s first vintner,” who once confessed “wine from habit has become an indispensable for my health.” Benjamin Franklin wrote that “wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy,” observing that the elbow was perfectly designed, by the Almighty, to facilitate drinking: “Let us, then, with glass in hand, adore this benevolent wisdom.”
      Given this, and other related historical facts, it would be easy to argue that the United States was founded by a bunch of tosspots for the express purpose of facilitating inebriation.
     It would take an honest, fair-minded person — they do exist — to survey, not the narrow range of grape-stained documents, but the whole of American history, to point out that subordination to Great Britain did not encumber consuming wine, and other factors inspired the quest for American independence, such as a desire for freedom.
      A similar candor demands that a similar evenhanded historical perspective be applied to last Sunday’s “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” the prayer orgy on the National Mall featuring top officials from the Trump administration celebrating the notion that ours is a Christian nation created by, and for, Christians.
      Pretty to think so. For them. For others, not so much. But before we dive in, first consider the source — something the media is terrible at doing. We wake up every morning, shocked to discover a fiery object in the sky, muster our wits to gradually ascertain that, yes, it is indeed the sun, again, and then prepare to receive that day’s load of lies and crimes as similar bolts from the blue, as if they hadn’t appeared yesterday and the day before that, and the day before.
      The proponents of the America-is-Christian canard are the same people who generally not only take pride in their woeful ignorance of the past but claim to feel bad if minor details like slavery or labor strife or mass immigration manage to nudge themselves into a textbook, who pass laws to make sure succeeding generations are hobbled in a similar fashion, a kind of intellectual foot-binding. Now, in their continuing quest to salve their inflamed egos, they claim America was founded especially for them as a Christian nation. It wasn’t. It was founded by Christians, true. But suggesting that their creation is therefore, by necessity, also Christian, is like arguing that Albert Einstein’s revolution in physics makes atomic energy Jewish (which the Nazis actually did claim, to their eventual sorrow).
      Where to begin? It’s common to start with the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, where our nation spelled it out so plainly that even MAGA could understand, if they were into understanding reality rather than trying to mold it to their whims.

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