But Sunday, I awoke to read this story and had to do a double-take:

Words fail me.

And a paraphrased headline in the USAToday Op/Ed section pretty much says it all: “The president is not the Vicar of Saddleback Church.”

Nor is he the Pope, an Imam, Rabbi, or any other peddler of snake oil, bankrupt mysticism, Voo-Doo, or delusional mumbo-jumbo. You wanna give your god a hand job? Go right ahead. But don’t ask the president to do it for you.

Having said that, this morning I am presented with this bit of letter-to-the-editor insanity:

To start, I could easily illustrate the lack of reasoning behind the letter writer’s argument and ask if it is only within the last 30 years or the last 50 years that the idea of a purely secular state has been advanced. Either way, the idea of a purely secular state has been around for much longer than even 50 years. In fact, the idea of a secular state has been around since the Founding.

Next, one is left to wonder how the letter writer gets from “Creator” to “Creation” and the refutation of evolution. That is truly a stunning piece of mental gymnastics.

Is the statement of rights in the Declaration of Independence—the statement that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”—unique? No, not at all.

In his Second Treatise on Civil Government, published in 1690, John Locke engages in an extensive discussion on the concepts later reflected, verbatim, in the Declaration of Independence.

The philosophical intent of the use of “Creator” is not an affirmation of the Christian God, nor of any god for that matter. If we look back to Locke’s Treatise—for it was Locke’s reasoning that informed Jefferson and the other Founders—we find the idea of the Christian God as having any claim over the civil society to be completely refuted. Society and society’s laws are the product of our logic and reason in light of our self-directed interests. The intent of the usage of the term “Creator” is to state that the rights we possess are inherent and inalienable by virtue of our very existence, regardless of whether we are created by the Judeo-Christian God, some other god, or by cosmic happenstance.

Thus, the existence of a god is utterly irrelevant to the discussion and our rights exist regardless of how we came to be. If we are the creation of the Christian God, or if it is somehow proven that no god exists at all and we are the creations of little green men from another galaxy, or if we sprouted, sui generis, from the primordial ooze, the proposition equally stands that our rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” are, and remain, inalienable by our very existence.

In the end, the language of the Declaration is largely pointless. The Declaration of Independence does not provide any law or legally bind us as a society. What forms our laws, guarantees our rights, and serves as the basis from which our government may act is the U.S. Constitution and the laws enacted thereby.

Locke, J. (2005). Two treatises of government. Laslett, P., ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Contrary to popular belief, the Declaration of Independence has absolutely no legal weight in American law. Our law is founded, first and foremost, on the U.S. Constitution. This is clearly articulated in the Constitution, in Article VI, in what is known as “the supremacy clause.”

So where does the Declaration of Independence stand? The Declaration of Independence was drafted in 1776. It is a document that lists the grievances of the colonists in America who were tired of British rule that imposed upon them the taxes of the British crown but provided them with no representation in British Parliament or say in how their lives were governed.

Thomas Jefferson, having studied John Locke, an English philosopher and social contract theorist, used Locke’s own words in crafting the Declaration of Independence. The primary rationale and reasoning that Jefferson drew upon was Locke’s justification for a people to sever their bonds with their government, dissolve the political order, and restructure it anew.

And thus, from Jefferson, we have this:

And it was at this point that the rebellion in the American colonies was officially undertaken.

The Revolutionary War lasted until 1781 with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Following this, the official end of the war was not achieved until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. There was then the failed attempt to establish a government under the Articles of Confederation. In 1787, delegates from 12 of the 13 states (R.I. did not send a delegate) met to draft what ultimately became the U.S. Constitution. After much debate, the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified by the states in 1789.

The Declaration of Independence is the landmark document that marks America’s severance of British rule. It’s clear, strong language reflects the conviction and resolve that each of the signers had in ensuring their own Life, Liberty, and Property. But the Declaration of Independence is not the law of the land in the United States and does nothing to establish religious (Christian) roots as the foundation of our government.

The Declaration’s guarantees of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” are not secured by the Declaration itself. And while the words “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” do not appear verbatim in the U.S. Constitution, they are clearly embodied in all of our constitutional guarantees. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution has as its purpose:

• to form a more perfect Union

• establish Justice

• ensure domestic Tranquility

• provide for the common defence

• promote the general Welfare

• secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

“Life” is secured through the establishment of justice and providing for our common defense, and “Liberty” is called out explicitly. The “Pursuit of Happiness” is a bit more complicated, for how does one guarantee a right to pursue happiness?

Generally understood, the pursuit of happiness is best represented in our ability to enjoy the fruits of our labor and our liberty. We are free to make our own decisions about how to pursue our existence, and to make for ourselves our own home, profession, and domestic life. Our existence, our home, our profession, our domestic life, and our right to such, are the embodiment of our “Estates.” It is through this line of reasoning that the right of “Pursuit of Happiness” becomes a right to our “Estates,” or as Locke concludes, that “which I call by the general Name, Property.” (Locke, Chap. IX, § 123, l.17)

“Property” is thereby secured through the establishment of justice, providing for domestic tranquility, common defense, and the general welfare. It is this approach that gives us the language of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing to all citizens the rights of “life, liberty, and property.”

These same guarantees are again reiterated in the language of the 14th Amendment.

Yet the Declaration’s language of “Nature’s God” and the “Creator”—tenuously religious terms of 18th Century Deists, skeptical of religion and the Judeo-Christian God—are nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution. Instead we find prohibitions. Article VI mandates that “no religious test” shall be required to hold public office, and the First Amendment prohibits government from taking any official action with respect to religion, or prohibiting the free exercise, thereof. From these prohibitions, Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state is clearly visible, and the Judeo-Christian God (or any god, for that matter) are forever shut out of our Constitution.

Thus, we have an inherently godless Constitution, irrevocably committed to a purely secular form of government. And the idea of a Christian Nation becomes little more than the wishful thinking of religious-minded power-mongers and mealy-mouthed ministers seeking to expand the scope of their influence beyond their congregation—a concept that is utterly and completely at odds with the core principles at the heart of our guarantees of life, liberty, and property.

Dershowitz, A. (2003). America declares independence. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Kramnick, I., Moore, R.L. (2005). The Godless Constitution: A moral defense of the secular state. New York: W.W. Morton & Co.

Locke, J. (2005). Two treatises of government. Laslett, P., ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.