Congressman Hostettler Believes Jesus is Celebrated in the Constitution

September 27, 2006

The Honorable John N. Hostettler
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Mr. Hostettler:

As a lobbyist for the Secular Coalition for America, representing the interest of atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic Americans, my job is to educate members of Congress regarding issues important to my constituency. Your statements on the House floor during the debate on your bill, HR 2679 "Public Expression of Religion Act," on September 26, 2006 require a great deal of clarification.

You claimed that our nation’s Founders were intentionally referencing Jesus Christ and his birth by using the phrase "in the Year of our Lord" in the date of the Constitution. Your efforts to transform our Constitution, which forbids the use of religious tests for elected and appointed office and forbids the "establishment of religion," into an invocation of Jesus based on the phrase "in the Year of our Lord" requires a very twisted logic.

If the Founders were using the Constitution to invoke Jesus, as you contend, they could have done so in many less ambiguous ways than using this phrase. They could have said, "Under the guidance of Jesus, we the People ...," but they did not. In fact, there is no mention of Jesus, Christianity, or any god(s) in the text of the Constitution. The Founders created a secular government to protect the religious freedom of all Americans -- even Americans with no religion at all.

If the Founders wanted to promote religion, they could have easily included a religious test that all elected and appointed officials would have to believe in some form of a higher power (as several states at the time did) -­ but the Founders did not. Instead they said that "no religious test" could be used. In the first amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the very first freedom added to the Constitution was that no law can be made "respecting an establishment of religion." This marks a clear distinction between our public secular government and private religious beliefs. As Thomas Jefferson said in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, the First Amendment creates "a wall of separation between Church & State."

In fact, the use of "in the Year of our Lord" was a standard way of dating documents at the time. This was not an expression of religion, but a routine inherited from European practice.

Using your faulty logic in expanding the meaning of "in the Year of our Lord," the Founders' use of the terms "Sunday" and "Monday" in the text of the Constitution would mean they were invoking the worship of the Sun and the Moon based on the terms' pagan origins. Or, the use of the months "July" and "August" means the Founders were invoking the worship of the Roman gods Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar based on the origins of these terms. Obviously this was not their intent; however, some Christians were offended by these terms. The Quakers adopted a strictly numerical system for days and months to avoid the use of these non-Christian references. The rejection of the Quaker system suggests that the Founders were not concerned with the dating standards of the time.

I understand that since you are a devout Christian you want to infuse your personal religious beliefs into every aspect of your life. However, your strong belief cannot transform our secular Constitution into a Christian manifesto. The facts simply do not support your belief.

Sincerely,
Lori Lipman Brown