It is a common trope among many politicians and others to state, as Senator Jim DeMint recently did, that the United States is a Christian nation. That is, that this country was founded on Christian principles. This is typically evidenced by various statements of the Founding Fathers, theistic phrases in the Declaration of Independence, and occasionally a look at the Founders’ religious preferences. (Giving, of course, a nice coat whitewash to Thomas Paine’s deism, Ethan Allen’s atheism, John Adams’ Unitarianism, and Jefferson’s own strange eclectic beliefs.)

These arguments are then inevitably countered by bringing up the obvious tropes. Namely, that the Constitution of the United States makes no mention of God. Period. That in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, Congress approved and the President signed language stating that “…the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;…”. And on and on and on.

However, I would contend that an argument over what the Founders believed has little if anything to do with whether the government of the United States is based on religious principles. After all, I believe it was Jesus Christ himself who said: “You will know them by their fruits.” Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that all of the the Founding Fathers were pure Christians, that has very little bearing on whether the Constitution itself is based on Christian teachings. The only way to figure that out is to examine the Constitution itself and determine whether it adheres to Christian percepts.

The first thing to note about the Constitution of the United States is that it proposes three branches of government, separate but equal, each with their own enumerated powers. This is a strange setup considering that the Bible does not describe any human governance remotely resembling the system established by the Constitution. There are only two basic types of governance mentioned in the Bible at all, really: monarchies and the rule by Judges.

Additionally, in the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers clearly state that governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This is at odds with the Letter of Paul to the Romans, where Paul clearly states that “there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” Indeed, according to Paul, all of the Founding Fathers who participated in the American Revolution were sinful, because “whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.”

Clearly, from a basic philosophic perspective, the Founding Fathers were at odds with the Bible about the justification for government, and actually “brought judgment upon themselves” by revolting against the King of England, whom Paul would have argued God had set forth to rule them.

In addition to having a completely different philosophic framework for government than the Bible, the Constitution is also strangely silent on a lot of issues that both Jesus and the Apostles found to be important. For example, the Constitution protects the institution of private property. However, according to the Acts of the Apostles, private property wasn’t respected in early Christian communities at all. As Acts describes it, “all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.”

Clearly, the Constitution does not reflect this idea.

Here’s something else. In the Gospels, Jesus is firmly against violence. In Matthew 5:39, he states “I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” Despite this clear exhortation to pacifism, the Founding Fathers allowed a General, George Washington, to preside over the Constitutional Convention, and the Constitution itself empowers Congress to declare war and expend funds to build an army and navy.

The list goes on:

• The Constitution does not prohibit persons from praying openly and publicly, nor does it make it a crime to let people know that you are fasting. Indeed, the Constitution actually protects these acts, specifically forbidden by Jesus Christ, through the First Amendment.

• The Constitution allows for the taking of oaths, which violates Christ’s teachings.

• The Constitution does not forbid divorce, nor does it ensure that people who divorce do not remarry.

In short, not only does the Constitution of the United States fail to enforce Christian doctrine, it allows and in some cases mandates that the government do things in violation of Christian teachings.

Anyone who honestly looks at history cannot deny that there are Christian influences on the development American society and its legal system. After all, a majority of people in the country have been Christian since its founding, and their ideas helped shape the nation we are today.

However, it is a gross misreading of the Constitution to state that it is somehow based on Biblical teaching. It clearly is not. Republican government is not specifically endorsed by the Bible, and Constitutional mandates are frequently at odds with Christian teachings. Moreover, the very philosophy from which the Constitution is derived–that justification for government comes from consent–is at odds with the philosophy of government promulgated by Christianity. Accordingly, it is simply not true that the Constitution is derived from Christian principles.