America’s Founders Rejected
Any Religious Test Oath
To the 10 Commandments

Just how important are the 10 Commandments to the liberty of a nation?

At the height of the Stalinist purges when millions were being consigned to the Gulag and almost certain death the plaintiff voice of a Russian woman pierced the darkness, “Why have all these things happened to us?” The equally plaintive answer returned, “Because we have forgotten God.”

This is the fate of any nation that turns its back on God. On that day the ACLU attack on the 10 Commandments will fall silent. There is no escape from the judgment of God, save for an appeal to the mercy of God.

That was the path chosen by the Children of Israel during the days of Nehemiah, the Governor who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem after the captivity. After a long recital of the sins of the nation, recorded in chapter 9, the people agreed that “because of all this we are making an agreement in writing; and on the sealed document are the names of our leaders, our Levites and our priests.”

The nation sealed their commitment to the 10 Commandments with a written oath. Leaders of both church and state agreed to this covenant on behalf of the people” (Neh.9:38).

America Breaks Covenant With God

It is this fundamental obligation to the 10 Commandments that the U.S. Constitution bluntly rejects in Article VI. There it states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

As we have noted, earlier Colonial constitutions had required such a test. For example, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut specified that "the Governor be always a member of some approved congregation...." Likewise, the Massachusetts constitution of 1780 required the following oath: "I________, do declare, that I believe the Christian religion, and have firm persuasion of its truth."

We often hear Christians asserting that even though the founders excluded all mention of God from the Constitution, they never intended to separate Christianity and the state. Innumerable Supreme Court briefs, quotes from contemporaries, and legislative pronouncements spanning 100 years or more are cited in support of this assertion. But once again, the only sure source of the founder's intent is the founders themselves, most notably the Father of the Constitution himself, James Madison.

What exactly did the founders mean by "no religious test?" The Federalist Papers do not appear to deal directly with this passage in Article VI.

However, there are several references in the Federalist indicating that the founders were confused regarding the role of religion and the doctrine of separation of church and state. In Federalist #57 Madison wrote, that "no qualification of wealth, of birth, of religious faith, or of civil profession is permitted to fetter the judgment or disappoint the inclination of the people."

Madison apparently saw faith as somehow blinding the minds (fettering the judgment) of the electorate to more pertinent qualifications for public office. In Federalist #52 he added that "the door of this part of the federal government [House of Representatives] is open to merit of every description...and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith."

Thus, by his own admission, Madison regarded virtually any qualification except religious faith as requisite for public office. He makes no serious reference to the 10 Commandments with respect to the new nation.

The key founders were clearly influenced by Christianity. Madison, for example, studied under Rev. John Witherspoon at Princeton, as previously noted. But they apparently believed in a kind of practical, civil religion; a common sense ethic that would be inclusive of a fairly broad range of religious faith. Thus, Unitarians Franklin and Jefferson were welcome in the fold.

In addition to Madison, Witherspoon influenced many of the delegates to the Constitutional convention. He was a Presbyterian minister who gave a big boost to Scottish, common sense rationalism and established it as a credible school of thought within the church.

This was a branch of Enlightenment thought that advocated a form of common sense politics, not explicitly Christian. Thus, natural law rules in the public sphere; there is a common ethic that governs all political entities. For example, we seem to find universal laws against murder in all civilized societies.James Hefley described Madison as one who had attended Princeton and once considered the ministry.

However, his commitment to Scripture and the 10 Commandments was problematic:Though he had been influenced by Voltaire and other European rationalists to believe that the Bible was not divinely inspired, he was assured that a 'high Providence' directed the destinies of nations.

No Religious Test

Madison and the Federalists argued in some of the state ratifying conventions that "no religious test" referred to a prohibition of one sect's taking precedence over another. Edmund Randolph also expressed this opinion at the Convention in Philadelphia.

However, if the text is taken literally it is difficult to escape the implication that it refers to an individual's qualification for office, such as the requirement of some states that officeholders belong to a Protestant congregation. Moreover, it appears in a paragraph discussing the oath of office. At the very least, it was an unfortunate and dangerous choice of words, given the familiar use of test oaths by the states and the ease with which the phrase may be applied to religion in general, not just denominations.

The anti-Federalists certainly believed that it had reference to the undermining of Christian qualification for office. It was fairly obvious from the several colonial constitutions what the phrase was referring to; i.e. a religious qualification for public office. Thus, it is not just modern pagans who have given it that interpretation.

The founders rightly saw the danger of establishing or subsidizing any particular Christian denomination. However, in their zeal to disestablish all denominations at the national level, the founders also imprudently disestablished religion, and thereby God and the 10 Commandments.

Regardless of what the founders may have meant, latter day heretics have taken their words at face value to reinforce the radical view that Christianity should be excluded from the public square. The seemingly innocuous seeds sown so many years ago by the founding fathers are today bearing a bitter harvest indeed.

For example, Isaac Kramnick, writing for the New York Times in an article critical of the "religious right" makes this observation:

In 1787, when the Framers excluded all mention of God from the Constitution, they were widely denounced as immoral and the document was denounced as godless, which is precisely what it is. Its opponents challenged ratifying conventions in nearly every state, drawing special attention to the stipulation in Article VI, Section 3: "No religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

He went on to note that "An anti-federalist in North Carolina wrote: 'The exclusion of religious tests is by many thought dangerous and impolitic...Pagans, Deists and Mahometans might obtain office among us.' For another North Carolinian, David Caldwell, the prohibition of religious tests 'constituted an invitation for Jews and Pagans of every kind to come among us. Of course, such statements constitute political heresy for the modern political pluralist. They are the epitome of "political incorrectness."

Rexford and Carson have interpreted this section to mean that "Every official in the United States...is on oath to uphold the Constitution. Religion, however, can never have anything to do with the question of eligibility of an officeholder in the United States." This is the common interpretation.

In other words, government officials are required to swear allegiance to civil authority, but not to the religious authority of God in the 10 Commandments. This is a key facet of the American civil religion as embodied in the secular state. There is therefore no recognized recourse to the Court of Heaven or the Law of God in the 10 Commandments.

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