Senator Charles Sumner (R-Mass.), most noted as an abolitionist, was also a supporter of the proposed Christian Amendment to the Constitution.

Lately, we have heard some GOP showhorses talk about the United States as a “Christian nation”. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, for instance, said last year that she was “tired of this separation of church and state junk – that’s not in the Constitution”, while adding that “The church is supposed to direct the government” and not the other way around (Dress). Non-Republicans lament of what the GOP has become over such a sentiment and others, seeming to believe that the GOP was once a more secular party. The Senate GOP’s 29-3 vote for a school prayer amendment to the Constitution in 1966, which I have covered before, says otherwise. Although the latter part of Boebert’s statement about church directing government is completely off as to the intentions of the Founding Fathers, she is on solid ground with holding that government is not supposed to direct the church as well as the first part as the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution, rather Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. Her sentiments on religion and state also have more in common with founding figures of the Republican Party than such non-Republicans think. From the adoption of the United States Constitution, there were those who saw the absence of God in it as a deficit, and during the 1860s a number of Republicans saw fit to do something about it.

Proposing the Christian Amendment

In 1861, eleven representatives from Protestant denominations met and saw the War of the Rebellion as a form of divine punishment for failure to include God in the Constitution, and proposed to alter the preamble to mention God. The following year the National Reform Association was founded to push this amendment and proposed it to President Lincoln, who was noncommittal. The proposed amendment would add, “We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the inalienable rights and the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves and our posterity, and all the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” (Allison). Prominent supporters included such big names in the early Republican Party as Senators Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Zachariah Chandler and Jacob Howard of Michigan, B. Gratz Brown of Missouri, John Sherman of Ohio, and Justin Morrill and George Edmunds of Vermont.

Despite this promising start of support, the War of the Rebellion was consuming the time of government, and the assassination of President Lincoln further disrupted any push forward this amendment might have had. There was also some growing hesitation among its supporters. Charles Sumner, for instance, grew concerned about how his Jewish constituents would respond (Allison). The proposed amendment suffered a great blow when Lyman Trumbull (R-Ill.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, regarded the amendment as unnecessary in 1865 and cited examples of the Constitution indirectly supporting the notion of God, including public oaths for office and a right for free exercise of religion. Trumbull then asked for the Judiciary Committee to be discharged from the duty of consideration of the amendment and it was agreed to (Allison). Efforts persisted, with petitions being presented by numerous members of the House and Senate. Senator Richard Yates (R-Ill.), stated in his support,

“So far as I am concerned. I must say that this nation is too much indebted to the Christian religion for its national superiority for it to ignore Christianity. This is the religion which aroused our fathers in the old country and caused them to migrate to this continent and to lay here the foundations of religion and freedom. It crossed the ocean with our Pilgrim fathers; it has carried our institutions to the distant frontier; it has erected temples dedicated to the true God. The spirit of its philanthropy has filled our land with colleges and school. Its benevolence has established institutions for the relief of the disabled and the diseased, and for the amelioration of our race. And now, sir, nine-tenths of the people of my State demand that there shall be an amendment to the Constitution by which the supremacy of God shall be acknowledged by this great nation to that Being to whom we are indebted for all that we are — for our successes in many wars, and for the establishment of equal rights and liberty throughout the land” (Allison).

The amendment was not without its opponents, including Senators Francis P. Blair (D-Mo.) and Carl Schurz (LR-Mo.) who objected to consideration with the latter citing petitions from over 10,000 people in opposition. No action was taken over concerns that the amendment had potential to impair free exercise of religion.

The nation that existed when this amendment was proposed was an overwhelmingly Protestant one, with Protestantism being taken as a given with Catholic and other religious schools being regarded as “sectarian”. There have been periodic efforts since to amend the Constitution to make it more of a Christian document, with the most recent example being school prayer, which I have covered before. Although the school prayer amendment is on its face neutral and could potentially be neutral in application, the motivation for it comes from Protestants who want prayer in the classroom, as it existed in many American schools before the 1962 Supreme Court decision Engel v. Vitale.

References

Allison, J. (1998). The NRA (National Reform Association) and the Christian Amendment. The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State.

Retrieved from

https://candst.tripod.com/nra.htm

Dress, B. (2022, June 28). Boebert says she is ‘tired’ of separation between church and state: ‘The church is supposed to direct the government’. The Hill.

Retrieved from

Boebert says she is ‘tired’ of separation between church and state: ‘The church is supposed to direct the government’

Vile, J.R. (2009, January 1). Christian Amendment. Free Speech Center.

Retrieved from

https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/christian-amendment/