Marvin Dean Cox doesn’t seem to believe there is “any professing Christian who also advocates for a theocracy in the United States” (letter to the editor, Oct. 4). How about former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Attorney General Bill Barr, Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, and 25% of Americans, according to a 2021 poll? Another poll found 78% of evangelical Republicans want to formally declare the U.S. a Christian nation.
Mr. Cox cherry-picked a quote from John Adams, who wrote in a letter to a Massachusetts militia unit, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” However, President Adams also signed his name to a treaty with Tripoli that stated “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion …” How do we reconcile those two statements? They aren’t as contradictory as you might think. What if we found a country with only immoral and irreligious people? Those people couldn’t sustain a government like ours. But is it because they don’t subscribe to any religion or don’t want it to interfere with government, or is it because you can’t trust immoral people? A nation of moral pagans or atheists can govern themselves quite well. After all, there were no Christians around during the golden age of Greece. Without morality there is no religion, but a moral people, even those who may be burdened by a religion, can govern themselves quite well. That is, I believe, what Adams meant.
And contrary to what Mr. Cox believes, Christian nationalism, which is at its very heart anti-democratic, is a growing threat to our government of the people, by the people and for the people.
— Rick Sinnott
Chugiak
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