Hilariously, my new book cites more men than I've quoted since my teens.
Why? Because many Americans--observant and secular--fear the religious right's efforts to remake the US into a theocracy, but lack tools for arguing when the US Taliban claims its positions originated with the Constitution's Framers.
Ours is an age of sound-bites and factoids; too few people plow through 400-page biographies of the Founders. So I researched and compiled Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right to feed our hunger for truth but with the sound-bite brevity of modern communications: surprising, short, well-sourced facts, quotes, and resources--from the Founders and other great Americans.
The Founders were imperfect, oh yes. Some were slave-owners. Women weren't even on their radar screens. But on church-state separation, they were radicals. Not pompous old men in powdered wigs--revolutionaries: Deists, agnostics, Christians, atheists, Freemasons, clearly stating what they believed, in their own words:
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." --Thomas Jefferson"My own mind is my church."--Thomas Paine
"I doubt of Revelation itself."--Benjamin Franklin
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind." --James Madison
Did you know that:
o The Constitution contains not one reference to a deity--on purpose?
o Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence did not mention "endowed by the Creator"?
o "In God We Trust" was not on our currency, and "Under God" was not the U.S. motto, until the McCarthy-ite 1950s?
o The 15th-century Roman Catholic Church considered abortion moral?
o The Treaty of Tripoli--initiated by George Washington and signed into law by John Adams--declares: "The United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"?
o James Madison, "father of the Constitution," denounced the presence of chaplains in Congress--and the army--as unconstitutional?
o Lincoln's first drafts of The Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address made no mention of any deity?
We need to know these things. As a writer and reader, I trust the power of words that try to tell truths. I wanted to offer my country-men and -women a book to give and to keep, to study, to quote. A tool for activism. A source to pull from pocket, purse, or knapsack, to brandish, saying "That's not true! Actually, James Madison said . . ." A database for scholarly reference, a citation when writing letters to newspapers or debating in class--or Congress (or just to delight in, feeling vindicated!). Nation Books priced Fighting Words to be easily affordable, and rushed production so it's available before the elections. May this "verbal karate" guide reacquaint us with our proudly secular roots, inspire us to honor them, and help us take back our country.