Americans who honor the U.S. Constitution's separation of church and state are alarmed. Agnostic and atheists, as well as observant people of every faith, fear the religious right has gained historic political power via an ultraconservative movement with highly placed friends. But many of us feel helpless. We haven't read the Founding Documents since school (if then) We lack arguing tools, "verbal karate" evidence we can cite to defend the secular United States.

For instance, extremists claim and, too-often, we ourselves assume- that the U.S. law has religious roots. Yet the Constitution contains no reference to a deity. The Declaration of Independence contains not one word on religion, basing its authority on the shocking idea that power is derived from ordinary people, which challenged European traditions of rule by divine right and/or heavenly authority. (Remember, George IIIK was king of England and anointed head of its church.) The words "Nature's God," the "Creator," and "Divine Providence" do appear in the Declaration. But in its context-era and author, Thomas Jefferson-that celebrated science and The Enlightenment, these words are analogous to ur contemp[orary phrase, "life force."

Rev. Jerry Falwell notoriously blamed 9/11 on 'pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians…groups who have tried to secularize America." He's a bit late. In 1798 Alexander Hamilton accused Jefferson of a "conspiracy to establish atheism on the ruins of Christianity" in the new republic.

Under Secretary of Defense William Boykin thunders "We're a Christian nation." But the 1796 treaty of Tripoli- initiated by George Washington and signed into law by John Adams-proclaims: "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."

Offices of "Faith-Based Initiatives" with nearly $20 billion in grants have been established (by executive order, circumventing congress) in ten federal agencies, as well as inside the White House. This violates" the Lemon Test," a 1971 Supreme Court decision (Lemon v Kurtzman): "(i) a statute [or public policy} must have a secular legislative purpose; (ii) the principal effect of the statue [or policy] must neither advance nor inhibit religion; (iii)the statute [or policy] must not foster 'excessive [government] entanglement with religion.'"

"Traditionalists" rabid to keep inserting "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are actually anti-tradition. Those words never appeared in the original, penned in 1892 by Rev. Francis Bellamy (a Baptist forced to resign the pulpit for having called himself a Christian socialist). After intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and American Legion, "One Nation, indivisible" was changed by Congress to "one nation under God, indivisible"; this was 1954, reflecting McCarthyite bombast against "godless Communism" at the Cold War's height.. (Francis Bellamy's granddaughter, Barbara Bellamy Wright, denounced the revision, noting her grandfather "would have objected strongly.") On flag day, 1943, the Supreme Court (west Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette) ruled unconstitutional a law compelling schoolchildren to recite the pledge and salute the flag, For the Court, Justice Jackson wrote, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion." What about our currency? Originally, the motto on coins (the major exchange medium in the 18th century) was simple: Liberty." but "In God We Trust" began to appear informally on some U.S. coins during the 19th century, due to a spread of religious fervor following the Civil War. Yet early in the 20th century, when President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned the design of new coinage, he left off "In God We Trust," expressing his "very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins… not only does no good but does positive harm." Congress overrode him in 1908, after a lengthy crusade initiated by a hyper-religious director of the Mint, James Pollack. A campaign of petitions from religious congregations so frightened Rough Rider Roosevelt that he ceded, announcing he wouldn't veto the bill. Paper currency escaped deification until 1957: religious advocates began agitating for the words during the 1940's - but not until those McCartrhyite 1950's did they succeed. The Fifties also saw IGWT's adoption as the national "motto" The Founders would be outraged. Their original motto and Great Seal-devised by Adams, Franklin and Jefferson - was" E. Pluribus Unum" ("From Many , One") with "Liberty." Was considered appropriate and sufficiently, until the chare of the god brigades.

Furthermore, the only oath of office specified verbatim in the Constitution (Article II, Section 1) is that taken by the President, and the words "so help me god" do not appear in it. On the contrary, the Founders Listing the secular choice of "affirmation" as the coequal alternative to a religious "oath" is itself remarkably radical for its time.

The Constitution itself contains not one reference to deity or any supernatural powers. This is not an oversight. In fact, the word "religious" occurs only once, in Article VI: "Senators and Representatives…shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution: but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification of any office or public trust under the United States ."

When George W. Bush and his Cabinet members invoke the "Christian Fathers of our country." The Founders must be picketing in their graves. They were a mix of freethinkers, atheists, Christians, agnostics, Freemasons and Deists (professing belief in powers scientifically evinced in the natural universe). They were definitely imperfect. Some were slaveholders. Female citizens were invisible to them-though Abigail Adams warned her husband John. "If particular care and attention aare not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

But the Founders were, after all, revolutionaries. Their passion-especially regarding secularism-glows through their documents and personal correspondence.

Thomas Paine

Paine's writing s heavily influenced the other Founders. A freethinker who opposed all organized religion, he reserved particular vitupertation for Christianity.

"My country is the world and my religion is to do good" (The Rights of Man, 1791).

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church" (The Age of Reason, 1793).

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity" (ibid)

Benjamin Franklin

Raised a Calvinist, Franklin rebelled-and spread that rebellion, affecting Adams and Jefferson. His friend, Dr. Priestley, wrote in his own Autobiography: "It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers." A scientist, Franklin rejected churches, rituals, and all ": supernatural superstitions."

Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself" (Franklin's Autobiography, 1731-1759)

"Some books against Deism fell into my hands…they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations: In short, I soon became a thorough Deist" (ibid)

George Washington

The false image of Washington as a devout Christian was fabricated by Mason Locke Weems, a clergyman who also invented the cherry-tree fable and in 1800 published his life of George Washington. Washington, a Deist and a Freemason, never once mentioned the name of Jesus Christ in any of his thousands of letters, and pointedly referred to divinity as "It.". Wherever he (rarely) attended church, Washington always deliberately left before communion, demonstrating disbelief in Christianity's central ceremony.

John Adams

Adams, a Unitarian inspired by the Enlightenment, fiercely opposed doctrines of supernaturalism or damnation, writing to Jefferson: "I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved-the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced".

Adams realized how politically crucial-and imperiled- a secular state would be:

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history…. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [forming the U.S. government] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture: it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses…. Thirteen governments [the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery… are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind" (A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. 1787-1788).

Thomas Jefferson

It's a commonly stated error that U.S. law based on English common law, is thus grounded in Judeo-Christian tradition. Yet Jefferson (writing to Thomas Cooper, Feb 10, 1814) noted that common law "is that system of law introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century… we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law"

Jefferson professed disbelief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ, while respecting moral teachings by whomever might have been an historical Jesus. He cut up a Bible assembling his own version" "The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful…" he wrote Adams (January 24, 1814) "evidence that parts have proceeded from an extraordinary man: and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds."

Scorning miracles, saints, salvation, damnation, and angelic presences, Jefferson embraced reason, materialism, and science. He challenged Patrick Henry, who wanted a Christian theocracy: "

…an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ." So that [the preamble] would read 'A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection, the Jew, and the Gentile, the Christian, and Mohammedan, the Hindu and Infidel of every denomination" (from Jefferson's Autobiography, referring to the Virginia Act of Religious Freedom).

The theme is consistent throughout Jefferson's prolific correspondence: "Question with boldness even the existence of a god" (letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787).

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which [built] a wall of separation between church and State" (letter to the Danbury [Connecticut] Baptist Association, January 1, 1802).

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government". (letter to Alexander von Humboldt. December 6, 1813).

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." (letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814).

"Whence arises the morality of the Atheist?...Their virtue then must have had some other foundation than the love of God" (letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814).

"I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know." (letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819).

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus… will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter". Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

James Madison

Although prayer groups proliferate in today's Congress, James Madison, "father of the Constitution" denounced even the presence of chaplains in congress-and in the armed forces as unconstitutional. He opposed all use of "religion as an engine of civil policy" and accurately prophesized the threat of "ecclesiastical corporations."

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise": (letter to William Brandford, April 1, 1774).

"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they benne the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries."(Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, Section 8, 1785)

"Besides the danger of a direct mixture of Religion and Civil Government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect…The establishment of the Chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles…Better also to disarm, in the same way, the precedent of chaplainships for the army and navy… Religious proclamations by the Executive {branch} recommending thanksgivings & fasts are shoots from the same root… Altho' recommendations only, they imply a religious agency, making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers" ("Monopolies, Perpetutities, Corporations, Ecclesiastical Endowments," ca 1817).

That's only a sampling" quotes that blast cobwebs off our tamed images of the Founders. Their own statements-not dead rhetoric but alive with ringing, still radical, ideas-can reconnect us to our proud, secular roots, and inspire us to defend them. Activist sources for doing so include: Americans United for Separation fo Church and State (www.au.org), Freedom from Religion Foundation (www.ffrf.org), and People for the American Way (www.pfaw.org).

In these times of bitterly contentious non-dialogue, progressive people of faith in particular can do much-needed, vital work in their communities, e.g. Texas Faith Network (www.tfn.org). For women this fight is especially crucial: we're "canaries in the mine.," the first to suffer from escalating religious -based restrictions attacking our right to reproductive choice: to government-funded shelters and programs for survivors of rape, domestic violence, and child abuse; to affirmative action; to equal-opportunity access to education and jobs; to redefining "family" as more inclusive, and more. Feminist.com is an excellent website to find and hyperlink with a wide array of groups focusing on different priority issues.

But this work needs all of us-men, women, and children, red- and blue staters. Whatever our beliefs, we all need to acknowledge this grave threat to our secular, pluralistic society-a threat at its worst openly declares its goal of an American Christian theocracy, and at its least inflicts severely chilling effects on freedoms that Founders defined. We need to stand up to all forms of bigotry (even when disguised as biblical). We need to get on local school boards and city councils, to protect our rights to read fine literature and teach sound science. We need to educate ourselves and each other, to quote the Founders' words in letters to newspaper editors, in calls to local TV and talk-radio, in pressuring our Congressional Representatives and Senators. The Founders minced no words- and they acted on them. Dare we do less?