Founders misunderstood

Bruce Becherini’s March 15 letter shows a truly impressive misunderstanding of the founding principles of “the greatest nation ever to exist since the dawn of man” (apparently ignoring such inconsequential civilizations as Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Republic, to say nothing of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India and Persia).

Not only has Becherini failed to recognize that our country embraced equality to emulate the egalitarianism of classical Athens and the representative democracy of the Roman Republic, he also completely misses the point when it comes to the role of religion. The question of which god the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution had in mind is irrelevant.

What matters is how they addressed religion in our nascent country. John Adams states in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli that “the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,” and his predecessor, George Washington, wrote extensively of his plan for a multifaith society that “gives bigotry no sanction” (1790 letter to Touro Synagogue). Perhaps Becherini would do well to re-examine who, exactly, is suffering from “revisionist denialism.”

Birgitta Hendron

Spokane