Christian amendment


Christian amendment describes any of several attempts to amend a country's constitution in order to reflect its status as a Christian state.
In the United States, the most significant attempt to amend the United States Constitution by inserting explicitly Christian ideas and language began during the American Civil War and was spearheaded by the National Reform Association.

Samoa

In June 2017, Samoa became a Christian state, after Parliament passed a bill to amend its constitution; Article 1 of the Samoan Constitution states that “Samoa is a Christian nation founded of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.

United States

Initial proposals

In February 1863, during the American Civil War, a coalition of eleven Protestant denominations from seven northern states gathered to discuss the state of the nation. Seeing the Civil War as God's punishment for the omission of God from the Constitution, they discussed a proposed amendment to alter the wording of the Preamble to acknowledge God. The idea that civil governments derive their legitimacy from God, and Jesus in particular, was alleged to be based on Biblical passages such as Psalm 2 and. The original draft of the amendment, by Pennsylvania attorney John Alexander, read:
The Christian Amendment Movement was founded the next year and quickly renamed the "National Reform Association" with Alexander as its first president. They sent a memorial to Congress formally proposing the following amendment:
A delegation from the National Reform Association sought to meet with Abraham Lincoln on February 11, 1864, to solicit his endorsement of the amendment. Lincoln's pastor, Rev. Phineas Gurley, arranged for Lincoln to meet the delegation. After hearing their petition, Lincoln responded:
The proposal was supported by Senators Charles Sumner, B. Gratz Brown and John Sherman, but did not come to a vote in Congress. One member of the National Reform Association, James Pollock, played a role in getting the phrase "In God We Trust" on the two-cent coin in 1864.
Another version of the amendment read:
Similar proposals were considered by Congress in 1874, 1895, 1896, 1910, 1947, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, and 1969 but none passed.

Later attempts

With the growing backlash in American society against communism in the 1940s and 1950s, new efforts were made to introduce Christianity into the Constitution, although these efforts were now in the form of standard constitutional amendments. In 1954 Vermont Senator Ralph Flanders proposed:
None of the proposals came to a Congressional vote.
There were calls for similar amendments in the wake of the 1962 Supreme Court case Engel v. Vitale, which ruled school-sponsored and dictated prayer in schools unconstitutional. Over 200 similar amendment proposals were introduced to Congress between 1894 and 1984.