Fact Check: Are There 42 Bible Verses In the Constitution?

This week, a Christian Nationalist preacher at the Abundant Life Church in Lee's Summit, Missouri declared that "There’s forty-two bible verses in the Constitution, and when you look at the Amendments for the Bill of Rights and you read through them it’s almost all right out of the bible.”

The statement was delivered so directly, so authoritatively, that we might presume that there's some reasonable ground for the claim. However, the preacher didn't bother to identify even one of these supposed 42 bible verses in the Constitution. Neither did the preacher identify one place where the Bill of Rights contains biblical language.

There's a good reason for that.

There are zero bible verses in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights is profoundly unbiblical and contains no language from the Christian bible.

The Christian bible is a consistently authoritarian text, promoting the power of kings and priests to control people without democratic elections, without individual liberty, and without a government that is anything at all like the government established under the Constitution of the United States of America.

The Constitution was developed in reaction against the Christian biblical tradition of monarchy mixed with theocracy.

The preacher from the Abundant Life Church was just plain wrong.

The evidence against his assertions is easy to find. All a person has to do is read the Constitution, and it's obvious that it has nothing to do with the Christian bible.

So why did none of the adults attending his lecture stand up and object? Why didn't even one of them ask a critical question to challenge the preacher's absurd statement?

The answer is sadly clear: Christian Nationalist preachers teach their followers to accept whatever they say as a matter of faith. Christian Nationalists don't check the facts. They believe what they're told to believe, and have little interest in learning anything outside of the sermons they hear at church.

What we have in Christian Nationalism is a dangerous combination: Unquestioning adherence to the declarations of religious and political leaders along with a hunger for totalitarian government.

Absolute power coupled with a detachment from reality is capable of the most horrific abuses imaginable.

For a more detailed analysis of these claims, including an amendment-by-amendment examination of the Bill of Rights for biblical influence, see the original article at Stop Christian Nationalism.