AMERICA’S RELIGIOUS HISTORY

Is the United States a Christian Nation?

The founders were mostly Christian. They built a godless government.

Photo by Lucas Alexander on Unsplash

A common cry we hear today is, “The United States of America is a Christian nation!” It isn’t, and it was never intended to be. Despite this, most of the founders were Christians.

Those Christian founders weren’t Christian in name only. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, wrote in an 1816 letter, “…it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” Jay was also elected president of the American Bible Society in 1821, though it was more of an honorary appointment than an active role.

Patrick Henry, who played a major role in the Revolution and whose opposition to the Constitution helped bring forth the Bill of Rights, was an Anglican. John Witherspoon was an ordained Presbyterian minister; Samuel Adams was a devout Congregationalist; Charles Carroll was a Catholic; and Roger Sherman was a Congregationalist who wrote on theology in his spare time.

These men, except for Patrick Henry, all signed the Declaration of Independence. Anyone who tries to tell you that the founders were Atheists is lying to you.

This is what makes our founding documents remarkable. It was men like them, most of them Christian, who created a Constitution that never once mentions Christ, the Bible, church, or God at all. The only mention of deity you’ll find there is in the date, where it says, “in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.” However, this was a convention, not a creed.

Though religion is mentioned in the Constitution twice, both times it was to keep religion out of government. The First Amendment forbids any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, and Article VI says, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust.”

Even the presidential oath provides for this. The Constitution says, “oath or affirmation.” The affirmation is for those elected whose conscience won’t allow a religious swearing.

The people of the time understood exactly what this meant. Critics, during ratification debates, attacked the terms of Article VI. At North Carolina’s convention, Rev. Henry Abbot warned that without a religious test, “…pagans, deists, and Mahometans might obtain offices among us.” The critics weren’t wrong. The framers heard the objections and kept the clause anyway.

The nonbeliever’s inclusion wasn’t an oversight discovered later. In 1788, though it created a scandal, it was still ratified, and then, in 1796, the young government put it in writing to a foreign power.

Joel Barlow, an American diplomat, negotiated a treaty with Tripoli, one of the Barbary states whose pirates preyed on American shipping. It was a practical document that spoke of peace, commerce, and the business of tribute payments. The eleventh article of the treaty opened with a sentence that is conveniently overlooked by those who argue the United States is a Christian nation.

It states, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…”

The key phrase is “not, in any sense.” The Senate ratified the treaty unanimously in June of 1797. President John Adams, a Christian who regularly attended church, signed it. The newspapers printed it, and there were no outcries or scandals. It was wholly unremarkable, but set a standard for the country that is largely ignored by those today who argue for the country’s Christian founding.

Why would a generation of mostly Christian men build a deliberately non-Christian state? Because they knew implicitly that it wouldn’t be a battle between Christians and “heathens,” but between Christian and Christian. In Massachusetts, the established Congregationalist church jailed and fined Baptists. What was their crime? They were Baptists.

In Virginia, the Anglican Church taxed dissenters and used those taxes to pay its clergy, which was something James Madison actively fought against. Our founders understood that wherever an “official” church existed, the majority of its victims were other Christians who had a different way, no matter how minor, of practicing their faith.

The question the phrase “Christian nation” can never answer is: which version? There are hundreds of denominations, with perhaps thousands of variations. Is the United States a Baptist nation? A Catholic one? Methodist? Mormon?

Each denomination would like to claim it is theirs, but ultimately, you can only have one, and nobody can, or is willing to, agree. The religious test ban wasn’t to protect Christians from Atheists, but to protect them from each other.

To make it work, the founders built the only structure that could hold them all: a government that held none of them. The Declaration uses language that is deliberately inclusive: “Nature’s God,” “their Creator,” and “divine Providence.”

These are phrases a Baptist, a Catholic, a Jew, a Muslim, or even a Pagan or Atheist could sign with no issue.

Jefferson himself, who drafted the document, was so far from orthodoxy that he later took a razor to his own Bible and cut out the miracles. Franklin, a month before his death, wrote that he doubted the divinity of Jesus. Adams was a Unitarian and denied the Trinity itself.

The men most responsible for the founding language were the least orthodox in the room. However, the more orthodox majority voted for that language too, and this is what people on both sides of the argument fail to see.

These choices had some strange consequences. With no “official” religion, the country invented one with divine figures, sacred documents, holy days, shrines, saints, and martyrs. Columbia emerged as a patron goddess and was celebrated in poem and song for over a century until largely replaced by Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam.

On the ceiling of the Capitol rotunda is a fresco of George Washington, titled The Apotheosis of Washington, where he sits enthroned in the heavens, surrounded by goddesses, making him a kind of deified emperor. It was not intended to be sacrilegious; it happened because people need to give form to abstract ideas. It was to fill a void created by a government that named no god, and built by men who mostly prayed to one.

The record shows a very different picture from what most people on both sides of the argument claim. There is neither a godless conspiracy nor a Christian founding. Instead, it is something that is more deliberate and interesting than either. Religious men, who saw religion used as a weapon, took that weapon off the table for everyone, including themselves.

Even then, it wasn’t a clean decision, but the principle left was simple. Worship, or don’t, as you see fit. As long as you bring no harm to another’s life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, do what you will. Today, every American, Christian or other, benefits from the foresight of our founders.

Sources

(all links verified at the time of writing)

John Jay to John Murray, Jr., October 12, 1816, in William Jay, The Life of John Jay: With Selections from His Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, vol. 2 (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), 376, https://archive.org/details/lifejohnjay02jaywrich/page/376/mode/2up

The Constitution of the United States, National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript (Article VI, Article II oath of office, and closing date).

The Declaration of Independence, National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

Speech of Rev. Henry Abbot, North Carolina Ratifying Convention, July 30, 1788, in The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 4, ed. Jonathan Elliot (1836), 191–92, https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/henry_abbot7.30.pdf (“pagans, deists, and Mahometans”).

Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and Tripoli, 1796–97, Article 11, Avalon Project, Yale Law School, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp

James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163

Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790, https://constitution.org/1-History/primarysources/franklin-stiles.html

Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (“the Jefferson Bible”), ca. 1820, digitized at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, https://americanhistory.si.edu/JeffersonBible/the-book/?page=1&view=scan#dl

The Apotheosis of Washington, Architect of the Capitol, https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/apotheosis-washington

This piece was inspired by Maria Chambers’s article, *They wanted prayer in government until religious freedom showed up wearing horns. *I recommend taking a few minutes to read it.

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Edited by Wandering Mind for Restless Quills