Bullypulpit said:
.....The assertion that America was founded on "Christian" principles is unsupported by the facts of the matter. It is nothing more than historical revision to make that assertion.
You have taken their comments out of context. You forget whence they come.
One of the main reasons Americans of the founding era immigrated to our country was to obtain the freedom to worship God in their chosen manner. Contemporary scholars often refer to America's traditional openness to diverse religions in terms of religious "tolerance" or "toleration." But for the Founders, the doctrine of religious liberty as enshrined in the First Amendment and other official documents was a vast improvement on the principle of religious toleration as codified in England's Toleration Act of 1689. As George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rightsﾅ"
There were two main differences between religious toleration as practiced in England following the Toleration Act of 1689, and religious liberty as it developed under America's state and federal constitutions after the American Revolution. The first difference concerns the origin of a citizen's freedom to worship God.
In England, freedom of worship, like all other "rights of Englishmen," was considered a government grant. But in America, this freedom came to be seen as a natural rightﾗa possession all humans are born with and deserve to keep. As such, it preceded government, and government was bound to uphold it.
Thus nearly every early state constitution guaranteed religious liberty. New Hampshire's was emphatic: "Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and reason." And the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution enjoined the federal government from "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]."
The second difference between the English doctrine of religious toleration and the American doctrine of religious liberty was that under the former, taking advantage of the right to worship could involve the loss of other rights. Thus even while tolerating religions other than the official state religion, England's government discriminated against their members. For instance, non-members of the Church of England were not allowed to hold public office.
Under America's doctrine of religious liberty, freedom of worship was inextricably linked with the other unalienable natural rights in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Thus the Constitution prohibited religious tests for federal offices.
Although several states continued discriminating against (while tolerating) certain denominations into the early 19th century, all came eventually to embrace the doctrine of religious liberty as summarized in the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty (1786): "our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry."
Under the English doctrine of religious toleration, since there was an established state church, other churches, although tolerated, existed in tension with the government. For its part, the government was negatively disposed toward them.
Under the American doctrine of religious liberty, which included the First Amendment prohibition against the establishment of a particular state church, there was not this built-in cause for government to be negatively disposed toward any of its religious citizens. Thus President Washington was able to write to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, in the first-ever official welcome to Jews as citizens outside of Israel: "May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."
The first reason that the American doctrine of religious liberty led government to be positively disposed toward religion was that, by its own internal logic, this doctrine recognized the rightness and goodness of worshipping God. Religious liberty, like all of our natural rights as explained in the Declaration of Independence, are allotted us in equal portions by our Creator. We owe that Creator worship for those good things.
Thus the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 explains religious liberty in terms of allowing us to do our duty to God: "religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not be force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion ﾅ" And James Madison, in his "Memorial and Remonstrance," describes religious liberty as both a "right towards men" and a "duty towards the Creator."
The second reason that American government was positively disposed toward religion was secular: American churches were useful in promoting morality, and therefore in securing liberty.
The Founders distinguished liberty, which entails a morality of self-control, from license, which is characterized by uncontrolled passions. At a minimum, free citizens must be sufficiently self-controlled to respect each other's rights to life, property, worship, etc. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 55, for a people lacking this self-control, "nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another."
Religion teaches the distinction between liberty and license. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?"
http://www.founding.com/issues/index.cfm
