The Founding Fathers
Rather than address explicit constitutional provisions, American fundamentalists often like to quote-mine the Founding Fathers in order to divine their intentions and "prove" that they actually envisioned the new state as a Christian nation. They primarily target George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the first three Presidents of the United States, and claim that they were deeply devout Christians whose actions were to a large degree inspired by their faith.[2][3]
This notion is patently false: Jefferson's Deistic convictions are evident from his writings, and he was a high-profile critic of established Christian dogma; he even wrote his own version of the New Testament, the Jefferson Bible, expunging the Gospels of all references to the supernatural. Washington never attended communion services at his church and took great pains to refer to his god by Deistic terms like "Great Author" and "Almighty Being" in his inaugural address. While Adams credited religion in general with bolstering public morality, he consistently argued that the United States had been founded on rationalist and Enlightenment principles and rejected the notion of divine legitimation for political leadership.[4][5]
It is also interesting that these eminent figures were heavily criticized for their lack of religious devotion in times past. Rev. Bird Wilson had this to say about them in a 1831 sermon:
“”The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity.[6]
[edit] First Amendment
A common argument is that the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was intended to mean different denominations instead of different religions, because the idea of non-Christians living in the United States would have been unthinkable at the time. (George Washington's 1790 letter to the Jewish Congregation of Newport notwithstanding.[7])
This is of course not paying attention to the fact that several of the founding fathers were deists, and the Christian ones were almost all secularists. There was generally a liberal feeling throughout the Christian establishment in the U.S. at that time. The New England Puritans had really lost their steam by that point (indeed, a great number of Congregational churches would become Unitarian over the course of the next half-century); the Anglicans were, well, Anglicans; the Quakers were quite a liberal bunch as usual; other groups had insufficient political clout to do anything but support a completely secular state under which they would not be persecuted.
There is positive documentation that mere non-sectarianism was not what was meant by "free exercise of religion." In his Detached Memoranda, James Madison recounted the following occurrence during the passage in 1786 of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which was specifically intended to guarantee at the Virginia state level what the U.S. Constitution did at the federal level:
“”In the course of the opposition to the bill in the House of Delegates, which was warm & strenuous from some of the minority, an experiment was made on the reverence entertained for the name & sanctity of the Saviour, by proposing to insert the words "Jesus Christ" after the words "our lord" in the preamble, the object of which, would have been, to imply a restriction of the liberty defined in the Bill, to those professing his religion only. The amendment was discussed, and rejected by a vote of agst.
—James Madison, Detached Memoranda[8]
In the same document, Madison opined that it was an encroachment on separation of church and state to "exempt Houses of Worship from taxes," and in response to a proposed measure to provide state support to all Christian ministers, he warned against the very concept that was being put into his mouth:
“”Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?[9]
To showcase a prime example of how deeply the "Christian nation" mythographers stick their heads in the sand, Christine Millard, the owner of a Washington, D.C. touring outfit called "Christian Heritage Tours," actually quoted the above statement of Madison's and then, in a jaw-dropping non sequitur, concluded that Madison was talking only about freedom for Christian denominations.[10]
[edit] Treaty of Tripoli
The most obvious falsification of this myth is the Treaty of Tripoli, a peace treaty signed with the Ottoman possession of Tripoli in 1805. Tripoli being a Muslim state, and accustomed to the hostility shown to Muslims by the established Christian states of Europe, the U.S. wanted to demonstrate that its religious policy was not of a similar sort, and so inserted the following language in the treaty:
“”the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen.[11]
The text of the treaty was printed on the front page of many newspapers without any sort of public outcry.[12]
In the face of such a smoking-gun falsification, the best that the "Christian nation" mythographers have been able to do is assert that this was mere politics designed to keep the Ottomans happy and to harp on the point that the treaty no longer holds force of law, having been superseded by later treaties; the latter a neat example of moving the goalposts.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_United_States_as_a_Christian_nation
