While I agree with your title, I believe it's for today. I believe our country was a Christian country but is no more. Separation of church and state was never meant to be defined as it is today. I think Ronald Reagan said it best when he said:

To those who cite the First Amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny." -- President Ronald Reagan, March 15, 1982

It's been twisted now to mean something totally different. Revisionist History has done a great job in helping to turn our country away from God.

Certainly Grover Cleaveland didn't believe it either.

The American people have always abundant cause to be thankful to Almighty God, whose watchful care and guiding hand have been manifested in every stage of their national life, guarding and protecting them in time of peril and safely leading them in the hour of darkness and of danger."-- President Grover Cleveland, Nov. 2, 1885

And why would Buchanan say this.........

"My prayer to God is that He would preserve the Constitution and the Union throughout all generations."-- President James Buchanan, message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1860

if he didn't believe the principles of our country were founded on God? Why would God preserve the Constitution otherwise?

Here's a thought provoker from James Adams. Sure sounds like a connection to me here.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."-- President John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798

Andrew didn't believe it either.

"That book, Sir, is the Rock upon which our republic rests."-- President Andrew Jackson, referring to the Bible, June 8, 1845

And I think you may recognize this, but will put it in anyway because I agree wholeheartedly with him. Not all the fathers were religious but the majority were. The problem is we tend to hear mainly from those that were not. Coincidence? I think not. Why do you think Jefferson gets quoted so often and Washington never does? Washington was our first President. Seems to me he at least deserves equal time.


“The evidence is overwhelming that the Founders were religious people who wanted a religious country that enshrined liberty for all its citizens, including those of different religions and those of no faith. But our educational institutions, especially the universities, are populated almost exclusively by secular individuals and books who seek to cast America’s past and presentin their image."-- Dennis Prager

KFC POSTS: While I agree with your title, I believe it's for today.

I totally agree KFC.


Good article SC. I enjoyed reading it. You brought up some great points. I grinned and nodded in agreement when I read, "But of course, everyone wants to disect those words for their own purpose or side of the argument." This of course is true.
Yes, you’re title is right, we are secular nation...and that’s because we ‘ve democratized the constitutional republic that our Founders originally set up.

There’s no doubt that today we’re not a Christian nation. America was set up as a constitutional republic in that the general population elects representatives who then pass laws which govern the nation. A constitutional republic is rule by law and if we were a Christian nation, then we would be ruled by laws which would be in harmony with God's laws and today, clearly they are not. A constititional republic is the highest form of government and one in which the rulers as well as the ruled obey the laws. It is one that requires a great amount of participation and maintainence. If neglected, it can deterooiorate into a democracry, anarchy, oligarchy, monarchy, or dictatorship....and that’s exactly what has happened. We’ve been off course for some time now and our great constitutional republic has collapsed.

But you're saying we never were a Christian nation even from our very foundation. Hmmm, I would disagree with that.

What 3 certain unalienable rights did the Founding Fathers seek to protect? The Founders envisioned a government that was to protect “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” as the “self evident truths endowed by their Creator”.....the unalienable rights which come from Creator, right?



What was the source of law for the new constitutional republic according to Founder Noah Webster? “Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.” (Noah Webster, History of the US, pg. 6.) Yes, like it or not, the transcendent values of Biblical natural law were the foundation of the laws of the American constitutional republic. This provided stability---for example, murder will always be a crime for it is always a crime according to Scripture. Contrast this with the source of law for a democracy which is popular feelings of the people and in a democracy if a majority of the people decide that murder is no longer a crime, then, guess what, murder is no longer a crime.

At the time of the Founders, America’s immutable principles of right and wrong were not based on feelings and emotions of a poll taken of the people, but on certain “principles that do not change”. In a letter from Benjamin Rush dated April 1788, “ Where there is no law, there is no liberty, and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.” In the American republic the principles which did not change and which were certain and universal in their operation upon all members of the community were the principles of biblical natural law. These principles were ensconced in the republic so much so that early law books taught that government was free to set its own policies only if God had not ruled on this area first.

From Blackstone’s Commentaries: “To instance in the case of murder: this is expressly forbidden by the Divine...if any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law....But, with regard to matters that are...not commanded or forbidden by those superior laws such ...as ..the exporting of wool into foreign countries; here the...legislature has scope and opportunity to interpose.”

The Founders, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, and Rufus King all signers of the Constitution, echoed that theme:

“All laws, however, may be arranged in two different classes. 1) Divine. 2) Human...but it should always be remembered that this law, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same Divine source: it is the Law of God...Human law must rest its authority of that law which is Divine.” James Wilson.

“The law...dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.” Alexander Hamilton.

“The... law established by the Creator...extends over the whole globe, is everywhere and at all times binding upon mankind...This is the law of God by which He makes His way known to man and is paramount to all human control.” Rufus King.

The fact that the Founders understood that Biblical precepts formed the basis of those laws of newly established government and set up the constitutional republic in this manner signifies that the nation was indeed Christian. They also knew that the republic would be destroyed if the lawmakers’ and peoples’ knowledge of those precepts should ever be lost.

While it’s true the federal government that the Founding Fathers set up was not founded on religion, however, the laws that were enacted were to be in harmony and not contradict God’s laws as laid out in Sacred Scripture.

i don't deny that many had personal religious convictions. but both of you ignore the 2 most important things up there, which aren't teh personal statements of any of them.

it is when acting as a government, we acted secularly. look again at the
treaty of tripoli...



not in any sense.

and President Adams said...



that is speaking as President, not as a person.

same with the ohio v minor case.

this has nothing to do with how people feel as individuals. 90% of this country today would consider themselves religious, in a way they personally define it. but that is irrelevant when acting as a nation, or a government.

you 2 have both confused a "secular society" with a "secular government." i'm just glad the founders didn't.

I don't think so at all. You're going by one line in one treaty and there is more to the story. This is by David Barton of Wallbuilders who has many of the original documents or copies of them and he goes about the country showing us what's in them. I've seen him in person. He's amazing. I've been hankering to get his book "Original Intent."

This article may be read in two manners. It may, as its critics do, be concluded after the clause "Christian religion"; or it may be read in its entirety and concluded when the punctuation so indicates. But even if shortened and cut abruptly ("the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion"), this is not an untrue statement since it is referring to the federal government. Recall that while the Founders themselves openly described America as a Christian nation (demonstrated in chapter 2 of Original Intent), they did include a constitutional prohibition against a federal establishment; religion was a matter left solely to the individual States. Therefore, if the article is read as a declaration that the federal government of the United States was not in any sense founded on the Christian religion, such a statement is not a repudiation of the fact that America was considered a Christian nation. Reading the clause of the treaty in its entirety also fails to weaken this fact. Article XI simply distinguished America from those historical strains of European Christianity which held an inherent hatred of Muslims; it simply assured the Muslims that the United States was not a Christian nation like those of previous centuries (with whose practices the Muslims were very familiar) and thus would not undertake a religious holy war against them. This latter reading is, in fact, supported by the attitude prevalent among numerous American leaders. The Christianity practiced in America was described by John Jay as "wise and virtuous," by John Quincy Adams as "civilized," and by John Adams as "rational." A clear distinction was drawn between American Christianity and that of Europe in earlier centuries. As Noah Webster explained:

"The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it.
Daniel Webster similarly explained that American Christianity was:
Christianity to which the sword and the fagot [burning stake or hot branding iron] are unknown—general tolerant Christianity is the law of the land!"
There's a bunch more here but I'll end with this:

Shortly after the military excursion against Tripoli was successfully terminated, its account was written and published. Even the title of the book bears witness to the nature of the conflict:
The Life of the Late Gen. William Eaton . . . commander of the Christian and Other Forces . . . which Led to the Treaty of Peace Between The United States and The Regency of Tripoli

For the rest of the article go here:
WWW Link

oh please...the language couldn't be more clear. they are not distinguishing between american and european christianity, as most of them shared faiths with at leat some european christians. it wasn't their religion itself that was at issue for teh founders, but religion's relationship with the government. that is what distinguished us. our church and our state were speperate. they could be assured that our church would not influence our government.

eaton's book is about how he personally felt. his accounts. but our government record of the treaty's language is clear.

i respectfully disagree with ya kfc.

i'm not a big quoter, but it seems to me that our country was founded as a religious nation.
i believe that most of the founding fathers were christians who were fed up with people taking advantage of christianity. people using it for their own ends, in a lot of ways.
they wanted to be able to worship in their own ways, without government or anyone else getting involved.
in my mind, the founding fathers were being guided by something bigger than they were. during that moment in time, they were able able to get things done like no other time in history.
they realized that in order to get what they wanted, they had to butt out of what other people were doing. (this is a terribly hard thing for most humans to do)
its late and i am a pretty disorganized thinker, but this is my point.
i believe the intention of the separation of church and state is not for the government to ignore religion, but for the government to not favor one religion over another.
all religions have a place in our country equally.
but, my opinion is that we should be a secularly governed people, but our gov. should remember its sunday school lessons.

i think the founders were thinking along similar lines. thanks for your comments.



exactly. it's easy to keep everyone else's religion out of government. in our own minds, after all, they are wrong anyway. but OUR religion is the right one, so why shouldn't that bleed into government? after all, you get the double self esteem bump of doing God's work and showing everyone just how righteous you and your religion are. a perception of pleasing God and showing off your righteousness is a tough temptation to resist.

SEAN CONNERS POSTS:



Your article prompted more research on my part and it seems that there were several treaties negotiated with Tripoli during the "Barbary Powers Conflict". I think the Treaty you refer to above the one the fledgling US Senate unanimously ratified and was signed by Adams when he was president was in 1797, not in 1791 (which may have been a typo error).

The conflict began shortly after the Revolutionary War and continued through the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. So, Thomas Jefferson wasn't Adams predecessor. Adams term was 1797-1801 and Jefferson followed from 1801-1809.

My research on the Tripoli thing has turned up some interesting info, at least to me. More on that later as time permits.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
-First Ammendment of the US Constitution.  Emphasis added.

We can argue theorized intent of the founding fathers, what they personally believed, what later treaties said etc.  But none of that has any bearing when you look at the words on the page.  No law establishing religion OR prohibiting FREE exercise of said religion.  This means that any member of the government can have whatever beliefs they like, and govern in accordance with their conscience so long as they do not attempt to establish by law any officialized religion.

This means no policies stating that a holiday, or religious ceremony be observed.  No policies or laws regarding the requirement of prayer.  No government funding of any religion (unless it is equally applied to ANY religious group seeking such funding).

It also means that there can be no laws or policies prohibiting people from acting in accordance to their beliefs.  There is no requirement that you be an athiest to hold a government position, or work for the state in any way.  You can be a staunch Roman Catholic, and vote the way of your conscience on social and legal issues so long as you are not trying to codify your religious beliefs into law.  It also means you can have any set of morals you like, and vote with them regardless of your religion.  There is no requirement that you be morally blank to be in the government.

It is freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion that was codified in the first ammendment.  I think people forget that a lot.  And a statement prohibiting us from governing according to religion is NOT the same as saying we can't govern from morals or ethics.  Morals and ethics exist independent of faith for many, yet anyone who takes a moral stance on any issue, or makes a judgement on a right/wrong matter, is often lumped in with those preaching from their bibles.

Any rule or law eliminating religion from government is just as much a violation of the 1st ammendment as any law or rule establishing religion.  It was meant to protect both the the religious and the athiest, neither is greater than the other by means literal or implied by the constitution.

i can agree with that statement.

SEAN CONNERS POSTS:




I’ve taken much of the following info concerning the Treaty and what was going on at the time from Barton’s book Original Intent.

Tunis, Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Turkey were the 5 Muslim Barbary Powers that were warring against who they claimed to be the “Christian” nations of England, France, Spain, Denmark and the US. Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline attacking undefended American merchant ships for their cargoes, pillaged villages, enslaving men, women and children as well as “Christian” seamen---now get this---in retaliation for what had been done to them by the “Christians of previous centuries e.g. the Crusades, and Queen Isabella’s and Ferdinand’s expulsion of Muslim’s from Granada. The negotiations of the treaties required us to pay tribute, that is thousands of dollars for safe passage (official extortion) and for ransom of our seamen.

It’s true that by the 1797 Treaty with Tripoli, America denied being founded on a Christian religion. Barton writes Article 11 of was one of many in which “each country officially recognized the religion of the other in an attempt to prevent further escalation of a “Holy War” between Christians and Muslims.”

In the quote provided by KFC, Barton writes that this clause in its entirety (which I’ve added in caps above) fails to weaken the fact that America was considered a Christian nation. Barton explaining further what the clause meant, “Article XI simply distinguished America from those historical strains of European Christianity which held an inherent hatred of Muslims; it simply assured the Muslims that the United States was not a Christian nation like those of previous centuries (with whose practices the Muslims were very familiar) and thus would not undertake a religious holy war against them. This latter reading is, in fact, supported by the attitude prevalent among numerous American leaders. The Christianity practiced in America was described by John Jay as "wise and virtuous," by John Quincy Adams as "civilized," and by John Adams as "rational." A clear distinction was drawn between American Christianity and that of Europe in earlier centuries.

Another way of reading this is Adams was saying that our nation was founded not on the Catholic religion, but on Enlightenment ones. In 1776, only a small number of Catholics lived in America and not that many Jews. The US was a Protestant nation and it remained such throughout the 1800s.

There is something else that goes along with this that I find very interesting as well. This story from Ted Sampley a US Veteran Dispatch, came out earlier this year when Keith Ellison was the first Muslim Congressman ceremonially sworn in on the Koran. Evidently he used the Koran that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. There were a few blogs written and this may have already been mentioned. The story is that in 1786, Jefferson then the Ambassador to France, and Adams then the Amb. to England, met with the Muslim ambassador in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty. During the meeting they asked why Muslims held so much hostility toward America. The ambassador answered that Islam was founded on the laws of their prophet and that it was written in their Quran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners and the every Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. Jefferson got a copy of the Koran.

For the following 15 years, the American gov. paid Muslims tribute amounting to 20% of the US gov. annual revenues in 1800. In 1801, Tripoli declared war against us and this was the first official war as an established nation. That year, Jefferson became President and declared that America wasn’t going to spend one cent for tribute, and dispatched Marines and warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast. IN 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripoli forcing the surrender of Tripoli and freeing all American slaves.

Zoomba posts:


I agree Zoomba.

This is how I understand it taking it a step further. The Founders intended only to prevent the establishment of a single national or federal religion or denomination and not to restrain public religious expressions. It was well established though that the states could do as they wanted.

I'm thinking of Justice Joseph Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, "..the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice and the State constitutions."

Jefferson said about the same thing, "I consider the government of the US, as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious instittutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the US (the Tenth AMendment). Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the general government. It must then rest with the state."

Bottom line: The amendment clearly says that Congress shall make no law pertaining to relgion, not that Florida, Maine, Washington or California, etc. shall make no law.

The First Amendment didn't allow federal interference in state questions involving speech and press. The people of the states had their right to self-government and that was to be respected. This was challenged time and again over the years, but it held sway. This was respected until 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, when the Supreme Court declared the local school boards were prohibited from approving non-sectarian prayers for use in schools. This definitely runs counter to the Founders intent.

hahahah that's quite fine SC...it's what makes the world go round.



Did you get the book Lula? I tried to when I saw him in person but his table was so crowded I couldn't get within 15 feet of it.

While I do believe the pilgrims came here in the first place for Christian freedom and the founders put this same freedom into writing in many ways, forms and means, I also believe they had every intent on us being a Christian Nation but not one founded on any particular religious denomination. We were to worship God freely and without dictatorship as it was in England and many other parts of the world.

Even Jefferson, who was a deist, believed strongly the bible be taught in the school system for it's very values, morals and goodness it expouses. He felt when or if we took that out, we'd certainly go into moral freefall.

I took a look at the Star Spangeled Banner written by Francis Scott Key who was a lawyer BTW. It was written in 1814 not too far removed from the writing of our constitituion and thought the last stanza was interesting. This was the prevalent thought I see throughout all the founders writings. Most would not know this last stanza.

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Yes, it's dyn-o-mite!




I agree if you go to the Founders "intent" you will see Christian nation written all over it. Look, it was a noble experiment that just didn't last...remove the two pillars of religion and morality as indispensable supports and you've got a collapse in the making. That's what I see us going through now. It's the Church that has to take the right ground...Christians must vote for honest, God fearing men who love the Lord our God above men, mammon and power.

Charles Finney said, "Politics are a part of religion in such a country as this and Christians must do their duty to country as a part of their duty to GOd." "in such a country such as this"? America, Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!