Christianity was not established as the state religion by the founders of the USA; The USA has been a secular state with religious freedom since its inception.
"In God We Trust" was first minted on a two-cent coin in 1864 at the height of the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict of its time. It was only during the Cold War that the motto became an important national symbol, symbolizing faith in God in contrast to the atheistic Soviet Union.
The high status of religion in the USA can be traced back to the settler's’ experience of religious persecution in the 'old world'.
by I_saw_Will_smacking
28 Comments
Counter arguments ( not to be confused with contra points) on YouTube have some great arguments about this topic
Not only was the US founded on Christianity, they only endorsed the radical wacko evangelicalism that was invented long after the founding. Time traveling dogma is a thing don’t you know?
>experience of religious persecution in the ‘old world’.
That experience was “No, you can’t engage in religious persecution here” So they moved to America
Also, most of the Founding Fathets were Deists, not Christians. Deists acknowledge the existence of some kind of singular creator deity and that’s it. They have no beliefs beyond that and are no more Christian than Jews, Muslims, or Zoroastrians are. Deism was historically a more common form of irreligiousness than atheism and practically all enlightenment-era intellectuals were Deists, not Christians or even Atheists.
When the founding fathers mentioned “God”, they were referring to the Deist notion of God, not the Christian one.
The laws of the US and Western civilisation in general are firmly grounded in Christianity.
Weren’t like almost all of the founding fathers people that rejected traditional christianity and embraced some sort of enlightment religion based on the use of reason and a god that while being a creator was not an interventor?
It is interesting to see just how non-religious America was at its founding. It wasn’t until the Great Awakening that Christianity became super prominent in this country
This kind of thing is always mindblowing when you’re a french agnostic. If our president swore on a bible during his inauguration, french people would go wild instantly.
Religion should not be part of a government.
The comments will surely be nice and level-headed with this post
The constitution nether protects or prosecute religion yeah that’s going work out well in a nation of WASPs.
I wouldn’t ignore the state constitutions, written before the US Constitution, where in most of them required a public confession of faith to hold office. The 13 colonies certainly rooted themselves in Christianity. Not all of them followed the same denominations, and is most likely why we have the freedom to practice our religion without state intervention (because there wasn’t a consensus on what kind of Christian – like in England where the State and the Church were aligned)
If the US wasn’t founded on Christianity, then why did the 23rd President of the US hold a horse race to find the corpse of Jesus?
Both are true. They were specifically saying *ignore the Roman Catholics. No conflicts between types of Protestants. Jews can exist legally but that is about it*
Basically. No wars of religion all types of Christians and people with a bible welcome.
The US was founded by Christians, not founded for Christians.
He should be smacking Robin with the Treaty of Tripoli, which was the USA’s first treaty, and explicitly stated that the US was not and would never be a Christian nation.
Ironically, the BIble is very clear that you shouldn’t be a dirty rat fink liar.
These conservatives keep ignoring that part.
John Adams signed in 1797 the Treaty of Tripoli – *unanimously* ratified by the senate.
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion”.
It depends how you wanna interpret what either quote means. Like, the government officially does not say which religion is the right one. However, when making laws, they did seek the Bible for inspiration. There’s a difference between a theocracy and a government running parallel with religionous value.
Like, you want laws that match up with your personal values, right? Well, what if those values came from your religion?
This is why saying whether or not the US government is truly secular is a more complex question than one would think.
Historical context is important here. The Quakers, Lutherans, and Protestants left Europe (mainly England and Holland) due to Catholicism and the Church of England.
In plain text “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” – the U.S. cannot create a new Church of England “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” – the U.S. can’t say “ONLY Protestants are welcome” or “Muslims are NOT welcome”.
Technically, church can legally influence the state, but state cannot influence the church… and in a nongovernmental capacity it would be almost impossible for a church to not influence the state via core tenants and beliefs of voters.
That said, the early laws and concepts are a marriage of English common law and Judaic-Christian tradition.
The beliefs of the founders undoubtedly impacted the thoughts and rulings of the establishment. I would say that it’s unfair to say America was never a Christian Nation when so many early documents reference God, but the early state did not want to establish a state Church.
With the fall of traditional religious framework and the rise of strange new pseudoscientific ideas as well as Silicon Valley type cults I think we’re going to have to expand what we consider “religions.”
Yeah, who cares that God is mentioned in our constitution like 10 times? People can pretend it’s not the Christian God they were talking about if they want but… 🤷
Edit: I’m not defending or agreeing with religion in politics. I’m just making a point about how prevalent it is and has been 🙄. I don’t like it anymore than you do
Both are true; it was founded mostly by Christians on a Christian moral framework; you’d be insane to dispute that. However there is no state imposed religion.
The 1797 Treaty with Tripoli states, “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”
Just because it was not the state religion doesn’t mean it was not the societal values
Those people don’t care about the truth…they care about what they see as the truth
It was founded by mostly Christians, with a mixture of Deist, Christian, Jewish, Enlightenment, and Greek philosophy. It was to be a secular government but run by people within the moral framework of the time.
It was definitely not intended for its citizens to be irreligious postmodern nihilists.
**The United States is a deist nation** — and we’ve never forgiven the Founders for that screwup.
The basic premise of this post is true but this question is pretty complex and really requires a nuanced and thorough discussion.
OP is quoting the First Amendment which, while generally considered a foundational document, was only actually ratified in 1791, 15 years after the Declaration of Independence. By contrast, the Declaration of Independence directly references God and makes arguments as to rights based on their being endowed by that God. Notably though, there is no specific reference to that God specifically being the Christian God. In accordance with that precedent, the United States has generally acknowledged and perpetuated at times the notion of there being a seemingly monotheistic God that they even at times allow public official prayer to without going into further detail about this God that would be more applicable to one monotheistic religion than another. This is officially not considered an establishment of religion for First Amendment purposes. That covers the federal government’s relationship with God and religion; the government has in a semi-formal fashion recognized the existence and general potential for intervention of a monotheistic God without going further.
But there’s more than just the federal government in the US. Many states had established churches into the 1800s. This was considered allowed on the state level at least through the Civil War. With the passing of the 14th Amendment though, the states have had to follow the federal government’s treatment of religion.
And finally, there are the people. The US has always had a relatively devout Christian majority population, many of who came to the US to pursue their religion more freely. While not largely correct as to the country as a whole, they may see their experience in the US as founded on their religion because of it.
This also brings in the use of the term “Christian nation.” The US has nor ever has had a state religion in its independent history outside of its semi-formal identification of a God. So if your definition of “Christian nation” is one which formally declares for the religion, the US is not one. However, many use this term to describe a nation full of Christians, which the US generally has been. So in context it is and has been a “Christian nation” since its founding.