A Christian Nation?

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain recently pandered to the Religious Right:

“I admire the Islam. There’s a lot of good principles in it,” he said. “But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.”

In the interview, the senator also said the “Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”

I’ll leave out the fact that McCain was referring to something called “the Islam.” (Was he referring to Islam or Muslims?) McCain, of course, has every right to support whomever he wishes, Christian or not, for president. But I want to address the question: Is the United States a Christian nation? That depends on how one defines the term.

The vast majority of Americans, approximately 77 percent, are Christians. As Bradley Burston writes in Ha’aretz, the United States is an unofficial Christian country:

Every Jewish kid in America who has ever worn a kippah in public, every Muslim who has worn external evidence of his or her devotion to Islam, knows very well that Senator McCain was right. Every public school child who was raised in a home where Jesus was not believed to be God, and who was made to sing “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” with devotion and feeling, knows just how right McCain was. Every high school football player who began every game hearing an invocation to the Lord Jesus Christ, cannot help but wonder what all the fuss is about.

Still, does this mean that the United States is officially a Christian country? Part of McCain’s statement — that America was “founded primarily on Christian principles” — is utterly absurd. Countries are political entities, and religions are sets of theological beliefs and associated practices. The two are completely different. What does the Constitution say about the life, death and purported resurrection of Jesus? Nothing, of course.

So, the United States was not founded on Christian principles, but was it founded as a Christian country? For this to be true, the country’s founding document, the Constitution, would need to state that America is a Christian nation. It does not. Nothing else matters legally or politically.

But let’s look at the evidence that pundit (and film reviewer) Michael Medved uses to prove his case that the United States was founded as a Christian country:

In his Farewell Address of 1797, President Washington (who had also served as presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention) unequivocally declared that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle…Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

A president’s personal opinions are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

His successor as president, John Adams (also known as “The Atlas of Independence”) wrote to his wife Abigail in 1775: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. A patriot must be a religious man.”

A president’s personal opinions are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

Thomas Jefferson, who disagreed with Adams on so many points of policy, clearly concurred with him on this essential principle. “God who gave us life gave us liberty,” he wrote in 1781. “And 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 of the Gift of God?”

A president’s personal opinions are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

James Madison (acclaimed as “The Father of the Constitution”) declared that “religion is the basis and Foundation of Government,” and later (1825, after retiring from the Presidency) wrote that “the belief in a God All Powerful, wise and good…. is essential to the moral order of the World and the happiness of men.”

A president’s personal opinions are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, who served as President of the Continental Congress in the last stages of the Revolution (1782-83) wrote: “Our country should be preserved from the dreadful evil of becoming enemies of the religion of the Gospel, which I have no doubt, but would be the introduction of the dissolution of government and the bonds of civil society.”

The personal opinions of a president of the Continental Congress are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

John Marshall, the father of American Jurisprudence and for 34 epochal years (1801-35) the Chief Justice of the United States, wrote: “The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it.”

The personal opinions of a Supreme Court chief justice are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

…Justice Samuel Chase, delivered an opinion (Runkel v. Winemill) in 1799 declaring: “Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion, and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.” These judicial opinions make clear that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment never constrained early judges from classifying the United States as an enthusiastically Christian society.

A Supreme Court ruling does not change the Constitution and the fact that the founding document does not identify the United States as a Christian nation.

In fact, the same Congress that approved the First Amendment gave a clear indication of the way they understood its language when, less than 24 hours after adopting the fateful wording, they passed the following Resolution: “Resolved, that a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceable to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.”

A Congressional resolution does not change the Constitution and the fact that the founding document does not identify the United States as a Christian nation.

George Washington issued the following message to his troops: “The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger. The general hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.”

A general’s personal opinions are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

Two years later, Washington proclaimed: “The commander in chief directs that Divine service be performed every Sunday at 11 o’clock, in each brigade which has a Chaplain….While we are duly performing the duty of good soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of a patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian.”

A general’s commands to his troops are not constitutional law. They have no legal bearing on the issue of whether America is officially a Christian country.

THE FOUNDERS WEREN’T ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS OR SECULARISTS; THEY WERE, ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION, DEEPLY SERIOUS CHRISTIANS.

The personal beliefs of the Founding Fathers have no effect, one way or another, on whether the United States is a Christian country. What matters is the founding document that they wrote — and it does not state that the United States is a Christian country. If the Religious Right does not like this fact, they should advocate for a Constitutional amendment.

The early Supreme Court rulings and Congressional resolutions reflected the fact that the vast majority of Americans were Christians, not that the United States is officially a Christian country. As a New York Times headline writer put it in this op-ed column, a nation of Christians is not a Christian nation. The difference is subtle, but important.