Was America really founded on Christianity?

So I've got a lot to blog about, but this is the most seasonally appropriate. On the Fourth of July, my dad convinced me (and my boyfriend and his sister as well) to go to church with him and the rest of the family. The church service started thirty minutes early to make time for a special Fourth of July play by the children. As a whole, the entire one and a half hour service was a bold display of the persistent forced marriage of church and state, and the pastor used the sermon to more acutely articulate his conviction that our nation was founded on Jesus Christ, and, unless the USA returns to her Christian roots, we will no longer be the land of the free and the home of the brave. To paraphrase the pastor, "today (July 4th) is a commemoration of our nation's independence from tyranny, but dependence on God."

I've heard conflicting stories about exactly what role the Founding Fathers wanted the church to play in America, but after doing some research I've discovered that many of our founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams, specifically called for a separation of church and state. While they were undoubtedly devout Christians, they had no intentions for America to be a theocracy.

When the first colonists came to America, they came escaping religious persecution and state religion. Hypocritically, many colonies went on to officially establish their own religions, and some jobs and political offices required applicants to pass a religious test. However, this all changed once the Article 6 of the Constitution prohibited the use of religious tests and the First Amendment protected the free exercise of religion. Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were very clear in their writings that it for their best interest that the church and state be separated.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 articulating his beliefs (along with  citing the first amendment) about the relationships between church and state

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

In fact, many historians claim the Jefferson was the one to coin the term "separation of church and state." Jefferson went on to design the University of Virginia (holla!) to further reflect his faith in the separation between church and state. As an architect and founder of the school, Jefferson placed the Rotunda as the center of his public university, ostensibly choosing to place a library modeled after the Parthenon at the nucleus of the UVa grounds instead of a church.

James Madison, our Father of the Constitution, was also a fierce advocate of the separation of church in state, as you can see from many of his letters. Many times he refers to the desire for a "total separation of the church from the State" and also writing that, "a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together" (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822). I don't think it's possible to have a clearer framer's intent.

Perhaps the most blunt assertion of the idea of the separation of church and state comes from a clause in The Treaty of Tripoli, as ratified by the US Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1797. The treaty was a part of the set of Barbary Treaties crafted to address pirating on the Barbary Coast. Recognizing that the area was dominated by the Islamic faith, Article 11 of the treaty reminds the world that "the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

And it's a good thing that our nation wasn't founded on Christianity, especially as the US becomes increasingly diverse. According to an extensive 2007 survey by the Pew Form on Religion & Public Life, 78.4% of American adults are Christian, and a shrinking 51.3% of them are Protestants. That's a pretty big number, but it also means that 21.4% of American adults practice other religions or none at all. Thus, to say that America was founded on and perseveres because of Christianity effectively excludes and marginalizes the religion of nearly one fourth of Americans, whether they be Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, or atheists. Even among those Americans who are Christian, there are so many different denominations and interpretations of Christianity that I doubt there could be a national agreement to what exactly "the church" is and how to apply it to policy. Just sit a Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, and Greek Orthodox down at a table and I'm sure they can come up with more ways that they're different than similar (come to think of it, this is exactly what Thanksgiving at my dad's house sounds like). After all, some of the worst wars and violentest of conflicts are between people of the same religion whether Catholics versus Protestants or Sunnis versus Shias.

Walking into a church full of children waving flags and streamers singing "God Bless America" is cute, but powerful imagery. While I don't think it's wrong for churches to celebrate the Fourth of July, it's factually inaccurate for anyone to claim that America was founded on Christianity and the marriage of church and state.

As long as voters or politicians erroneously believe that our country was founded on Christianity, we will get policy that is poisoned with homophobia and sexism, intolerance of other beliefs, government funding of religious initiatives, restrictions on sex ed and birth control, and Creationism in the schools. Ultimately, basing policy on religion is dangerous, because it needs no justification other than "because the Bible says so." There is little critical thinking in religious fundamentalism, and it's unfair to subject an entire country to any group's misguided beliefs.

For further reading check out Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, or click on any of the links/ citations in this article.

Photo credit to Monque