Not a Christian Nation?
I had someone recommend a book to me entitled “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation” by Jon Meacham and so far it is an interesting book. Not too long ago I was in a discussion on the Our Country Deserves Better PAC Facebook group discussion board about a statement given by President Barack Hussein Obama in Turkey:
“President Barack Obama stated at a press conference in Turkey last week that we Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Muslim nation, but rather, a nation of citizens who are, uh, bound by a set of values.”” (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/1003)
The discussion I had with several individuals was using the base of America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independent and the Constitution of the United States of America.
Paragraph one of the Declaration of Independence: “…Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...”
Paragraph two of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Paragraph thirty-two of the Declaration of Independence: “…appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…”
Final paragraph of the United States Constitution: “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names.”
“Nature’s God”, “Creator”, “Supreme Judge”, and “Year of our Lord” … They all reflect God, but which God? Do Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship different gods? I do not believe so. Were the Founding Fathers talking about just the Christianity? America was called the “great melting pot” or maybe not. But do I believe that America was established as a Christian nation in the “new world”? I believe so!
Again, the argument is that the Founding Fathers were not talking about the Christian God, just a god. I disagree. I had this thought: there are three major religions in the world today (Christianity in all its varieties, Judaism, and Islam). Now let’s go back to 1776, the year of American Independence was declared.
According to page twenty-eight of “The Churching of America, 1776-2005: winners and losers in our religious economy” by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark they list the number of congregations in America in 1776. After checking out several of the different congregations listed I found that many are off-shoots of Christianity but they only list that there were five congregations that were Jewish and no Islam congregations in America at that time.
So it is a viable defense to say that America was never a Christian nation at the time of its founding? I would say no, because there really wasn’t any other religion in America at the time of the founding other then Christianity. Yes, I would agree that we are a “melting pot” of people in the United States of America in this day and age, but I do not agree that we should abandon the principles in which the Founding Fathers established the United States of America on: a belief in God and a basis of Christianity.
