America Is NOT a Christian Nation

Let me be as clear as possible, The United States of America has never been founded with, based on, or intended to be associated with, Christianity. 

Within the last 60 years or so, there has been an ever growing fallacy coming out of the religious right, and just like so many religious claims, despite the evidence against the claim, people keep repeating themselves.

So when people say that 'Merica was founded as a religious country they are implying a few things. For starters, they imply the founding fathers were Christians, as well as imply the constitution was based on the bible, not to mention suggesting that there was an official Christian ideal from the beginning and recently the evil atheists took their membership away from them. If I am fighting a straw man, then please comment.

This comment is lifted from Mr. Lindgren's blog:

"...You both repeatedly demonstrate a real hard time accepting this country was founded by Christians with Christian principles. Recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Look at the words on our currency. America is not catering to the self righteous free thinkers that represent 2% of our population. It’s time smart folks like you that can’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance hit the road and leave your food stamps with your intellectual neighbor on your way out."

Without going in to too much detail, I will explain why these claims are wrong.

"founded by Christians with Christian principles..."

American Historian Richard B. Morris wrote a very insightful book about the attitudes of the time, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, in which he identified seven figures as the "key" founding fathers.

-George Washington

-James Madison

-John Jay

-Thomas Jefferson

-John Adams

-Benjamin Franklin

-Alexander Hamilton

From that list, there is only one who we can consider a Christian in any meaningful sense. John Jay was the only member to profess Christianity and had been known to invoke it in decision making, as he did on the 12th of October in 1816:

"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

This is what many revisionists have in mind when they refer to the founding fathers as Christians. To conclude this would to ignore most available evidence.  Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Hamilton were all outspoken deists, not affiliating with Christianity, from their own words:

"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the biginning of the world until this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning, and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind" --Thomas Jefferson 1816

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstiion (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology." --Thomas Jefferson 

 "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."--James Madison

 "I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserves -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"--John Adams in a letter to Jefferson

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."--John Adams

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."--Benjamin Franklin

And so on with far too many to quote here. To say the founding fathers were Christian would be mostly wrong. As for the next claim, that we can find the Christian status in the pledge of allegiance is simply stupidity and willful ignorance.

A casual glance at the first two Google results show Wikipedia and UShistory.org, both demonstrating why this is erroneous. From the UShistory website I quote:

"The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.

In its original form it read:

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

In 1923, the words, "the Flag of the United States of America" were added. At this time it read:

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words "under God," creating the 31-word pledge we say today. Bellamy's daughter objected to this alteration. Today it reads:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.""

So Even the family of the original author objected to the usage of your deity in this national pledge. So on the the next utterance if idiocy, that we should look at our currency to see this is a Christian nation. I will completely ignore the fact that, by your argument,  this is a deist nation, with no mention of Christianity, because it is still an idiotic argument.

Again from Wikipedia, we can quickly see how he was in error. "In God we trust." was adopted at the United State's official motto in 1956, changing from "E Pluribus Unum". Similar to the pledge, it was pushed at a time of "red scare" demonstrating a rivalry for the evil atheist communists. Claim debunked. Even the coin usage, which started in 1864 was an attempt to show those pesky secessionists that god was actually on the side of the north, not the south, although both sides made this claim.

Please, religious people, adhere to skepticism and question what you already know, especially before you throw out blind statements with an arrogant certainty. That said, if I have made any inaccurate claims, please feel free to correct me.

The hardest part in dealing with these claims is that they keep coming up, without people learning their lesson. Just because you keep repeating it does not make it true!