The idea of a Christian America means different things to different people. Pollsters have found a wide circle of Americans who hold general God-and-country sentiments.
But within that is a smaller, hardcore group who also check other boxes in surveys — such as that the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God and that the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation, advocate Christian values or stop enforcing the separation of church and state.
For those embracing that package of beliefs, it’s more likely they’ll have unfavorable views toward immigrants, dismiss or downplay the impact of anti-Black discrimination and believe Trump was a good or great president, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey.
I always heard the argument that the founders did not want a Christian based nation because they saw the chaos in the UK with Catholics fighting Protestants, vice versa and every time a monarch ascended from the opposite side it was the axe for you all of a sudden.
They were probably mostly Christian though, at least outwardly, and so wrote the constitution with Christianity informs ideals and morals.
That said, separation of church and state is a good thing. Anyone arguing they actually wanted a Christian nation is intentionally ignorant (or a fucking idiot).
So idk if “we the people” is intentionally rejecting God as much as it’s rejecting the king.
Most of them, at least the ones most responsible for drafting the Constitution, were deists, as was common for intellectuals during the Enlightenment. Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Monroe were all deists. They generally accepted that Jesus existed and he brought great wisdom of the world but they also questioned his divinity. And even the professed Christians, like Adams, were heavily influenced by progressive Unitarian principles, which did not believe in religious supremacy over government.
Jefferson was so unconvinced of Christ’s divinity that he edited the New Testament down to what he considered to be the wisdom and took out all of the supernatural elements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
This (Jefferson Bible) seems like an important fact for me not to have known until now. Thanks!
But, don’t forget your side of Jesus with your politics. We are, after all, a “Christian nation.” Also, I hate the world.
I knew a lot of this but this is the first I’ve heard of the Jefferson Bible! Thanks for sharing!
Here’s some ammo for you- https://liberalamerica.org/2014/10/27/88-founding-father-quotes-that-will-enrage-the-religious-right/
TIL!
I mean just look at early politics. There were many factions that went to other parts of the colonies to establish their own religious center. But others wanted to keep it separate. This is well documented in so many colonies.
Likely they were also considering the 30 years war, especially with a few of the colonies having explicitly been founded as religious settlements, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Mass especially.