\n<\/p>\n
When he talks about the role of religion in the founding of the United States, historian Gregg Frazer does not attract eager audiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither side really wants to hear what I say,” says Frazer, a professor of history and political studies at The Master\u2019s University, a Christian school in Santa Clarita, California.<\/p>\n
The founders, Frazer says, did not create a Christian republic. Several key founders either rejected core Christian doctrines or were vague enough to keep historians debating. For Frazer, that often disappoints audiences of his fellow Christians.<\/p>\n
But, he says, nor were the founders a cluster of rationalist deists \u2014 believers in a God who set the universe in motion like a clockmaker and then left it alone \u2014 and anti-religious skeptics, as they are sometimes portrayed. That disappoints audiences who favor a high firewall between church and state. Most of the founders were religious in one form or another.<\/p>\n
The long-running debate over the founders\u2019 intentions about religion has been turbocharged with the approaching 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. Amid the America 250 celebrations, some Christian activists and authors are redoubling claims that the U.S. had a Christian founding.<\/p>\n
They have an ally in the White House.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump is promoting \u201c America Prays,\u201d culminating in a May 17 gathering on the National Mall in Washington. Official participants include many Christian organizations and individuals, some who champion the idea of a Christian founding. Cabinet officials are issuing Christian messages in their official capacity. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proclaimed that \u201cAmerica was founded as a Christian nation \u2026 in our DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n
In short: The long-standing debate \u2014 secular government on one hand, faith on another \u2014 rages and matters still.<\/p>\n
Critics and advocacy groups are pushing back.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost \u2014 nearly all \u2014 serious historians agree that America was not founded as a Christian nation in any meaningful legal, philosophical, or constitutional sense,\u201d says the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It decries efforts \u201cto redefine America according to the Christian Nationalist disinformation and then reshape our law accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six in 10 U.S. adults surveyed say they believed the founders originally intended America to be a Christian nation, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report.<\/p>\n
Why do the founders\u2019 beliefs and intentions matter?<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s looking for what we historians call a usable past,\u201d says John Fea, author of \u201cWas America Founded as a Christian Nation?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe go into the past looking for what we want in order to advance a particular political or cultural agenda,\u201d says Fea, a fellow at the Lumen Center, a Christian research institute and study center in Madison, Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
Advocates often skirt history’s nuances. For example, public officials and others did indeed offer prayers on behalf of the new republic at important historical moments.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut are those prayers the central part of the story of what happened when we, in the United States, declared independence?\u201d Fea wonders. \u201cLast time I checked, it was about taxation and representation and shutting down the port of Boston and all these more economic and political things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historian Mark David Hall argues that Christianity did strongly impact the founding. While core founders did not hold traditional Christian beliefs, he contends many other founders did, and that this shaped their thinking about how to form the new republic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s plenty of evidence Christianity had an influence,\u201d says Hall, author of \u201cDid America Have a Christian Founding?\u201d<\/p>\n
He says founders\u2019 attention to human dignity harmonizes with the Bible\u2019s teaching of humanity created in God\u2019s image. The system of checks and balances \u2014 to prevent the concentration of power \u2014 reflects teachings about human sin that would have permeated a largely Protestant culture, he says.<\/p>\n
He also notes that some early presidents and Congresses issued proclamations for prayer and thanksgiving, though some drew opposition and controversy. Some states sponsored churches for decades after the country’s Constitution was ratified, indicating the founders did not believe religion should be absent from public life.<\/p>\n
They believed that faith was important in forming moral, responsible citizens of the new republic. They promoted \u201ctoleration without eliminating the importance of real religious commitment on the part of differing adherents,\u201d Frazer wrote in his book, \u201cThe Religious Beliefs of America\u2019s Founders.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is no reference to any specific religion in the Constitution beyond the date \u2014 \u201cin the year of our Lord\u201d 1787. It forbids religious tests for officeholders. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees religious freedom and forbids \u201cestablishment\u201d of a national religion.<\/p>\n
Twentieth-century Supreme Court rulings applied the First Amendment to the states on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from denying citizens\u2019 rights. The court cited founder Thomas Jefferson\u2019s metaphor of a \u201cwall of separation between church and state.\u201d Courts have since wrestled with how to apply that principle in areas such as school prayer, healthcare, labor law and crosses on public lands.<\/p>\n
Frazer argues that the Bible is not cited as a source for any governing principles in the documented proceedings of the Constitutional Convention or in the influential Federalist Papers, which advocated for the Constitution. He says the founders drew on influences such as Enlightenment thinking on such concepts as human equality, accountable government and freedom of religion. Early critics of the Constitution faulted it for lacking religious content.<\/p>\n
The Declaration of Independence does have religious language, declaring that rights come from the \u201cCreator.\u201d It appeals to \u201cdivine Providence\u201d and to the \u201cLaws of Nature and of Nature\u2019s God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas Jefferson and other founders \u2014 adroitly, Frazer says \u2014 used terms acceptable to Christians as well as followers of other religious and philosophical movements.<\/p>\n
Even the seemingly straightforward question, \u201cDid the founders intend America to be a Christian nation?\u201d raises questions: Who were the founders? When was the actual \u201cfounding\u201d?<\/p>\n
Some see the founding as the original colonial settlements \u2014 a century and a half before 1776. Colonial charters for Massachusetts Bay and Virginia declared the spread of the Gospel as a fundamental purpose. Puritan Boston endeavored to be a Christian \u201ccity upon a hill.\u201d<\/p>\n
In practice, the religious nature of the colonies varied. They had economic and territorial ambitions alongside heavenly ones. State religious persecution of religious minorities in Virginia and Massachusetts drew pushback.<\/p>\n
The religious values of a colonial system that decimated Native communities and imported enslaved Africans has also come under enduring scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Decades before the American Revolution, an evangelical revival known as the Great Awakening reached many colonists. Church membership and attendance declined steadily throughout the 18th century, according to studies, even as the colonies remained mostly Protestant.<\/p>\n
The Protestant label also covered a range of beliefs, as some churches shifted toward Unitarian views that esteemed Jesus as a prophet or sage, not divine.<\/p>\n
By the Revolution, rationalistic approaches to religion strongly influenced many college-educated and propertied elite men, such as those who produced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Frazer wrote. So did Freemasonry, a fraternal order based on beliefs in a universal God and morals.<\/p>\n
Some founders were devout Christians such as John Jay, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. Others believed in God but not in Jesus\u2019 divinity, including key founders like Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The enigmatic Washington kept active in his Episcopal church but avoided sacraments and also was an active Freemason. He spoke about God in terms most people at that time could accept, such as \u201cProvidence\u201d or \u201cSupreme Ruler.\u201d<\/p>\n
But contrary to popular belief, most founders were not deists.<\/p>\n
Frazer instead describes many founders as \u201ctheistic rationalists.\u201d George Washington believed that divine \u201cProvidence\u201d saved his life in battle and intervened on America\u2019s behalf. He was far from alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did believe in an active God,\u201d Frazer says. \u201cTherefore, prayer matters, because there\u2019s someone listening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even the skeptics thought religion was important in forming virtuous citizens. Franklin donated toward building projects for various churches and a synagogue in Philadelphia. Many scholars believe the First Amendment created a sort of religious free market in which Christianity and other faiths have flourished to this day.<\/p>\n
At speaking engagements, Frazer hands out a flyer with 12 points on why the Christian America view is dangerous for both church and state.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s mostly dangerous for Christianity,\u201d Frazer contends. By claiming people or ideas as Christian if they aren\u2019t, it \u201cmuddies the waters in terms of what Christianity is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP\u2019s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n