Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Myth: American is a Christian nation.
Reality: America has never been a "Christian nation," and never will be. If it ever becomes officially a Christian nation, that's the end of America!
There is no exclusively or specifically Biblical or Christian legal construct or ideology encoded in America's foundational ideals, Declaration of Independence, original Constitution, subsequent Amendments, laws or system of government. If anything whatsoever, the American system is a radical and emphatic rejection of the "divine right of kings" and religion-government entanglement which comprise the core of Abrahamic (Jewish-Christian-Islamic) governmental tradition.
Diametrically opposite of this tradition (thankfully), the United States of America is based upon English common law, as established principally by the Magna Carta (1215), Constitution of 1657, Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and Bill of Rights (1689). These in turn draw not from Biblical governmental philosophy, but from "pagan" Greek democracy and Roman law. Other important inspirations for the novel U.S. system were obtained from Enlightenment and utilitarian philosophers, principal among these the English philosopher John Locke, as well as French champions of the common man's rights and qualities: Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. Also, there is some evidence that Benjamin Franklin brought ideas from the Iroquois Confederacy's form of democracy into the original discussions of American government, particularly the aspect of each state/tribe being an autonomous unit yet bound to a larger federal whole: a league of united tribes/states.
If the founding fathers had intended to create a Christian country they most certainly would have included the five letters J-E-S-U-S or the six letters C-H-R-I-S-T or the nine letters C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N somewhere - anywhere - in the nation's bylaws. But nope. Did they just forget Jesus? Well yes, they did. They intentionally forgot Jesus, and left out Christianity for some very, very, very good reasons.
First off, more than a few of the founding fathers were simply not Christian. Right along with the vanguard of Western civilization as it embraced the philosophies of the Enlightenment, the leading lights of the American Revolution, including Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were reevaluating religious doctrine and dogma and "tradition," and finding much of it quite lacking and contrary to their rational sense of justice, morality and spirituality. Jefferson went so far as to cut out all the parts of the Bible he disagreed with, ending up with a very compact little treatise.
As well, the American patriots were keenly aware of the disastrous intersection of religion and government as it had played out in their ancestral England and throughout Europe, as well in the American colonies where at a time in history a person could be put to death for being of a particular religious stripe and caught in the wrong colony. They had absolutely no intention of adhering to the "traditional value" of brutal and bloody Christian vs. Christian warfare that had ravaged Britain, Ireland and the continent for centuries, much less sanction something as barbaric as a new government-sponsored religious crusade against some purported "infidel" (like, say, the Cherokee).
So the founding fathers extremely wisely chose to create a wholly secular government and society, where the religions would be allowed to freely, and hopefully peaceably, coexist. In the new America you had the right to be an Anglican or a Quaker or a Catholic or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Deist or an atheist. This concept is called "freedom of religion." Or it could likewise be defined as "freedom from religion" if you so choose. Either way you want to parse it, it is a fundamental aspect of the concept of freedom itself.
Reality: America has never been a "Christian nation," and never will be. If it ever becomes officially a Christian nation, that's the end of America!
There is no exclusively or specifically Biblical or Christian legal construct or ideology encoded in America's foundational ideals, Declaration of Independence, original Constitution, subsequent Amendments, laws or system of government. If anything whatsoever, the American system is a radical and emphatic rejection of the "divine right of kings" and religion-government entanglement which comprise the core of Abrahamic (Jewish-Christian-Islamic) governmental tradition.
Diametrically opposite of this tradition (thankfully), the United States of America is based upon English common law, as established principally by the Magna Carta (1215), Constitution of 1657, Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and Bill of Rights (1689). These in turn draw not from Biblical governmental philosophy, but from "pagan" Greek democracy and Roman law. Other important inspirations for the novel U.S. system were obtained from Enlightenment and utilitarian philosophers, principal among these the English philosopher John Locke, as well as French champions of the common man's rights and qualities: Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. Also, there is some evidence that Benjamin Franklin brought ideas from the Iroquois Confederacy's form of democracy into the original discussions of American government, particularly the aspect of each state/tribe being an autonomous unit yet bound to a larger federal whole: a league of united tribes/states.
If the founding fathers had intended to create a Christian country they most certainly would have included the five letters J-E-S-U-S or the six letters C-H-R-I-S-T or the nine letters C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N somewhere - anywhere - in the nation's bylaws. But nope. Did they just forget Jesus? Well yes, they did. They intentionally forgot Jesus, and left out Christianity for some very, very, very good reasons.
First off, more than a few of the founding fathers were simply not Christian. Right along with the vanguard of Western civilization as it embraced the philosophies of the Enlightenment, the leading lights of the American Revolution, including Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were reevaluating religious doctrine and dogma and "tradition," and finding much of it quite lacking and contrary to their rational sense of justice, morality and spirituality. Jefferson went so far as to cut out all the parts of the Bible he disagreed with, ending up with a very compact little treatise.
As well, the American patriots were keenly aware of the disastrous intersection of religion and government as it had played out in their ancestral England and throughout Europe, as well in the American colonies where at a time in history a person could be put to death for being of a particular religious stripe and caught in the wrong colony. They had absolutely no intention of adhering to the "traditional value" of brutal and bloody Christian vs. Christian warfare that had ravaged Britain, Ireland and the continent for centuries, much less sanction something as barbaric as a new government-sponsored religious crusade against some purported "infidel" (like, say, the Cherokee).
So the founding fathers extremely wisely chose to create a wholly secular government and society, where the religions would be allowed to freely, and hopefully peaceably, coexist. In the new America you had the right to be an Anglican or a Quaker or a Catholic or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Deist or an atheist. This concept is called "freedom of religion." Or it could likewise be defined as "freedom from religion" if you so choose. Either way you want to parse it, it is a fundamental aspect of the concept of freedom itself.