America is a Christian Nation

Firstly, if you disagree with my assessment of the Treaty of Tripoli, you should provide evidence that it does not mean that the US is not founded upon the Christian religion. Given that it explicitly uses the words "the government of the United States is not, in any way, founded upon the Christian Religion," that will be some task. But you cannot simply assert that it must mean something else without providing evidence for your view. Secondly, going back further than the War of Independence is irrelevant. The founding principles of the colonies is irrelevant. We must look at our actual *nation's* founding, and that founding begins with the War of Independence and the events immediately prior to it. Also, I did not say that none of the founding fathers were Christian-- only that they were not uniformly Christian as is often claimed, and that a fair amount were of another faith. Even many of those you quoted require closer inspection. Many of your quotes only mention God, who is not exclusive to Christianity but is also shared by just about every religion, even Deism. (For brevity's sake, for any quote for which I don't provide a quote, I refer you to Wikiquote. I had tried to source all my quotes immediately after them, but I ran out of space. My apologies.) For example, John Adams is far less certain. He expressed many Unitarian viewpoints, and also said, "Howl, Snarl, bite, Ye Calvinistick! Ye Athanasian Divines, if You will. Ye will say, I am no Christian: I say Ye are no Christians: and there the Account is ballanced." Essentially, he was saying that while he may not be a Christian in the "traditional" sense of the word-- the Christianity we think of today, he considered himself more Christian than any of his critics. Ben Franklin: As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. This is hardly a quote you'd expect from a Christian! He said that while Jesus's morals and views on religious were great, they'd been corrupted by Christianity, and that its current form was not what it originally was. True, he expressed a belief in a "Supreme being," but that is hardly contradictory to deism. He may well have been a Christian and not a deist, but if so, he was a throughly non-devout one. Indeed, if you read his explanation on the lightning rod, though he seemingly attributes it to God, he does so in a wittily mocking manner. Now, I find it amusing you quote Jefferson, the man who coined the phrase "wall of separation" and the famed creator of the Jefferson Bible, which was essentially a Bible with any claims to the divinity of Jesus removed because Jefferson did not believe them to be true. He claimed to be a Christian only in the sense that he viewed the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to be wonderful moral teachings. Even I, an atheist, can say this about them. Now, let us look at some of Jefferson's other quotes, to get a good idea of many of his beliefs: I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion . . . or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. Thomas Paine is another great example of a Deist: Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. [The Age of Reason] Again from the Age of Reason: The account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism. Essentially, I think it is evident that Paine's religious views were certainly not Christian, but rather Deist. I think his quote "The only true religion is Deism" is especially telling. ;) Madison: During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Washington... was complicated, to say the least. While he often sprinkled his speech with religious rhetoric, he was always incredibly careful NOT to identify himself as a Christian. Now, it seems very possible to me that he was indeed one, but his reluctance to identify as such indicates, to me, that he viewed his religion as entirely his own business and nobody else's. Which brings me to my point, which you seem to have so artfully dodged and ignored, so I shall quote myself: "Even the Christians among them, however, were ardent secularists-- they believed that the government and religion had no business interfering with each other." Washington, like the other founding fathers, believed that a man's religious is his own business, and that it didn't matter at all when it came to politics. In a response to a letter to a Synagogue, Washington assured them that, so long as as he is a good citizen, his faith is completely irrelevant and of no concern to the nation. Madison, despite his arguably Christian faith, wrote an essay in which he said that Congress absolutely must not employ chaplains. Were America a Christian Nation, would this make any sense at all? A few more quotes: Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America. --Thomas Paine, Common Sense Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.-- Thomas Jefferson, Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.-- Thomas Jefferson Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations.--James Madison The government of the United States is not, in any way, founded upon the Christian religion-- the Treaty of Tripoli. I repeat it because you failed to address it or demonstrate why it doesn't mean what it seems to mean. As you can see, even those who may have been Christians would have no truck with mixing religion with government-- both for the religion's sake and the government's! I must end with your last claim. Yes, the majority of people in the country are Christian. However, saying that it's a Christian nation just because Christians are the largest group is like saying it's a White Nation just because white people are the largest group in the country.