A favorite cut and paste I made as a standard answer for the "In God We Trust" and "Christian Nation" sheep:
Think about the "Christian America" myth for a moment: If America was truly founded as an explicitly Christian nation (as is continually proclaimed by "Christian" activists such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, Chuck Colson, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, Bill Gothard, etc.), then why do we find no mention whatsoever of Jesus, Christ, Christian or Bible in America's founding documents? --not in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution of the United States. In fact, the Constitution does not even make a single reference to any "god." And the reference to a "creator" in the Declaration of Independence is merely an ambiguous "creator," a "Creator" that is vague and subordinated to natural laws that everyone should know through common sense, i.e., "self-evident" truths. (This fits when one realizes that it's author was a Deist, not a Christian.) Moreover, the Bible, Jesus, or Christianity is never mentioned nor alluded to in either document. Nor is God, Jesus, Christ, Bible or Christianity mentioned in the hundreds of pages of the Federalist Papers (the "working documents" of the Founding Fathers). Strange stuff for a nation that some like to say was founded as "Christian." But myths die hard, if ever.
It must be remembered that, The Founding Fathers did NOT put "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance or "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency. "Under God" was added to the Pledge by an act of Congress in 1954, during the McCarthy "communist witch hunt" hysteria. "In God We Trust" began to appear on coins in 1864 and became the official motto of the United States only in 1956. [The motto conceived by the Founding Fathers was "E Pluribus Unum" (Out of Many, One).]
"The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"
(Treaty with Tripoli, 1797. Presented by President and Founding Father John Adams, and ratified unanimously by Congress.)
"No religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States"
(U. S. Constitution, 1787, Art. 6, Sec. 3).
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus, building a wall of separation between Church and State"
(Thomas Jefferson, 1802, letter to Danbury Baptist Association).
"The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State"
(James Madison [author of the first amendment], 1819, Writings, 8:432).
"Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance"
(James Madison, 1822, Writings, 9:101).
"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history"
(James Madison, undated, William and Mary Quarterly, 1946, 3:555).
"And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Govt (sic) will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
(James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, 1822)
Facebook
Twitter