Please visit: http://www.godisimaginary.com http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com http://www.richarddawkins.net http://www.atheists.org http://www.infidels.org http://www.godlessgeeks.com http://www.samharris.org http://www.ffrf.org http://www.au.org http://www.rationalresponders.com http://atheismtracts.googlepages.com

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Is America Really a Christian Nation?

A Wall of Separation... Even though the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” does not appear in the United States constitution, it was used by president Thomas Jefferson to describe the first amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. In other words, the United States government is not allowed to promote or suppress any religion, nor is it allowed to proclaim a state religion. The founding fathers of the United States clearly did not want this nation to become a theocracy, and for good reason. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.” We all would do well to heed these words of wisdom.

In God We Trust... United States currency shares a similar story to that of our Pledge of Allegiance. In 1861, M.R. Watkinson, a minister, suggested adding the words “God, Liberty, Law” to our nation’s currency so that we would not be remembered as a “heathen nation”. In 1864, a law was passed allowing “In God We Trust” to be placed on one, two, and three cent coins. In 1873, after passing several laws, “In God We Trust” was allowed and in 1908 became mandatory for all coins. The issue did not resurface until the Cold War era. In 1956, the 84th Congress and President Eisenhower passed law declaring “In God We Trust” as the national motto of the United States. The first paper currency to resemble the motto entered circulation on October 1st, 1957.

Our founding fathers had enough foresight to see that without certain laws and regulations in place, the freedoms of Americans would be trampled on and tyranny would gain a foothold. America would become the very thing they fought so hard to destroy with the American Revolution. One freedom defined in the first constitutional amendment is that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Without this freedom, the United States government could have been similar to Iran or Saudi Arabia. The United States constitution also states in Article 6 that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” If this article was not in place, it would be possible for laws to be created requiring that certain elected officials must be, for example, a deacon of their church. You may think this is harmless, but if you turn back the pages of history about 900 years to the time of the crusades, you begin to see that letting clergymen run the world can have disastrous consequences.

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Your next question might be, “Isn’t United States law based on the Ten Commandments?” There are only 3 commandments that bear resemblance to modern society, and those are: #6, “Thou shalt not murder,” #8, “Thou shalt not steal,” and #9, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” If you take a look at every known historical society, you will see these three rules aren’t exclusive to Christianity. The first four commandments are religious edicts, having nothing to do with our current laws. The fifth commandment, “Honor thy father and mother” has no law backing it. After all, you can legally sue your parents. The seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” has no federal laws forbidding the act. The tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet…” is perhaps the most ignored of them all. If this commandment was adhered to by everyone, our capitalist society would collapse as no one would want any products or services that they see other people enjoying.

You may ask, “If the United States wasn’t founded on Christian principles, why does the Pledge of Allegiance have the words ‘One nation under God’ in it?” To answer this question we need to travel back in time to 1953. The United States was knee deep in the cold war with the Soviet Union. The Red Scare, fueled by political propaganda, began a series of communist witch-hunts headed by senator Joseph McCarthy. The Roman Catholic men’s group, the Knights of Columbus began a campaign to add God to the Pledge of Allegiance. They had little success lobbying this change until George Docherty preached a sermon that President Eisenhower attended on February 7th, 1954. In this sermon he stated, “Apart from the mention of the phrase 'the United States of America,' it could be the pledge of any republic. In fact, I could hear little Muscovites repeat a similar pledge to their hammer-and-sickle flag in Moscow.” Eisenhower agreed with these words. The news spread, and the opinion of the communism fearing public grew. On February 10th, 1954, Senator Homer Ferguson sponsored a bill proposing the addition of god to the Pledge of Allegiance. The bill was signed into law on June 14th, 1954.

Most Christians in the United States today believe that the United States was founded on Christian principles. A brief look at history, however, will reveal this is not the case. The United States’ Constitution contains no mention of God, Jesus, or Christianity anywhere on it’s pages. In 1797, the Treaty of Tripoli declared, “the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Why then is the United States considered a Christian nation by so many?

We the People...

Thou Shalt Not...

One Nation Under God...

Introduction