IS America a Christian Nation?
AFFIRMATIVE!
Nancy Y. Harvey
7/16/20255 min read
Most people these days rely heavily on search engines to provide them with immediate retrieval of information. So, when I posed the question, Is America a Christian Nation? to such an entity, I quickly received a flat out “no.”
And, it was also accompanied by several supportive statements, that were without merit and substance. I quickly realized that these “so called” reliable search engines are not always accurate, trustworthy, or truthful.
According to my findings, the answer to this significant question is clearly documented in the annals of our history.
In my book, I have featured several authentic and trustworthy American historians, whose writings will confirm the accuracy of my AFFIRMATIVE! answer.
It is my pleasure to introduce to you a dynamic father and son team, David and Tim Barton of Wallbuilders. In their book entitled, The American Story – The Beginnings, they provide verifiable facts in support of why America is a “Christian Nation.”
The following excerpts are taken from Chapter 20 – American Courts, pages 261 – 267.
“The Christian influence so visible throughout the Executive and Legislative Branches was also apparent in the Judicial Branch. For example, in a unanimous decision in 1844, the US Supreme Court affirmed that America was “a Christian country.” Then in 1892, the Supreme Court, after pointing to several dozen American governmental documents from across the centuries, again delivered a unanimous ruling, declaring:
[N]o purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people…[T]his is a Christian nation.
In 1931, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the same message for a third time:
We are a Christian people…according to one another the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.
These “Christian country,” “Christian nation,” and “Christian people” declarations were subsequently cited by numerous federal courts for decades, well into the modern era.
And because the Supreme Court viewed America as a Biblical nation, it is not surprising that it regularly invoked Christian principles as the basis of its rulings on marriage, citizenship, foreign affairs, domestic treaties, and other issues. Yet ironically, if someone today states that America is, or ever was, a “Christian nation,” that person usually will be mocked and viciously criticized by secularists and “progressives.”
Of course, it makes a huge difference how someone defines “Christian nation.” Today’s critics wrongly portray a “Christian nation” as something coercive and exclusive—a country that rejects those who are not Christians, oppresses people of different religions by restricting their opportunities, and requires them to be Christian to have civil rights. In short, they claim that being a “Christian nation” means being a theocracy.
The problem with this approach is that our predecessors never took “Christian nation” to mean theocracy. For instance, US Supreme Court Justice David Brewer, author of the unanimous 1892 “this is a Christian nation” Supreme Court decision, offered a definition that would have been accepted by those who came before him and many who came after him (except for many modern critics who redefine the phrase).
He wrote: Christianity was a principal cause of the settlements on these western shores [the New world]. It has been identified with the growth and development of those settlements into the United States of America [and] has so largely shaped and molded it that today, of all the nations in the world, it [America] is the most justly called a Christian nation.
Therefore, America is a Christian nation because the principles of the Bible shaped its values, culture, and institutions.
Brewer spent significant time explaining what a Christian nation is not (which, interestingly, is exactly what critics today wrongly claim that it is):
[I]n what sense can it [America] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion, or that the people are in any manner compelled to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within our borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all. Not is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially.
In fact, the government as a legal organization is independent of all religions. Nevertheless, we constantly speak of this republic as a Christian nation—in fact, as the leading Christian nation of the world.
It is important to emphasize that Brewer and the other justices were not devising a new definition, they were restating what had long been held by the Founders and early jurists, civic leaders, and historians.
Following this decision, Brewer gave a series of popular lectures addressing the decision and how the Court reached its conclusion. In 1905, his lectures were published as a book in which he observed that “[T]he calling of this republic a Christian nation is not a mere pretense, but a recognition of an historical, legal, and social truth. “Historical, legal, and social truth”—the same categories already presented in this work.
The evidence in these three areas was so abundant that state courts were just as forthright in their declarations on this subject as the federal courts had been.
For example, [O]ur laws and institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. And in this sense. And to this extent, our civilization and institutions are emphatically Chrisitan. Illinois Supreme Court, 1883
Here is another example:
Our great country is denominated a Christian nation…. We imprint “In God We Trust” on our currency. Our state has even sometimes been referred to by cynics as being in the “Bible Belt.” It cannot be denied that much of the legislative philosophy of this state and nation has been inspired by the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount and other portions of the Holy Scriptures. Mississippi Supreme Court, 1950
Whether America is currently behaving as a Christian nation is a different discussion, but it is historically irrefutable that for centuries, including under the US Constitution, America was considered a Christian nation.
The Biblical Christianity practiced by the early colonists and Founding Fathers had a profound influence in directing the early course of the American Story. Without true Biblical Christianity, there never would have been the US Constitution that has caused America to be the longest on-going constitutional republic in the history of the world.
Our Founders were the first civil leaders to, as the Declaration of Independence announced, “hold these truths” and establish a nation upon them.
As Noah Webster (a key individual in the ratification of the Constitution and the “Father of the American Dictionary”) accurately affirmed:
The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence, which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.
From the beginning our national identity and destiny have been intertwined with our relationship with God, and our belief in the Bible’s authority for daily living. This new experiment of personal liberty and human rights through a representative government was truly unprecedented.
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance.” (Psalm 34:12)
