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comment by pezz29

But remember the founding fathers had a far less federalist understanding of government than we do today. This is even true of the party at the time which was called the federalist party. If it's not in the Constitution, it doesn't mean the founding fathers absolutely wanted government staying out of it, it either meant the founding fathers thought it wasn't the role of government, or they were leaving that power to the states.

States could and did have official religions. I don't think the founding fathers prevented the federal government from making one national state religion because they were trying to banish religion from government, they were just leaving it to the states.

That reinforces thenewgreen's point that these people were, overwhelmingly, Christians.



MattholomewCup  ·  4331 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I find that the question of their own religious beliefs is highly irrelevant to the discussion. What they wrote is what matters, because that is what they all agreed was the best foundation for the country. Likewise, I find that the states who declared themselves Christian (or, more accurately, a specific flavor of protestant) really have no bearing on whether America was founded as a "Christian nation" or a "secular nation," they are merely a subset of the whole, and the power of state's rights has differed greatly over time. The foundational document of the country was express in its intent to let people worship in peace as they pleased. Perhaps they could have never forseen the influx of different, non-Christian religions, or atheism, but that's ok because it was never written by then that that mattered.

Again, I would highlight that the founders were deeply influenced by Enlightenment thinkers, many of whom fit in the atheistic-agnostic-deistic spectrum, and who were express in their philosophies that governments should be secular. In fact, I consider Thomas Paine to be a founding father and he was explicitly not Christian. They were very worldly folks and knew philosophy and political science, and understood religion's place was the individual and their community, not the government. Individual states may have differed but the federal government of the United States was never, ever "Christian."

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