The Myth of the Christian Nation: Clarifying Our History

There is a widespread misconception that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.  It is a position touted by lots of people, usually with the assumption that making the United States Christian (again) is a priority.  It feeds anti-Semitic, anti-Islam and anti-anything-other-than-Christianity-sentiments.  It fuels the fires of intolerance and, more importantly, distorts our actual religious history.

Most of us learned a version of history that goes something like this. The Pilgrims came on the Mayflower in search of religious freedom in 1620.  The Puritans soon followed.  Other religious groups that came in the early centuries of the new British settlements found a wonderful welcome and freedom to establish their own houses of worship without interference.

The problem with this narrative is that it’s bullshit.

In 1564, fifty years before the Mayflower and the Puritans, a French Huguenot settlement was founded at Fort Caroline (Florida).  In 1565 the Spanish (Catholics) established a base at Saint Augustine and then wiped out the Huguenots.  The antipathy between Protestants and Catholics would continue for generations.

In 1620 a group of Puritans dissented from inside the Church of England, boarded the Mayflower to flee increasing persecution, and landed in Massachusetts.  This group became known as the Pilgrims.  Rather than establish religious freedom, they foisted the strictest forms of Puritanism onto people as they settled in Massachusetts.   

The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to British North America sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any society. Which religion was a topic of hot debate. Both groups believed there was one true religion and that it was the duty of civil authorities to impose it.  This included the use of force when necessary. Those who refused to comply, like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, were banished from the Colony.  Others were executed as heretics.

While this appears to have the veneer of being a “Christian nation” there were many religious expressions in the early settlements.  Quakers, Mennonites, Moravians, Lutherans, Catholics and Jews were among the early settlers in the British colonies.  It was not a happy melting pot of religious traditions. There was fear and hatred of religious traditions other than one’s own.  

There is a difference between trying to establish the United States as a Christian nation and simply looking for the freedom to pursue religious passions without interference from the state.  This was futile, since most colonies had established state churches funded with tax money.  Despite their best efforts to force conformity, there were always multiple expressions of religious life, both Christian and non-Christian.

Roger Williams settled the colony of Rhode Island as a refuge for those fleeing religious persecution in other colonies.  It is ironic that the religious freedom the Puritans sought for themselves in coming to the New World, they then denied to everyone else. 

 Other motivations were also at work.  The Mayflower trip was financed by Spain, in the hope of discovering new trade routes and bringing back goods to sell on the open market.  By 1640 New Amsterdam, later known as New York, became a focus for international trade.  Entrepreneurs flocked to the new world looking for opportunities to market new goods in Europe and bring European goods to settlers.

The entrepreneurial influence in the colonies cannot be overstated.  To think that the colonies were all about Christianity and making a Christian nation is a gross oversimplification of the complex and conflict filled history as well as the financial motivations of those early settlers.

 It would be years before this divisive past played itself out.  In 1790 President Washington addressed the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island: “All possess a like liberty of conscience and immunity of citizenship…For happily the Government of the United states, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

Later in his speech he said, “May the children of the Stock of Abraham (Jews, Christians and Muslims) continue to merit and enjoy the good will of other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”  

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were in absolute agreement that freedom of religion was essential for a successful society.  In 1786 the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom became the law of the land. Jefferson wrote that the law “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

Our forebears were clear, the United States was to have a secular government and there would be no religious litmus test for its leaders.  It was a hard won battle after the years of state run churches in most of the colonies.  The early settlers repeated the history they fled from in Europe with the same fractious consequences.

It is high time we learned from history. The United States never was, nor was it intended to be, a Christian nation. The first Amendment states clearly that the state is to have no role in establishing or maintaining any religious tradition. 

The rising tide of intolerance fueled by white evangelical religious traditions is taking this nation dangerously close to overlap in the spheres of church and state.  History bears ample witness to the damage done to both institutions when this happens.  We are a nation of many religions and no religion.  We are a nation where our forebears envisioned each individual having the freedom to worship in the manner of her/his choice. 

Let’s not lose sight of the long game for the sake of political gain in the moment.  There is too much at stake.