Recently, I wrote a long essay criticizing Mark Brennan's article in Chronicles Magazine arguing that Gordon Wood was wrong to identify America as a "creedal nation," because this would contradict the history of "America's Anglo-Protestant culture" as the real identity of the American nation. Paul Gottfried then defended Brennan's argument against my criticism, and I wrote a response to Gottfried's defense.
If you read my original essay and Gottfried's defense of Brennan, you will notice that Gottfried is totally silent about my historical evidence. This is strange because both Brennan and Gottfried insist that all the historical evidence is in their favor. Most remarkable is their silence about the constitutional evidence that those who wrote and ratified the Constitution and the first ten amendments did not see America as an Anglo-Protestant nation. But since I wrote only two paragraphs on the constitutional evidence, I decided that I should say more about this.
My main idea is that what we see in the Constitution is the influence of Roger Williams' principles of toleration, religious liberty, and a "wall of separation" between church and state. Baptist preachers like Isaac Balbus and John Leland preserved the legacy of Williams by arguing for religious liberty in Virginia, and they were influential with Virginia political leaders like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
THE FIRST FOUNDING FATHER
Who was the First Founding Father of America?
Some scholars say it was John Winthrop, who led the Puritan founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630--the "shining city on a hill" and all that (Bremer 2003).
Others say it was Roger Williams, who founded the city of Providence (later incorporated into Rhode Island) in 1637 (Johnson 2015).
There is some truth in both claims. But we should see that the Puritan theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first founding of illiberal America, while the establishment of religious liberty and separation of church and state in Providence was the first founding of liberal America.
We should also see that the liberal America of Williams eventually prevailed over the illiberal America of Winthrop. Because while the legacy of Puritan theocracy has dwindled to almost nothing today, the principles of religious liberty and separation of church and state established by Williams have been foundational for American political culture.
When these principles are combined with freedom of speech and of the press in the First Amendment, this establishes liberal America as an open society with freedom of thought and speech that allows for the free pursuit of both philosophic or scientific understanding and religious experience, with an open debate over Reason versus Revelation.
In his book Illiberal America, Steven Hahn rightly begins his history of illiberal America with Winthrop and the theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (49-63). But then he passes over Williams in four sentences (54, 60, 63, 70), and he does not allow his reader to see how in the debate between Winthrop's illiberal America and Williams' liberal America, Williams' arguments eventually (over 200 years) prevailed. As one can see, for example, in the history of state-established religion in Massachusetts (Witte and Latterell 2019).
This sets the pattern for Hahn's rhetorical strategy throughout his book. He moves through nine periods of American history from the early 17th century to the present. For each period, he shows the emergence of some illiberal tradition of American history. But then he obscures the fact that each of these illiberal traditions has either been utterly defeated or seriously weakened by the success of liberalism. Hahn's deceptive rhetorical strategy then allows him to mistakenly claim that today Donald Trump and his MAGA movement manifest the triumphant convergence of all of America's illiberal traditions.
The influence of William's principles in shaping Liberal America can be seen in the text of the Constitution.
THE PREAMBLE
If the framers of the Constitution had wanted to identify America as a Christian nation, they would have done so in the Preamble. But they did not.
By contrast, it was common in the state constitutions to do that. For example, the Preamble to the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 affirmed "the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the Great Legislator of the Universe," and "devoutly imploring His direction in so interesting a design." And Article 2 declared that "it is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great creator and preserver of the universe." But there is no language like this anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.
The Constitution's silence about God provoked a debate that continues up to today. Some of the people who want to identify America as a "Christian nation" have said that the Constitution needs a "God Amendment." The most prominent example of this movement to put God into the Constitution was the National Reform Association that emerged during and after the American Civil War. This was a movement of evangelical Protestant ministers, theologians, academics, lawyers, and judges, who claimed that the Civil War was God's punishment of America for having a godless Constitution, and that this showed the need for amending the Constitution.
They proposed an amended version of the Preamble to the Constitution--with the new language in italics:
"We the People of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" (National Reform Association 1874, p. 7).
Beginning in 1864, the NRA formally petitioned President Lincoln and the Congress of the United States to support this amendment to the Constitution. The leaders of the NRA argued that they were not proposing an established church or a merging of church and state. Rather, they were proposing a constitutional recognition of the fact that America was a Christian nation, and this could be done without denying religious liberty and the separation of church and state. But they failed to persuade President Lincoln or the Congress to take their proposed amendment seriously.
OATH OR AFFIRMATION AND NO RELIGIOUS TEST
Article VI of the Constitution prescribes that all of the legislative, executive, and judicial officers of the United States and the several States "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
An oath is a solemn calling upon God as a witness. But an affirmation does not invoke God. Allowing people to consent to government by affirmation rather than a sacred oath followed the precedent set by Williams.
On August 20, 1637, Williams and 12 other people who had followed him to Providence signed the "Providence Agreement":
"We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for the public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a Towne fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civil things" (Lutz 1998: 162).
This is the beginning of Liberal America. Previously, Puritan settlers in America had signed "covenants" in which they took an oath "in the presence of God and one another" to combine themselves into a civil polity "for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith" (Mayflower Compact). But notice that in this Providence Agreement, they make a "promise" rather than an oath, God is not mentioned, and they submit themselves to the political body "only in civil things"--not in spiritual things. This was the first founding in America of government by the consent of the governed with a separation of church and state.
The "no religious test" clause was also in the tradition of Williams' liberalism. All of the state constitutions except for Virginia and New York had religious tests for their public officers. For example, the members of the Pennsylvania state legislature had to swear an oath: "I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."
Before the adoption of the Constitution, most of the states had a religious test requiring that the officers of government be Protestant Christians, and thus excluding Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and atheists. In some cases, even dissenting Protestants were excluded. With the passage of Thomas Jefferson's Statute on Religious Freedom in Virginia in 1786, Virginia became the first state to protect religious liberty. Then, in the decades after the adoption of the Constitution, all of the states dropped religious tests for office.
In the Ratification Debates, some of the Antifederalists objected to the "no religious test" clause. For example, at the North Carolina convention, David Caldwell objected to this as "an invitation for Jews, and Pagans of every kind, to come among us," and he worried that "this might endanger the character of the United States" (Bailyn 1993, 2:908). One speaker at the Massachusetts ratifying convention warned that no religious tests "would admit deists, atheists, etc., into the general government; and, people being apt to imitate the examples of the court, these principles would be disseminated, and, of course, a corruption of morals ensue."
This shows the primary reason why people wanted religious tests and the legal establishment of religion--without religion, there would be a "corruption of morals." That's why any proponent of religious liberty had to argue, as Williams did, that the "civil peace" of a community could be sustained by a natural moral sense without any particular religious belief. One can be good without God.
NO ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION
The First Amendment to the Constitution declares: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." By directing this prohibition only against the Congress, it seemed that state governments were free to have religious establishments. It was not until 1940 that the Supreme Court ruled that under the 14th Amendment, the "no establishment" rule applied to state governments. But the "no establishment" principle contributed to the movement to disestablish religion in the states.
Indicating their agreement with Williams, Madison and Jefferson attacked the establishment of a state-supported church in Virginia as a violation of the unalienable natural right to religious liberty. Their arguments were set forth in Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" and Jefferson's "Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty." Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" was a written petition opposing a bill introduced in the Virginia General Assembly in 1784 and 1785 that would have required the people of Virginia to pay an annual tax "for the support of the Christian religion or of some Christian church." Jefferson first proposed his "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" in 1779, but it was not ratified until 1786 (Johnson 2015, 273-79).
All of their arguments can be found in the writings of Williams. For example, Madison repeated Williams' claim that the New Testament shows that the early Christian churches were voluntary associations that did not depend on the support of human laws, because the spiritual kingdom of God was separated from the earthly kingdom of the world. Ecclesiastical establishments supported by human laws began with the Roman Emperor Constantine, over three hundred years after the first Christian churches (Madison 1973, 12).
Madison also agreed with Williams in arguing that not only did the Christian religion not depend on the support of human laws, but the civil government did not depend on an established religion, because as Williams indicated, the "civil peace" of a political community did not depend on the "spiritual peace" of a true church. After all, native Americans and pagans have kept the peace of their communities without belonging to the true church of God (BT, 72-73). Here Williams agreed with Pierre Bayle that a society of atheists could live together in a peaceful social order based on their natural moral sense without any religious beliefs.
When the Virginia General Assembly ratified Jefferson's "Statute of Religious Liberty" on January 16, 1786, that effectively ended the legal establishment of religion in Virginia.
Prior to the Revolution, most of the American colonies--with the exception of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania--had established churches supported by the government with compulsory taxation and various kinds of coercive persecution of religious dissenters. That began to change after 1776, as the states moved away from illiberal theocracy towards liberal toleration. By 1833, none of the states had an established religion. There were still some state laws enforcing religious belief--such as laws criminalizing blasphemy--but these laws were almost never enforced.
It is clear, then, that the "no establishment" clause denies that there is any constitutional support for the Christian Nationalism of people like House Speaker Mike Johnson.
After Mike Johnson was reelected Speaker of the House of Representatives speaking in his acceptance speech, he summarized the major points of Donald Trump's MAGA agenda for the Congress; and in doing that, he insisted that the election of Donald Trump and the new Republican Congress was an act of divine providence. He explained: "I don't believe in luck or coincidence. I believe in the idea of providence." As evidence that the belief in God's providential care for America is part of America's exceptional position in the world, he read what he identified as Thomas Jefferson's "Prayer for America," and he said that Jefferson had said this prayer each day of his eight years as president, and every day thereafter until his death. In the video above, this comes at around 14 minutes into the speech. You can also read the text of the speech at Johnson's congressional website.
Johnson identified Jefferson as "the primary author of the Declaration of Independence," in the context of noting that the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence would occur during the term of this 119th Congress in 2026.
Here's the prayer:
Almighty God who has given us this good land for our heritage. We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves, that people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues endow with thy spirit of wisdom, those whom in thy name, we entrust the authority of government. That there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the Earth. In times of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail, of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Johnson then immediately claimed that the election of the Republican Congress was an "act of providence," and that it was "providence that spared President Trump from the assassin's bullet." In this way, he suggested that God miraculously intervened to save Trump's life so that he could be elected president. I have written previously about this belief that Trump is God's Chosen One--like God's choice of Cyrus as the Messiah for Israel.
But contrary to what Johnson assumes, there is no evidence that this prayer was written by Jefferson. And Johnson has never even attempted to present such evidence.
Moreover, that Jefferson would not have written such a prayer is clear from his refusal as president to proclaim any national day of prayer for the country. In 1808, Samuel Miller (a minister) sent a letter to Jefferson asking him if he would be receptive to a request from some ministers that he issue a presidential proclamation of a day of "fasting, humiliation, and prayer" before God. Jefferson replied by saying that he would have to refuse such a request because it would violate the First Amendment's provision that "no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion." He did indicate, however, that since the First Amendment applies only to the national government, a state government might have the right to issue some such proclamation of a national day of prayer.
Apparently, Jefferson believed that a presidential prayer for America like that attributed to him by Johnson would have violated what Jefferson had called the "wall of separation between church and state" in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. He was responding to a letter from the Danbury Baptists congratulating him on his election in 1800 and endorsing his affirmation of "religious liberty--that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals," and therefore that civil government has no rightful power prescribe religious belief. This puts Jefferson on the side of Williams in asserting the "wall of separation" of church and state against the theocracy of Winthrop.
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH
The First Amendment declares: "Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." This language of "free exercise of religion" was first used in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1776. The Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was written by George Mason. The last section of that document affirmed religious liberty:
"That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other" (Art. 16).
Although this echoes some of the language of Williams about religious liberty, it still suggests some blending of religion and the state that Williams would have rejected. First, it uses religious language--"our Creator" and "Christian forbearance"--that suggests a governmental endorsement of Christian theism. Second, it does not clearly condemn the legal establishment of religion; and in fact, it was not interpreted as challenging the existence of the established church in Virginia.
James Madison was a delegate at the Virginia Convention. And he proposed alternative language for this section on religious liberty: "all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and therefore that no man or class of men ought, on account of religion to be invested with peculiar emoluments or privileges; nor subjected to any penalties or disabilities" (Johnson 2015, 267; Madison 1962, 1:170-75). The Convention rejected this language, presumably because this would have abolished the legal privileges of the established church in Virginia.
But then then Virginia Statue of Religious Liberty of 1786 affirmed religious liberty as part of the freedom of speech and thought by declaring that
. . . our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry . . . that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
The First Amendment echoes this affirmation of the natural right to "free argument and debate" in combining free exercise of religion with freedom of speech and press as expressing the freedom of the mind in thinking and speaking about all intellectual and religious questions.
THE NINTH AMENDMENT
In the Virginia Statue of Religious Liberty, Jefferson identified religious liberty as a "natural right." The term "natural right" does not appear in the Constitution, but the existence of natural rights is clearly implied in the Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." That this idea of rights "retained by the people" pointed to natural rights in the state of nature before the establishment of government was clear in Roger Sherman's draft of the Bill of Rights: "The people have certain natural rights which are retained by them when they enter into Society."
This suggests that religious liberty could be not only an enumerated right (in the First Amendment) but also a natural right. And therefore, there was no need for the Supreme Court to argue that the 14th Amendment had applied the First Amendment religious liberty right to state governments, because they should have said that it applied to the states insofar as it was a natural right.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMERS WERE NOT CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS
During his first term as President, Donald Trump first attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. While there, he was photographed proudly holding up his copy of a new book by Stephen Strang--God and Donald Trump. Strang is a leading Pentecostal evangelical who argues that Trump has been chosen by God to save America from secularism and to restore America as the Christian Nation.
He argues that the American founders established America as a Christian nation specially chosen by God to be under his providential care. Strang refers to "Benjamin Franklin's surprising declaration during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when he said famously, 'God governs in the affairs of men'" (xiv). And Strang says that the purpose of his book in telling the story of God's intervention in the election of 2016 is to confirm this idea "that God is involved in the affairs of men" (184).
Remarkably, however, Strang is silent about the circumstances of Franklin's declaration at the Constitutional Convention. On June 28th, 1787, the delegates appeared to be deadlocked in their debates because of the opposing interests of large States and small States. Benjamin Franklin rose to propose that the Convention invite some local minister to attend and offer daily prayers to invoke the aid of God. "If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God's notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?" According to a popular legend, the Convention accepted Franklin's proposal, and from the moment that they had these prayers, the deadlock was broken by God's providential intervention. This story has been repeated by many American ministers as evidence that the American Constitution was divinely inspired.
I first heard this story as a child when it was part of a sermon at the First Baptist Church of Wills Point, Texas. But years later, as a college student in a class on the American Founding, I was shocked when I looked at James Madison's notes for the Convention as edited by Max Farrand in the Yale University Press edition (particularly 1:450-52, 3:470-73, 3:499, 3:531), and I saw that this story was false. Franklin did make his proposal for daily prayer at the Convention. But the response was silence. Finally, Alexander Hamilton offered a quip about how they did not need "foreign aid." The motion was dropped.
This is not the action of good Christians. It is the action of men who respected religious belief, but who did not believe that God would answer their prayers and intervene to promote their political success. Since the meetings of the Convention were kept secret, they were not concerned about public appearances. If the meetings had been open to the public, they surely would have felt compelled to accept Franklin's motion.
Anyone who wants to turn the American Founders into good Christians must deny the most obvious facts about their words and deeds. On the other hand, one could argue that at least some of the American Founders were pious Christians in the tradition of Roger Williams, who thought that New Testament Christianity requires a "wall of separation" between church and state to protect the spiritual purity of the church and the political purity of the state. And therefore, it is blasphemy to pray for God's sanctification of a government.
The clear conclusion from all of this is that the idea that America is a Christian Nation is unconstitutional.
REFERENCES
Bremer, Francis J. 2003. John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father. New York: Oxford University Press.
Farrand, Max, ed. 1987. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. 4 vols. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Farrand's Records can be found online at the Library of Congress website.
Hahn, Steven. 2024. Illiberal America: A History. New York: Norton.
Johnson, Alan E. 2015. The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience. Pittsburgh, PA: Philosophia Publications.
Lutz, Donald S., ed. 1998. Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
National Reform Association. 1874. Proceedings of the Fifth National Reform Convention To Aid in Maintaining the Christian Features of the American Government, and Securing a Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Held in Pittsburg, February 4, 5, 1874, With a History of the Origin and Progress of the Movement. Philadelphia: Christian Statesman Association.
Strang, Stephen. 2017. God and Donald Trump. Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine.
Williams, Roger. 1963. The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. Vol. 3: Bloody Tenent of Persecution. Edited by Samuel L. Caldwell. New York: Russell and Russell.
Witte, John, and Justin Latterell. 2019. "The Last American Establishment: Massachusetts, 1780-1833. In Carl H. Esbeck and Jonathan Den Hartog, eds., Religious Dissent and Disestablishment: Church-State Relations in the New American States, 1776-1833, 399-424. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
