Did America Have a Christian Founding?

At Heritage.org

… In a new essay, Mark David Hall, a scholar of religion and the Founding, shows how the two most popular answers to the query—“Of course not!” and “Absolutely!”—distort the Founders’ views.

Hall reminds fervent secularists that the Founders did not support a strict separation of church and state that requires political leaders to avoid religious language and public spaces to be stripped of religious symbols. And he cautions those who would succumb to an overly zealous Christian reading of the Founding by reminding them that the Founders did not create a theocracy and that they were, to a person, committed to protecting the religious liberties of all citizens, regardless of faith, so long as they “demean themselves as good citizens.”

Hall does, however, recognize the influence that Christian ideas had on the Founders and identifies the three major areas of agreement with respect to religious liberty and church–state relations at the time of the Founding:

1. Religious liberty is a right for all—Christian and non-Christian alike—and must be protected;
2. The national government may not create an established church; and
3. Religious references and appeals to God are appropriate in the public square.

In short, while America did not have a Christian Founding in the sense of creating a theocracy, its Founding was deeply shaped by Christian moral truths. More importantly, it created a regime that was hospitable to Christians but also to practitioners of other religions.

Read it all…