by Ramon Coleman

Christian Nation?

I recently went on the internet to see what people were saying about the United States being a Christian Nation. There were almost 10 million hits with some claiming we are a Christian nation and others saying we are not and never were. As you would expect, you can find many quotes from past Presidents to founding fathers using Christianity as a basis for this country’s beginnings and its laws.
Samuel Adams, who has been called ‘The Father of the American Revolution’ wrote The Rights of the Colonists in 1772, which stated:
“The rights of the colonists as Christians...may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institution of the Great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.”
Our sixth President, John Quincy Adams said
“From the day of the Declaration...they [the American people] were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of The Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct”
John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court said:
“Providence has given to our people the choice of their ruler, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
Woodrow Wilson, in his election campaign for President, made this point:
“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.... America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”
In 1947 President Harry Truman wrote to Pope Pius XII that, “This is a Christian nation.” I don’t think he meant that the United States has an official or legally-preferred religion or church. Nor did he mean to slight adherents of non-Christian religions. But he certainly did mean to recognize that this nation, its institutions and laws, was founded on Biblical principles basic to Christianity and to Judaism from which it flowed. As he told an Attorney General’s Conference in 1950,
“The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and Saint Matthew, from Isaiah and Saint Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”
I wonder how close to this we are today