Is the U.S. a Christian Nation?

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That the Constitution was godless and opened the door for non-Christians to serve in government did not go unnoticed. Indeed, it was bitterly attacked for its failure to honor God and to give Christianity a favored place. To abandon the ideal of a Christian Commonwealth was to invite God’s wrath or, at best, the withdrawal of his favor. In newspapers, pamphlets, sermons, letters, and arguments in the ratification debates, troubled citizens complained that "pagans, deists (“abominable wretches”), and Mahometans [who ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity] might obtain offices among us." “A Turk, a Jew, [a papist], and what is worse than all, a Universalist, may be President of the United States.” A Quaker president could “deprive us of the means of defence” And since the Constitution stupidly gives command of the whole militia to the president, "should [the president] hereafter be a Jew, our dear posterity may be ordered to rebuild Jerusalem."

For their part, the few Jews in America expressed gratitude, thanking George Washington for his part in creating a government that “enfranchised us with all the privileges and immunities of free citizens, and initiated us into the grand mass of legislative mechanism.” Constitutional scholar William Lee Miller has written that, “in the framing of Article VI, . . . the new nation was electing to be nonreligious in its civil life.”

It was reported that, asked why the Constitution fails to mention God, Alexander Hamilton replied, “We forgot.” But the omission of God was neither an oversight nor, in the minds of the Framers, a slight. That gathering of grave young men contained some remarkable thinkers and fine writers. Had they wanted to establish a Christian nation, they could have stated the matter quite plainly.