Was the United States Founded as a Christian Nation?

On May 1, 2025, during a National Day of Prayer event at the White House, President Donald Trump made remarks that cast doubt on the traditional principle of separation between church and state.

In conjunction with these comments, President Trump signed an executive order establishing a presidential commission on religious liberty. This commission aims to evaluate threats to religious freedom in the United States and suggest strategies to enhance religious protections.

 

These actions have sparked discussions about the role of religion in government and the interpretation of the First Amendment.

 

The question of whether the United States was founded on Christian principles invites intense debate. American Christian Nationalists insist that America’s founding fathers built the nation firmly atop the tenets of Christianity, while others argue that the country was deliberately designed to be religiously neutral. The USA is a predominantly Christian nation today. But was it the intention of the founding fathers to chisel Christianity into the bedrock of our national identity?

A closer look at the founding documents, historical context, and the words of the Founders themselves shows a clear truth: the U.S. government was not founded on Christian principles, but rather on Enlightenment ideals that emphasized reason, liberty, and the separation of church and state.

 

The clearest evidence lies in the U.S. Constitution itself. Unlike earlier colonial documents, the Constitution contains no reference to God, Jesus Christ, or Christianity. Its focus is firmly secular, establishing a government rooted in the consent of the governed. The First Amendment states plainly, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” erecting a legal barrier between religion and government. The Founders sought to create a society where belief was a personal choice, not a civic mandate.

 

Many of the individuals involved in America’s founding were religious men, but their political philosophy was shaped more by the Enlightenment than by any specific theology. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, famously edited his own version of the Bible; cutting out all references to miracles and divine intervention, leaving only Jesus’s moral teachings. Jefferson wrote in 1813, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.”

 

If you’re curious, you can actually see the Jefferson Bible on display at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. It shows the passages Jefferson cut from the Bible because he believed that these verses were added much later in the development of the Christian scriptures. (He was right.)

 

James Madison, often called the “Father of the Constitution,” was equally cautious about mingling church and state. In 1785, he warned in his “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” that government involvement in religion would inevitably corrupt both: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?” Madison’s words reflect a deep commitment to religious liberty, not religious dominance.

 

The Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 1797, offers one of the most unambiguous statements on this issue. Article 11 of the treaty reads, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…” This public, diplomatic declaration, made just a decade after the Constitution was written, confirms that the young republic understood itself as secular, even on the international stage.

 

Individual Founders left behind a wide variety of comments that underscore their complex relationship with religion. Benjamin Franklin, a Deist who believed in God but doubted organized religion, remarked during the Constitutional Convention: “When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.” Franklin believed that religion should not require government protection if it were truly divinely ordained.

 

Similarly, John Adams, America’s second president, acknowledged the importance of religion for morality but warned against religious rule: “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Adams recognized that while Christianity, and religion generally, could inspire virtue, the power of governance had to remain separate.

 

It would be inaccurate to deny that Christian culture shaped many aspects of American society. Christian ethics , such as ideas of charity, justice, and human dignity, were embedded in Western thought and thus influenced many founders. However, these values are not uniquely Christian; they were also present in Greco-Roman philosophy, English common law, and Enlightenment humanism.

 

America was built not on Christianity, but on a profound respect for individual freedom, including freedom of religion. The Founders envisioned a nation where government did not dictate faith, and where citizens could worship as they wished, or not at all. To claim otherwise is to misunderstand both their intentions and their legacy. As Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Adams so clearly demonstrated in word and deed, the foundation of the United States is not religious orthodoxy, but liberty.