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Is America a Christian nation? The Founding Fathers sure thought it was. The first act of the first US Congress was to install a chaplain to open every session of Congress with prayer. The signers of the Declaration of Independence unanimously declared that men had been "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

The most important treaty ever signed by the United States was the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783 by representatives of the fledgling US government and emissaries of Great Britain. The first words of the treaty are: "In the Name of the most Holy and undivided Trinity."

At the Constitutional Convention when debate had reached an impasse and it appeared that there might be no constitution, Dr. Benjamin Franklin‚s solution was to call for prayer. And in the case of the Holy Trinity Church, no less than the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled that, "Our civilization and institutions are emphatically Christian."

So, is America a Christian nation? These men thought it was, and said so in their writings and speeches:

George Washington

John Adams

Thomas Jefferson

Andrew Jackson

Abraham Lincoln

William McKinley

Teddy Roosevelt

Woodrow Wilson

Herbert Hoover

Franklin Roosevelt

Harry Truman

Dwight Eisenhower

John F. Kennedy

Ronald Reagan

Before the invasion of Normandy, the greatest battle in history, President Franklin Roosevelt led the nation in a six minute prayer for protection. The first part of the prayer was:

"Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. "

After that war ended, Congress declared that our national motto would forever be, "In God we Trust."

John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other."

Patrick Henry: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Samuel Adams, who is known as "The Father of the American Revolution," said "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."

Samuel Chase was a Justice of the US Supreme Court and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was Chief Justice of the State of Maryland, when he ruled in 1799 (in Runkel v Winemiller): "By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion."

John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, stated, "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, wrote, "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."

Even Harry Truman, not the most conservative of presidents, said, "This is a Christian nation -- 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∑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."

All of these are quite a contrast to the view of the current occupant of the White House. In his first appearance in a Muslim nation as president, on April 6 in Turkey, Barrack Obama said, "Although we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation."

I wonder who is correct? The men who risked their lives to birth this nation, then wrote our founding documents, and almost every president who followed them? Or the man who was tutored by Communists and Socialists and who for over 20 years attended a "church" where the pastor implored God to "damn America"?

Dr. Tom Barrett
Conservative Truth (Publisher, Editor)

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Biography - Dr. Tom Barrett

Dr. Tom Barrett has been an ordained minister for 30 years. He has written for local and national publications for most of his life, and has authored several non-fiction books. He has been interviewed on many TV and radio programs, and speaks at seminars nationwide. Tom is the editor and publisher of Conservative Truth, an email newsletter read by over fifty thousand weekly which focuses on moral and political issues from a Biblical viewpoint.

Tom is Publisher and Editor of ConservativeTruth.org.

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