America: Has It Ever Been A Christian Nation?

Great Question. Here are some of the arguments for both sides of this issue.

For Yes: We have historically had a very high church attendance percentage; Christian revivals including the two Great Awakenings, the 1858 Prayer Revival, and the Jesus Movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's; the Spiritual nature of some of the early colonists like the Pilgrims and the Puritan (who are not the same group as many believe); the Christian impulse behind the abolitionists and womens suffrage groups of the 1800's; our effort at Prohibition that, while failing in many ways, did come out of largely Christian influence; the number of Presidents that either directly claimed Christianity or whose writings and general governing philosophies (e.g. Washington, Lincoln) lead many to believe they were Christians.

For No: Slavery and the following racial segregation; the mistreatment of the Native Americans; the influence of Deism on some of the early Founding Fathers (e.g. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine); the failure of Prohibition to be effective; the rising Drug trade and other forms of crime; the general lawlessness which characterized parts of the Old West; the complete greed of some early colonists (e.g. the Jamestown settlers) and 19th century businessmen who subjected their workers to slave-like conditions.

I believe the best way to say it is the following: America is the closest example of a genuinely Christian nation that one can find in all of history. The style of our government (while having some roots in pagan cultures) reflects more closely Christian values than any other form of government that has been designed. However, this does not mean that all Americans have been Christian or that our application of Christian values has been perfect (and even sometimes we have been completely non-Christian about it).

The above statement will not win any prizes for articulation of thought (awkward as it is in places) yet I believe it is a more balanced view of American thought than simplistic extremes of some Christians ("Every last Founding Father was a Christian") or the simplistic extremes of our cultural elite today, which includes many historians ("The Founding Fathers were largely Deist and divorced their religious views from implementation of their political philosophy") or the simplistic extremes of America haters ("They were all maniacal psychopaths").

It is not really an accurate statement to say that "America is a Christian nation" as the no evidence above will expose. It is also not accurate to say that "America has never been a Christian nation" as the yes evidence above exposes. The term "A Christian nation" is somewhat subjective and all of American history shows that true Christianity and Paganism (often disguised as Christianity) have been at war since Day One of our history. No better example of this conflict exists than the personal war that went on inside Christopher Columbus. He had a Christian vision of the purpose of his voyages yet succumbed to the Pagan influence of greed for gold once he got to our shores. Another great Contrast in this areas is the differing saga of the Jamestown colony and the Plymouth colony. The former emphasized greed and the latter emphasized God.

The war between Christianity and Paganism continues today in America, as it likely will until the day America ends.