In my recent “America at 250” sermon, I made the case that America had a Christian founding. This does not mean everyone was a Christian obviously, nor does it mean that our system of government or culture were without any flaws. But the people, the culture, and the institutions that defined America from the colonial era into our early history were decidedly Christian.
Making this claim was not controversial until relatively recently. But history is one of the most contested areas in the culture war. The fastest way to change a people’s God is to change their story. Progressives know this and they have been attempting to remake America’s past so they can control her future. The 1619 Project, for example, has sought to argue that America was founded on slavery and racism. Some Democrat politicians are claiming Somalians built America (seriously!). Howard Zinn engaged in a massive rewriting of American history with his 1980 book, “A People’s History of the United States,” which was incredibly influential in academia. Zinn argued that the whole of American history is based on theft and oppression, while simultaneously praising Soviet and Chinese Marxists. Zinn’s effectiveness can be seen in collapsing patriotism; especially among young people, there is more shame than pride in being American. But we need to understand that historical revisionism is a sin (I preached on this here: https://www.trinity-pres.net/audio/10.27.24%20Sunday%20Sermon.%20Rich%20Lusk.mp3). Zinn has been debunked in many places, most especially in a book by Mary Grabar. But his work continues to be influential on the way American history is taught from elementary schools through graduate schools.
Those who want to claim America was a secular nation from the start can make their case and get traction, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, because it has some plausibility if we only look on the surface.
Back up to the colonial era. The Puritans who settled in Massachusetts created one of the godliest societies in history. In Puritan Massachusetts, most everyone professed faith in Christ and lived like a Christian. The civil law was largely based upon the Bible. The literacy rate was nearly 100% because they wanted everyone to be able to read the Bible. Crime was low. Poverty was low. Family stability was high. Fathers catechized and disciplined their children. Church attendance was the norm. They set out to be a model Christian society – a city on a hill – and they largely succeeded. Other colonies were not far behind.
By the time the colonists declared independence, we were still largely a Christian people. While some churches have moved away from orthodoxy into Unitarianism and Deism, the Great Awakening, led by men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, largely got the church back on track.
The majority of of officers and soldiers in the Continental Army were not just professing Protestant Christians; they were Calvinists who knew their Bibles well. The historical record shows that clearly.
What about our founding document, the Declaration of Independence? It is widely recognized that the primary author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was not an orthodox Christian. he had been baptized into the Anglican church and attended church regularly most of his life. His unorthodox beliefs were held very privately until much later in his life. But he knew when he wrote the Declaration he was not writing a personal statement but a national statement. He knew the Bible well, he respected the Christian tradition, and perhaps most importantly, he knew that when he was tasked with drafting the Declaration, he was writing on behalf of a largely Christian people. He knew he needed to write a document using their categories if it was going to be accepted and adopted.
So here’s the key question: When the Declaration invokes God – when it says all men are CREATED equal and endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights, when it speaks of the “laws of nature and nature’s God,” what God is in view? Is it the Christian God or some other god? Which God or god underwrites these rights? Further, when the Declaration appeals to the Supreme Judge, when it speaks of the protection of Divine Providence, who is this judge and providential ruler of history?
Well, survey all the religions and gods that have been believed in in history. How many religions or gods fit the description in the Declaration? How many religions, like the Declaration, have a singular God who is Creator and providential Ruler of all things? Not many. Most religions and their gods are already eliminated. We can rule out all ancient pagan religions, the Eastern religions, and to so-called gods of the philosophers. It also rules out the “watchmaker” god of Deism.
So now ask, How many religions teach there is a divine law embedded in nature, in the natural design of the world? And that the God who embedded his law in nature (so that nature reveals his character and puts demands on his creatures, per the Declaration) has bestowed on all men certain unalienable rights? And that civil government has been ordained to secure those rights, and thus is limited in its power? This rules out any kind of secularism or humanism. It also rules out Islam, which has no doctrine of natural rights or limited government, and no institutional distinction between mosque and state the way the First Amendment to the American Constitution distinguishes the institution of civil government and the church.
By process of elimination, there is only one religion and only one God who fits the description of the Declaration: The God revealed in the Bible and believed in by Christians. No other historical religion has a God like this, or could support the legal case made in the Declaration. Whatever Jefferson’s personal beliefs may have been, he was most certainly a cultural Christians, and the Declaration he principally authored reflects Christian conviction.
This means that if we stop believing in the God of the Bible, we lose the foundation on which our nation and its system of government rests. It means we lose the source and foundation of our rights and everything else the Declaration talks about.
Frankly, this is why American progressives are not very patriotic (see: https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/06/the-democrats-patriotism-gap/). Progressives know deep down that their secular worldview is at odds with America’s Christian roots. They do not like America because they do not like the faith that formed our nation.
America has always been flawed. Americans have always been sinners. America institutions have always been imperfect. But we have a glorious heritage of faith and freedom, of courage and virtue. Our nation is rooted in Christian faith. We should not let anyone take that away from us.
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Sometimes those who want to argue against America’s Christian founding and foundations will claim America has always been secular, and they will point to the first amendment as proof: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And then these secularists will go on to quote Jefferson about a “wall of separation” between church and state, ignoring the context in which Jefferson wrote those words. When Jefferson spoke of the “wall,” he was arguing the state should not interfere in the life of churches, not that Christians have to keep their faith out of the public square. Jefferson did indeed express a desire to keep religion in a private box elsewhere, as a way of maintaining social peace, but that was not his purpose when he spoke about the “wall.”
The first amendment’s meaning has changed in the American consciousness over time. Originally, it was a way of acknowledging that Americans belong to many different Christian denominations, many states already had established churches at the state level, and there would never be a federally established church in America. The context was the broad Reformational Protestantism that characterized America at its founding. What the framers of the first amendment were getting at it can be seen in the American revisions to the Westminster Confession, chapter 23, adopted in 1787:
“Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.”
These Americanized Presbyterians still believed the Christian faith should have a privileged position in society. The civil magistrate still had a duty to promote the Christian faith. But state was not to favor one Christian denomination over another. The kind of religious freedom envisioned was a specifically Christian freedom — not freedom for Muslims or Hindus or Satanists.
Today, the first amendment is viewed as a religious free-for-all. Protestant Christians must not be privileged in any way over any other faith or religion. If anything, secualrism must be privileged. In other words, we have reversed and inverted the meaning of the first amendment.
The transformation of the first amendment made America safe for Roman Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and others (though not without a struggle). The problem, of course, is that some false religions are impossible to integrate into the American system. Adherents of certain religions simply cannot be assimilated, and thus their presence in America threatens America’s existence. This is the irony of liberalism: while America has been a global superpower, able to withstand any enemy from the outside, it opened the door to subversion from within — all in the name of the highest liberal ideal, “freedom,” and specifically “freedom of religion.”
To give a sense of how crazy the liberal way of thinking can be, consider that Locke did not object to Muslims coming to live in his idealized liberal republic, but he did object to Roman Catholics, precisely because Catholics have a transnational loyalty to thew pope, and thus could not be trusted to be good citizens.
Locke was wrong on multiple counts: (A) Roman Catholics certainly changed the makeup of America, and often for the worse, but Catholics in general have subordinated their religious loyalty to the state (see JFK’s 1960 comments as he was running to be the first Catholic president: he claimed he believed in a liberal order where no pope or pastor would tell a civil magistrate how to govern, and no civil magistrate would tell a pope or pastor how to do his job; in other words, even Catholics were willing to privatize their religion to fit into the American project). (B) Muslims have a higher loyalty to sharia than to the American constitutional order. We are now seeing plainly that Muslims intend to fundamentally conquer and transform America. They do not intend to assimilate but to overtake. The Democrats think they are using Muslims to usher in their preferred policies, but it is more likely the other way around. Sharia is simply not compatible with the American constitutional order. Contrary to Locke, Islam and Western republican forms of government simply cannot co-exist. (C) Classic Reformed Protestant is just as public as strict Roman Catholicism. While evangelicals, fundamentalists, and pietists have all too easily settled for a privatized faith, this is certainly not the historic Protestant faith, which insisted on a recognition of Christ’s public lordship over every square inch of creation, and treated the Bible as a political text as much as a soteriological and liturgical text.
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The original purpose of the first amendment was not to keep our politics or culture secular. How could it, when our politics and culture were deeply religious at the time the first amendment was passed? The purpose was not to keep Christians out of government; it was to keep the government out of the church. Not only did many of the original states have established denominations, many of them had religious test oaths for holding civil office. These were leftovers from the colonial era and were not always consistently enforced, but they were not matters of mere symbolism either. Many of early our states recognized that civil government must have a religious founding in order to be legitimate. Many of our early states only wanted Christians to hold public office.
The first amendment was largely born out of a desire to not repeat the religious wars that had rocked Europe after the Reformation (though the degree to which those were actually “wars of religion” rather than “wars of nationalism” is debatable.). Americans wanted to prevent the kind of religious tyranny that had arisen in Europe from taking hold in America. But in doing so, they opened the door to a different kind of tyranny – secular tyranny.
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When the first amendment was passed, 9 of the 13 states had established churches. They were different denominations – so obviously a federally established church would have caused conflict.
The first amendment prevents Congress from establishing one denomination as the official church of the USA (the way the Anglican church is the state church of Britain). I think that was wise. But note it only applied to Congress. While the later doctrine of incorporation has made the Bill of Rights in some way binding on the states, this was not its original design.
The first amendment was in no way intended to keep religion out of public life, even if that is how it has come to be used. Thus, when Oliver O’Donnovan says the first amendment was the symbolic end of Christendom, he has a point – but that understanding of the amendment was not the original intent, but rather a later development. One could argue (as Caldwell has) that we are actually no longer functioning under the original constitutional order; we have a series of revolutions, each one ushering a new de facto constitution even if the words on the paper have not changed.
The very next day after drafting what would become the first amendment (along with other sections of the Bill of Rights), Congress passed a resolution asking President Washington to proclaim a national day of prayer and thanksgiving to acknowledge God’s role in the nation’s founding and the new government. Washington complied and issued that proclamation, calling for a national day of thanksgiving on November 26, 1789. In that proclamation, he pointed out that all nations have the duty to obey God and acknowledge his rule. He called on Americans to thank God for the many signal favors he showed our nation. He asked Americans to pray to the Lord and Ruler of nations (who could that be?) to pardon our transgressions and to enable us to fulfill our duties properly and punctually.
Joseph Story was one of our first SCOTUS justices, and he wrote a famous 3 volume commentary on the constitution. This is what he said about the first amendment (paraphrased for modern clarity): “The real object of the amendment was not to countenance, much less advance Islam or Judaism or atheism, by prostrating Christianity, but rather to exclude all rivalry among Christian denominations and to prevent any national church establishment.”
All American Christians knew at that time that the Bible teaches church and state are distinct institutions/spheres, each with its own officers and functions. But separation of church and state was not understood as separation of God and state, or religion and state, or morality and state. Both church and state operate under reign of Christ and are accountable to him and his Word.
We do not have, not should we have, an established church. But the “free exercise” clause meant that Christians would be free to influence and shape the laws and culture of our nation in accord with Scripture.
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Something else needs to be considered with regard to Jefferson and the Declaration. In Jefferson’s original draft, when writing about man’s creation and his rights, he said, “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” Ben Franklin requested changing “sacred and undeniable” to “self-evident.”
This was an unfortunate change (as was the change made from Jefferson’s original draft on slavery – but that’s a discussion for another day). The word “sacred” is an important word. It had a very specific meaning at that time. Noah Wester’s 1828 dictionary gives us a sense of its understanding in that era. Here are the first several definitions:
“1. Holy; pertaining to God or to his worship; separated from common secular uses and consecrated to God and his service; as a sacred place; a sacred day; a sacred feast; sacred service; sacred orders.
2. Proceeding from God and containing religious precepts; as the sacred books of the Old and New Testament.
3. Narrating or writing facts respecting God and holy things; as a sacred historian.”
“Sacred” suggested divine revelation. These truths about our rights are known because God has revealed them. We know these things from Scripture.
The change to “self-evident” suggests something very different. It makes it sound as if these truths about human rights are obvious to every reasonable person. There is no need for revelation; they can be accessed through human rationality independently of revelation.
Here’s the problem with Franklin’s change: These truths are most certainly not “self-evident” to everyone. We actually need the Bible to make the argument Jefferson was making. But unfortunately the allusion to the Bible was taken out.
The fact that all men are created equal (before the law), with certain unalienable rights was NOT self-evident to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It’s not self-evident to atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus. These truths are only self-evident to a Christian people who are steeped in the sacred Scriptures. They are indeed sacred truths, not self-evident truths.
But the change from “sacred” to “self-evident” was made. And that change opened the door to enthroning reason and experience in the place of Scripture. That change opened the door to secularism and human autonomy. If we do not need God to know we have rights, do we need God to define those rights? Before the Declaration was even adopted, it was being secularized.
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The Constitution does not make any explicit reference to Jesus, the Trinity, or the Bible (other than its dating in the year of our Lord – which is not insignificant, but also not fully adequate). The founders could have made their Christian commitments explicit. They chose not to. Another fateful choice. Of course, the Constitution does acknowledge Sunday as a holy day on which no offical work is to be done, and it does embody certain Christian principles (like total depravity), but it left implicit what should have been made explicit.
Why is this? One answer (argued forcefully by Rushdoony) is that the Constitution was never intended to be anything more than a procedural document. The Declaration provided the “American philosophy,” while the Constitution provided the procedures for the American system.
That may very well be true, and I’m inclined to think it’s a good explanation in historical context (why state what everyone already knows?), but it was still naive. The fact that the Christian roots of the constitution are left implicit, largely obscured, once again opened the door to highjacking the Constitution and secularizing it.
There were Christians concerned about this at the time of the Constitution’s adopting. The heirs of the Scottish Covenanter tradition in America largely dissented from the Constitution for just this reason. They obviously wanted something more like the 1638 Scottish National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant – they wanted America to explicitly enter in covenant with God as a Christian nation. They wanted their fundamental principles of Christ’s mediatorial kingship over the nations, the duty of civil magistrates to uphold the true religion, and the Bible as the lawbook of Christ’s kingdom to be openly acknowledged. Their slogan “no king but Christ” had been popular in the colonial era leading up the war for independence. They wanted a government openly committed to suppressing blasphemy, heresy, idolatry, and immorality. That’s not what they got with the American system.
Some Presbyterian pastors wrote to George Washington with these concerns shortly after he was inaugurated into office. They expressed concern that the Christian faith was not explicitly acknowledged in the Constitution: “We would not have been alone in rejoicing to see some explicit acknowledgement of the only God and Jesus Christ whom he sent inserted somewhere in our nation’s Magna Carta.” But then these Presbyterian pastors said their fears were calmed by the fact that Washington’s first act as President was to attend the divine service (public worship), setting an example for his successors. They praised Washington for his obvious Christian character, seen in strict Sabbath observance, calling the nation to prayer, etc. (The complete story is told in Peter Lillback’s book on Washington.)
I think those Presbyterian pastors were short-sighted to back off of their intial concerns. Those concerns were well-founded, as subsequent history shows. What would happen when you got a President who did not share Washington’s piety? Obviously the last 200 years have shown us what could happen – a lot could go wrong! That’s not to say some explicit acknowledgment of Christ in our Constitution would have preserved our national faith. Faithful words on a paper are not the same as faithfulness in the hearts of the people. But it would served as one more firewall against much of the progressive agenda that has been foisted upon us.
There were actually Presbyterian and Reformed Christians who worked from early in our history up into the 1950s to revise our Constitution so it acknowledged Christ as Lord. I chronicle the role of Presbyterian ruling elder and SCOTUS justice William Strong’s role in that movement here: https://tpcpastorspage.com/2025/12/30/the-national-association-of-evangelicals-and-christian-nationalism/. This tweet is a summary:
From the 1860s into the 1950s, the National Reform Association (with strong ties to some Reformed and Presbyterian churches) sought get the Constitution amended to contain an explicit recognition of Jesus’ lordship.
SCOTUS Associate Justice William Strong (1808–1895, served 1870–1880) was a key supporter and leader (president) of the NRA.
He endorsed and promoted the organization’s platform calling for a “Christian amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, acknowledging:
•Almighty God as the author of the nation’s existence and source of its authority,
•Jesus Christ as its ruler,
•the Bible as the fountain of its laws and the supreme rule of its conduct.
This language appears in NRA documents, such as the 1872 “Call for a National Convention” (which Strong signed as president) and related proceedings. Strong actively championed it as a Presbyterian ruling elder and jurist.
In 1873, Strong warned that the Constitution must either be made “explicitly Christian” or else Christianity would be “obliterated” from every U.S. institution. He beleived that the amendment was necessary is we were going to keep Christian faith in the public educational system (A. A. Hodge and R. L. Dabney were sounding the alarm about rising secualrism in the public schools at this same time.)
He also authored works like “Two Lectures Upon the Relations of Civil Law to Church Polity, Discipline, and Property” (1875), exploring connections between civil law, Christianity, and moral principles.
The furthest these efforts ever got was a Congressional House Committee in 1954.
Tis a shame it never happened. Strong’s warnings were not heeded and what he feared – the obliteration of Christian faith from American public life and institutions – largely came to pass.
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Joseph Story on the proper interpretation of the first amendment:
“Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation…
It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape…
The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution…”
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