Just a quick collection of quotes that I think go a long way to discredit the notion that America was founded as a Christian nation or that the primary founding fathers were crazy about the notion of Christianity and certainly not Christianity playing a role in our government.
John Adams
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." (well not spoken, but he wrote it in the Treaty of Tripoli)
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
"But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed."
"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; […] Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
Thomas Jefferson
denied a nation day of fasting, citing "a wall of separation between Church and State".
"I promised you a letter on Christianity […] The delusion...on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favourite hope of an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own...the returning good sense of our country threatens abortion of their hopes and they (the preachers) believe that any portion of power confided to me (such as being elected president), will be excerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: FOR I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD, ETERNAL HOSTILITY AGAINST EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN."
"I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction, at length,...that Christianity is part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is inconrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed...What a conspiracy this, between Church and State."
"But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
There are even quotes from Thomas Jefferson that showed how George Washington went out of his way to not answer questions from clergy about his religion belief in or not in Christianity.
Benjamin Franklin
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible... I soon became a thorough deist"
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
"Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another."
James Madison
"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?"
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
Thomas Paine
- I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
The Constitution
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,"
Not to mention the great irony of the fact that we founded America while fleeing from the religious tyranny of Great Britain.
