The below video from Mike Slater features a couple of relevant clips from Voddie Baucham and two substantive interviews. It is instructive and is worth watching:
Constitutional Conservatism and Biblical Christianity in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina
Would a Christian nation kill millions of INNOCENT PEOPLE as the US has done in the Middle East for Israel, which is pretty anti-Christian?
Christianity was a major positive influence on the culture that produced the founding. But Deism was really in vogue ~1776 (at least briefly) and seriously contributed to religious freedom and the emphasis on individual rights. Jefferson, Franklin, Thomas Payne, NC’s Willie Jones, and others were Deists. John and Abigail Adams leaned that way. Washington refused to take communion. (Of course, it should be said that Deists weren’t exactly anti-Christian, just rejecting more mystical aspects of it. And I also have the impression that some who toyed with Deism as they graduated from Princeton ~ 1776 went back towards conventional Christianity by the 1790s.)
The Founders were obviously a bit less Christian than the monarchies of Europe, which used Christianity as the very justification for their forms of government…which forced its subjects to pay for churches and taxed them extra for not attending. They were very seriously Christian.
In response to your first question, J. Sobran, no, they would not. There are a couple of complicating factors. Theology within certain sectors of Christianity got hijacked by the Zionist cause; and that influenced many Christians. In addition, the Islamists and Middle Easterners often did just enough to hurt us and/or provoke us for American Christians to rationalize getting involved.
With respect to both of your comments, yes, Deism was “a thing” back then. I am not sure that it was as pervasive or as dispositive as you seem to suggest. If we did a study of many of those names listed, we would find the truth is a bit more complicated. But there is no question that Christianity heavily informed the founding, and that the colonies at that time were overwhelmingly Christian.
Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe were also Deists. I think Nathaniel Macon was Deist was coming out of college (the Founding period) but became more conventionally Christian later in life.
A lot of the good Christianity contributed to the Founding had to do with the particular strain of Christianity that existed in America, informed by the tolerance of the Quakers and of John Locke (not the intolerant Puritanism of New England, Anglicanism of England, or Catholicism of France–all of which supported a serious degree of tyranny of authority over the individual).
To try and answer your question , TC, simply this was an interesting discussion and YES America is a Christian Nation . One of the guests mentioned USSC decision, circa 1892 and I dug into that case. here is some of what I found that helped me answer as I did:
Holy Trinity v, the USA….
The court held that the priest was not a “laborer” within the meaning of the statute, even though he was a foreign national. Page 143 U. S. 471 includes the following quotes:
subject, is granted and secured; but to revile, with malicious and blasphemous contempt, the religion professed by almost the whole community is an abuse of that right. Nor are we bound by any expressions in the Constitution, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at all, or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Mahomet or of the Grand Lama, and for this plain reason, that the case assumes that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors.
If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, “In the name of God, amen”; the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing everywhere under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation. In the face of all these, shall it be believed that a Congress of the United States intended to make it a misdemeanor for a church of this country to contract for the services of a Christian minister residing in another nation?
There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons. They are organic utterances. They speak the voice of the entire people. While because of a general recognition of this truth the question has seldom been presented to the courts, yet we find that in Updegraph v. Com., 11 Serg. & R. 394, 400, it was decided that, “Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania.”
Thanks, Fred. Certainly, as the video indicates, there was established Christianity in a number of states after the founding. I think the first gentleman interviewed in the video from Hillsdale was very convincing.