A Christian Nation ?

Many right-wing fundamentalist christians love to claim the United States was created as a christian nation, and remains a christian nation today. Unfortunately for them, the facts dispute both of those claims. The United States was created as a secular nation, and remains so today. The Founding Fathers were very clear about that.

First, they included religious freedom in the Bill of Rights -- making it constitutionally clear that our government favored no religion (not even christianity), and that every citizen has the right to believe in whatever religion they choose (or to believe in no religion at all).

And if that didn't make it clear enough that the United States was a secular nation, they spelled it out in the Treaty of Tripoli. This treaty was written by Joel Barlow (appointed by President George Washington to be the American counsel to Algiers), passed unanimously by the United States Senate on June 7th of 1797, and signed by President John Adams on June 10th of 1797. Article 11 of that treaty (pictured below) states "the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".

And there is proof that the United States is not a christian nation today either -- or at least not a nation of practicing christians. Note the graphic at the top of this post. It is made from information in the 2010 General Social Survey, and it shows that regular weekly attendance at religious services has dropped significantly between 1972 and 2010. In 1972, those who attended weekly religious services was more than 40%. By 2010, that had dropped to only about 30.3% (a drop of about 26%).

And the number of those who never (or rarely) attend a religious service has climbed even more -- from less than 30% in 1972 to about 43.5% in 2010. That's a rise in nonattendance of about 53%. That would be bad enough (with less than one out of three Americans regularly attending religious services), but there is evidence that even that may be an inflated figure.

It seems that some people may have been too embarrassed to admit that they never attend religious services, so they told pollsters that they did attend. In a 2004 report based on actual head counts of christian church attendees, it was discovered that the actual attendance was only about 17.7% (or significantly less than one out of every five Americans). And this report is backed up by a 2005 study by C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler that was published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion -- which also showed attendance was only slightly above 17%.

The truth is that the United States was not founded as a christian nation, and it is not a christian nation today. And anyone who believes it is a christian nation is just denying reality.