Republican leader Marjorie Taylor Greene recently stated that “Our Founding Fathers would’ve been considered Christian Nationalists, and I agree with them!”
Greene has embraced a trope of exclusion that is factually and historically wrong.
While many of the Founding Fathers were religious, they did not intend to create a Christian nation. The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of Christianity or any specific religion.
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said, “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”
John Adams states more definitively that “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
Separation of church and state reflected concerns by the founders based on centuries of religious wars in Europe.
The lasting scars of those wars lead to the First Amendment prohibition on “establishment of religion.” Madison wrote, “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”
The Founding Fathers created the Constitution based on the rule of law. Jefferson wrote, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
Christian Nationalism must be rejected. It is a threat to our rights and the democratic republic of the Founding Fathers.
Michael Pardus
Penn Township, Westmoreland County