As with so many questions, we need to respond to “Is America a Christian nation?” with another question: “What do you mean by a Christian nation?”

If we mean, “Are the majority of the people in America affiliated with the Christian religion?” we would have to say, as Dr. Albert Mohler says elsewhere on this site, “Yes.” That’s simply a matter of fact.

If we mean, “Were the original inhabitants of America Christians?” the answer would be “No. They were native peoples with their own indigenous religions.” If we mean, "Were the original framers of the U.S. Constitution Christians," the answer would be, "Some were. Some weren't."

But if we mean, “Is the U.S. Consitution an explicitly Christian document?” we’d have to say, “It no doubt reflects the values of the largely Christianized European populace that produced it. But no, it doesn’t establish Christianity as the national religion. In fact, it forbids the establishment of a national religion.”

If we mean, “Are America’s domestic and foreign policies consistent with the teachings of Jesus?” I think we’d have to say, “Maybe partially at our best moments, but certainly not on many occasions.”

If the question is meant to explore whether Christians in America should be allowed to express their faith in public (saying, for example, “Merry Christmas” to one another), that would prompt me, speaking personally, to say, “Sure. And Jewish people should be able to say Happy Chanuka, and so on. Each person should be able to express his or her faith publicly, as long as doing so doesn’t violate the rights of another person.” The alternative – not allowing people to express their faith in public – would create a kind of totalitarian state few if any of us want. Besides, as this site demonstrates, respectful dialogue about religion is a fascinating and sometimes meaningful and even life-changing experience.

If the question is intended to privilege some (Christians) and marginalize others (nonChristians), I think it’s not the kind of question a follower of Jesus would even ask, because sincere followers of Jesus are taught to love their neighbors as themselves, which would mean they wouldn’t want to marginalize them.

Everything I know about Jesus leads me to believe that Jesus himself would be most pleased for those of us who are Christians to celebrate his birthday by actually seeking to follow his teachings about neighborliness – and especially, during these times of heightened religious tension in our world, neighborliness towards those of different faiths, and those of no faith. Which raises one further question: what if we asked, not "Is America a Christian nation," but "What would it mean for America to become a more Christ-like nation?"

Atheism, I believe, becomes more popular when religious communities become more corrupt – and especially when their corruption includes violence. This occurred in the decades after the Thirty Years War in European history, and I think we're entering a similar period today. When religion seems to produce violent or arrogant or hypocritical believers, many people decide it is more ethical not to believe.

Interestingly, Jesus said something about this phenomenon in his “Sermon on the Mount.”

He said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” A resurgence of atheism could be seen as people “throwing out and trampling underfoot” a version of religion that has lost its "salt," a religion which is doing too few good works but instead is either doing too much nothing (other than talk) or doing too many evil things.

So when the world’s second largest religion seems (to many people) too tolerant of terrorism and sectarian violence, and sometimes even encourages and justifies them, we shouldn’t be surprised that many people reject religion. When the world’s largest religion seems (to many people) too tolerant of militarism, unjustified war, and consumerism, and sometimes even encourages and justifies them, we should be even less surprised.

When both religions do too little to promote active peacemaking, care for the poor, concern for the environment, and the renewal of communities, when they seem more concerned with “straining out gnats” of religious trivia than “swallowing camels of massive social injustice, we should only be surprised that more people haven’t become atheists.

Many if not most of us who are believers are so because of people and faith communities we have met ... groups characterized not by the bitter taste of violence and hypocrisy, and not by the bland taste of nominalism and lukewarmness, but by the salty taste of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-discipline. Where faith communities are helping people be formed in these qualities of character and daily living, it's hard not to believe in God, just as when the opposite is happening, it becomes hard to believe in God.

So, I would say that much of the appeal of today’s popular atheists – from Richard Dawkins to Sam Harris – lies in the corruption of religion. There are other factors too – the ongoing celebrity death-match between a form of aggressive scientific reductionism and a form of reactionary fundamentalism that won’t engage with science constructively, for example.

But I am more interested in a new phenomenon: a growing desire for dialogue among professed atheists and people of faith in regards to global crises. (This is the subject of the book I am currently working on.) A few years ago, a group of leading scientists (many of them convinced atheists) whose science increasingly alarmed them about the environmental crisis called for a meeting with religious leaders. “We have the scientific data that tells us we’re in trouble,” they said. “But we don’t have the means of motivating people to change their behavior and their values. We need you to do that. Let's work together.”

That’s where I believe some of the recent attempts at “atheist evangelism” will be counterproductive in the end. The atheists are right: there is a lot of unhealthy, unsavory religion out there. But they are not necessarily right that the world would be better off if religion just went away and everyone joined them in their atheism. Their aggressive posture will, I think, have the unintended consequence of increasing the reactivity of the religious … and perhaps the arrogance of the irreligious too. A world with more reactive religious people and more arrogant irreligious people is not a pleasant thought.

In light of our pressing global crises, in a world like that, everybody loses.

There’s a better alternative than a death-match between religion and atheism: for people of faith (including readers of this blog) to seek to take the logs out of our own religious eyes by dealing with the racism, militarism, imperialism, terrorism, sectarianism, consumerism, judgmentalism, nominalism, and other –isms that are corrupting our religious communities … and to collaborate for the common good, to make our world more the kind of place that our Creator would desire, working side by side with everyone who is willing, including those who don’t believe in a Creator.