Jefferson could be commenting on the oratory of today’s conservative Christians who claim that “America is a Christian nation”. Their shrill rhetoric is filled with “hypocrisy and meanness.” This language of “Christian nation” is meant to divide the country, not bring it together and to consolidate the dangerous power of “Christian politics,” an oxymoron if ever there was one.

What is often so poorly understood is why the admittedly Christian authors of the Constitution would write a document that so clearly keeps the United States from having Christianity as its official religion. Some argue that these founders were dedicated secularists. Not in the least. James Madison often referred to God as “the Governor of the Universe,” John Adams called himself “a church-going animal” and Thomas Jefferson wrote often of “Almighty God.” They were men of faith and they protected religious pluralism and freedom of all faiths because of their belief in God.

The faith of the Founders was that God operates in the conscience of each individual and the search for religious truth must be free for God to be worshipped in truth. All coercion does is cripple the free search for God. In other words, in the belief system of those who wrote the Constitution, God doesn’t need the help of the state for there to be faith. Indeed, in their experience learned from Europe, all state religion ever does is breed violence and hypocrisy.

The United States is not a “Christian nation” because the Christians who wrote our Constitution believed that the freedom of each individual’s conscience honored God more than coercion. All coercion gives you is disrespect of an infinite God.

These claims that America is a “Christian Nation” only show a contempt for God. God doesn’t need the help of political pundits for there to be faith.