is america christian?
26 - 02/23 /19:16
In 2009 then President Obama—in his painfully precise way—said, “One of the great strengths of the United States, is we have a very large Christian population. We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation … .” Unlike Saudi Arabia or the United Kingdom, the US Constitution gives authority to no religion.
Obama accurately stated America is not a Christian state. The Constitution prohibits the government—federal, state, local—from establishing religion, any religion. He just as accurately identified one of America’s great strengths: a large Christian population.
Obama accurately stated America is not a Christian state. The Constitution prohibits the government—federal, state, local—from establishing religion, any religion. He just as accurately identified one of America’s great strengths: a large Christian population.
There’s plenty of evidence that Christianity is in decline. Still, a large population remains. Society’s latching onto “Pray for Buffalo #3—Damar Hamlin” and curiosity about “The Asbury Revival” evidences Christianity’s broad stickiness in American culture.
Christianity has deep roots in American history.
9/11/2001 about 150 members of Congress, Democrats shoulder-to-shoulder with Republicans on the Capitol’s East Front steps, broke into an impromptu singing of “God Bless America.” Just last year that hymn was belted out again by Democratic House members after they passed gun control legislation.
November 1963 America mourned its assassinated President. US military bands marching in the state funeral played the classic Funeral March. Other marches played were Christian hymns: Holy, Holy, Holy; Hymn to the Holy Name; and at the request of JFK’s widow, Onward Christian Soldiers.
Earlier that year Martin Luther King wrote from a Birmingham jail: “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage.”
During WW2 President Franklin Roosevelt often addressed the nation via radio. Over the airwaves on D-Day he said, “In this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer.” Then he did what no other President has done—FDR led the nation in prayer. “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”
In his 1939 State of the Union address FDR insisted there were times “in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.”
We visited the Lincoln Memorial in 2022. Standing in that sanctuary I listened in as a young man softly translated into some slavic language for a fellow traveler, Lincoln’s words chiseled into stone:
“If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come; but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came; shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him.”
The US Constitution acknowledges no authority higher than the people. And yet, the Constitution itself records that it was accomplished “in the Year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” And it exempts one day in calculating the passing of time: Sundays—the Christian day of worship.
During the Constitutional Convention the 18th century’s celebrity scientist and renaissance man, Benjamin Franklin, proposed, “I beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.”
Blessings,
Dan Nygaard
Christianity has deep roots in American history.
9/11/2001 about 150 members of Congress, Democrats shoulder-to-shoulder with Republicans on the Capitol’s East Front steps, broke into an impromptu singing of “God Bless America.” Just last year that hymn was belted out again by Democratic House members after they passed gun control legislation.
November 1963 America mourned its assassinated President. US military bands marching in the state funeral played the classic Funeral March. Other marches played were Christian hymns: Holy, Holy, Holy; Hymn to the Holy Name; and at the request of JFK’s widow, Onward Christian Soldiers.
Earlier that year Martin Luther King wrote from a Birmingham jail: “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage.”
During WW2 President Franklin Roosevelt often addressed the nation via radio. Over the airwaves on D-Day he said, “In this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer.” Then he did what no other President has done—FDR led the nation in prayer. “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”
In his 1939 State of the Union address FDR insisted there were times “in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.”
We visited the Lincoln Memorial in 2022. Standing in that sanctuary I listened in as a young man softly translated into some slavic language for a fellow traveler, Lincoln’s words chiseled into stone:
“If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come; but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came; shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him.”
The US Constitution acknowledges no authority higher than the people. And yet, the Constitution itself records that it was accomplished “in the Year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” And it exempts one day in calculating the passing of time: Sundays—the Christian day of worship.
During the Constitutional Convention the 18th century’s celebrity scientist and renaissance man, Benjamin Franklin, proposed, “I beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.”
Blessings,
Dan Nygaard