by James Glaser
March 1, 2005

For the last several years there have been so many people telling us that "America was founded by Christians and we are a Christian Country." They talk about "One Nation under God" and "In God We Trust" as proofs.

Really it all sounded true to me, that is until people started writing to me and questioning this. I know if you repeat a lie often enough, everyone will start believing it is the truth.

Here is what got me thinking maybe we were not founded as a Christian Nation. This was sent to me by a Marine, who was questioning our founding. In the Marine Corps Hymn it has a line that says, "From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli." Well it seems that in 1797, when most of our founding fathers were still around we signed a treaty with "the Bey and the Subjects of Tripoli."

Article 11 (of the treaty)

"As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselman—and as the said States never have entered into war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

This treaty was read on the floor of the Senate and no one objected and it was signed into law. In 1797, the United States Government put in writing that we were "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

That correspondence got me thinking and so I read our Constitution again and I am sorry to say, but God is not mentioned in the Constitution even one time. You would think if we were a Christian Nation there would be something in the Preamble, but all that says is, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves, our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

There is nothing about God or Christ in there. I looked in the Bill of Rights and the only thing I could find was in Amendment 1 "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Well that would be the place to say we were Christian if that was the intention of the Founding Fathers.

I looked up "One Nation Under God" and that was put in the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 and the bit about having "In God We Trust" on our money didn't start until the Civil War, so neither of those had anything to do with the founding of our Nation.

Thomas Jefferson did have "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" in the Declaration of Independence, but in his own words he said, "a wall of separation between church and state"

From what I have been able to read I would say that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, George Washington and James Madison were not even Christians, but might be better describes as Deists.

Tom Paine wrote, "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.... I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church I know of. My own mind is my own church."

I guess it would be nice if George Bush and all the Religious Right Ministers that claim America was founded as a Christian Nation were right, but now I don't think they are, in fact I am sure they are wrong. It is kind of sad, but what I find even sadder is that it only took me about four hours of reading to figure all of this out and learn the facts. You would think these men would at least give it that much research, but they must not have.

So if all these people are lying to us on this, what else are they lying to us about? I know George Bush has taken at least two oaths to protect our Constitution and if he had ever read it he would know that it was written without God in mind. I am sorry, but God does not exist in the American Constitution and if our Founding Fathers really wanted a Christian nation or even a nation with God as a base, they would have said so someplace in our founding principals.

You and I might have wanted them to have done that and you and I might have always thought they did start our country with God on their mind, but the fact is the didn't do it that way,and you would have to say that it is pretty obvious that they purposely left God out.