Don’t call U.S. a Christian nation

This is in response to the letter to the editor from Mr. Harold Knudsen (Fence Post, Feb. 5) titled “Founding Fathers weren’t mostly deists.” Mr. Knudsen is sadly mistaken in some of this arguments. First, Thomas Jefferson never believed that God shaped people’s lives and that America should be a Christian nation. Second, Article 11 of the Tripoli Treaty had everything to do with the fact that we are not a Christian nation. The treaty was written during the Washington administration and sent to the Senate during the Adams administration. It was read aloud to the Senate, and each senator received a printed copy. This was the 399th time that a recorded vote was required by the Senate, but only the third time the vote was unanimous.

Further, regarding the Founding Fathers, the early presidents were generally deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal God but rejecting the divinity of Jesus. Thomas Paine disbelieved all religions. George Washington never declared himself a Christian, according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. John Adams stated in later life that “this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion at all.” James Madison stated that “religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”

I could go on with quotations from Franklin, Ethan Allen and more. The crux of the matter is that the United States in not a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Yemen are all Muslim nations. We are certainly different from them in that we do not profess to be a Christian nation, and believing that the United States is a Christian nation is wrong thinking and not in accordance with the facts.

Michael Lee

Wheeling