Is America a Christian Country?

In response to a recent article I published, one of my readers asked me this question:

“Is America a Christian country?” 

My students have asked me this question often over the years. It usually takes me several lessons to lay the historical foundation to address the question. The answer is complex, and in today’s partisan-charged political climate, it may seem provocative, but it deserves a better answer than a simple “yes and no.”

Much of the answer depends on one’s definitions – because the different meanings yield different answers. To begin:

But the more nuanced answer also depends on:

Let’s explore the different ways of examining the question.

The question is usually asked about the United States at some point in our history. Here are some historical snapshots:

In 17th-century Puritan New England, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a unique charter that differed from other colonies. It allowed an unusual degree of self-government because the company charter itself was transferred to New England from England. The colony developed a government closely intertwined with Puritan religious leadership under a theocratic approach.

Was it Christian?

John Winthrop. Image: Wikimedia

Absolutely. They saw themselves as “a city on a hill,” based on a 1630 sermon by Puritan John Winthrop, traditionally believed to have been delivered aboard the Arbella, flagship of the Winthrop Fleet and the lead ship of the Great Puritan Migration of 1630. The fleet brought about 1,000 Puritans to New England. The total migration saw about 20,000 Puritans emigrating from England to North America.

Winthrop quoted from Matthew 5:14-16:

They hoped to demonstrate to Old England, and the rest of Europe, an example of a true Christian society. They operated as a Biblical Commonwealth: they sought the guidance of Scripture in all aspects of citizens’ lives, with Scriptural authority applied to many criminal statutes.

Was it America?

Not America as a nation. It was a colony of ‘British America’ rather than the independent United States. The original Puritan charter government lasted about 60 years until the revocation of the charter in 1691, when the Crown merged Plymouth Colony and the Province of Maine with the Massachusetts Bay Colony into a single royal Province. As a British American colony, it was not yet the United States — no more ‘U.S. America’ than colonial Virginia or New France.

Did Christianity influence the founding of the United States in 1776? The short answer is “Yes,” though there were other major influences at the time, including the Enlightenment. I discuss this in greater detail in my earlier article, American Revolution: Reason and Religion.

Original Declaration of Independence broadside, 1776. Image: Wikipedia

Was it America?

Certainly, the Declaration of Independence starts with “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen “united States of America.”

Was it Christian?

I’ll “parse” the different aspects of the answer below.

Painting of the Second Great Awakening, 1839. Image: Wikipedia

The Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s was a Christian revival that swept throughout the United States like a fire. It saw dramatically more converts and a far larger percentage of the population converted, compared to the First Great Awakening in the early and mid 1700s, which I discussed here. This Second Great Awakening was a transformative religious revival that fundamentally reshaped American culture, social life, and even politics. It influenced virtually every major social movement in the United States, including abolitionism, temperance, and expanded women’s public roles.

It was certainly a larger territory of the country and a larger percentage of the population than previously. The U.S. had 26 states by 1840.

One could say it established a precedent for faith-driven societal transformation, providing a sense of community and a moral framework for a nation undergoing rapid expansion and social change. The Second Great Awakening shaped the moral and partisan climate of the 1828 and 1840 elections, during which voter turnout rose dramatically.

The answer to this question depends on who one asks and what definition they operate upon:

Let’s call this:

Christian with a capital “C.”

This sentiment may not be unique to Christianity and is indicative of a nominal Christian, a person who identifies as a Christian because of family tradition or cultural background, but lacks an active personal faith in Jesus Christ. 

Let’s call this:

Christian with a small “c.”

Let’s call this:

Christian with no “c.”

The person asked this question may have their own perspective, experience, and personal biases. They may only understand the answer through their “grid”.

Visiting the USA. Image: The Atlantic

A person who is a visitor, foreign tourist, or knows of America from what they read or see on TV and movies may see the answer this way:

They might be a European who perceives their Western society as post-Christian. Or they may live elsewhere, in a country that is majority Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, animist, or atheist.

They may see America as the land of opportunity where one might pursue the “American Dream”; they might envy the U.S. Witness the social media posts of international tourists in the U.S. for the World Cup – estimates range from 1m to 10M — who are amazed by America’s kindness and abundance.

If, on the other hand, they live in a society that is Christophobic, they may see America as an enemy.

Historical Trivia:

Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French magistrate, traveled widely in the US in 1831 – admittedly some fourty years after the U.S. Constitution – and wrote about his observations and reflections in his book Democracy in America. He concluded:

While the meaning is currently hotly debated, and the term itself is contested among historians, political scientists, and even Christians as to what it means, an advocate of this ideology might say:

This person harkens back to some period in America’s past that they believe was Christian and wants to reinstitute it, framing politics as spiritual warfare against secularism and pluralism.

Secular Liberal T-shirt. Source: Printerval

At the other end of the spectrum, a more liberal or progressive American might say either:

“Is America a Christian country? Yes, it was, and we must get past it.” 

or:

“No, we never were, and we should stay that way.”

Correct.

Looking again, particularly at the Founding in 1776 and the subsequent U.S. Constitution of 1789:

Unlike at the federal level, nine of the thirteen original states had an “established” state church; most of the state constitutions required those who served in government to make a profession of faith, like that of Delaware:

All 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had some formal affiliation with a church. They were closer in time to the First Great Awakening than the signers of the U.S. Constitution. Their “devotion” is subject to how one defines “Christian”; see Question 2 above. Nevertheless, some were notably and outspokenly Christian with a capital “C”:

Of the 39 signers of the U.S. Constitution:

In their writing, the Founders commonly cited other authors and books. The single most-referenced book, with over a third of those attributions, was the Bible. Specifically, the Old Testament, particularly Deuteronomy, according to political scientist Donald Lutz, who found that Bible citations were employed in a broad sample of American political writings between 1760 and 1805.

America at the founding was overwhelmingly Protestant, and Christian assumptions shaped everything from common law to public rhetoric. It was reflected in the very fabric of the calendar:

• All states had Sunday Blue Laws where businesses were closed, courts didn’t sit, and legislatures didn’t meet
• The calendar universally used A.D., Anno Domini, “in the Year of our Lord”
• Christmas and Easter became anchoring points of the American year
• The First Continental Congress and subsequent legislatures built their calendars around Christian holidays. Chaplains opened legislative sessions with prayer
• Academic calendars were structured around the Christian liturgical year for terms, breaks, and graduation ceremonies not to conflict with Christian holidays. This included Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and William and Mary

Even in modern times, according to several recent polls, roughly two-thirds of Americans (60%-64%) identify as “Christian”… combining small “c” and capital “C”. This number has been declining – in 2007 Pew Research reported that 78% of Americans identified as Christian – but the percentage has now stabilized since 2019. If America is not now post-Christian, as Europe is, it is post-Biblical.

The U.S. Constitution makes no substantive references to God, except perhaps the last sentence:

There was an explicit effort in the U.S. Constitution to prevent a faith test for officeholders (like the state constitutions) by originally prohibiting Congress from establishing a national church while allowing the exercise of religious freedom (1st Amendment).

The Founders did not want a state church, like England had (Anglican). They established freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, except if it was the imposed religion of an established state church.

Nevertheless, as I’ve written, the Constitution was crafted under the influence of Christian (influenced by Presbyterian polity) principles as well as more secular Enlightenment principles.

I’ve previously written on the influence of the First Great Awakening revival and the clergy’s role in promoting independence. But at the same time, there is no doubt of the influence of Enlightenment writers like Paine (clearly secular), Locke, and Montesquieu.

My old sociology of religion professor, Robert Bellah, applied and developed the term ‘civil religion‘ — originally coined by Rousseau — to describe the more generic providential language (à la Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) that draws heavily from biblical imagery and invokes God without privileging one faith or fusing it with ethnic identity.

U.S. presidents have leveraged this language by employing “city on a hill” rhetoric as a national touchstone in their public speeches:

Even non-presidential leaders like Sandra Day O’Connor and Mario Cuomo used it as well.

It would be historically defensible to assert America was founded by a mostly Christian people who deliberately created a non-sectarian (religiously neutral) government — a nation with a Christian culture but a secular constitution. Where one places the emphasis is where the argument lives.