When talking about the United States, is it more accurate to say that church has no place in the state (or government), or that the founders had Christian ideals in mind?
Share why if you wish.
Separation Of Church And State Or Founded On Christian Ideals?
This seems pretty straightforward to me. Article Six includes this text: “no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”. And the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Admittedly, there is a mention of “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” which certainly seems to reference God, but that is in the Declaration of Independence, and not the U.S. Constitution.
Agree with Lee. This one’s so obvious it’s amazing that Christian Nationalists and Fundamentalists think it’s not. The only mentions of religion in our constitution are statements of negation!
And the ideals we were founded on are enlightenment ideals, not religious ones.
The framers of the Constitution were a mixture of Christians and atheists/deists, the latter of whom were largely raised in Christian environments. It’s true that they were operating on an assumption that Christianity was the default—Jews and Muslims and Hindus and traditional Native American beliefs weren’t on their radar. But in preventing any particular sect of Christianity from gaining dominance while making space for those with no religion at all, they established that all churches (and by extension temples, mosques and sweat lodges) must be kept separate from the state, on an equal basis.