History professor Gregg Frazer often finds himself addressing audiences who don’t want to hear his message about religion’s role in America’s founding.
“Neither side really wants to hear what I say,” explains Frazer, who teaches history and political studies at The Master’s University, a Christian institution in Santa Clarita, California.
According to Frazer, America’s founding fathers didn’t establish a Christian republic. Multiple prominent founders either dismissed fundamental Christian teachings or held beliefs ambiguous enough to spark ongoing scholarly discussion. This perspective frequently disappoints his fellow Christian listeners.
However, Frazer emphasizes that the founders weren’t simply rationalist deists—those who view God as setting the universe in motion like a clockmaker before stepping away—or anti-religious skeptics, as some portray them. This stance disappoints those favoring strict separation between church and state. The majority of founders practiced some form of religious faith.
This enduring discussion about the founders’ religious intentions has intensified as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches on July 4. During America 250 celebrations, certain Christian activists and writers are strengthening their arguments that the United States had Christian origins.
They find support in the current administration.
President Donald Trump is championing “America Prays,” which will culminate in a May 17 gathering on Washington’s National Mall. Official participants include numerous Christian organizations and individuals, some advocating for the Christian founding concept. Cabinet members are delivering Christian messages in their official roles. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that “America was founded as a Christian nation … in our DNA.”
Simply put: This longstanding discussion—balancing secular governance with faith—continues to rage and remains significant.
Opposition groups and critics are responding forcefully.
“Most — nearly all — serious historians agree that America was not founded as a Christian nation in any meaningful legal, philosophical, or constitutional sense,” states Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The organization condemns attempts “to redefine America according to the Christian Nationalist disinformation and then reshape our law accordingly.”
According to a 2022 Pew Research Center study, six out of ten American adults believe the founders initially intended America to become a Christian nation.
What makes the founders’ beliefs and intentions significant?
“Everyone’s looking for what we historians call a usable past,” explains John Fea, author of “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?”
“We go into the past looking for what we want in order to advance a particular political or cultural agenda,” notes Fea, a fellow at the Lumen Center, a Christian research institute and study center in Madison, Wisconsin.
Supporters frequently overlook historical complexities. For instance, public officials and others certainly offered prayers for the new republic during significant historical moments.
“But are those prayers the central part of the story of what happened when we, in the United States, declared independence?” Fea questions. “Last time I checked, it was about taxation and representation and shutting down the port of Boston and all these more economic and political things.”
Historian Mark David Hall maintains that Christianity significantly influenced the founding. While key founders didn’t embrace traditional Christian beliefs, he argues many other founders did, and this shaped their approach to forming the new republic.
“There’s plenty of evidence Christianity had an influence,” states Hall, author of “Did America Have a Christian Founding?”
Hall points out that founders’ focus on human dignity aligns with Biblical teachings about humanity being created in God’s image. The checks and balances system—designed to prevent power concentration—reflects teachings about human sin that would have permeated the largely Protestant culture, he argues.
He also observes that some early presidents and Congresses issued prayer and thanksgiving proclamations, though these sometimes faced opposition and controversy. Some states supported churches for decades after the Constitution’s ratification, suggesting founders didn’t believe religion should be completely removed from public life.
They believed faith was crucial in developing moral, responsible citizens of the new republic. They promoted “toleration without eliminating the importance of real religious commitment on the part of differing adherents,” Frazer wrote in his book, “The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders.”
The Constitution contains no reference to any specific religion except for the date—”in the year of our Lord” 1787. It prohibits religious tests for officeholders. The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom and forbids establishing a national religion.
Twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions applied the First Amendment to states based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which prevents states from denying citizens’ rights. The court referenced founder Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor of a “wall of separation between church and state.” Courts have since struggled with applying this principle in areas like school prayer, healthcare, labor law and crosses on public property.
Frazer contends that the Bible isn’t cited as a source for governing principles in documented Constitutional Convention proceedings or in the influential Federalist Papers, which supported the Constitution. He says founders drew from influences like Enlightenment thinking on concepts such as human equality, accountable government and religious freedom. Early Constitution critics criticized it for lacking religious content.
The Declaration of Independence does contain religious language, stating that rights come from the “Creator.” It appeals to “divine Providence” and to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
Thomas Jefferson and other founders—skillfully, Frazer notes—used terminology acceptable to Christians as well as followers of other religious and philosophical movements.
Even the seemingly simple question, “Did the founders intend America to be a Christian nation?” raises issues: Who were the founders? When was the actual “founding”?
Some view the founding as the original colonial settlements—a century and a half before 1776. Colonial charters for Massachusetts Bay and Virginia declared Gospel spreading as a fundamental purpose. Puritan Boston sought to be a Christian “city upon a hill.”
In reality, colonies’ religious character varied. They had economic and territorial goals alongside spiritual ones. State religious persecution of religious minorities in Virginia and Massachusetts faced resistance.
The religious values of a colonial system that devastated Native communities and imported enslaved Africans has also faced continuing examination.
Decades before the American Revolution, an evangelical revival called the Great Awakening reached many colonists. Church membership and attendance declined consistently throughout the 18th century, according to studies, even as colonies remained predominantly Protestant.
The Protestant designation also encompassed various beliefs, as some churches moved toward Unitarian views that respected Jesus as a prophet or sage, not divine.
By the Revolution, rationalistic religious approaches strongly influenced many college-educated and wealthy elite men, such as those who created the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Frazer wrote. Freemasonry also influenced them—a fraternal order based on beliefs in a universal God and morals.
Some founders were devout Christians like John Jay, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. Others believed in God but not Jesus’ divinity, including key founders like Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The mysterious Washington remained active in his Episcopal church but avoided sacraments and was also an active Freemason. He spoke about God in terms most people of that time could accept, such as “Providence” or “Supreme Ruler.”
However, contrary to popular belief, most founders weren’t deists.
Frazer instead describes many founders as “theistic rationalists.” George Washington believed that divine “Providence” saved his life in battle and intervened on America’s behalf. He wasn’t alone in this belief.
“They did believe in an active God,” Frazer says. “Therefore, prayer matters, because there’s someone listening.”
Even skeptics considered religion important in forming virtuous citizens. Franklin contributed toward building projects for various churches and a synagogue in Philadelphia. Many scholars believe the First Amendment created a religious free market in which Christianity and other faiths have thrived to this day.
At speaking events, Frazer distributes a flyer with 12 points explaining why the Christian America view is dangerous for both church and state.
“It’s mostly dangerous for Christianity,” Frazer argues. By claiming people or ideas as Christian when they aren’t, it “muddies the waters in terms of what Christianity is all about.”
