The Establishment Clause

The religious right likes to support their desire for religiously-oriented legislation by saying that this is Christian country and by reminding us that the founders were Christian.

America is not a Christian country, but a country containing a lot of Christians. If this distinction seems pedantic, consider the difference between a public school in which most students happen to be Christian and a specifically religious school. The difference is that the latter is designed to focus largely on the religion of the students while the former is not.

The question of design leads us to ask about the design of America. While Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Washington, et al, were Christian men, did they design the USA to be a Christian country? It seems reasonable to suggest that, had that been their intention, they would likely not have designed and advocated for a provision in the constitution that specifically prevented the establishment of a single religion. This point becomes even stronger when we bear in mind that these were Christian men writing this law! If atheists had written a law preventing the establishment of a religion, that would come as no surprise. The fact that religious, Christian men thought it important enough to write such a law, tells us that we should take that law pretty seriously.