Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

There has been a great misconception with regards to whether America was founded as a Christian nation. Many believe that because those who came to our shores were in practice of a Christian life, that it meant they founded America as a Christian Nation. This is where the misconception is, and what many Americans today that claim America to be founded as a Christian nation like to forget is that those same people were fleeing another country mostly do to religious persecution and not being allowed to practice their chosen faith as they saw fit. So, why do we think they would come to these shores and claim this nation as a Christian nation? They came here for the freedom to worship and the freedom to not worship.

Yes, many early settlements were greatly dependent on their strict adherence to their religious faith, and they did indeed ostracize those that decided once they arrived here that the particular religion was no longer for them, or could no longer abide with the Christian laws that flourished their settlement. So, they moved on and founded new settlements, and practiced their new version of whatever faith they chose.

If we truly want to be technical, we have to remember that America was not inhabited by practicing Christians, but rather Native-Indians; and we know full well that the Indians who inhabited America were polytheists and did more worshipping of earth and nature then of one god. It was also the White-man who came to these shores and forced the Indian to give up their land as well as their religion. So, if you want to claim that the barbaric and cruel Christians that came to America founded this country as a Christian nation, I think we should be really ashamed to identify with that, which is no better then what we see in many countries of today that do call themselves a theological nation.

These early settlers had visions and wishes for freedoms, but they were driven by fears and by not wishing their settlement to fail. Sometimes those fears of failure cause people and groups of people to do the exact opposite of what their original convictions were, and for these original settlers they fled religious persecution in one country and then persecuted other peoples faith and spirituality in another new country.

It was later on down the line when our founding fathers came on to the scene, that they realized the early settlers did make some mistakes with respect to hypocrisy and religious freedom. This is why they knew to declare this nation as a free nation that allowed everyone that inhabited it to practice religion that they so chose, or to not practice religion if they so chose. We also need to remember that many of the founding fathers and original constitution framers were not practicing Christians. Many were Deists, Freemasons, and even Atheists.

All one has to do is look at the many foreign countries that claim to be a nation of a specific religion, and you see how much damage and lack of freedom there truly is for the people that inhabit them. Do we really want to consider ourselves a Christian nation and ostracize the many in our nation that do not practice Christianity or a religion? And then, which sect of Christianity will be deemed the right and correct sect of Christianity to practice in this so called Christian nation? Because remember, there are so many different variations and interpretations when it comes to Christianity; so, who has the right version?