How does declaring the United States a “Christian nation” threaten the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights?
First, such a declaration is diametrically opposed to the current language of the First Amendment, which expressly prohibits any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” Second, if the purpose of such a declaration is to reflect the actual history of the United States, then it constitutes a complete distortion of that history. Many early Americans did regard themselves as Christians, but the Framers of the Constitution explicitly rejected the proposition that the new nation should be founded on the doctrine or teachings of any religion. The Constitution is a wholly secular document. The Framers had very good reasons for keeping church and state separate — and those reasons are still relevant today. Fresh in the minds of the Founders was the history of the immediately preceding centuries, which were filled with turmoil, civil strife and bloody persecutions caused by disputes between religious sects and misguided efforts to establish religious uniformity. Any effort to provide a p
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