Well, I was scared to start this as I have books filled with this stuff, but here's just a few to think about: 1. The charter of our nation, our founding document, the Declaration clearly says "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God..." 2. Ben Franklin (who the left loves to think of as an atheistic deist but nothing could be further from the truth) called for prayer before each assembly and he requested that one or more of the city's clergy be present. Some believe this to be the turning point in the convention and prayers have opened both houses ever since. 3. Your source was incorrect in its assertion that there were no established state churches. It was Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black who grudgingly acknowledged that "indeed, as late as the time of the Revolutionary War, there wer established churches in at least eight of the thirteen former colonies and established religions in at least four of the other five". 4. The same year as the Declaration (1776), Maryland passed a Declaration of Rights that required state officials give a "declaration of a belief in the Christian religion" and required the "attestation of the Divine Being". 5. Massachusetts paid the salaries of the Congregational ministers until 1833. 6. Article III of the Northwest Ordinance, passed by the Continental Congress in 1787, stated "Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." 7. All 50 state constitutions appeal to Almighty God. Now I admit that none of these prove that they were directly trying to establish a "Christian Nation" per se. But the founders and state governments were <u>definitely trying to mix religion, specifically protestant Christianity, and government</u>. They had no problem with that. Ben Franklin himself pointed out that atheism was virtually unknown in the colonies and as I've pointed out the vast majority of people were Protestants. You can debate how far they wanted to go. But you cannot debate that they wanted to go...
The founders believed that one of those laws of nature and nature's God was the Divine Law of Separation of Church and State. That is why the Constitution granted "not a shadow of a right" of authority over religion to the national government.
Franklin's motion for prayer at the Constitutional Convention was rejected and there is no evidence in the offical records of the U. S. Congress to support the claim that "prayers have opened both houses ever since." What is your evidence?
At the time the Revolutionary War commenced in 1775, there were eight colonies with state churches. However, they were all abolished or suspended in 1776. In 1788, none of the States had churches established by law. The closest thing to a state church were the establishments, in three New England States, of the peole's duty to contribute to the financial support of Protestant teachers.
That is true. However, from 1775 to 1793 relgious tests were removed in Virginia, New York, Delaware, Georgia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania. Rhode Island and Conneticut never had a relgious test. North Carolina's relgious test of 1776 was ignored. By the end of the founding era, nine of the thirteen states had no religious test whatsoever.