Did the founders of the United States intend to create a Christian nation?<\/p>\n
Political leaders who addressed\u00a0a prayer rally on the National Mall<\/a>\u00a0on May 17, 2026,\u00a0seem to think so<\/a>: House Speaker Mike Johnson led the crowd in \u201crededicat(ing) the United States of America as one nation under God.\u201d<\/p>\n Some, and perhaps many, scholars\u00a0would say no<\/a>: that, while many founders were religious, as a group they concluded that the national government should not support any particular faith.<\/p>\n As\u00a0a scholar of colonial North America<\/a>, I believe that history provides an answer. European colonisers in lands that became the United States did link church and state. But the architects of the new nation broke from that idea as surely as they broke from Britain.<\/p>\n The European desire to expand the boundaries of Christendom played a central role in the colonial era, as I describe in my 2026 book, Contested Continent<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n That drive\u00a0mattered greatly to Christopher Columbus<\/a>, who sailed west in 1492. Upon landing in the Bahamas, he laid claim to already populated territories,\u00a0writing that Christ would rejoice<\/a>\u00a0\u201cas he foresees that so many souls of so many people heretofore lost are to be saved.\u201d<\/p>\n The ‘Doctrine of Discovery<\/a>‘, proclaimed by the Vatican in 1493, granted European monarchs title over lands occupied by non-Christians and urged them to convert the people who lived there.<\/p>\n Less than a generation later, the Protestant Reformation transformed Christianity, dividing Europe and\u00a0spawning brutal violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n In England, the schism reshaped the relationship between church and state. King Henry VIII\u00a0severed ties with the Pope<\/a>\u00a0in the 1530s. He ordered the\u00a0dissolution of monasteries<\/a>, and his followers defaced church statues of Catholic saints.<\/p>\n After Henry rejected Rome\u2019s authority, Parliament passed\u00a0the Supremacy Act of 1534<\/em><\/a>, which made the monarch the leader of an independent national church,\u00a0the Church of England<\/a>.<\/p>\n Queen Elizabeth I, Henry\u2019s daughter,\u00a0further reduced the political power of English Catholics in 1559<\/a>. Her desire to promote her Protestant faith, along with a yearning to expand England\u2019s political authority, helped fuel a vicious\u00a0campaign to take control of Ireland<\/a>, where the Reformation\u2019s teachings had not taken hold.<\/p>\n The desire to promote Protestantism also figured in English plans for the colonisation of North America. In the 1580s, an expedition\u00a0sent by Sir Walter Raleigh<\/a> arrived on the Outer Banks of what is now North Carolina. They were eager to learn about the region\u2019s natural resources and its peoples.<\/p>\n English colonial planners also hoped to convert Carolina Algonquians and to keep Catholics away. A small group of Jesuit priests had already tried to establish a mission on a tributary of Chesapeake Bay in 1571, but they were killed by Indigenous people<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thomas Harriot, who\u00a0chronicled the English efforts<\/a> when he arrived in 1585, believed that Carolina Algonquians would convert to Protestantism. In fact, he wrote, native people were so eager to accept the faith that they grabbed a Bible \u201cto embrace it, to kisse it, to hold it to their bre(a)sts\u201d in order to absorb the lessons it contained.<\/p>\n In 1607, the Virginia Company of London established a settlement at Jamestown, promising, according to\u00a0the colony\u2019s 1609 charter<\/a>, that colonisation would lead to \u201cthe conversion and reduccion of the people in those partes unto the true worshipp of God and Christian religion.\u201d To advance their goal, they tried to bar anyone holding \u201cthe superstitions of the Churche of Rome.\u201d Colonists had to swear the oath of supremacy to the English monarch, which meant accepting the Church of England.<\/p>\n Within a generation, other Protestants arrived in English America, including critics of the Church of England who are now often called ‘Pilgrims’. Puritans, who migrated soon after, held similar beliefs<\/a>. Persecuted in England for their dissenting views, they arrived eager to demonstrate to the world that they knew the\u00a0best ways to advance a civilisation<\/a>, based on their interpretation of scripture.<\/p>\n Among these migrants was John Winthrop, a leader of the Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1630, he wrote what became\u00a0the most famous sermon<\/a>\u00a0in early America \u2013 although he was not a minister and likely never delivered it to a congregation.<\/p>\n Winthrop advocated\u00a0the blending of church and state<\/a>. As he put it, drawing on the Bible\u2019s\u00a0Book of Matthew<\/a>, \u201cWe shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.\u201d Colonists\u2019 failure, he suggested, would be a victory for the enemies of God.<\/p>\n English advocates of colonisation were aware that Catholics had been erecting churches in modern-day Mexico and Peru<\/a>. Protestants feared that Rome\u2019s influence might spread across the East Coast, moving southward from French Canada and northward from Spanish Florida. While English authorities\u00a0allowed limited migration of Catholics<\/a>, especially to Maryland, their Colonies remained Protestant strongholds.<\/p>\n No single official church establishment stretched across the 13 colonies that would eventually join in the American Revolution. But church and state were closely related in each.<\/p>\n European colonisers in lands that became the United States did link church and state. But the architects of the new nation broke from that idea as surely as they broke from Britain.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Towns across New England taxed residents\u00a0to support local congregational churches<\/a>, which evolved out of Puritan traditions. Colonial governments established the Church of England\u00a0in Virginia in 1619<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0in New York<\/a>\u00a0in 1693.<\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s\u00a01682 frame of government<\/a>\u00a0promised that law-abiding people would not be persecuted for their religious views or forced to worship. But those who held public office needed to \u201cpossess faith in Jesus Christ.\u201d Even Rhode Island, famous for its tradition of tolerance, specified in\u00a0its 1663 charter<\/a>\u00a0that residents should edify \u201cthemselves, and one another, in the holie Christian faith.\u201d<\/p>\n By the mid-1770s, many colonial Americans decided that the time had come to separate from Great Britain<\/a>. Many also wanted to separate church and state.<\/p>\n In 1777, just a year after he drafted the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote\u00a0Virginia\u2019s Statute for Religious Freedom<\/a>. As he put it, one\u2019s ability to serve the public should \u201chave no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than on our opinions in physics or geometry.\u201d When the statute became law in Virginia in 1786, it protected freedom of worship and ended\u00a0taxes to support the Church of England<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article 6 of the United States Constitution<\/a>, written in Philadelphia in 1787, forbade any\u00a0religious oaths for those who wanted to hold office<\/a>.\u00a0The First Amendment<\/a>, which became part of the Constitution in late 1791, held that Congress \u201cshall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n The leaders of the American Revolution\u00a0did not agree on all matters of faith<\/a>. But had they wanted public support of religious institutions, they had plenty of models at hand \u2013 including the Church of England.<\/p>\n They decided, instead, that a durable republic could best survive if politics and religion inhabited different spheres. This recognition contradicted almost two centuries of colonial practice, making it among the most radical achievements of the founding era.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Published 2 July 2026.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n This article was originally published in <\/em>The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n