What do people mean when they declare that the United States is a Christian nation? Do they mean that America is a Christian theocracy in which their particular interpretation of “God’s Law” is the foundation of the U.S. governing system?

I suspect that those who trumpet the Christian nation and American exceptionalism theories see our nation as God’s city on the hill, a bright moral beacon shining the light of Christian righteousness for the rest of the world.  Further, I suspect they see the nation as God’s enforcer of the rules and understand themselves as called to judge and punish those who break them, upset their sense of social order, and challenge their interpretation of the law and their understanding of Holy Scripture.

Those believers hold the idea that we live in a Christian nation—”a perfect union.” They dismiss complexity of interpretation and diversity of beliefs in one fell stroke of their creator’s brush. They are certain that America was created by one God intent on ruling the world, that Americans are exceptional among God’s creation, and that the U.S. laws ought to uphold and enshrine their personal religious beliefs— both on U.S. soil and beyond.

An alternative point of view is that Christian Americans are called to live their lives in accordance with the Gospel teachings of Jesus: Feed the hungry, care for the poor and disabled, practice humility, love your enemy, be people of peace, refrain from judging others, and offer infinite forgiveness.

This view embraces a theology that “gives to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”… a clear separation of church and state. Those who hold it understand that there are differences in biblical interpretations and, thus, they do not seek to enshrine a particular religious doctrine in law. To them the “word of God” is expressed in the teachings and actions of Jesus of Nazareth rather than in any specific tenets or set of commandments.

The Christian nation proponents, on the other hand, tend to see their preferred translation of the Bible as the literal word of God and they strive to make it the cornerstone of national governance.

This view was represented by four nationally-prominent Republicans at a “Rediscover God in America” webcast: Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Mississippi Governor Haley Barber, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich of Georgia. All of them considered running for President, and Bachman and Gingrich are still in the mix.

The event was hosted by the Florida Family Policy Council and was streamed into churches across the country. According to a registration flier, the purpose was to teach congregants “how to interpret and assess current events in the light of God’s Word, as our founding fathers did, and how to respond Biblically and take action that aligns with His truth… History is clear: the founding fathers of our country drew their inspiration, wisdom and direction from the Bible…A just and prosperous nation is born and sustained by truth, not compromise. Join with thousands of churches across the nation! Bring the truth about God and America to your congregation and community.”

Sarah Palin, another star in the Republican heaven, said that it is “mind-boggling” to suggest that America isn’t a Christian nation. She told a Kentucky audience  “God truly has shed his grace on thee— on this country. He blessed us and we better not blow it.”

Newt Gingrich, speaking at a Texas church to thousands of evangelical churchgoers delivered a dire warning that the nation’s Christian roots are under attack.” He said  “I have two grandchildren— Maggie is 11 and Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

Tea Partiers are also prominent in the America-is a-Christian-nation crowd. According to the American Values Survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, more than half of those identifying themselves as members of the Tea Party stated”I believe that America is a Christian nation”. The same percentage believes that “the Bible is the literal word of God”.

All of their beliefs and interpretations are within their rights to personally hold as members of a pluralistic nation. Danger emerges when they hold public office and speak as if their personal and triumphalist interpretations were enshrined in the Constitution or the or the mission of the Founding Fathers. Those of us who point out the danger and highlight their contradictions are often labeled: secular humanist, atheist, communist.

I am not an anti-Christian secularist. I am ordained in the Episcopal Church and I try to faithfully follow the teachings of Jesus. I speak out for what I believe is just, and I seek to make my voice heard by those responsible for setting social policy.

But I do believe that our Constitution calls for a secular government. It, in fact, refers to religion only two times: The first Amendment prohibits any laws that call for “establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, and in Article VI, which prohibits requiring religious tests for those seeking public office.

I also believe that the truth held in the heart of God is not exclusive to any religion, doctrine, political party or ideology. Rather, that truth (contrary to the words of the flier above) is found through bringing diverse opinions to the table and seeking common ground through compromise.  Meister Eckhart, the great 14th-century German mystic, captured my vision of the Holy: “God is like a great underground river with no beginning and no end, and rushing with indescribable force. All the religions of the world sink their wells into that same river, but in different places.”

And, also contrary to the flier (and to Palin, Gingrich and the Tea Partiers), many of our most prominent “founding fathers” would have agreed with me. Brooke Allen wrote in her insightful book Moral Minority that “the key Founding Fathers were not strictly orthodox believers and in many cases were not even Christians…

“They were broad-minded intellectuals, clear products of the international Enlightenment. As such they tended to see religious zeal as an irrational, divisive and even atavistic passion that constituted a threat to human society.”

She points out that Thomas Jefferson “urged his young nephew to subject the authors of the New Testament to the same textual scrutiny he would give to other ancient historians.” And George Washington “rewrote the presidential addresses crafted for him by others so as so omit all references to Jesus Christ.  James Madison gave it as his opinion that ‘Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.’”

Allen maintains that the founders’ primary concern “was to establish a strong civil society with protected rights for its citizens. Religion, most of them believed, was a personal matter which should be forcibly kept out of the public arena.”

Benjamin Franklin hailed from a devout Presbyterian family, but he was more of a deist than a Christian. He wrote, “Here is my creed. I believe in God, Creator of the universe. That He governs it by his providence. That He ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render Him is doing good to his other children… As for Jesus of Nazareth… I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see. But I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes… and I have some doubts about his divinity…”

George Washington did not leave many written thoughts about his relationship with Christianity. In fact, Thomas Jefferson wrote that Washington “had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian Religion.”  Episcopal Bishop William White answered an inquiry by writing that “truth requires me to say that General Washington never received communion in the churches of which I am the parochial minister, although Mrs. Washington was an habitual communicant.”

Further, according to Bishop White, “I do not believe any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation…” And the Reverend Dr. Bird Wilson wrote that while Washington “was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man, he was not a practicing Christian.”

John Adams proclaimed, “I mix religion and politics as little as possible.” In a letter he told Jefferson “I have long been settled in my own opinion, that neither philosophy, nor religion, nor morality, nor wisdom, nor interest will ever govern nations or parties, against their vanity, their pride, their resentment or revenge, or avarice or ambition. Nothing but force or power and strength can restrain them.”

Adams held the opinion that the church should stay out of the business of governing because “the clergy are universally too little acquainted with the world and the modes of business to engage in civil affairs…” Adams was a Unitarian who became “weary of philosophers, theologians, politicians and historians. They are immense masses of absurdity, vices and lies.”

Thomas Jefferson maintained that “History, I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government” and in 1784 he declared that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg… reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error…”

When President Jefferson urged the people to “Shake off all the fears, and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat… Question with boldness even the existence of God… Read the Bible as you would read Livy or Tacitus.”

I highly recommend Allen’s book, and have found no compelling evidence in history that the Founding Fathers were  harbingers of “our Christian Nation” theory. In fact, as Allen says, “the framers as a group saw religion as a divisive rather than a cohesive force.”

Other voices from history have been equally clear. Michael Land, writing in salon.com, points to the Treaty of Tripoli (which was ratified by the United States Senate in 1798). It proclaims that  “As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has itself no character or enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Muslims…it is declared by parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of harmony existing between the two countries.”

Land also refers to John Tyler, America’s tenth president, who wrote in a 1843 letter “The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent— that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscious is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgement.”

When President Barack Obama spoke in Turkey on April 6 he summed up my thoughts exactly:  “One of the great strengths of the United States is that we have a very large Christian population. But we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”