America's Christian Roots

Before there was a nation

Long before 1776, faith shaped the communities that would become the United States.

1620: The Mayflower Compact

Before they even stepped off the ship, the Pilgrims signed an agreement to govern themselves, one of the first steps toward self-government in America. They said why they had come.

“Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and the honour of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia…”

The Mayflower Compact, November 11, 1620

1636: America's first college

Harvard was founded mainly to train ministers, and its 1646 rules told every student the purpose of his education. Yale (1701) and Princeton (1746) were also founded by Christians to train pastors and leaders.

“Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternall life, John 17:3.”

Harvard, Rules and Precepts (1646)

1647: Public schools, so everyone could read the Bible

Massachusetts required towns to set up schools so that children could read the Scriptures for themselves. The law is nicknamed the "Old Deluder Satan Act" from its opening line: Satan's chief project is "to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures." America's tradition of education for everyone began here.

1730s-1740s: The Great Awakening

Preachers like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards drew huge crowds in every colony. Whitefield preached to thousands outdoors, from Georgia to New England. For the first time, people across the colonies shared a common experience, and many historians see it as one of the forces that bound Americans together before the Revolution.

How Congress began: on its knees

The men who declared independence didn't just mention God. They prayed, out loud, together, and called the whole nation to pray.

1774: The first Continental Congress opens with prayer

On September 7, 1774, with news that British troops had attacked Boston (a rumor that turned out to be false), the delegates asked Rev. Jacob Duché to pray. He read Psalm 35, "Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me," and then prayed on his own for the colonies. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail about it.

“I never saw a greater Effect upon an Audience. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that Morning.”

John Adams to Abigail Adams, September 16, 1774

1775: A nation called to fast and pray

On June 12, 1775, Congress asked all the colonies to keep July 20 as "a day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer." Over the following years Congress issued many more proclamations for days of fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving, some of them naming Jesus Christ directly.

1782: Congress recommends a Bible

The war cut off Bibles from England, so Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken printed an American edition. Congress had its chaplains review it and, on September 12, 1782, officially recommended "this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States."

1789: Chaplains for Congress

One of the first things the new Congress did under the Constitution was hire chaplains for the House and Senate to open sessions with prayer. They still do, every day Congress meets, more than 230 years later.

The founding documents

1776: The Declaration of Independence appeals to God four times

It speaks of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," says all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," appeals "to the Supreme Judge of the world," and ends "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence." The whole argument rests on one idea: our rights come from God, not from kings or governments, so no government can take them away.

1787: Franklin calls the Convention to prayer

Five weeks into the Constitutional Convention, the delegates were deadlocked and tempers were high. Benjamin Franklin, then 81, stood up, reminded them that they had prayed daily for God's help during the war, and moved that each day open with prayer. In honesty: the motion was not adopted, partly because there was no money to pay a chaplain. But his words are some of the most famous ever spoken in that hall.

“I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”

Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787

1787: The Constitution and freedom of religion

The Constitution itself is a legal framework and doesn't discuss God, though it is dated "in the Year of our Lord" and gives the president ten days to sign bills, "Sundays excepted." The First Amendment then protected the free exercise of religion and kept Congress from setting up a national church. That idea didn't come from unbelievers: it came largely from Christians, especially Baptists like Isaac Backus and John Leland, who had been jailed or taxed by official state churches and believed faith must be free to be real.

Presidents who called the nation to God

1789: George Washington's first inaugural address

In the first words he spoke as president, Washington thanked God for guiding the nation.

“No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States.”

George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

1796: Washington's Farewell Address

As he left office, Washington warned the nation that freedom can't survive without faith and morality.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

1798: John Adams: a government for a moral and religious people

Adams proclaimed national days of fasting and prayer in 1798 and 1799. That same year he wrote to a Massachusetts militia brigade:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

John Adams to the Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798

1800s: Church in the Capitol

For much of the 1800s, Sunday church services were held in the U.S. Capitol, in the House chamber. Thomas Jefferson attended them as president, starting just two days after writing his famous "wall of separation" letter.

1863: Abraham Lincoln in the darkest hour

In the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed a national day of fasting and prayer, and later that year made Thanksgiving a yearly holiday.

“It is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow…”

Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, March 30, 1863

1752 / 1864: Symbols that say it

The Liberty Bell, cast in 1752, carries Leviticus 25:10: "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof." "In God We Trust" first appeared on a U.S. coin in 1864, during the Civil War, and became the national motto in 1956.

Even the skeptics pointed to Jesus

Most of the founders were church-going Christians. A few, like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, questioned some traditional beliefs. But even they held up Jesus as the greatest moral teacher who ever lived. Christianity ran so deep in America's founding that even its doubters built on it.

Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson cut Jesus' teachings out of the Gospels and arranged them into a book, twice. The first, in 1804, he titled The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, "an abridgement of the New Testament for the use of the Indians." (Historians debate whether he meant that literally.) His later version, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, is kept at the Smithsonian. When Jefferson wanted to teach morality, he went to Jesus. In fairness to the full Christian faith: Jefferson left out the miracles and the resurrection, which the apostles saw as the very center of the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:14).

“I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.”

Thomas Jefferson to Charles Thomson, January 9, 1816

Benjamin Franklin

A month before he died, Franklin answered a question about his faith from Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale. He admitted he had doubts about Jesus' divinity, yet he gave Jesus' teachings the highest praise he could.

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see.”

Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790

John Adams

Years later, Adams looked back on what had united the very different men of the Revolution. He named two things: the general principles of Christianity, "in which all those Sects were united," and the general principles of English and American liberty.

“Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God.”

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813

Where our values came from

Many things Americans take for granted, that every person has equal worth, that the weak should be protected, that slavery is evil, didn't come from nowhere. In the ancient world they were unusual ideas. Historians, including some who are not believers, increasingly trace them to Christianity. Historian Tom Holland, who for years assumed his own values came from ancient Greece and Rome, argues in his book Dominion (2019) that even modern secular ideals like human rights and equality grew out of Christian soil.

Every person has equal worth

Rome valued people by their rank. The Bible teaches that every human being is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and that in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female" (Galatians 3:28). "All men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator" puts that idea at the heart of America.

Genesis 1:27 · Galatians 3:28

Caring for the poor, the sick, and the unwanted

Early Christians rescued babies left out to die and cared for the sick during plagues when others fled. Basil of Caesarea built one of the first true hospitals around AD 369. The pagan emperor Julian complained in AD 362 that "the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well." Hospitals, orphanages, and charities across America trace back to this.

Matthew 25:35-40 · James 1:27

Ending slavery

Slavery was practiced almost everywhere in history: in Rome, Africa, the Islamic world, Asia, Europe, and among many Native American peoples. Sadly, some Christians defended it too. What was new in history was a movement to end it, and that movement was driven above all by Christian conviction, from the Quakers' 1688 protest in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to William Wilberforce in Britain and abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe in America.

It helps to know the scale. Of the roughly 10.7 million Africans who survived the voyage to the Americas, about 388,000, around 4 percent, were brought to what became the United States. Most were taken to Brazil and the Caribbean, where so many died from brutal sugar-plantation labor that the enslaved population kept shrinking and was constantly refilled with new captives. None of that makes American slavery any less evil. It does mean America wasn't uniquely guilty, and that what stands out is that it ended.

Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery, condemned slaveholding religion in the name of real Christianity: "I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ."

Exodus 21:16 · 1 Timothy 1:10

Civil rights

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister, and the civil rights movement was organized in churches. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963), King argued that an unjust law is one "out of harmony with the moral law" of God, quoting Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

Amos 5:24 · Micah 6:8

Forgiveness and loving enemies

"Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) was a shocking idea in a world built on honor and revenge. Today even people who never open a Bible admire forgiveness. That admiration comes from Jesus.

Matthew 5:43-45 · Luke 23:34

Leaders who serve

Ancient rulers were served. Jesus said, "whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant" (Mark 10:43) and washed his disciples' feet. The idea that leaders exist to serve the people, rather than the other way around, runs through America's founding.

Mark 10:42-45 · John 13:12-15

Questions people raise

“The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) says America is ‘not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.’”

The treaty, with a North African Muslim state, does say that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." In context, it was assuring a Muslim ruler that the American government was not a religious state at war with Islam, as European "Christian" powers had been. It's true that the United States has no official church; the founders chose that on purpose. But that's a statement about the government's legal structure, not about the faith of the people, who were overwhelmingly Christian, or about the values the nation was built on.

“The founders were all deists who didn't believe in a God who answers prayer.”

A few founders held unorthodox views, but true deism, a God who made the world and then stays out of it, doesn't fit even them. Franklin said "God governs in the affairs of men" and asked the Convention to pray. Most founders were members of churches, and many, like John Jay, Samuel Adams, Roger Sherman, Patrick Henry, and John Witherspoon (a Presbyterian minister who signed the Declaration), were devout Christians.

“The separation of church and state means faith has no place in public life.”

The phrase isn't in the Constitution. It comes from an 1802 letter Jefferson wrote to Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, reassuring them the government wouldn't interfere with their faith. It was meant to protect churches from the government. Two days later Jefferson attended church in the Capitol.

“America is uniquely evil, a nation built on slavery and stolen land.”

America's sins are real and shouldn't be denied. But "uniquely" isn't true. Slavery existed on every inhabited continent, and the transatlantic trade sent most of its captives to Brazil and the Caribbean, not to the United States. Barbary pirates from North Africa enslaved an estimated one million or more Europeans and took American sailors captive too, which is part of why that 1797 treaty existed.

The history of Native Americans is also more complicated than it's often taught. Native nations suffered real injustice, from broken treaties to forced removals like the Trail of Tears. Yet they were also many different peoples with their own wars, conquests, and in many cases slavery, long before and after Europeans arrived. The Iroquois wars of the 1600s destroyed entire nations like the Huron, the Comanche built an empire on raiding and taking captives, and many Pacific Northwest peoples held slaves. Seeing them as real people means seeing both: they were sinned against and, like every people, they sinned.

The Christian view isn't that any nation is the hero or the villain. It's that every nation is made of sinners who need grace. What's rare in history is a nation that repents of its sins and works to make them right, and much of that repentance in America came from Christians.

“So America was founded as an officially Christian nation.”

Not in the legal sense, and the founders didn't want that: they had seen state churches persecute believers. What's true is that America was founded by a mostly Christian people, on Christian moral ideas, with constant public prayer and appeals to God. Some states did keep official churches for a while, the last until 1833.