7. The United States was born as a Christian nation
The widespread belief that the Founders were Christians to a man is a false one, and the arguments often presented to support the belief are specious. Some cite Washington’s membership in the Episcopal Church in Alexandria as evidence, forgetting that in the Virginia colonial-era church membership and attendance were mandatory, as was tithing. When Washington died in 1799 he did not ask for a minister to come to his bedside, nor for even a Bible, and Washington throughout his life referred to Providence. Jefferson was a Deist, as was Franklin and several others of the Founders, who did not believe in Divine Intervention in human affairs.
John Adams was a member of the Unitarian Church, which did not have a hierarchical clergy, and in some congregations no clergy at all. Some sites quote John Adams as writing, “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion“. Adams did not write that, it is a clause in the first treaty with Morocco, though he did fully ratify the treaty and sent it to the Senate for their “advice and consent”. The debate over America being founded as a Christian nation goes all the way back to the first settlers, many of whom came to the New World to establish religious persecutions of their own, leading to the several colonies of New England forming to flee the Puritans.