The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

Even if the founders were correct in this elitism and people really did need religion to prevent them from running amok, it does not follow that we are a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. That a republic requires morality and therefore a moral people, and therefore a religious people, does not mean it requires Christians. The founders’ guarantee of religious freedom for all makes it clear that they did not think so either. In fact, these Enlightenment thinkers and the founders they influenced shared an important constant: they did not view religion as valuable because of its truth claims or as a source of morality, but simply as a means of producing good behavior without a reasoned moral analysis. This is a severe blow to the Christian nationalist. Any religion would do; Judeo-Christianity was not special. Montesquieu, the political theorist the founders may have relied on more than any other, perhaps said it best: “even a false religion is the best security we can have of the probity of men.”46