America’s founders wrote church-state separation into the Constitution

Evidence

The biggest fraud of Christian nationalism—that the United States was founded as a Christian nation—is also the movement’s source of its greatest weakness. The mythologizers of Christian nationalism have hurled every distortion they can find at America’s founders because they know that those same founders secured a truth that is fatal to their cause. The “wall of separation between Church & State” is not a latter-day fiction concocted by secular liberals, as Christian nationalists would have us believe. It is a phrase put to paper by Thomas Jefferson to describe a principle that was written into the Constitution and carved into history as a core achievement of the American Revolution. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 1069

Categorization

• XREF: Answers the ch8 debate over whether America’s founders created the first secular republic — this is the author’s direct rebuttal position. — connects to: Christian nationalist political theory centers monarchy, not democracy — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 211; America’s founders created the first secular republic. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 509; The founding fathers held diverse religious views and drew on secular sources — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 38 (+1 more)