Barack Obama vs. Harry Truman and Many Others on America as a Christian Nation

By Mike Griffith, Staff Writer

Barack Obama is lucky that "Give’em Hell" Harry Truman isn’t around today; otherwise, he’d have some explaining to do about his recent comment that America is not a Christian nation.  During his trip to Turkey a couple weeks ago, President Obama took it upon himself to declare that we Americans don’t consider America to be a Christian nation.  President Truman had a very different view on the matter.

President Truman wrote the following in 1947:

This is a Christian Nation. More than a half century ago that declaration was written into the decrees of the highest court in this land. It is not without significance that the valiant pioneers who left Europe to establish settlements here, at the very beginning of their colonial enterprises, declared their faith in the Christian religion and made ample provision for its practice and for its support. The story of the Christian missionaries who in earliest days endured perils, hardship–even death itself in carrying the message of Jesus Christ to untutored savages is one that still moves the hearts of men.

As a Christian Nation our earnest desire is to work with men of good will everywhere to banish war and the causes of war from the world whose Creator desired that men of every race and in every clime should live together in peace, good will and mutual trust. Freedom of conscience, ordained by the Fathers of our Constitution to all who live under the flag of the United States, has been a bulwark  (Letter to Pope Pius XII, August 6, 1947)

President Truman is by no means the only President who has affirmed America’s Christian heritage and character.

President Calvin Coolidge:

Here stands our country, an example of tranquillity at home, a patron of tranquillity abroad. Here stands its Government, aware of its might but obedient to its conscience. Here it will continue to stand, seeking peace and prosperity, solicitous for the welfare of the wage earner, promoting enterprise, developing waterways and natural resources, attentive to the intuitive counsel of womanhood, encouraging education, desiring the advancement of religion, supporting the cause of justice and honor among the nations. America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force. No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions. The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but with the cross. The higher state to which she seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God. (Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925)

President Woodrow Wilson:

America was born a Christian nation.  America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture. (In Jan Nordholt, Woodrow Wilson: A Life of World Peace, University of California Press, 1991, p. 47)

President John Quincy Adams, our sixth President and the son of President John Adams:

Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Saviour and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before? (An Oration Delivered before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport [Massachusetts], at Their Request, on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1837, by John Quincy Adams. Newburyport: Charles Whipple, printed by Morse and Brewster, 1837, pp. 5-6)

In 1854 the House Judiciary Committee issued a detailed report on the meaning of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.  I quote from that report:

Had the people during the Revolution had a suspicion of any attempt to wage war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect. Any attempt to level and discard all religion would have been received with universal indignation. . . .

But we beg leave to rescue ourselves from the imputation of asserting that religion is not needed to the safety of civil society. It must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure rests. Laws will not have permanence or power without the sanction of religious sentiment—without a firm belief that there is a Power above us that will reward our virtues and punish our sins.

In this age there can be no substitute for Christianity; that in its general principles is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants. (Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives Made During the First Session of the Thirty-Third Congress, Washington: A. O. P. Nicholson, 1854)

President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke about the importance of faith in God in the American tradition:

The Founding Fathers expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is rounded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual fights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights.

To you and to me this ideal of Government is a self-evident truth. But in many lands the State claims to be the author of human rights. The tragedy of that claim runs through all history and, indeed, dominates our own times. If the State gives rights, it can–and inevitably will–take away those rights.

Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first–the most basic–expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers saw it, and thus, with God’s help, it will continue to be. (Remarks Recorded for the Back-to-God Program of the American Legion, February 20, 1955, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=10414)

President Obama would do well to take some lessons in real American history, and he could start by studying the above statements.

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