by Dave Franklin

Created on: May 20, 2009

This is obviously a very emotive subject for many, especially for the every growing conservative Christian factions who are becoming more prominent in America today. One of the problems with understanding history is that our ticket to the past is mainly found in peoples writings. These thoughts and ideas are used by the next generation of writers to inspire their works and so it goes from generation to generation until you realise that any book you read today is just a series of interpretations from one author to the next. Many books have hidden agendas and it is very easy to represent facts in such away that they support your cause. Facts and truth are often not the same thing. Countries, like people, often re-invent their own paths to help support the image they want to project today. So in a rambling way I am saying that if it is not in the modern history books that we need to look for evidence to the true nature of the founding of America, then it is to the original writings of the founding fathers themselves.

I would say at this juncture that I am at no point saying that America was largely shaped by men with Christian beliefs, from the Mayflower to the drafting of the Declaration Of Independence and through out much of America's history the main players have largely been of white, protestant European, if not British stock. But it is not the individual beliefs of the politicians that is under scrutiny here. It is certainly true that the Great Migrations of the 1630 which founded the Virginia Colonies were as a direct result of the puritans belief that Charles I of England was trying reunite the country with Roman Catholicism, and a new protestant kingdom was sought away from the religious turmoil of Europe, currently embroiled in the religious fervour of the Thirty Years War and an England about to embark on its own Civil Wars. But these colonies are not yet America, merely hidden outpost too far from the control of Europe.

The question of Americas founding being religious or secular is found in the writings and official documents of the men who drafted the Declaration, the document that effectively created The United States as a country in its own right, in political terms. The clearest indication of the nature of the newly founded America comes from two of its biggest players. The following is from a treaty drafted in 1796 under George Washington and signed by John Adams advocating a peace accord with the Muslim Kingdom of Tripoli.

As the

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