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Whether or not the United States was founded as a Christian nation is a question that concerns people probably more than it should. It's not that the question is unimportant, but the asking of it demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basis of western civilization: the Aristotelian understanding of the natural law. In the Declaration of Independence, the "legal brief" drafted by Thomas Jefferson to justify the American Revolution, the natural law basis for the Revolution and (by extension) that of the new country, is made clear: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

The identity and specific attributes of the noted "Creator" are carefully omitted from the document. This is understandable on a number of grounds. First, while all the members of the Continental Congress believed in God, it is problematical how each one defined the Supreme Being. By some standards Jefferson himself might not have been considered a Christian. John Carroll from Maryland, a Catholic, belonged to a church subject to legal disabilities and which some groups even today consider non-Christian. Benjamin Franklin's approach to religion was also somewhat equivocal from the point of view of the Established Church, and the list could go on. This leads into the second, and (politically) the most important reason for not specifying any attributes to a Creator that could not be derived from the use of natural reason, that is, the natural law.

The Founding Fathers of the United States were rebelling against a system that, in their opinion, was unjust. Rights to life, liberty, and (most immediately) private property, were being violated and infringed as a matter of course. One of the more fundamental liberties abused by the British government was freedom of religion.

Since the days of the Tudors, Great Britain and Ireland had been burdened with "Established Churches." That is, religious institutions were legally treated as branches of the government, tax supported, and with religious requirements such as mandatory attendance at services at Christmas and Easter and payment of tithes enforced with the coercive power of the State. Failure to attend services could result in heavy monetary fines or jail time. Non-conformists, such as Catholics and Anabaptists, were viewed as traitors to both God and the State, conveniently merged into one via the recently-introduced theory of the Divine Right

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