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When a high school teacher in Oklahoma recently played a video sent by Secretary of Education Ryan Walters, students were met with a bold claim: the United States was founded as a Christian nation, with the Bible meant to guide governance and education. The video urged students to embrace Christianity in the classroom—a repeated message by Walters. This narrative, while familiar and comforting to some, is historically inaccurate.
This claim distorts the intentions of the Founding Fathers and misrepresents the foundational principles of American democracy. Let’s examine the evidence.
The Founding Fathers’ Intentions: Secularism and Religious Freedom
The framers of the U.S. Constitution deliberately avoided mixing religion and government. Religion is mentioned only once in the Constitution, and that is to prohibit it: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” (Article VI). This was a revolutionary stance, a response to the state religions that had created centuries of conflict in Europe.