The US founders’ other revolutionary choice: Separating religion and government

Image: Signing of the United States Constitution with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton (left to right in the foreground). Image credit: 1940 painting by Howard Chandler Christy via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. Article by Peter C. Mancall. The Conversation – June 24, 2026.

Did the founders of the United States intend to create a Christian nation? Political leaders who addressed a prayer rally on the National Mall on May 17, 2026, seem to think so: House Speaker Mike Johnson led the crowd in “rededicat(ing) the United States of America as one nation under God.” Some, and perhaps many, scholars would say no: that while many founders were religious, as a group they concluded that the national government should not support any particular faith. As a scholar of Colonial North America, I believe that history provides an answer. European colonizers in lands that became the United States did link church and state. But the architects of the new nation broke from that idea as surely as they broke from Britain. […]

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