Amid celebrations of The us’s 250th anniversary, assertions of the rustic’s spiritual, and particularly Christian, personality have grown louder in political discourse.
In Might 2026, Area Speaker Mike Johnson and different outstanding officers participated in a prayer provider in Washington, D.C. Johnson proclaimed, “We hereby rededicate the United States of America as one nation under God.” Although planners invoked the country’s “Judeo-Christian” heritage, maximum spiritual leaders on the match got here from the evangelical Christian custom. In a prerecorded video, President Donald Trump learn from the New Testomony ebook of two Corinthians.
Many unusual American citizens who attended the prayer provider appeared to acknowledge the will to hyperlink the US with Christianity. One advised a reporter that the U.S. used to be “founded on a Christian doctrine,” whilst some other insisted it used to be “an important thing for our nation, just to put Christ back first.”
Other folks concentrate to Christian worship tune at Rededicate 250, at the Nationwide Mall, on Might 17, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
AP Photograph/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Those concepts weren’t restricted to this one-time collecting. In speeches and prayers at public occasions, Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth proclaimed the U.S. to be “one nation under God.” In February 2026, at a Christian broadcasters conference, he declared that “Christ is King” and claimed “a direct through line from the Old and New Testament Christian gospels to the development of Western civilization and the United States of America.”
To start with look, those expressions would possibly appear triumphalist declarations that hyperlink the country’s good fortune over the last 250 years with Christian religion. As a historian of U.S. Christianity, on the other hand, I acknowledge expressions like those incessantly rise up when Christian American citizens are feeling the rest however triumphant.
Civil struggle and committing to God
Because the U.S. plunged into Civil Conflict in 1861, each the Union and Confederacy sought to hyperlink their facet to God. The preamble of the Accomplice charter famous a want for “the favor and guidance of Almighty God” for his or her new govt.
Within the North, the Pennsylvania clergyman M.R. Watkinson effectively lobbied for a connection with God to be added to cash. Watkinson believed the country used to be in charge of “disowning God” and advised the treasury secretary to make declarations of religiosity. This could “place us openly under the divine protection,” he famous.
3 years later, as struggle dragged on, a gaggle comprising individuals of the North’s primary Protestant denominations advised a transformation to the preamble of the U.S. Charter. Its individuals sought to claim that American citizens known “Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government” and desired “to constitute a Christian government.”
The modification used to be no longer ratified throughout the Civil Conflict, however the efforts in each the North and South printed how an existential political disaster driven language of God into govt.
Efforts to claim The us Christian
Quickly after the Civil Conflict, Protestant Christians within the U.S. perceived a brand new risk. Starting within the 1870s, atheism and indifference to faith become standard, particularly amongst more youthful intellectuals. Emerging numbers of Catholic and Jewish immigrants introduced better spiritual variety.
Fearing a lack of their vital clout and affect, religious Protestants revived the sooner marketing campaign to jot down their religion commitments into the Charter.
Along with striking references to God and Jesus within the Charter, their proposed modification declared the Bible “the supreme rule for the conduct of nations.”
This used to be at odds with the ideals of Roman Catholics, who glance to church instructing and custom along side the Bible as resources of non secular authority. The sturdy emphasis at the Bible made transparent that the modification used to be written essentially for Protestants.
Supporters of the modification incorporated William Robust, a justice at the Ideally suited Court docket. In 1873, Robust urged that the Charter should both be made “explicitly Christian” or else Christianity could be “obliterated” from each U.S. establishment.
The Christian modification in the end failed, in large part as a result of no longer all Protestants supported it. However anxieties about rising variety and emerging indifference had satisfied many American citizens of the wish to enshrine Christianity within the Charter.
A godly country with Chilly Conflict anxieties
Anxieties within the aftermath of International Conflict II and the daybreak of the Chilly Conflict introduced some other upward thrust of Christian rhetoric in U.S. civic lifestyles.
In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a invoice including the word “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. The president’s signing commentary famous that the word represented a “reaffirming” of “the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future.” This used to be vital given the “violence and brutality” the arena had skilled and the being concerned “prospect of atomic war,” it mentioned.
President Eisenhower on the New York Road Presbyterian Church on Feb. 7, 1954, when he amended the Pledge of Allegiance to incorporate the phrases ‘under God.’
Hilltoppers by way of Wikimedia
The next yr, Eisenhower signed a invoice striking the word “In God We Trust” on all American forex. Probably the most invoice’s sponsors, U.S. Rep. Charles Bennett, a Florida Democrat, invoked the now-familiar thought of the country’s spiritual personality. Bennett insisted that the U.S. “was founded in a spiritual atmosphere and with a firm trust in God.”
Those traits stemmed from the function of strengthening American citizens’ spiritual dedication amid the struggle and pageant of the early Chilly Conflict. Students have demonstrated that political leaders like Eisenhower and non secular figures, such because the an increasing number of standard evangelist Billy Graham, all wired the significance of robust spiritual religion. Of their eyes, that religion set the U.S. except for the “godlessness” of Soviet communism.
The historian Kevin M. Kruse has proven that the upward push of non secular language mirrored home political issues as neatly. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal techniques, designed to reply to the Nice Despair, had expanded the government’s position within the financial system and empowered arranged exertions.
An alliance of conservative industry leaders and ministers feared a lack of affect on this new political and social truth. All the way through the Fifties they connected their values “faith, freedom, and free enterprise,” Kruse writes, all below the perfect of the U.S. as a country below God.
250 years of religion and concern
Extra incessantly than no longer, the insistence that the U.S. is “one nation under God” isn’t a triumphant commentary of good fortune.
This concern used to be obvious within the reaction of an attendee on the “Rededicate 250” prayer provider in Might. When interviewed through PBS, this attendee declared, “American is built on the Christian faith,” and added, “if we lose this faith, the whole country will collapse.”
During the country’s historical past, that existential concern has impressed efforts to claim the U.S. a Christian country.
This newsletter comprises subject matter from a piece of writing revealed on Feb. 2, 2018.
