United States Founding Principle: Seperation of Church and States

Most of the Founding Fathers were NOT Christian-John Adams: "The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."James Madison: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."Thomas Paine: "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish [Islamic], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. "Thomas Jefferson: "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."Most of them were deists, and rarely ever referred to the Christian God or Jesus but instead to Providence or an ambiguous "Creator."

"Treaty of Tripoly" i think even more so expresses the Non-Christians founding of the United States. Article 11 reads."As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

or as Thomas Jefferson said:"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."

or as James Madison said;"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State." (1819).

Every man "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." - George Washington (Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789)

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787)

United States ConstitutionThe First Amendment"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Article VI, Section 3"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."