The Christian Nation That Never Was

The United States was not born a Christian nation. It was built by men who argued, doubted, rewrote their Bibles, and chose law over doctrine. “The Christian Nation That Never Was” takes a scalpel to one of America’s most persistent political myths: the claim that the founders meant to build a government “founded on the Christian religion.” Drawing on the founders’ own letters, public documents, and laws, this book follows the story from the Enlightenment in Europe to the experiments of the early republic. Along the way, it introduces the real Jefferson who cut up the New Testament, John Adams the grumpy Unitarian, Thomas Paine the heretic of two revolutions, Benjamin Franklin the pragmatic skeptic, and George Washington the master of polite but carefully vague public religion. You’ll see how “Nature’s God” in the Declaration is not the God of any church; how the Constitution deliberately leaves God out; how the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the First Amendment dismantled religious privilege in law; and why the Treaty of Tripoli could declare, without controversy, that the U.S. government is “not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” The book then tracks how, centuries later, a very different story was invented: “Judeo-Christian America,” the Ten Commandments as the “basis” of our law, and a wave of Christian nationalist disinformation that tries to drag the country backward. Accessible, heavily sourced, and unapologetically secular, “The Christian Nation That Never Was” is for anyone who’s tired of being told that real Americans must be real Christians. It’s a guided tour through the actual record—so you can see, in the founders’ own words, what kind of nation they thought they were creating, and what’s at stake when we forget it.
ASIN: B0G6KKWDL9
VSKU: BVV.B0G6KKWDL9.VG
Condition: Very Good
Author/Artist:Bone, Chris
Binding: Paperback
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: Book has little sign of wear or use