America's 250th anniversary revives questions about religion and the founders

Amna Nawaz:

As the nation nears her 250th anniversary next month, Judy Woodruff reports on the old questions about faith and the founding are once again being pushed to the forefront. It's part of her series America at a Crossroads.

Judy Woodruff:

On a Sunday morning last month, the National Mall in Washington was converted into a place of worship, with Christian rock bands belting hallelujahs, the crowd demonstrating their devotion.

Rev. Robert Jeffress:

if being a Christian nationalist means loving Jesus Christ and loving America, count me in.

(Cheering)

Judy Woodruff:

And a roster of speakers, most of them evangelical Christians, calling on Americans to consider the divine hand guiding our country through its history.

Eric Metaxas, Author:

Trusting the lord is how America came into being. Washington knew it. John Adams knew it. They all knew it. Even Benjamin Franklin knew it.

Judy Woodruff:

This was Rededicate 250, a day of prayer, praise and Thanksgiving organized by Freedom 250, the public-private partnership launched by the Trump White House to coordinate its anniversary celebrations.

President Donald Trump:

Thus Solomon finished the house of the lord.

Judy Woodruff:

President Trump appeared in a previously recorded video to read a Bible passage.

Donald Trump:

Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC):

How many you love Jesus?

(Cheering)

Judy Woodruff:

Many of his Cabinet officials and allies on the Hill appeared as well.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA):

In this 250th year of American Indian independence, we hereby rededicate the United States of America as one nation under God.

Vice President J.D. Vance:

And the morality and religion that formed the American consciousness were decidedly Christian, founded upon the principles and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Woman:

I love our president. I love his Cabinet.

Judy Woodruff:

I spoke with visitors who had traveled a long way to be there and who voiced little doubt about their Christian faith and our shared history.

Do you believe that the founders intended this to be a Christian nation?

Woman:

Absolutely. Our nation was founded on a Christian doctrine.

Man:

I believe our founding forefathers were Christian men who loved God, and that's why God made a covenant with this nation.

Woman:

The country needs to return to the lord, to not just say that he is lord, but that he would genuinely be who dictates, who makes the decisions.

Man:

American is built on the Christian faith. So right now, if we lose this faith, the whole country will collapse.

Woman:

I love President Trump. I love what he's doing. I love this event. It's a great honor to bring back Jesus into this nation, because America needs Jesus.

Judy Woodruff:

While clearly passionate, the people who gathered that day aren't alone. A 2022 Pew Research survey found that 60 percent of Americans said they believed the founders originally intended for America to be a Christian nation, while 45 percent said they believed the country should be a Christian nation.

John Fea:

In some ways, this question, was America founded as a Christian nation, is really about the present, not the past.

Judy Woodruff:

Historian John Fea has been studying and writing about this question for a long time.

John Fea:

This is a really interesting Anglican church, because, here in Philadelphia, the Anglicans were split between patriotism and loyalism.

Judy Woodruff:

We met at Christ Church in Philadelphia, where some of those founding fathers, including George Washington and John Adams, attended services.

John Fea:

And this is where Washington and Martha, sometimes, their family, Martha's children, would come and worship.

Judy Woodruff:

This year, Fea is releasing a third edition of his book "In God We Trust: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" It serves as a primer for readers interested in a historical assessment of the faith of the founders, the ways they thought about religion and public life, and how these questions have persisted throughout our history.

John Fea:

Every founder brought their own sort of religious beliefs to bear. In some ways, talking about the founders' personal religious convictions is very unhelpful, because, sometimes, their religious convictions do not necessarily always translate in the way that they thought about the relationship between church and state.

Judy Woodruff:

For example, George Washington was an Anglican who reportedly abstained from taking communion after the revolution. While he wrote often of Providence, Fea says he rarely mentioned Jesus Christ.

John Adams was a Unitarian, rejecting the notion of the trinity and was fiercely anti-Catholic. Thomas Jefferson was a skeptic who created his own Bible that removed all references to miracles in the New Testament.

And though some lauded the role that religion could play in building a new country, they also believed there should be no established religion or religious test for federal office.

John Fea:

These were all radical ideas, new ideas in the Western world. There had been no country that had been built upon these radical ideas of separating church and state, of religious liberty, of religious freedom.

And they saw all of the dangers, especially persecution of minorities, religious minorities. And they were -- they wanted a nation built on religious liberty.

Judy Woodruff:

And how strongly do they feel about that?

John Fea:

Well, they -- every founding father would have embraced that idea. There was really very little dissent at all on that question.

Judy Woodruff:

Even as the Freedom 250 event in Washington gained national attention last month, another group, Faith250, has been quietly meeting in churches, synagogues and mosques in Northern Virginia for the past year to discuss historical texts across lines of faith, the Declaration of Independence, "The New Colossus," the poem found on the Statue of Liberty, and the writing of Frederick Douglass.

Rabbi Michael Holzman founded Faith250.

Rabbi Michael Holzman, Founder, Faith250:

The idea of America, the narrative of America, the identity of being an American has always been aspirational, and it's always been connected to a vision for humanity, right? And so we just turn to our different religious traditions to find the ways that we can talk about our vision for humanity and our vision for this country.

Rizwan Jaka, Member, Faith250:

Now, thank you all so much for getting to your tables.

Judy Woodruff:

Rizwan Jaka has been working within the interfaith community for decades in this area.

Rizwan Jaka:

As an American Muslim, it takes me back to where estimated one-third of enslaved Africans that were brought here were of Muslim descent. And so the founding of this country also had Muslims that were a part of it in that journey, right, obviously coming from the foundings and how do we continue to create a more perfect union to live up to those ideals.

Judy Woodruff:

Miranda Hovemeyer is a humanist chaplain at American University. She doesn't identify with any faith tradition, something she shares with more than a quarter of the country.

Miranda Hovemeyer, Humanist Chaplain, American University:

You need to be able as an American to follow your personal conscience. And that is a really important founding principle of the United States, because we're acting out of -- in reaction to coming out of a place where church and state were not separate.

And a big value that we are trying to impart on this democracy going forward is that each human being has freedom of conscience to choose what is the right path for them in their own spiritual belief and development.

Rep. Mike Johnson:

Let your Holy Spirit descend upon this land.

Judy Woodruff:

John Fea says that this tension between claims of a Christian founding and a tradition of religious freedom and what they should mean for public life has shown up throughout our nation's past.

John Fea:

At every moment, whenever there is social demographic cultural change, there's always a backlash. You could call it nativism, but there's always a backlash to try to preserve what the population believes America is all about.

Judy Woodruff:

Yet, as an evangelical Christian himself and a historian, he says one needn't choose between God and country.

John Fea:

But, for me, Christians believe that they're a part of the kingdom of God, an alternative kingdom, right, a kingdom that is -- transcends nations and these kinds of things. So what does it matter whether or not we are -- America is founded as a Christian nation for a person of true Christian faith?

In other words, I do not tie my personal faith to American identity in any way, shape or form. And I hope I'm willing to speak out against my country when it has to -- as a patriot and a Christian, speak out against my country when necessary, as well as praise it for the good things that it's done.

Judy Woodruff:

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Philadelphia.