Amid celebrations of The us’s 250th anniversary, assertions of the rustic’s spiritual, and particularly Christian, persona have grown louder in political discourse.
In Would possibly 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.” Even though 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 e-book of two Corinthians.
Many atypical American citizens who attended the prayer provider perceived to acknowledge the need to hyperlink the US with Christianity. One informed 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.”
Folks concentrate to Christian worship tune at Rededicate 250, at the Nationwide Mall, on Would possibly 17, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
AP Picture/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 may 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 ceaselessly rise up when Christian American citizens are feeling anything else however triumphant.
Civil struggle and committing to God
Because the U.S. plunged into Civil Warfare in 1861, each the Union and Confederacy sought to hyperlink their aspect to God. The preamble of the Accomplice charter famous a need for “the favor and guidance of Almighty God” for his or her new executive.
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 accountable of “disowning God” and suggested the treasury secretary to make declarations of religiosity. This may “place us openly under the divine protection,” he famous.
3 years later, as struggle dragged on, a bunch comprising participants of the North’s primary Protestant denominations suggested a transformation to the preamble of the U.S. Charter. Its participants sought to claim that American citizens identified “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 now not ratified all over the Civil Warfare, however the efforts in each the North and South printed how an existential political disaster driven language of God into executive.
Efforts to claim The us Christian
Quickly after the Civil Warfare, Protestant Christians within the U.S. perceived a brand new danger. Starting within the 1870s, atheism and indifference to faith turned into common, particularly amongst more youthful intellectuals. Emerging numbers of Catholic and Jewish immigrants introduced larger spiritual variety.
Fearing a lack of their important clout and affect, religious Protestants revived the sooner marketing campaign to put in writing 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 educating and custom together with the Bible as resources of non secular authority. The sturdy emphasis at the Bible made transparent that the modification used to be written basically for Protestants.
Supporters of the modification integrated William Robust, a justice at the Best Court docket. In 1873, Robust urged that the Charter will have to both be made “explicitly Christian” or else Christianity could be “obliterated” from each and every U.S. establishment.
The Christian modification in the end failed, in large part as a result of now not all Protestants supported it. However anxieties about rising variety and emerging indifference had satisfied many American citizens of the want to enshrine Christianity within the Charter.
A godly country with Chilly Warfare anxieties
Anxieties within the aftermath of Global Warfare II and the crack of dawn of the Chilly Warfare 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 remark 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 sector had skilled and the being concerned “prospect of atomic war,” it mentioned.
President Eisenhower on the New York Street 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 persona. Bennett insisted that the U.S. “was founded in a spiritual atmosphere and with a firm trust in God.”
Those trends stemmed from the function of strengthening American citizens’ spiritual dedication amid the battle and pageant of the early Chilly Warfare. Students have demonstrated that political leaders like Eisenhower and non secular figures, such because the an increasing number of common evangelist Billy Graham, all stressed out the significance of sturdy spiritual religion. Of their eyes, that religion set the U.S. except the “godlessness” of Soviet communism.
The historian Kevin M. Kruse has proven that the upward push of non secular language mirrored home political considerations as smartly. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal systems, designed to answer the Nice Melancholy, had expanded the government’s function within the economic 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 through the Nineteen Fifties they connected their values “faith, freedom, and free enterprise,” Kruse writes, all beneath the best of the U.S. as a country beneath God.
250 years of religion and concern
Extra ceaselessly than now not, the insistence that the U.S. is “one nation under God” isn’t a triumphant remark of good fortune.
This concern used to be obtrusive within the reaction of an attendee on the “Rededicate 250” prayer provider in Would possibly. When interviewed by way of PBS, this attendee declared, “American is built on the Christian faith,” and added, “if we lose this faith, the whole country will collapse.”
All the way through the country’s historical past, that existential concern has impressed efforts to claim the U.S. a Christian country.
This newsletter contains subject material from a piece of writing revealed on Feb. 2, 2018.
