Why I'm Proud To Be An American

 

I am proud to be an American.

Tomorrow we celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States of America. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming to England and the world that the American colonies were no longer part of the British Empire. Crafted by a small committee and penned by Thomas Jefferson, it is widely regarded as one of the most important documents in human history. It is the ideals expressed in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence that make me proud to be an American.

For the past 27 years, I have told every class I have taught that I consider myself an "American Exceptionalist." I truly believe we are an exceptional nation and people. America is unique because we have forged a national identity from people of different races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, and languages. Over the last 250 years, Americans have come together around one shared ideal. That ideal is captured in a single sentence from the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

What makes America special is that these are not merely words we recite to make ourselves feel good while we pursue other, more ignoble ambitions but, rather, that we have never ceased to strive to live up to the lofty goals of that singular promise. Those words have served as our nation's guiding ideal, one that each generation has struggled to fulfill. Our progress has often been uneven, and we have repeatedly fallen short. Yet that, to me, is one of America's greatest strengths. America has an exceptional capacity to learn from its past and attempt to rectify its historical shortcomings.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote those words, he owned enslaved people. Indeed, an enslaved servant was present in the his room as he drafted the Declaration of Independence. America's experience with slavery remains one of the darkest, most execrable chapters in our history and the clearest example of our failure to live up to our founding promise. Yet 84 years after the Declaration was written, the nation became so divided over slavery that it fought a Civil War that ultimately ended the institution. In essence, Americans were willing to sacrifice their lives in an effort to bring the nation closer to its founding ideals. That, to me, is remarkable and inspiring.

Our treatment of American Indians is another tragic example of the nation failing to live up to its promise. For much of our early history, Native peoples were viewed as uncivilized or less than fully human. They were killed, displaced, enslaved, abused, and repeatedly betrayed by broken treaties. That history is reprehensible and shameful. Yet, over time, we have increasingly acknowledged those injustices and sought, however imperfectly, to address them. Once again, rather than simply ignoring a painful past, America has confronted its failures and attempted to do better.

Again and again, our nation has wrestled with its history and its failure to fully uphold its promise. Women were always citizens, but for much of our history their citizenship was more symbolic than meaningful. They possessed few political rights and limited economic and social rights. Through the courage and determination of generations of women—and many men—the nation was compelled to recognize yet another contradiction between its ideals and its reality. Once again, America chose to learn from its past and work toward a better future.

While I am proud to be an American, I have not always been proud of its government or its leaders. Every president since I became politically aware has, at times, disappointed, angered, or frustrated me. Yet that is one of America's greatest strengths—and one of the reasons I am proud to call it home. Here, you can freely express your discontent without fear of reprisal.

True patriotism means supporting your country while striving to make it better. It means holding the nation to its highest ideals and demanding that its leaders live up to them. When they fall short, citizens have not only the right but the responsibility to speak out and insist on better.

As Theodore Roosevelt famously said, "Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly by the degree in which he himself stands by the country."

That is why I love this country. America's promise is so inspiring that it deserves our unwavering commitment—not blind loyalty to those in power, but steadfast dedication to the ideals that define the nation and the expectation that our leaders will strive to fulfill them.

Today, we stand at another crossroads in our nation's history. Do we truly believe that all people are created equal? Do all people possess certain unalienable rights? Does our government have a duty to protect those rights regardless of the color of a person's skin, their ethnicity, their religion, how they identify, or whom they love? As a nation, we must decide whether those rights belong to everyone or only to some.

I believe we will ultimately decide they belong to everyone. The process is slow, and the journey is often difficult and imperfect, but I believe we will continue moving toward a more perfect fulfillment of our founding promise. Americans are willing to confront their history—the glorious and inspiring alongside the painful and shameful. We learn from both. We strive, generation after generation, to become the nation envisioned in the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago.

That is why I am proud to be an American.

Politics, Patriotism, and Prayer

Politics can be a religion, but religion should never be in politics.

The Trump administration has made religion, and more specifically Christianity, a central element of its politics. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which announced to the world that this nation and its people were no longer subjects of England but a new, independent nation, this religious emphasis has only escalated.

The term “Judeo-Christian” is a term that has entered the American lexicon over the last seventy-five years, with many claiming it is a foundational block in the creation and establishment of the United States. The Trump Administration, as we approach the 250th birthday of the nation, has amplified this notion. At a recent press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Our nation was a nation that was founded, 250 years ago almost, on Judeo-Christian values.” However, this often repeated claim that the United States was founded on “Judeo-Christian values” is not a historically accurate description of our nation’s founding.

The Founding Fathers were not a unified religious bloc, nor were they attempting to establish a Christian nation. Having just come from a “Christian nation” themselves, which was controlled by the Protestant Church or England at the time, and had a history of bloody wars and violent opposition between various sects of Christianity, they were insistent on creating a new and different kind of nation.

Many key figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, were heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, which was a radical departure from and reaction to the Christian religious zealotry that had dominated and controlled European life and heavily influenced its politics for centuries. The Enlightenment Movement emphasized reason, individual liberty, scientific inquiry, and skepticism of religious authority. To be sure, some of the Founding Fathers were devout Christians, while most identified as Christians in a cultural sense, but many held Deist beliefs, rejecting core doctrines like the divinity of Jesus.

For example, Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, essentially re-wrote the Bible. The Jefferson Bible completely omits not only the Old Testament, but all the miracles, supernatural elements, and even the resurrection of Jesus. 

Also, a number of key founders, most notably Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and to some extent, George Washington, were influenced by Deist ideas. Deism isn’t atheism, but it’s also not orthodox Christianity. It generally holds that a Creator exists and that Creator established natural laws, but does not intervene in the world through miracles or revelation in the traditional sense. That worldview matters a lot when you look at the founding language. Most importantly, the founding documents themselves are explicitly secular in structure and intent.

The U.S. Constitution contains no reference to God or Christianity. Its only mention of religion is in Article VI, which prohibits religious tests for public office, a radical departure from European norms at the time and reflective of the influences of the Enlightenment Movement.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly prevents the establishment of religion by Congress and protects the free exercise of all beliefs. This was not about promoting religion, but about preventing government control over it and from it. Indeed many of the colonies were founded as a refuge from religious persecution and intolerance against them from a government. Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by Puritans escaping religious persecution in England. Rhode Island was founded by Puritan dissenters who were ironically being persecuted for their lack of adherence to Puritan beliefs in Massachusetts. Maryland was established as a refuge for Catholics who were mistrusted and disliked by the English crown. Pennsylvania was founded as a haven for Quakers, who were intensely disliked by England. Other than Massachusetts, which established a theocracy, all of these colonies founded as an escape from religious persecution, decreed religious freedom in their colonies.

In the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, which was a treaty between the United States and the Barbary Coast pirates from North Africa, it explicitly states, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” This statement was to show that the United States did not harbor any religious hostility towards the Muslim North African nations. This treaty was unanimously passed by the United States Senate and signed by President John Adams.

Even in the Declaration of Independence, which has language like “endowed by their Creator,” is also due to enlightenment influence, rather than explicitly Christian. In this framework, invoking a “Creator” represents  a Deist philosophy rather than a Christian one. It grounded human rights in something universal and permanent, rather than in a king or a specific religious authority. This was crucial in justifying independence, because if rights come from the “Creator”, then no government can legitimately revoke them.

The Declaration uses several different terms like, “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” “Supreme Judge,” and “Divine Providence.” None of which are explicitly Christian. There is no mention of Jesus Christ, no reference to the Bible, and no appeal to specifically Christian doctrine. The language in the Declaration of Independence was intentionally broad enough to include all beliefs, rather than only Christianity. 

Even our current understanding and practice of Christianity would have been foreign to the Founding Fathers. During the eighteenth century and throughout most of the nineteenth century, the central figure in Christianity was God, not Jesus. And until the Second Great Awakening in the late 1700s and early 1800s, openly and publicly discussing religion was very uncommon and was done in private among other believers. Indeed, even the phrase “Judeo-Christian values” itself would have been unfamiliar to the Founders. It did not enter the American lexicon until the mid-20th century, largely as a way to promote unity during the Cold War. Therefore, projecting it backward onto the 18th century is historically inaccurate.

The phrase actually originated in the 1930s and 1940s. During this period, the United States was confronting two major forces. The rise of fascism in Europe and, later, the ideological struggle of the Cold War. In both contexts, American leaders and thinkers sought a unifying moral identity that contrasted with their adversaries.

As Nazi ideology spread in Europe, with its explicit antisemitism, American religious and political leaders began emphasizing common ground between Christians and Jews. The term “Judeo-Christian” was promoted to foster solidarity and to push back against the idea that Jews were outsiders to Western civilization. It was, in part, a moral and cultural response to the horrors of the Holocaust.

After World War II, the United States positioned itself against the officially atheistic Soviet Union. Politicians and institutions emphasized religion as a defining feature of American life. It was during this era that “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance  in 1954 and “In God We Trust” became the national motto in 1956. Two things that many also believe originated at our founding.

The phrase “Judeo-Christian values” created a broad, inclusive religious identity that could unify Protestants, Catholics, and Jews under a single cultural banner. Such distinction was important because the U.S. has had long standing tensions between Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities. So “Judeo-Christian” functioned as a kind of compromise language, one that smoothed over theological differences and presented a common ethical tradition (even if that tradition was selectively defined). It was less about theology and more about social cohesion in a time of division.

By the late 20th century, the phrase began to take on a more explicitly political and partisan role. It was increasingly used to argue that certain moral or legal positions on family, law, or public life were rooted in this shared heritage. The phrase “Judeo-Christian values” is not a founding era concept. It’s a 20th-century construct shaped by war, prejudice, and the need for national unity. It was originally meant to expand inclusion, but has often been repurposed in modern politics to suggest a singular religious foundation for the United States. 

None of this is to deny that religion, including Christianity, played a major role in American culture or in the personal lives of many early Americans. It did. As noted earlier, Christianity played a significant role in the founding of many of the early colonies. Christianity played a significant role in the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. Virtually every President of the United States over the course of the last one hundred years has made “God Bless the United States” the closing line of many if not most of their speeches. But cultural influence is not the same as constitutional foundation. The United States was designed to be a pluralistic society where people of all faiths or no faith could participate equally under the law.

So, when political leaders claim the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, they are not expressing an historical truth, they are advancing a vision of government that risks excluding those who do not share that identity. It reframes a secular constitutional system into a religious one, which runs counter to both the text of the founding documents and the intentions of many of their authors. This is why it is especially important for Christians in the United States to be informed and vocal about this issue.

Christian nationalism is on the rise, but very often it conflicts with both democratic principles and the core teachings many Christians hold, such as humility, truthfulness, and care for others. Some of the people in the highest positions of power in our country are platforming ideas and policies that directly erode the rights of women, neglect the poor, deprive the hungry, mistreat the immigrant, target the other, disregard our planet, and pray for God to kill their enemies, all while claiming to be Christian. If unchallenged, especially by Christians and their church, it allows a specific political ideology to define what Christianity means in the public square.

Christians who value both their faith and the Constitution are uniquely positioned to speak with credibility here. By insisting on historical accuracy and rejecting the misuse of our religion for political power, we can help preserve both religious freedom and the integrity of our own tradition.

Moreover, there are more than 200 distinct Christian traditions in the United States alone, all with our own unique theologies, interpretations of scripture, and how we believe the gospel should be lived out. To have a single Christian sect, especially one that doesn’t believe that Catholics, Methodists, and many other Christians are “true” Christians, threatens the intentions of our founding documents and the intent of the Founding Fathers. It threatens our belief in religious liberties. And it threatens the very foundations of not only Christianity itself, but the foundations of virtually every other religion in the United States.

If one Christian sect claims sole authority over religious truth and the exclusive right to define American values, then the founding principle that people are " endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is nullified.