Why Do So Many Citizens of the United States Claim That It Is A Christian Nation When The Government Denies It?

In recent years, the news media and religious zealots have promoted the idea that the United States of America is a Christian nation. The United States refused any ties to religion and more specifically Christianity centuries ago when the nation was first created. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, which was written under George Washington, only to be signed under the presidency of John Adams, states in Article 11:

“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 tranquility 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.”

Here we see evidence that the founding fathers themselves never attached a “religious” sentiment to the mission of the government.  So when did this idea that the United States is a Christian nation begin? We can find some answers by looking at the political scope of Christianity when the nation was first founded. In this regard, let us examine the observation made by  author Peter Whitfield in his classic work entitled New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration, which states:

“Psychologically more profound than technical advantage may have. been the sense of religious superiority. “European” was synonymous with “Christian”: when Spain and Portugal  initiated the era of exploration they chose to present their conquests as new crusades against the non-Christian world.”

In ancient times, religion wasn’t a separate institution within a greater society of homogenized people, it was the ethnic identity of that nation. In the mind of ancient man, your spiritual path was your ethnicity. Thus, we find that the Yoruban people of West Africa practiced Ifa. The Japanese practiced Shinto. The Chinese practiced Taoism. Descendents of India practiced Hinduism. Whitfield points out that during the colonial era, and in times prior, being a Christian was synonymous with being a European.

The Christian ethnic identity would further evolve into “whiteness” because Sub-Saharan Africans and Native Americans couldn’t bear the ethnicity Christian since they were of non-European ancestry, heathen converts would be categorized as “soulless” and given the title “black” to indicate their malevolent spiritual condition. Ironically, African Americans are often offended by people outside of their ethnicity, who use the n-word. However, they insist on describing themselves as “black,” which is a much more offensive term historically. As a professor of history and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University, the highly-esteemed Magda Teter noted that early Christians from the 3rd century BC equated the phrase “black people” as being synonymous with the word “sinner.” Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism by Magda Teter, states on page 30:

“Origen, the third-century Christian writer, connected the two verses to allegorize the expansion of the Christian church among the Gentiles, asking “in what way is she black and in what way is she fair without whiteness” Unbaptized gentiles were black, like the maiden, darkened by their sins, but once they “repented” their conversion “bestowed beauty” on them. “If you repent,” Origen wrote, “your soul will be ‘black’ because of your former sins, but because of your penitence, your soul will have something of what I may call an Ethiopian beauty.”….

Jerome expanded on it, reflecting on the colors black and white, and attaching symbolic value to the blackness of Ethiopia.  For Jerome, Ethiopia was “black and cloaked in the filth of sin.” But, he wrote, “At one time, we were Ethiopians in our vices and sins. How so? Because our sins had blackened {nigredo fecerant} us. But afterward, we heard the words: ‘Wash yourselves clean! And we said: ‘Wash me, and I shall become whiter than snow. we are Ethiopians, therefore, who have been transformed from blackness into whiteness. “



Many Westerners, especially African Americans, are unaware that the terms ‘white people and black people’ really have nothing to do with complexion, save to the laymen’s ignorance, but is a caste system wherein anyone living outside of the Biblical lands, who were not of the Abrahamic faith, were deemed a sinner and called a “black person,” regardless of their complexion. However, people who were born in the Biblical lands, or territories where biblical events had occurred, were considered “white” regardless of their complexion. Let’s take a brief look at the example of Dr. Mostafa Hefny.

As seen in the photo above, Dr. Mostafa Hefny migrated to the United States from Eygpt and is a proud man of Nubian origin. His story has been covered on CBS News, Time Magazine, and many other credible media platforms. Dr. Hefny was classified as “white” by the immigration office as Egypt is a Biblical land. Needless to say, Dr. Hefny went to court three times to try and change his racial status from white to black, not knowing that these classifications have nothing to do with pigmentocracy per se, but is the terminology used in Western society’s caste system. Dr. Hefny was denied three times and would eventually lose his job as an educator as it was a position for a minority. The basis for his denial of being catagorized as someone from the “black race” was due to Directive 15 for the federal Office of Management and Budget Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, which states that a white person is defined as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East.” This can certainly make you wonder about the real reason why people were asking to see former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

In conclusion, it would be safe to assume that when people describe the United States as a Christian nation, they could in effect be saying that it is a “white” nation. Maybe. Maybe not. Only time will tell.