Americans are a Christian people. The real issue that is being avoided is if it is a Christian state or not, and it most certainly isn't in any constitutional sense. Whether the founding fathers were die-hard Christians or Deists or Satanists or whatever doesn't matter since basic history shows that they were against a religious state not necessarily because they felt it was irrational (since most of the founding fathers were religious), but because they didn't want to incite conflicts over the various Protestant branches hostile to each other, Jews, Catholics, etc. along with the Church being a symbol of feudal rule in Europe. Remember, a common insult at the time was accusing someone of being a Monarchist, and that insult pretty much lasted up until the 1830's along with conspiracies that Aaron Burr was planning on starting an Empire.When did the idea that the US is a christian nation come around?
See: [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_conspiracy[/ame]
The idea that the US was both comprised of Christian peoples and was also a Christian state can be traced back to the Manifest Destiny and groups like the Mormons (they're more about America being the holy land and were the logical conclusion of the Manifest Destiny) and it developed as a political movement in the 1970's since people either do not read the Constitution or don't care about the Constitution because God's higher than that in their minds. In the 1920's, 30's, etc. there was still a subconscious belief that the USA was a Christian state in some way, it just wasn't contrasted with "WE'RE TAKING GOD OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS AND LOSING OUR MORALITY TO SECULARISTS!" It was more like "We must help each other as Americans bound by our love of God" or whatever.
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