The Existential Threat America Faces At 250—And How We Fight For Our Nation

They claim America was founded a Christian nation. The Founders' own words say otherwise.

This year, the United States turns 250 years old. And right on cue, MAGA Republicans and Christian Nationalists are using that milestone to push one of the most brazen historical lies in modern American politics: that “America was founded as a Christian nation.” They claim that the separation of church and state is a myth invented by secular liberals to suppress the faith of the majority.

I approach this argument as an observant Muslim. I approach it as a human rights lawyer who has spent his career defending religious freedom—for people of every faith and no faith. I write this piece today in partnership with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State with a very deliberate intent, we must stand united to protect secular governance because it is the correct, legal, and moral framework to govern a society. And because if we do not, none of us are safe. The founders left an extraordinarily clear record, and that record demolishes the Christian Nationalist narrative completely. Let’s Address This.

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(Shutterstock)

What the Founders Actually Said

Let us start with the document that started it all.

The Declaration of Independence was not merely a break from British rule. It was a philosophical revolution—a deliberate, explicit rejection of the idea that governments derive their power from God, from the church, or from any religious authority whatsoever. An early draft of the Declaration called out “the Christian king of Great Britain” by name, making explicit that the founders were rejecting not just a monarch, but the model of governance in which religious identity and state power are fused.

This was the Genesis—pun intended—of America’s founding government philosophy.

And that founding argument was simple as it was radical. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Not from God. Not from clergy. Not from scripture. From people. And what’s more, “people” was ultimately not intended to have an asterisk next to them. The last 250 years of existence has pushed towards a broader expansion of who is included. It is no surprise, therefore, that those most adamant to exclude who is included in our Constitution, i.e. “all people,” are also most adamant to include what is excluded, i.e. a Divine mandate.

The Constitution that followed is secular by design—not by accident, not by oversight, but by deliberate choice. It never mentions Christianity. It never mentions Jesus Christ. It references religion exactly twice, both times to restrict the government’s relationship with it. And its first three words ”We the People” are a conscious statement that human beings, not divine authority, give the government its power.

This was not a nation founded on Christianity. It was a nation founded on the radical proposition that no religion gets to run the government.

Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an and the Wall He Built

And after that secular Founding, the Founders acted accordingly. Here is the history that Christian Nationalists most desperately want you to forget.

The First Amendment did not descend from the heavens—it grew from a law written by a Virginian and introduced in the Virginia General Assembly: Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom—the intellectual and legal foundation of the First Amendment itself.

When Jefferson described whom that statute was meant to protect, he did not write “Christians.” He wrote that it was meant to comprehend “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”

I repeat—infidel of every denomination.

And when Jefferson’s colleagues attempted to insert the words “Jesus Christ” into the statute, the Virginia legislature voted them down. This was no accident of tolerance. Jefferson owned a Qur’an. He built a wall of religious protection deliberately wide enough to include the faith of every person in that then fledgling nation. So when someone tells you that secular governance has no place in America, you may tell them that the Father of the First Amendment already disagreed—in writing, in law, and in his own library.

The inside title page of the Qur’an owned by 3rd US President Thomas Jefferson. Source: simergphotos.com

And if that is not enough, consider Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli—ratified unanimously by the United States Senate and signed by President John Adams—which states plainly that “Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

Not in any sense. Unanimous. Signed into law.

The Founders were not subtle about this. We have simply been allowing their clarity to be buried under two centuries of revisionist mythology.

“One Nation Under God” Is Not a Founding Value, It Is a 1950s Marketing Campaign

“But if the Founders didn’t want a theocracy, why would they affirm that we are One Nation Under God?”

Great question. And the answer deserves its own section because it is repeated so often it has calcified into assumed truth. The actual truth is that the Founders never made such a statement.

“One Nation Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance more than 160 years after the Constitution was written—in 1954, during Cold War-era pressure from Christian Nationalist activists who wanted to distinguish America from the Soviet Union by inserting a religious declaration into the national ritual.

It literally broke the word “indivisible” in two.

When politicians invoke “One Nation Under God” as a founding sentiment—as evidence that America was always intended to be a Christian country—they are not citing history. They are citing a mid-20th century political insertion that the Founders never wrote, never endorsed, and never imagined.

The pledge, as originally written in 1892, said: “one nation, indivisible.” That is the founding sentiment. Everything added after is revision.

Christian Nationalism Is About Power. Not Faith.

Having established that America’s greatness rests in our call to uphold absolute justice built on secular governance—not on theology or theocracy—let me be precise about what Christian Nationalism actually is. Because it is frequently and deliberately confused with Christianity itself.

Christianity is a faith. Christian Nationalism is a political project—the project of using religious identity to override reproductive rights, strip LGBTQ+ equality, impose one group’s beliefs on everyone else, and concentrate political power in the hands of a movement that claims divine sanction for its agenda.

The distinction matters because the people pushing Christian Nationalism are not defending the faith of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ fed the hungry without checking their immigration status. He healed the sick without charging a deductible. He embraced the outcast, the foreigner, and the despised. He had nothing to say in favor of theocracy.

Christian Nationalism instead defends power—the power of a specific political coalition to write its religious preferences into law and impose them on a pluralistic nation of 330 million people.

Missouri lawmakers made this explicit when they cited the Bible directly in abortion legislation, writing “Almighty God is the author of life” into the bill’s text. Texas lawmakers make this explicit when they mandate Bible study and the 10 Commandments in public school. Lawmakers in a dozen states make it explicit when they try to ban ‘Shariah Law’ in violation of the First Amendment. That is not faith. That is theocracy—precisely the model of governance that the founders broke from 250 years ago, at considerable personal risk, with extraordinary deliberateness.

A granite Ten Commandments monument stands on the ground of the Texas Capitol, May 29, 2025 in Austin. (Source: Eric Gay/AP)

And here is what corporate media will not tell you: most Americans reject it. A 2022 national poll found that 62% of Americans oppose declaring the United States a Christian Nation. Christian Nationalism is not a mainstream American value. It is a fringe political movement using the machinery of minority rule—gerrymandered legislatures, an unelected Supreme Court majority, and a media apparatus that launders extremism as tradition—to impose its agenda on a majority that does not share it.

Why This Matters Right Now

If we do not stand united against this extremism, none of us are safe. This is why orgs like America United for Separation of Church and State (Americans United) are so critical to protecting our secular governance and universal human rights. Americans United has been on the front lines of this fight for decades—defending the constitutional principle that protects people of every faith and no faith from a government that would impose one religion’s preferences on everyone else.

They are the organization that fights these battles in court when the legislative process fails. They are the organization that has challenged government-sponsored prayer services, Christian Nationalist messaging on official federal agency accounts, and the systematic erosion of the wall between church and state that Jefferson built.

I have been proud to work alongside Americans United because their mission is my mission: the protection of religious freedom as a genuine human right—not a privilege extended to the majority and denied to everyone else.

And as a believer, let me be the first to state clearly—faith without works is dead. We must take meaningful action to stop the advancement of theocracy and Christian Nationalism in our country.

Right now, every donation to Americans United through July 31st will be matched up to $250,000. This is the moment to invest in the organization defending the principle that makes every other right possible. Because without the separation of church and state, there is no religious freedom—there is only the religion of whoever holds power imposing itself on everyone else. And that itself undermines the very purpose of the American experiment.

Donate and have your gift matched at au.org/summer.

The Truth That 250 Years Cannot Erase

I’ll leave you with this. Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of men—imperfect, contradictory, and in many cases morally compromised by the very systems they were challenging—nevertheless produced something genuinely revolutionary in the modern era: a government explicitly built on the principle that no religion gets to run it.

They said so in the Declaration. They designed it into the Constitution. Jefferson wrote it into the statute that became the First Amendment. Adams signed it into a treaty. The Senate ratified it unanimously.

Now, our nation’s 250th anniversary of independence is not the moment to weaponize our history for a theocratic political movement. Instead, it is an opportunity to remember what we actually declared independence from: the fusion of church and state that the Founders knew, from hard experience, produces not freedom—but tyranny.

We built something different. It is worth defending. It is worth sustaining.

And that can only happen if we stand as Americans, United, on the first three words that built this country: We the People.

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This piece is written in partnership with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Learn more and support their work at au.org.

Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, religious freedom, and the accountability that corporate media refuses to provide.

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