Christian Nation

The Christian Right loves to claim that ours is a Christian nation, founded on Christianity by the founders. The founders apparently didn't get the memo. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli, negotiated by George Washington's administration, states

[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.

Commenting on the historically incorrect assertions of the religious right on the subject, Andrew Sullivan writes

In fact, many of the statements of the Founding Fathers sound more like Christopher Hitchens than George W. Bush - and would be characterized as bigotry by much of the Republican right. It's important to realize that today's Christianists are not representative of the constitutional order and philosophy of this country's founding; and are, in fact, one of the deeper threats to the maintenance of the freedom bequeathed to Americans as a birthright.

These claims by the right never cease to gall me, as a Christian.