"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish. Where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source. Where no religious body seeks to impose its will, directly or indirectly, upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials. . . . For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. . . . Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you."   –John F. Kennedy to Baptist ministers in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1960, while campaigning for the U.S. presidency.

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I am profoundly grateful that I am a Christian living in America. I am grateful for both facts: that I am an American and that I am a Christian. I recognize, though, that both my citizenship and my religious commitment are not simply the results of my free choices. They also come from the choices of others who caused me to be born into a Christian family in a nation devoted to liberty. I am grateful and I am humbled when I contemplate why my life is what it is.          

The recognition of the forces leading me to be an American and a Christian causes me to argue with those who declare that America is a Christian Nation. Though Christianity has always been the dominant religion in America, the nation is great not because it is committed to Christianity, but because its constitution guarantees “liberty and justice for all.” No, those words are not in the constitution, but the guarantee is.

Liberty is based on the Golden Rule; it is about seeking a life for others as good as your own. To seek liberty and justice for all is Christian to the core. To attempt to force Christianity on those who have not freely chosen it is anti-Christian.         

Think about the Golden Rule as it relates to religious freedom. I wish that a citizen of any nation on the planet could choose Christ and follow her Christian convictions freely and openly without fear. In my perfect world, this would be the case not only in America and Canada and Australia, but also in Kurdistan, in North Korea, in Saudi Arabia—everywhere!          

If I think that should be true, then I should also believe that a Muslim or a Taoist or a Hindu should feel free and secure in following his beliefs not only in Iran or China or Sri Lanka, but also in America.         

In his recent book, "American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation," Newsweek magazine Managing Editor John Meacham observes that America is not a nation devoted to religious tolerance; it is a nation devoted to religious liberty. There is a difference. It was not the vision of the founding fathers that we merely tolerate those with alternative religious convictions, but that every person have complete liberty to follow his conscience, to live out her convictions, as full equals.         

It is a vision that has survived and nourished the nation for 230 years. On this Independence Day 2006, I do not celebrate a Christian Nation. I do celebrate a nation built on a profoundly Christian principle: liberty and justice for all. God bless America!

B.W.