Founding Fallacies: Newt's Alleged "War on Religion" and the Jefferson Bible

By Matthew Santoro

There’s a war on! Have you heard? No, it’s not the war in Afghanistan, nor the War on Terror. It’s not the War on Drugs, nor even the War on Poverty. Oh, no.

There’s a much more surreptitious threat. A threat to something more fundamental and—gasp!—fundamentally American. It’s the Obama administration’s secret “War on Religion"!

The intersection of Church and State. (Photo by Chuck
Coker via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.)

According to many conservatives, the United States was intended by its Founding Fathers to be a "Christian nation.” This heritage, they believe, is under assault from the "secular Left," with President Obama (that black-liberation-Christian-secret-Muslim-secularist) spearheading the effort.

But is this reconstruction of America's nascent principles, and Obama's alleged attack upon them, true to the historical record? A cursory review of the life and politics of Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and writer of the Declaration of Independence, returns results that will no doubt surprise many 21^st century American conservatives.