re: Charlie masterfully lays out proof that we were founded as a Christian nation

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Highly suggest you watch if you want to debate people about the secular v Christian divide in governance.

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Since you framed this as something to watch before debating the secular vs. Christian divide in governance, I hope you don't mind if I take you up on that. I'm not a theologian, so I won't make authoritative claims about the Bible itself. As an agnostic, I can only look at the history and ask what seem like fair questions.

It is true that some early state constitutions had religious tests. Eleven of the thirteen had some form, with nine requiring Protestant officeholders and others mandating declarations of faith. But if the founders meant for America to stay a Christian nation indefinitely, why did they author a Constitution that almost immediately bans religious tests in Article VI? That feels like a deliberate contradiction.

Most all of the signers were Christians in some form. That's true, but were their specific beliefs uniform enough to unite a nation? Jefferson and Franklin were deists, Adams leaned Unitarian. Whose version would have ruled? Puritans who punished Quakers? Anglicans who taxed dissenters? Quakers who rejected sacraments? Catholics who lived under public suspicion? With that much division, what exactly does “Christian nation” mean in practice?

And the Declaration adds more questions. Phrasing like “Nature’s God” and “Supreme Judge” sound religious, but were they meant as explicitly Christian, or just intentionally broad (even deistic) to unite fundamentally different groups? Did Adams’s line about the Constitution being for a moral and religious people mean Protestants only, or was he pointing to civic virtue more broadly, given his own Unitarianism?

So if the goal is to debate whether America was founded as a Christian nation, I would open my side here: the founders saw firsthand how damaging sectarian conflict could be. Would it not make sense that they built a system designed to keep government out of establishing one creed while still protecting free exercise for all?

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You know he originally wrote that slavery should be outlawed

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Negative.
He never wrote in the Declaration that slavery should be outlawed.
Instead, he attacked King George and Britain's slave traders for the "execrable commerce" of the capture, transport, and profiteering off of "persons of a distant people who never offended" the king or Britain. But that entire section was stricken at the behest of the southern colonies.

You might assume the concepts of slavery and the slave trade to be one and the same. For Jefferson they were necessarily held as distinct. Two years after his rejected DOI statement, he authored exactly that bill in Virginia, making Virginia the first state to ban the importation of slaves. It did nothing to address the slaves themselves. In fact, many Virginia slave owners supported the import ban as it rendered their "human commodity" all the more valuable.

Jefferson implemented his ban on a national basis in 1808, at the earliest constitutionally allowed opportunity to outlaw the international slave trade in the US.

In terms of slavery itself though, Jefferson was highly conflicted. For his entire life Jefferson rationalized slavery itself as being a necessary evil, as if the US was relegated to "holding a wolf by the ears." In his view, slavery was awful. But it was an economic necessity on the one hand, while on the other, there was the danger that freed slaves would attack whites in retribution for their abuse. For Jefferson personally, he was deeply in debt. Slaves constituted the vast majority of his wealth (security for his loans). Freeing them was not an option, sans bankruptcy and reputational obliteration.

Regardless, prior to his Virginia slave trade act, he was putting together an emancipation bill to allow a gradual freeing of slaves in the state with coincident international relocation. He never formally proposed it though. It would not have passed, and would have ended his political career.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

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Right, because the Christians that came to America wanted to practice Christianity in the ways they interpreted the Bible, not be forced by the king or the pope as was being done in Europe. The concept of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or any other religion wasn't much of a consideration at the time.

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Presbyterians like the Covenantors that came over from Scotland years earlier protested that the wording would allow for an atheist President, which was culturally taboo at the time. The warnings were not heeded and the country remained pluralistic at its founding and ever since.

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Truth telling geniuses right there.

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Christianity enjoyed a “Great Awakening” post-founding and the structure set up by the founders allowed for that to occur,

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It was rather brief, wasn't it? Don't know if I would credit the FM-Deist-Illuminated Founders for that. If anything (imo) it seems they purposely obstructed and minimizing major Christian-based influence early and often (as I'd earlier basically proposed was the case.)

I'm sure you're aware -- the first American colleges and university considered Bible study foundational to education. And then something changed radically by the mid-1850s.

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I say they The Founders] chose well when they enshrined religious liberty as a core American value.

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Yes, in theory. But a two-edged sword as it turned out and left open Pandora's Box of ambiguity. (As FMs, Deists and Illuminated hostile to the Gospel, did they know?)

The definition of "Religion" and Religious" has come to be defined as "devotion to any set of belief system values." No bueno.

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George Washington: Father of America. Free Mason

Thomas Jefferson: Author of the early, essential American documents. Free Mason

Ben Franklin: Idea man that shaped the thought of early America. Free Mason.

Since this is a remedial class, what do Free Masons NOT believe in? Divinity.

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Truth across the board right there.

Those guys (and their own contemporary ptb) rejected Jesus Christ, abide in their own divinity as you noted, and reeeeally did not want any Christian-Gospel based American institutions taking hold.

Moreover, Franklin was a member of some other unsavory orgs.

Founders "history" is largely mythical, concocted, written and taught by FMs, the Illuminated, and Jesooits for at least 150 years.

“Yes, in theory.”

This is where we differ. I say, no, not just in theory, but as evidenced by how things played out. There has been sufficient freedom to allow for a Great Awakening, numerous Christian sects, and plenty of non-Christian or atheist/agnostic belief systems. I view this as evidence of a working system of religious liberty with a mostly functioning marketplace of ideas. Winners and losers have changed over the years, but the system has proved resilient.

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Most all of the signers were Christians in some form.
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Patently false, wishful thinking -- and a myth.

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