The United States of America is a land of immigrants. Originally immigrants came from Europe. Nowadays they come from everywhere. It doesn’t matter what nationality, religion, colour, or language a person speaks, he or she can become an American. A Nigerian can never become a Frenchman. A Mexican can never become a German. A Korean can never become an Englishman. But all of the above can become, not only citizens of the United States of America, but genuine Americans.

The first immigrants to these shores were English Puritans and Separatists who came for religious freedom (in its earliest days America was a British colony). They came because they were not permitted to worship God in their homeland as they desired. So they immigrated to America in order to worship and serve God according to the dictates of their own hearts. They brought with them a stout and healthy Protestantism. Catholic and Jewish immigration would come later, thus, the foundation of America was providentially laid with the brick and mortar of Protestantism. While America has never formally been a Christian nation, it was founded by Christians.

Trouble arose later when the Puritan communities forbade other forms of worship. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Puritans formed a Congregational State Church, and in Virginia, the Anglicans established the Church of England on American soil. They refused to let others worship God in a fashion different from their own. People like the Quakers and the Baptists were persecuted. But religious liberty won the day, thanks in large part to Baptists like Roger Williams, John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes, John Leland, and Isaac Backus. Men of the Enlightenment like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison led the way in government for both political and religious liberty.

America’s first settlers arrived in the early 1600s, but it was not until 1776 that political liberty from Britain was won. In the Constitution that soon was adopted, the first ten amendments were called The Bill of Rights. One of the most important freedoms granted to American citizens is stated in the very first amendment, the article dealing with religious liberty. ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’

The First Amendment provided America with a double guarantee with respect to religion. ‘First, the Congress shall do nothing to favor, promote, or endow religion; second, that Congress shall take no step that would impede, obstruct, or penalize religion. Neither hindering nor helping, government would simply leave religion alone’ (Edwin S Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers, p44). There would be no national church and there would be no national affirmations of faith either. This was revolutionary in 1776.

No article in our Constitution is more debated than the First Amendment yet no one will ever understand America without understanding the freedom it grants. The First Amendment defines our national character. Religious liberty became the law of the land here when no other country in the world recognised religious freedom. Americans prize and value the precious gift of religious liberty. Many people around the world have religious liberty today because it was hammered out in the birth of our nation.

There is no national church in America; there never has been. The President of the USA is not a defender of the faith, any faith. The Federal Government doesn’t have the power to force men to bow their knee in any form of worship. This doesn’t mean that American Christians believe that God accepts any religious belief or any form of worship. No! We believe that heresy is criminal, but God is the One men must deal with for their unorthodox beliefs and practices, not the government. In America a person is free to hold whatever religious beliefs he wants or he is free to hold no religious beliefs at all.

With a new democratic form of government and a Constitution that didn’t acknowledge religion and permitted no national church, non-traditional religious groups began to proliferate. Non-conformists were no longer on the outside looking in. In New England, Baptists had the same rights as the Congregationalists; in Virginia, Presbyterians had the same rights as the Anglicans. Institutional religion was forever changed.

Many believers feared this new form of government. They were afraid that a secular state would be the end of true and vital religion, but it was not to be. In the aftermath of this newly found freedom, evangelical churches came to life and the blessing of God was poured out in what is now called the Second Great Awakening.

In response, heretical groups began popping up everywhere. Nathan Hatch documents many of the changes in his book, The Democratization of American Christianity. Where before institutional churches kept out radical theological change, the floodgates were now open. Anyone could start his own church and get a following. Campbellism, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, and other offshoot groups took foothold. Later came the Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and many others. Most of the cults and errant groups that regard themselves as Christian, which now plague the world, came into being in a nation that had no national church.

But evangelical Christianity also thrived in the soil of religious liberty. America became a great nation as the gospel advanced. All the greatness America has achieved can be traced to the blessing of God but this came with new political and religious freedom.

For many years the general populace of America recognised the God of the Bible as the only true God and the Ten Commandments were the foundational props of our morality. In the last hundred years the Christian influence has changed immensely. America is now a hodge-podge of races and religion and Protestant Christianity is no longer the driving force that it once was.

America’s greatest need today is another spiritual awakening. We are desperately in need of a heaven sent revival. Evangelicals still have the opportunity and freedom to serve Christ and proclaim his name. We must not sit idly by and lament the sad departure of our nation from its Christian roots. We have a job to do. We must be actively engaged in working for the Lord. We must pray for our nation. We must be salt and light in our communities, and above all we must preach the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ to our neighbours.