Was America founded to be a secular nation? In other words, does religion have no role in American politics or public policy making?

The answer is more complex than you might think. That is the subject of today's five-minute video presented by Robert George,

Professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. Enjoy!

It has become a dogma of progressive ideology that America is a secular nation.

What do people mean by secular?

The argument goes this way. Since the Constitution establishes a strict separation of church and state,

religion has no place in how the country is to be governed. Religion is a purely private matter,

and therefore must be kept out of politics or public policy making.

There is a problem with this claim, however.

It's false. What the Constitution actually does when it comes to religion is first

ban religious tests of any sort for public office. That's in Article 6. And second,

forbid the enactment of any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Those are the words of the First Amendment.

The plain meaning of those words is that Congress was forbidden from one

establishing a national church on the model of the Church of England, and two,

attempting to disestablish or interfering with the established churches that existed in some of the states,

in certain cases for decades after ratification of the First Amendment.

But what about the separation of church and state? That's in the Constitution, too, isn't it?

Well, no.

Try as you might. You will not find the words

separation of church and state in the Constitution.

The famous phrase comes from a letter that Thomas Jefferson, who was not at the Constitutional Convention,

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