If you have Netflix, view the movie “Monumental” by Kirk Cameron. Wonderful rebuke of the Founding-Fathers-as-Athiests meme.
They were all of the very same moral philosophy, though with different theologies and differing political ideas. However, they created a government which put the souls of the individual citizens in the forefront. They put religion into the free market where any religion would have the freedom to rise or fall by its own merit.
We do not have a theocracy, but we do have a government that they formed which takes moral truth as its most important founding stone.
I look forward to the establishment of a “theocracy” on this earth, but it will NOT BE ESTABLISHED BY MEN. That is the fallacy of those who are of the reconstructionist and dominion theology persuasion, many of whom profess to be Christians and who are generally conservative.
The true theocracy is going to be set up when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to rule and reign from Jerusalem for 1000 years.
I want a government that acknowledges God but not a Theocracy. Theocracies are very dangerous. The founders knew that.
More specifically, regardless what FDR’s 10th Amendment-ignoring justices wanted everybody to think about “atheist” Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation,” the real Jefferson had noted the following. The Founding States had made the 10th Amendment to clarify that the states had reserved “government” power to regulate (cultivate) religious expression uniquely to themselves, regardless that they had also made the 1st Amendment to prohibit the feds from officially addressing religious issues altogether.
“3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed [emphasis added]; …” — Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798 .
But regardless that the states have the constitutional authority to regulate religion, the USA (the federal government as distinguished from the states) is arguably a religiously neutral nation under the Constitution, just like Switzerland is regarded as a politically neutral nation. And although Christians don’t like to hear it, this is probably why Congress, probably many Christians in Congress in those days, had included a provision in the Treaty of Tripoli which indicated that the United States is not a Christian nation.
Here’s other excerpts from Jefferson’s writings which reflect that foreign nations were to regard the United States differently from the states.
"I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.
"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800.
And bear in mind that atheists are probably as cluess as Christians are about 10th Amendment-protected state power to address religious issues when atheists argue that USA is not a Christian nation.