The fact is that the founders knew exactly what they were doing and had studied the relationship of church and state far more carefully and wisely than virtually anyone has today. Their conclusion was that while separation of church and state is necessary, an anti-God government would be profound foolishness. Every one of the founders, from Benjamin Franklin to Jefferson, Washington, and John Adams wrote repeatedly that without religion there is no morality, and without morality people are not fit to be free and will not be free because they will seek bad things for themselves and their nation. In order to maintain morality, they knew it would be necessary to encourage churches and religion without ever giving one church rights that other churches did not have. Thus the congress (and Jefferson applied this to the federal courts) was to keep its nose entirely out of the religion business. As he said in his inauguration address, "In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the general (national) government. I have... left them as the Constitution found them, under the direction of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies." Jefferson was not looking for a "secular," or anti-God national government, but one that kept its nose totally away from religious matters. This too was the position of virtually all of the clergymen of the new United States of America in those days.

When it came to the teaching of the articles of faith that are worthy of any true religion, the founders wanted all schools to do exactly this, and they catalogued what these teachings should include. Benjamin Franklin is a representative example. He listed, 1) "There exists a Creator who made all things, and mankind should recognize and worship Him," 2) "The Creator has revealed a moral code of behavior for happy living which distinguishes right from wrong," 3) "The Creator holds mankind responsible for how they treat each other," 4) "All mankind live beyond this life," and 5) "In the next life mankind are judged for their conduct in this life."

Thus the founders of our United States were united, not in founding a godless society, but one in which the Creator God would be confessed and obeyed by all the people. They just did not want one particular church or sect of believers in God to have priority over others. Indeed one U.S. judge did not allow a man to testify in court when he declared that he did not believe in God.

Guy de Toquevile, a French judge who visited America in 1831, concluded that America's greatness was not in its resources, harbors, rivers, or fertile fields, but in the pulpits of American churches that were "aflame with righteousness." "America is great," he said, "because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." America's churches and America's preachers need to get busy.