Here's the blurb from Amazon:

At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected achievements of secularists who, allied with tolerant believers, have led the battle for reform in the past and today.

Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and the once-famous Robert Green Ingersoll, Freethinkers restores to history the passionate humanists who struggled against those who would undermine the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system.

http://www.amazon.com/Freethinkers-A-History-American-Secularism/dp/0805077766

If you Google "US Christian Nation," there are a whole lot of links, too many to list here.

You'll be able to find all kinds of facts! Good luck!

He's been brainwashed by the David Barton Phanbois, and the rest of the liars and history revisionists for Jesus.

David Barton himself is fond of lying about the founding fathers, getting caught, admitting he was wrong and then using the same damn lie over again.

to show you where it says so in the constitution.

Kramnick and Moore.

I read that recently, when recommended by another DUer. I was having a problem like yours.

But good luck getting those types to listen with an open mind, or to bother to read a book. They would rather use made-up quotes, lying source material and pure faith.

I am a Christian, and I know better than to think this country was founded in the Christian faith. The above mentioned book was recommended to me by a regular church-goer, too!

Ratified unanimously by the United States Congress in 1797.

"As the United States is not, in any sense, a Christian nation..."

This lead me to Thomas Paine and The Age of Reason. This guy would be considered a radical today in America at least to some of the conservatives I have the displeasure of knowing. I haven't finished the Age of Reason yet, I found his words too thrilling I had to know more about him which lead me to Wikipedia. My Dog! Some of my heroes are people who lead the fight for social equality or annoy the piss out of conservatives; Lincoln, MLK, Hitchens, Michael Moore, Larry Flynt, etc. Thomas Paine did both with gusto.

Does anyone here know why this man wasn't arrested and executed while he was IN Britain being followed by government agents?

From wikipedia:

Undeterred by the government campaign to discredit him, Paine issued his Rights of Man, Part the Second, Combining Principle and Practice in February 1792. It detailed a representative government with enumerated social programs to remedy the numbing poverty of commoners through progressive tax measures. Radically reduced in price to ensure unprecedented circulation, it was sensational in its impact and gave birth to reform societies. An indictment for seditious libel followed, for both publisher and author, while government agents followed Paine and instigated mobs, hate meetings, and burnings in effigy. A fierce pamphlet war also resulted, in which Paine was defended and assailed in dozens of works.[41] The authorities aimed, with ultimate success, to chase Paine out of Great Britain. He was then tried in absentia and found guilty though never executed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, John Adams, and Madison were Deists. Here's something from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica on the subject: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1272214/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity

Several of the Colonies were founded by members of various religious sects; Massachusetts by Calvinist Separatists, Pennsylvania by Quakers, Maryland by Catholics; Carolina was originally intended to be settled by French Huguenots, but Charles I barred any colonists who weren't members of the Church of England. Rhode Island (or "Providence Plantations", as it was) was founded as a haven of religious tolerance. The other colonies were commercial enterprises (Virginia, New Amsterdam) or penal colonies (Georgia).

Here is another point.

Europe was torn apart by wars about religion starting with the Reformation through at least 1651, maybe 1697. That is maybe 125-150 years before our Revolution in 1776.

If you think that that is about as recent as our Civil War was, then you realize that the feelings of the colonists in America were probably very sensitized to the possibility of religious war. Think of the South Shall Rise Again sentiment that still prevails in some parts of our southern states. It is fading, but still present in our culture. We have not forgotten that war, not at all. We are not over it.

And our Founding Fathers were aware of the religious wars in Europe and the damage caused. The potential for religious wars was to be avoided by adopting a Constitution that provided for religious freedom and tolerance.

Conflicts immediately connected with the Reformation of the 1520s to 1540s:
The German Peasants' War (1524–1525)
The battle of Kappel in Switzerland (1531)
The Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) in the Holy Roman Empire
The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) in the Low Countries
The French Wars of Religion (1562–1598)
The Thirty Years War (1618–1648), affecting the Holy Roman Empire including Habsburg Austria and Bohemia, France, Denmark and Sweden
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651), affecting England, Scotland and Ireland
Scottish Reformation and Civil Wars
English Reformation and Civil War
Irish Confederate Wars and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland

Although later wars such as the Nine Years' War (1688–97) had a religious component that was important locally in some arenas, they were more fundamentally undertaken for political reasons, with coalitions forming across religious divisions. Purely political motivations, and cross-religious alliances were also significant in many of the earlier wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion

which is why they didn't include it in the founding of our nation.

Simply note the founders were smart enough to recognize someone like your relative could be easily manipulated by politicians if all they needed to do was to claim god was on their side. Democracies requires citizens to learn about issues, not be so lazy as to think god is choosing the political team.

The divine right of any govt. is fundamentally opposed to every idea of the Enlightenment, and was behind the arguments against monarchies of the day in France and the UK - the two nations that had to most impact upon the founders because of the French philosophers who rejected feudal ideas as the core of human existence. Your relative is spouting neo-feudal jargon.

The ideas that formed the political conscience of the French philosophers and the founders were in the great debates about self-governing from the Greeks and Romans.

Anyone who was educated at that time was familiar with Latin and, sometimes, Greek, and read those works...those were fundamental to being considered an educated person within the culture of 18th century Europeans and their colonists.

So, if this nation was founded in homage to any religion, it would have to be to the pagan gods of ancient Rome and Greece. Shall we amend the pledge to "one nation, under Zeus" to reflect this reality?

Actually, the ancient Greeks and Romans also often rejected their own gods - the stories of their gods didn't form the core of their political philosophies. But they recognized the stories of the gods were useful to manipulate opinion.

same as it ever was.

1) Are you aware that a treaty, regardless with whom it was made, once ratified by both houses and signed by the President, becomes the law of THIS land? (the answer is yes, it does)

2) Have you ever heard of the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams? (my bet is he hasn't)

3) Do you realize how big of a dumbass you are? (OK...this last question is optional)