We don’t have a Christian nation. We do, however, have a nation that has benefited from the public witness of Christianity.
Robert Fogel, Nobel Prize winning economist and director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago, has recently written:
It is not possible to deal with the future of egalitarianism in America without considering the role of religious movements, particularly … enthusiastic religion.
Robert Fogel, 2002*
Alexis de Tocqueville, whose study of American culture is still highly respected among secular academics today, cautioned his French countrymen:
[There are those] who look forward to a republican form of government as a tranquil and lasting state … and who sincerely desire to prepare men to be free. When these men attack religious opinions, they obey the dictates of their passions and not of their interests.
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835**
And here is Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights activist, speaking to a group of northern students who came to Mississippi, in 1964, to help the civil rights cause:
Don’t talk to me about atheism. If God wants to start a movement then hooray for God.
Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964***
*Robert W. Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and The Future of Egalitarianism (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000) 6.
**Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1990) 307.
***Quoted in David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2004) 71.