It should be obvious that the presence of diametrically opposed worldviews results in increased conflict often presenting as inherent struggle for supremacy (one need only read any scholarly book on world history to discover this) just as a diversity of languages does not enhance communications.
The founding fathers were almost all Protestant Christians from the three largest Christian traditions of colonial America:
1. Anglicanism (as in the cases of John Jay, George Washington, and Edward Rutledge).
2. Presbyterianism (as in the cases of Richard Stockton and the Rev. John Witherspoon).
3. Congregationalism (as in the cases of John Adams and Samuel Adams).
Other Protestant groups included the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Lutherans, and the Dutch Reformed. Minority positions included three Roman Catholics (Charles Carroll, Daniel Carroll of Maryland, and Thomas Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania) and a few deists with Thomas Paine being the most prominent. Not one was a Muslim, atheist, or pagan.
According to the founding fathers, the United States should be a country where peoples of all faiths could live in peace and mutual benefit. But what they meant by "faiths" was decidedly Christian faiths.
As Bill Flax notes:
"All thought the Bible essential for just and harmonious society. The Founders disagreed on much, but were nearly unanimous concerning biblical morality.
They understood the relationship between state and society differently than progressive thinkers today: government cannot mold man. Righteous men must mold government which requires the inculcation of virtue through vibrant churches and the transmittal of values generationally via a social structure based on families. Jefferson ’s 'wall of separation' guarded faith, or lack thereof, against political interference."
Far from uprooting our Christian moorings, the Forefathers embraced their Christian heritage. Historian Larry Schweikart notes, “The founding documents of every one of the original thirteen colonies reveal them to be awash in the concepts of Christianity and God.” Youth learned to read using Scripture. Universities were chartered to teach doctrine. Students could not even enter Harvard, Yale or Princeton without assenting to the Westminster Confession.
John Adams noted, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.”
Per Paul Johnson, “The Declaration of Independence was, to those who signed it, a religious as well as a secular act, and the Revolutionary War has the approbation of divine providence.” The Declaration contains four clear references to God. Independence was predicated on the “laws of nature and nature’s God” because men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Continental Congress thought success dependent on “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” to whom they relied on for “the protection of divine Providence.”
Secularists claim designations like “laws of nature” evidences Deism, not Christianity. But that phrase also appears in the quintessential statement of Protestant faith, the Westminster Confession, where “light of nature,” meaning the same, appears repeatedly.
John Locke, whose influence was indisputable, clarified that natural rights need to “be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e., to the will of God.” And that legislation must be “without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made.”
Blackstone’s Commentaries, a pivotal support for America’s common law system, rests upon both sources for truth in Christian thinking. There is “special revelation” in the Holy Scriptures and “general revelation” of a complex, yet sublime world working according to an ordered design subject to discoverable natural laws."
So while the United States was not founded as a Christian theocracy, it was comprised of Christians who intended for the Christian worldview to be indelible to our social fabric and the founders, even the few non-Christians in the U.S. at the time, considered that a blessing.
This cooperation between the Christian worldview and state is referred to by U.S. historians as Jeffersonianism. By basing government in natural, universal, moral law, Jeffersonianism avoids antinomianism (secularism) on the one hand and state-mandated religion (reconstructionism) on the other.
Quoting Dave Miller PhD:
The Founders would never have favored integrating Islam into our schools, government, and other civil institutions. Far from it. In his discussion of freedom of religion in his monumental Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Father of American Jurisprudence Joseph Story clarified the meaning of the First Amendment with regard to the priority of Christianity:
"It is impossible for those, who believe in the truth of Christianity, as a divine revelation, to doubt, that it is the especial duty of government to foster, and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects. Indeed, in a republic, there would seem to be a peculiar propriety in viewing the Christian religion, as the great basis, on which it must rest for its support and permanence, if it be, what it has ever been deemed by its truest friends to be, the religion of liberty."
Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation (1833, 44.723-726.3.3.1865-1868, emp. added).
Indeed, the First Amendment was never intended to “level all religions.” Story further explained that:
"
the real object of the First amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government" (1833, 3:728, emp. added).
One must not misconstrue the Founders’ strong emphasis on religious freedom and tolerance as an indication that they viewed all religion as legitimate or conducive to the principles of the Republic. Their central concern was “disestablishment,” i.e., preventing the federal government from establishing one Christian sect as the state religion. Their idea of “freedom of religion” was first and foremost freedom to pursue the Christian religion unhindered by the federal government, and only secondarily freedom to practice non-Christian religion.
This truth is verified by the discussions surrounding the wording of the First Amendment. George Mason—who has gone down in American history as the Father of the Bill of Rights—proposed the following wording:
“All men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others” (as quoted in Rowland, 1892, 1:244, emp. added).
While Mason’s proposal did not make the final cut, it nevertheless establishes the historical context of the Founders’ discussion, demonstrating that their concern was first and foremost for the free exercise of the Christian religion.
Miller continued here:
Apologetics Press - Were the Founding Fathers "Tolerant" of Islam? [Part I]
Even though you believe them, your assertions are false.
Tolerance and acceptance of individuals irrespective of personal perspectives is the basis of a peaceful, pluralistic, and ultimately free civilization. You aren't required to "accept" Islam as a religion simply by allowing adherents of Islam to share your society. By extension, should Muslims that already exist in the United States suffer deportations simply because of what they choose to believe in? Do you have any conception as to the utterly vast ramifications this would have as far as a religious preference's influence on public policy in general?
Beyond the fact that immigration restrictions on the basis of a religious preference blatantly defy the First Amendment, it's utterly impossible to consistently argue any sort of coherent policy concerning a religious preference's contingent influence on what constitutes acceptable immigration. It's arbitrary, unconstitutional, and simply immoral.
