A Christian Nation If You Can Keep It
The Trump administration acknowledges the important role religion plays in American life and history.
Charles J. Russo | January 2, 2026
When discussing the nature of the fledgling United States in 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel, an influential socialite in Philadelphia, asked Benjamin Franklin “[w]ell, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously responded that the United States is “a republic, if you can keep it.”
At the dawn of 2026, a similar question lingers amid controversy over the nation’s religious status following recent remarks by President Donald J. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. More specifically, it thus seems fair to ask, without putting too much emphasis on Christmas, whether the United States is a Christian nation. We can respond enthusiastically “yes, if we can keep it.”
At the same time, I must hasten to add that the recognition and acceptance of the United States as a Christian nation, a notion with which most American Christians agree, does not mean other faiths are, or should be, excluded because all religions are welcome in our democratic republic. Rather, my position is that an acknowledgement that even in the increasingly religiously pluralistic United States, a nation founded at least in part on an imperfect notion of freedom of religion typically reserved for members of the dominant Christian traditions in the American colonies, religious freedom remains a fundamental right, a first among equals.
Vice-President J.D. Vance made the first of the two statements that generated controversy about religion on December 20, 2025, in a speech at Turning Point’s USA’s AmFest in Phoenix, Arizona. Vance declared “we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation,” adding fuel to the controversy over the status of Christianity in the United States.
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