Did the Founding Fathers seek to establish a Christian nation?

"I think the answer is no," said David Adler, the director of the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University. Adler spoke Thursday night in front of more than 180 people at the Coeur d'Alene library community room.

"The Founding Fathers did not intend to create a Christian nation, and, in fact, in 1796 our Treaty with Tripoli states in very clear language, 'We are not a Christian nation,'" Adler said. "It doesn't mean that many of the founders did not have certain views or ideas about the nature of the union - or the nature of the universe, because they did."

Adler is recognized as a non-partisan university professor who lectures throughout Idaho and the country on the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court, and is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles, several books, and is a frequent commenter on state and national events.

The founders, including James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, didn't believe so much in the dogma or creed of a particular religion, Adler said. Madison, Jefferson and others thought of religious teachings as more of a moral code to guide them.

"I think that the very fact that the founders created the Establishment Clause (of the First Amendment) to preserve and to protect religious liberty - many different creeds - suggests that they were not aiming to construct a Christian nation," Adler said.

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from engaging in practices and policies respecting an establishment of religion.

Adler said there is no evidence from debates and discussions in the first Congress that anyone then advocated the idea that government should have authority to impose religion or provide support for it.

"Because it was a private matter," he said.

Madison, Jefferson and others believed that religions were stronger if they survived on their own.

"If people chose to support religion that was the hallmark of its strength," Adler said.

Government support would have been a false way of propping up a religion, the founders believed, according to Adler.

"Moreover, it was not believed, at that time, that anybody serving in government necessarily had a monopoly on religious wisdom," Adler said.

He said the Founding Fathers were keen students of history.

The men knew that many wars were fought in the name of God and religious persecution was common in Europe. The founders worried that mixing religion and government could destroy the young American republic.

"Religion has such a strong influence on believers, many of whom would be looking toward the next life," he said. "It's a terrible union, a tyrannical union if you harness the power of government and march it in the cause of religion. Who could stand up to governmental forces if the government takes actions in name of the almighty?"

The "wall" separating "church and state" was to protect religious liberty, he said.

Application of the church-and-state clauses of the Constitution lead often to controversial decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, he said.

"The court has created a very serpentine wall, not a high, erect wall separating church and state," he said.