the premise of the nation was spiritual

The premise of the nation was spiritual, not secular. “Our ancestors who formed this government said, ‘We hold that all men are endowed by their Creator…’ Not by the accident of birth, not by the color of their skins or by anything else, but ‘all men are endowed by their Creator,’” Eisenhower stated. ‘In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept but it must be a religion that [believes] all men are created equal… Even those among us who are, in my opinion, so silly as to doubt the existence of an Almighty, are still members of a religious civilization, because the Founding Fathers said it was a religious concept that they were trying to translate into the political world.” Eisenhower understood something many Americans do not quite grasp even now: that “Nature’s God” resides at the center of the Founding.


American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Mecham. Random House. 2006. p.177