President William Howard Taft: USA Exerts Influence As a Christian Nation

For at least the last few decades we have heard people deny that our nation has Christian roots. It has been more present in our minds lately because of President Obama's assertion that we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation. As I have said before, that phrase was never intended to mean that our nation ever had Christianity as its official religion (although several of our states had an official Christian religion up into the 19th century). But we had and have roots in Christian, or Judeo-Christian, or Biblical concepts.

Below is another example of a President of the United States saying we are a Christian nation. In this case he is probably using the phrase in a more "generic" way. That is, he is talking about us setting an example of "Christian behavior." In his 4th annual message to the country, President Taft said:

Our population, our wealth, our definite policies, our responsibilities in the Pacific and the Atlantic, our defense of the Panama Canal, together with our enormous world trade and our missionary outposts on the frontiers of civilization, require us to recognize our position as one of the foremost in the family of nations, and to clothe ourselves with sufficient naval power to give force to our reasonable demands, and to give weight to our influence in those directions of progress that a powerful Christian nation should advocate.

Read the entire address here:

Fourth Annual Message (December 3, 1912)