Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) told interviewers in Orlando last week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics. She added that “If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.”

Rep. Rep. Harris is a two-term member of Congress and a candidate in the September 5 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.

She should know better.

Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that all federal and state officials “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this Constitution.”

That same article of the Constitution – which Rep. Harris as a member of Congress is sworn to uphold – goes on to say that “no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

No word there about electing Christians. In fact, if non-Christians had been barred from holding federal office at the dawn of the Republic, such venerable patriots as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and very likely George Washington would have been excluded. Adams was a Unitarian and, while the religious opinions of the other three have been debated at great length by historians, not one of them could be called an orthodox Christian.

For more than two centuries, a furious controversy has raged over the question of whether this nation was founded as a nation “under God,” or under the principles of reason, without reference to a Deity. Very likely, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes.

If the Founding Fathers made no reference to God in the Constitution, it was probably because they recognized that most of their countrymen held strong views on the subject of religion. Wisely, they concluded that it was going to be hard enough to ratify the Constitution as it was, without dividing the nation along religious lines. So they maintained a discreet silence.

But George Washington probably spoke for all the framers of the Constitution in a famous letter he wrote shortly after he became President. It was a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, and it is one of the noblest declarations ever penned in defense of freedom of conscience. Washington wrote:

“The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy – a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Amen!

A person may be a good citizen of the United States whether that person is a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, or a member of any other faith – or is a person of no faith at all. That is a truth that was recognized from our first days as a nation; it is a truth that we disregard today at our peril.