Catholicism: America's Former Foreign Devil

At the Values Voter Summit in Washington DC last weekend, leading members of the American religious right rallied around the notion that the US is a Christian nation. One speaker, the leader of a Texas megachurch, cited the advice of John Jay, a revolutionary-era American statesmen, that Americans should elect Christians. In an 1816 letter, Jay wrote: "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." When Jay and other 18th and 19th-century Anglo-American evangelicals spoke of "Christian", they meant Protestant. Catholics, Jay was implying, are not Christians, as well as suspect Americans.