John Kubal is a writer at the Brookings Register and a 35–year Navy veteran.

A few weeks back a Speakout by a Brookings resident and well-recognized political scientist took on the issue of the United States as a Christian nation. His missive was in response to one of our more prolific speakouters who believes that our nation was built on and remains to this day a Christian nation.

I’ve given both authors’ epistles a lot of thought and I decided — God help me — it’s time for me to weigh in.

As near as I can determine from my readings on the history of the first founders of the early colonies in North America, they came here seeking freedom to practice their brand of Christianity. They believed in freedom to practice religion — as long as it was their religion.

Throughout the history of our nation, a variety of Christian beliefs and religions would flourish and become one the underpinnings holding up the colonies and later the United States of America. Fast forward to the Founding Fathers and the role of religion in drafting the Constitution of the United States of America.

I have a pocket edition of “The Constitution of the United States (with Index, and The Declaration of Independence)” that I keep close at hand and refer to on a need-to-know basis. It has some “Selected Quotations” that include such topics as “Observing the Hand of Providence” and “Guarding Virtue & Freedom.”

Benjamin Franklin has “much faith in the general government of the world by Providence,” which he sees as “that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent Ruler.” Under “Guarding,” he notes: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

John Adams writes: “ Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

George Washington weighs in with: “The federal Constitution (adoption process) … will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence, as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.”

I trust that those reading these ramblings of mine recognize that the Constitution, in the First Amendment (one of 10 recognized as the Bill of Rights), stipulated that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: … .”

Add to that a piece of Article VI, which says that … “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Pure wisdom by the Founding Fathers in those two brief statements relative to the role of religion in the document that drives our democratic republic.

“E pluribus unum” (Out of Many One) was pretty evident in the melding together of 13 colonies, with their varietal mix of local cultures and Christian religious denominations, into one nation.

At the same time, I suspect by design, their approach to those many multiple  Christian denominations was “ex uno multis” (out of one many). With “no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the exercise thereof,” there was little possibility that the United States would ever have a state religion, such as the kingdom from which it departed still has.

In 1956, the U.S. Congress coined and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law a new official motto for our nation: “In God We Trust.” Do we really?

That same year I remember the Pledge Of Allegiance changing “from one nation indivisible … “ to “one nation, under God, indivisible … . ” Did those two words cement our United States as a Christian nation?

I guess I find it hard to believe that if the United States is the Christian nation so many of us purport it to be, how is it we fail so miserably in the Corporal works of Mercy uttered by Jesus of Nazareth in Matthew 25: 31 through 46?

“Hungry and you gave me something to eat”: how can the richest nation in the world have millions of people, especially children, facing “food insecurity”? It’s wonderful that we have “backpack programs,” food banks, and drive-through distribution of food. The people who participate in such efforts are being “Christlike,” regardless of their religious beliefs — or lack of them.

Meanwhile, South Dakota has been one of those few states that turned down millions of dollars for food benefits. For kids. Why?

“A stranger and you invited me in”: I suppose in some way this could be tied to our issues with illegal aliens entering our nation from south of the border. A tough one: but I relate it to the issue of our own people legally here but unable to find adequate housing to the point where they are forced into homelessness. Again, like hunger, how can this be happening in the world’s richest — and Christian — nation?

“Sick and you looked after me”: And we will when you’re sick or injured, using the best talent of health-care professionals, tools and technology in the world. But who’s going to pick up the tab? Aye, there’s the rub.

Because unlike other nations in the Western industrialized world, we don’t have a single-payer universal health-care system that covers all its citizens. Does any other such nation have a health care system that in a worst-case scenario can wipe out your savings and drive you into penury?

I find it ironic that other openly secular first-world nations, such as France, take better care of the social needs of their citizens than does the United States, a purportedly Christian nation. And things could get worse.

The religious and moral underpinnings of America, while never perfect in the secular, Christian — or a mix of both  — nation that we are, upheld the democratic republic that was put in place by our Founding Fathers.

“If you can keep it,” Franklin said. Can we?

Have a nice day.