Try to imagine what our country would look like if the “wall” that separates church from state were dismantled. Which church would you choose as the Church of the United States?

The majority of Americans would probably answer “Christian.” But Christian isn't a church. As we know, Christianity is divided into two broad sections, Catholic and Protestant. Catholics make up the largest religious community in the United States with nearly 100 million adherents. If we went by sheer numbers, then the Church of the United States would be Catholic.

Undoubtedly, Protestants would find this problematic. Southern Baptists make up approximately 16 percent of believers and form the third largest group after Catholics and non-believers (nearly 20 percent). They might have an inside edge on becoming the country's official religion. I suspect that many of the other Protestant denominations like the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and just regular old Baptists would have a problem with the radically conservative Southern Baptist Church of the United States.

It wouldn't be long before many of us would also have a problem when our tax dollars were collected to support a religion that we might abhor. Politicians would cater to the Church of the United States giving more and more public funds in return for public support. Soon, the national church would have laws passed that force Americans to attend its churches and follow its biblically interpreted laws.

Before too long, Americans might be persecuted if they didn't join the Church of the United States and many could even be put to death for apostasy or other trumped up charges.

This scenario may seem far-fetched to you, but this is exactly what was happening not just in many countries around the world but right here in the colonies at the time of the American Revolution. Many founders had witnessed or studied the abuses of state religions. They argued that if American citizens were to be truly free, they needed to be able to follow the dictates of their own conscience rather than the dictates of a national church. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights guarantee this.

This is what was and is truly revolutionary about America. Before the American Revolution, freedom of conscience did not widely exist as a legal right. The Constitution declared freedom of the mind and conscience to be the birthright of every human being! The state could not force any citizen to support any religion. All citizens were free to practice their own faith or no faith at all without fear of government interference.

Religious freedom was so important to the founders that they made the first tenet of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...”

In the Constitution there are only two places religion is mentioned. In the First Amendment above and in Article VI, paragraph 3, which is known as the “No Religious Test Clause” for holding office.

Could the intent of the framers and founders be any clearer?

Yet, there are folks out there who want you to believe that we need a national religion, that we need to be a “Christian nation,” that we need to follow biblical teachings, that the wall separating church from state is a falsehood and should be torn asunder. They are wrong.

The founders created a government that allows each one of us to follow the dictates of our own conscience. We are truly blessed. Americans need to be on guard against those who would want to overthrow the greatest gift the founders bequeathed to us: the separation of church and state.

Eric Lane is president of the San Antonio Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He can be contacted at ausa.president@