“If then we are indeed a Christian and a Protestant nation, in the name of the people, in the name of God, we have the right to say so in our Constitutions and laws, in our national and governmental acts. It is the chief element of our national religious liberty, that we should be allowed, and we are bound by the most solemn of all moral obligations, to acknowledge, worship, and obey our God, not only as individuals, but also as a free Christian and Protestant nation.

For no moral creature of God, no creature which is subject to his moral government, such as we have seen a nation is, can refuse or decline to honour its Creator by public and solemn worship, with impunity. As the individual, and the family, so the nation that neglects this, must bring upon itself His sovereign displeasure, and a grievous punishment. And since all our national institutions and blessings, yea, our civilization itself, are the fruits of Protestant Christianity, in the name of the people, in the name of God, we have the right, and we are morally bound, to recognize and honour, in our national acts, the source from which, and the channel through which, they have been derived to us.

For it is contrary to the constitution and order of nature, it is evidence of a base mind, and can never come to good, when the child, for any reason, or to gain any object, refuses to own its parentage. And we are bound to vindicate this right at all hazards. To yield it up, is to renounce our national parentage, birthright, and character; it is to dishonour our national religion, and the God of our fathers, yea, it is to betray ourselves, blindfold and manacled, as our children will find to their sorrow, in the very citadel of our religious liberties.” — Joshua H. McIlvaine, “A Nation’s Right to Worship God” (1859), pp. 35-36