I never really noticed it until, one day during a tour, some French visitors pointed it out. They asked me why the national flag of the United States was prominently displayed in St. Louis Cathedral, there, in the midst of the coats of arms of the archbishops since the founding of New Orleans in 1718.

The query took me by surprise and I had to really think about how to respond to this question coming from guests whose own national revolution in 1789 was inspired by our American War of Independence, just fourteen years prior.

As I struggled to respond, I remembered that most practicing christians (in minuscules for emphasis) in the United States are equally perplexed when faced with the knowledge that such formerly devout countries as France, Ireland and Québec are now staunchly secular societies. That church and state are strictly separate.

It finally occurred to me that the people of this country have never lived under a regime that was completely controlled by religious dogma, so the flag in the cathedral posed no threat to their sense of allegiance to the state or to the church because…

They have never been persecuted or massacred for their religious beliefs (France throughout history).

They have never had priests knock on the door every year to ensure that women were fulfilling their child-bearing duties (a current practice in Canada until the 1950s).

Modern women have never not had access to the pill (contraception was illegal in Ireland until the 1990s).

And I began to think…

When I hear or read politicians quoting the bible (in minuscules for emphasis) to justify policies or legal stances, when I hear people say that they want to live in a “christian” country, I shudder to think what that would actually look like.

Which version of “christianity” would actually be the national faith ? Who decides which of the thousands of interpretations of the bible would stand up in court ?

It’s fascinating to me that the catholics have aligned themselves with the evangelicals without understanding that the fundamentalists don’t even consider the catholics to be christians.

Nor do the southern baptists, for that matter.

The liberal episcopalians and the methodists don’t fit into the mold, either.

The presbyterians, those pesky little calvinists, certainly aren’t born-again because that’s an oxymoron for pre-destination.

And there seems to be less and less room at all for nominal-catholic-mostly-agnostic-secular-humanists like me.

Lots of ink has flowed about the founding fathers and their beliefs and whether they were christians or not. For all of their foibles and faults as young men barely out of their teens, products of their time and class, they were certainly ALL sons of the enlightenment, free thinkers, and multilingual. (I remember being astounded to learn that Thomas Jefferson could write in Greek and Latin simultaneously, a feather quill in each hand).

More than any other, the first ten words of the Bill of Rights reflect the strength and, I daresay, the diversity of their convictions:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”

I never really noticed it, until one day during a tour, some French visitors pointed it out. The flag in the cathedral.

And I began to really think.