QuickTake: You might expect me to want the government to confess my faith. I have come to believe it should not. America was founded by a largely Christian people, but not as a Christian nation. A republic that knows it is not holy can still be corrected. A nation convinced it is holy cannot. Nearly 3,000 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the people of Israel asked the prophet Samuel to appoint a king over them, so they could be like all the other nations.