Strict construction?

In an interview with Beliefnet.com, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, was asked the following question:

“A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?”

The Senator responded as follows:

“I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn't say, ‘I only welcome Christians.’ We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.”

This Sen. McCain is the same candidate who has promised that, if elected, he will appoint “strict constructionist” judges to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Strict construction,” according to Black’s Law Dictionary, “recognizes nothing that is not expressed.” Can anybody out there point out to me where in the U.S. Constitution it is written that we were established as a Christian nation? I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t find it. A strict constructionist judge couldn’t find it either because it's not there.

What is obviously disturbing about Sen. McCain’s answer is that he either (1) hasn’t read the Constitution (like 55 percent of Americans?) or (2) knows better but is playing up to the Religious Right to win their votes in November. Either way, I don’t want him as President.

Frankly, as a Christian, I’m offended that 55 percent of Americans, including Sen. McCain, think that Christianity is so weak that it needs constitutional establishment. As Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1780, “When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”