# Barack Obama — "no longer just a Christian nation" > [!quote] "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers." > — Barack Obama, "Call to Renewal" keynote address, Washington, D.C., June 28, 2006 ## Context Then-Senator Obama delivered this in a wide-ranging address on faith and public life to a progressive-evangelical audience, arguing that religious people should engage politics but in terms accessible to citizens of every faith and none. The line was later clipped to "we are no longer a Christian nation" and circulated as an attack; in context it is a statement of religious pluralism, not hostility to Christianity. ## Why this matters The most recent presidential-level statement of the pluralist premise behind church-state separation: a nation of many faiths and of none cannot have its government privilege one of them. Obama's roll call — Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, nonbeliever — is the demographic fact that makes establishment untenable, and the direct descendant of [[George Washington - to bigotry no sanction]] and [[John Adams - not founded on the Christian religion]]. That the line became a viral target is itself a measure of the shift: a description every Founder would have recognized is now treated by the [[Christian Nationalism]] movement as a provocation. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Sojourners, transcript of Obama's 2006 Call to Renewal keynote](https://sojo.net/articles/transcript-obamas-2006-sojournerscall-renewal-address-faith-and-politics); context and dating confirmed by [FactCheck.org](https://www.factcheck.org/2008/08/obama-and-the-christian-nation-quote/). - **Status:** Verbatim from the prepared text (Obama briefly stumbled in delivery; the prepared and intended wording is as quoted). Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[John Adams - not founded on the Christian religion]] — the founding-era version of the same claim. - [[John F. Kennedy - separation of church and state is absolute]] — the prior Democratic statement of strict separation. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Separation of Church and State]].