And you will notice the Founders compounded the problem for Christophobes by identifying the year not just as the year of “the Lord,” but the year of “our Lord,” meaning that all 55 Framers went on record to declare collectively that Jesus Christ was their Lord and Master.

Proof that this dating formula was not just an afterthought but a conscious, deliberate decision comes from the fact that the Founders not only dated the Constitution from the year of Christ’s birth but also from the date on which we declared our independence. We declared our independence in July of 1776 AD, and the Constitution was approved by Congress in September of 1787.

The complete formula for dating the Constitution reads this way: “—done in Convention—in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.”

Thus the Founders dated the Constitution, the supreme legal document in American history, from two moments of vast historical significance: the birth of Jesus Christ and the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that, in the eyes of the Founders, these two dates were the most important dates in American history.

I’ve had some secular fundamentalists tell me that this doesn’t make the document or the nation Christian in any sense since the dating formula was simply customary. It’s what everybody did.

I respond by saying this makes the case even worse for them, since they are admitting that it was so common for the Founders to think of Jesus as Lord and his life as the turning point of all history that they had not a moment’s hesitation in putting his name in our foundational document, expressing their personal allegiance to him, and dating it from the year of his birth.

Every time you date a check, or pick up a newspaper, or check the calendar on your smartphone, you are bearing silent witness to the Christian origins of our country, as well as to the enormous impact of Jesus Christ on world history. The history of the world, in the eyes of the Founders, is literally divided into two eras: the era before the birth of Christ and the era after his light came into the world.

Bottom line: America is a Christian nation. every calendar in the world proves it.