Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said in a recent interview that the U.S. was not founded on "one race or one religion," pushing back on arguments made by conservatives such as Vice President Vance.

"We were founded, a lot of our colonies, for our religious pluralism, right? And the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way," Gorsuch told PBS host Margaret Hoover in an episode of "Firing Line" published Friday.

"And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion, it was about those ideas," he added, referring to America's founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. "And those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all."

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, touted his view in December that Christianity provided the prevailing ideals for the founding and continuation of the country.

"I'm not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American. I'm saying something simpler and truer: Christianity is America's creed, the shared moral language from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond," the vice president said at Turning Point USA's annual "AmericaFest" event.

"Across that history, our country's major debates have always centered on how we could best as a people please God," he added at the time.

Vance also noted that the Christian creed "motivated our understanding of natural law and rights, our sense of duty to one's neighbor, the conviction that the strong must protect the weak and the belief in individual conscience."

He argued the country's ideal of religious liberty is a "Christian concept," arguing that "because we're all creatures of God, we must respect each individual's pathway to that God."

But Gorsuch had a different view, pointing out that Charles Carroll, who was also Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence alongside members of other Christian faiths. He also explained that Amish and Quakers settled in the then-British colonies.

"We have a First Amendment for crying out loud. No established religion, everybody has a freedom of religion, everybody has the freedom of speech, we are all equal under law," the high court justice told Hoover.

"Now, you can not agree with those ideas, fair enough," he added later. "Then we have a problem. But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind."

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