Should the US be a Christian nation?

to the OP:

interesting how Paganism is not looked at Wink

as to the fact of Atheists never take up charitable work... I disagree wholeheartedly ... I have friends that are Atheist are are the most kind and charitable people I ever met.. more so then a majority of Christians Ive met...

as far as this country being STRICTLY a Christian nation.. the problem with that is the fact of Discrimination that is still practiced by the Christian Church today....then again it seems that if you took a survey of random 10 Christians you would get 10 different answers on certain subjects ....

is there an easy answer? Not really.... people talk about the separation of Church and State .. yet our own president declares a religion as not a real religion? so much for that idea....

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Wolf_ODonnell wrote:

Yeah, well, the Evolution thread is in the wrong place, but I don't hear you complaining.

The evolutionist who started the thread was looking for response from people in the S&R forum. That's why he put it here.

Where else would he get responses from users of the S&R forum, Wolf?

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The reason for it's being a beacon of liberty and justice is precisely because it is not a Christian or any other religion based nation. In addition our founding fathers were wise enough to document that prohibition in the constitution.

Amendment I Of the US constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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On this day in 1646 the Massachusetts Bay leaders passed a law making it a capitol offense to deny the Bible was written by God.

http://chi.gospelcom.net/DAILYF/2003/11/daily-11-04-2003.shtml

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as much as i liked that post, i have to say that the witchburnings kind of hurt the idea that this is a pagan country.

then again, there are some interesting *native* american customs probably worth looking at.

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au1929 wrote:

The reason for it's being a beacon of liberty and justice is precisely because it is not a Christian or any other religion based nation. In addition our founding fathers were wise enough to document that prohibition in the constitution.

Amendment I Of the US constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I am in full agreement with the First amendment, and I would've thought you would reference the prohibition of religious tests, as well.

However, none of that proves your contention that the FF were deists.

Have you abandoned that erroneous claim?

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au1929 wrote:

The reason for it's being a beacon of liberty and justice is precisely because it is not a Christian or any other religion based nation. In addition our founding fathers were wise enough to document that prohibition in the constitution.

I don't think the founders' alleged secularism made much of a difference. In 1791, when the American states the First Amendment, Britain was technically a theocracy: The Church of England was the established church, and the head of the state was also the Church's highest leader. Yet Britain had already abolished slavery within its borders, and abolished it in its colonies decades before Lincoln.

The Britain of 1791, then, was an emphatically less secular state than the USA of 1791. Yet it's at least arguable that it was also the brighter beacon of liberty and justice.

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Thomas.
The inscription on the Statue of Liberty reads""Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," ...That is why they came and were welcomed. I should also add religious freedom.
What other nation can make that statement. Certainly not any European nation.

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au1929 wrote:

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty reads""Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," ...That is why they came and were welcomed.

The next time you visit the Statue of Liberty to read this inscription, maybe you should reserve some time for the next stop of the ship, Ellis Island. The museum there will add a few grains of salt -- no, make it a few spoonfuls -- to your claim that "the huddled masses yearning to break free" ... "were welcomed".

au1929 wrote:

What other nation can make that statement. Certainly not any European nation.

Not today -- but neither can America. I admit, though, that your pre-1923 immigration policies were much more humane than anything we now have. They're an ideal I'd love to see reinstated on both continents. (Minus the Chinese Exclusion Act.)

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Thomas

Make your mind up. You were addressing the past were you not? I would add that even today those who enter the US legally enjoy the same freedoms and privileges

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au1929 wrote:

Make your mind up. You were addressing the past were you not?

If you are addressing the past, then I think you're mistaken as well. European nations were generally welcoming of immigrants. We had plenty of Huguenots leaving France for Prussia to escape religious prosecution. Plenty of Irish emigrating to England. Plenty of Poles and other East Europeans seeking economic opportunity in Germany. The list goes on and on. I think you grossly underestimate the amount of migration throughout European history, and overestimate the hostility of Europeans to immigrants.

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JPB wrote:

neologist wrote:
Define christian.

really.

Another new book out on the topic is Forrest Church's,

I've just started to read it, but it certainly seems to be on-topic here.

Very interesting take in this book on the philosophical/theological differences between the Puritan New Englanders and the mid-Atlantic founders. online excerpts

Quote:

One week after the Union debacle at Bull Run in July 1861, the Reverend Horace Bushnell ascended his Hartford, Connecticut, pulpit to issue a lament: "Our statesmen, or politicians, not being generally religious men, take up with difficulty conceptions of government . . . that suppose the higher rule of God." Bushnell traced this failure of moral imagination back to the founders. In his view the nation's story opened blasphemously. Where a faithful citizen would expect to find "In the beginning, God . . . ," the story read, "In the beginning, Thomas Jefferson. . . ."

Recognizing how profoundly Enlightenment influences shaped the Declaration of Independence and American Constitution, Bushnell called on the people to reject the founders' vision. Ironically, his modern-day counterparts beseech their fellow Americans to return to the founders to resurrect a Christian America.

Also,

Quote:

I'll be attending a lecture tomorrow night by the author which includes a Q&A period afterwards. Any questions you want asked?

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JPB wrote:

I'll be attending a lecture tomorrow night by the author which includes a Q&A period afterwards. Any questions you want asked?

Maybe it's too cruel to ask an author on a reading tour about other people's books, but my question is this: What's a good collection of primary sources on the Founding Fathers' religious views? One thing that annoys me in this kind of discussion is that most of the quote on both sides come from people's favorite pundids; quotes of the founders, and quotes about the founders by their contemporaries, are rare by comparison.

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The Constitution is a living document; regardless of how the founders intended it to be read, we need to interpret it to best fit our country in the modern world. My opinion is that such an interpretation leaves religion out of the political equation. What do you guys think?

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fungotheclown

Quote:

The Constitution is a living document; regardless of how the founders intended it to be read, we need to interpret it to best fit our country in the modern world.

Does that mean that the constitution, you believe, can be reinterpreted with every change of administration or however the wind blows?

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fungotheclown wrote:

The Constitution is a living document; regardless of how the founders intended it to be read, we need to interpret it to best fit our country in the modern world. My opinion is that such an interpretation leaves religion out of the political equation. What do you guys think?

For the sake of the argument, I'll grant you that the Constitution is a living document. I don't actually believe this, except in the narrow sense that the Constitution can be amended, but I know better than to get into this argument yet again.

But even if we assume that the Constitution is a living document in the wider sense, it doesn't matter. Religious conservatives will fiercely disagree with you that "leaving religion out of the political equation" is the best way of "fitting our country in the modern world". I see no principled way to resolve this disagreement. Do you?

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Our interpretation of the Constitution has to change over time. Look at how different the world is now compared to when the Constitution was written. Ignoring all other factors such as economy, medicine, culture exchange, etc. you would still need to change both the Constitution and how we interpret it based on the differences in technology alone. For example, The 5th amendment was not written with fully automatic weaponry in mind. We have to account for that, and determine the balance between letting people arm themselves and allowing dangerous military weapons flow freely throughout the country.

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fungotheclown wrote:

The Constitution is a living document; regardless of how the founders intended it to be read, we need to interpret it to best fit our country in the modern world. My opinion is that such an interpretation leaves religion out of the political equation. What do you guys think?

I agree but the religious right will not leave religion out of the equation.

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au1929 wrote:

fungotheclown

Quote:
The Constitution is a living document; regardless of how the founders intended it to be read, we need to interpret it to best fit our country in the modern world.

Does that mean that the constitution, you believe, can be reinterpreted with every change of administration or however the wind blows?

Yes, to a certain extent it can. Look at gay rights. At the time of our FF homosexuals were executed. Today, without amending the Constitution, we at trying to treat them as Americans giving them the same rights as other Americans, not as some animal that has to be destroyed.

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xingu wrote:

au1929 wrote:
fungotheclown

Quote:
The Constitution is a living document; regardless of how the founders intended it to be read, we need to interpret it to best fit our country in the modern world.

Does that mean that the constitution, you believe, can be reinterpreted with every change of administration or however the wind blows?

Yes, to a certain extent it can. Look at gay rights. At the time of our FF homosexuals were executed. Today, without amending the Constitution, we at trying to treat them as Americans giving them the same rights as other Americans, not as some animal that has to be destroyed.

Where in the constitution does it condone the execution of homosexuals. Or for that matter address them at all.

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Should the US be a Christian nation?

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