@DesertDave,
This is a copy of a post that I had on another thread, To re-iterate:
While it is true there are innumerable references to God throughout government documents, and while it also may be true that the majority of American citizens have been Judeo-Christian, it does not follow that America was established as, or even was intended to be, a Judeo-Christian national government. Remember that America was originally settled not by religiously tolerant people, but in fact by highly intolerant religious sects who were free to carve out their own religious niches in an unsettled land.
That religious intolerance, and the forcing of one group's religious beliefs on another group, was what the framers of the Constitution were protecting all Americans against. Thomas Jefferson, unquestionably a framer of the Constitution and a Founding Father, was perhaps the champion of Religious Freedom in Revolutionary America. Thomas Jefferson's most persuasive admonition against the mixing of government and religion is in his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Query XVII.
In his “Autobiography,” Jefferson discusses the removal of the words “Jesus Christ” from the bill establishing religious freedom “in proof that they [the authors] meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”
In his “Report to the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” Thomas Jefferson refers to the “principles of our Constitution, which places all sects of religion on an equal footing….”
Thomas Jefferson believed in God. But he also believed in the inevitable corruptibility of religious and political leaders and felt strongly that a corrupt politician who was a religious demagogue would lead the nation to intolerance and ruin. Indeed, the lessons of history that I remember most clearly were that political-religious leaders (priests, kings, emperors, popes, and witch-hunting tribunals) who, by virtue of their holy mandate, represented the Word of God, committed unforgivable abuses. Perhaps our separation of church and state is an unintended, but fortuitous, check-and-balance that keeps the United States from repeating that history.
For America to be safe for all Americans to worship as they choose, it must be safe for any American to worship as he or she chooses. If the rights of a single American are abridged, the rights of every American are endangered. You may want to think of religious leaders as good people, but if they are advocates of injecting (their) religion into the American government, they are enemies of the Constitution, enemies of the state, and enemies of religious freedom.
As for the Holidays that America declares as National holidays, I speculate that the majority of the people who celebrate Easter and Christmas, fail to realize that pagen symbolism and commerical influence has completely morphed the holidays from christian to anything but christian. Easter Bunny? Christmas Tree? Christmas itself is not even celebrated in the same time of year that Christ was born. You speak of Hypocracy, I surmise that hypocracy is best recognized by those who practice it.
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