America founded as a Chrisitian Nation

This one'll go on for page after page, and no one will budge an inch.

So I'll get in early: who cares what the intentions of the Founding Fathers were? We're big girls and boys, and we can continue to make up our minds about how the shebang should work, like we've been doing for the past couple centuries. And we are, every day.

That said, I think both the strength of the framers' religious conviction and their lack of them have been overblown in the name of rhetoric. Were they religious? Sure. How religious were they in the context of their time? Not very.

Don't confuse founded as a christian nation with founded claiming to be a christian nation.....

I think that every person has an innate bias, an innate pattern of thinking, that is shaped in many ways by the society in which they are raised.

In the case of the founders of our country, they were all raised to be god-fearing christians of one denomination or another. Naturally, this will color their language and opinions on the way things should be set up in this new country they were designing.

Nevertheless; even though they themeselves were christian; even though they believed in a christian god very fully, and probably would not have thought favorably towards a person who did not, they specifically set up our nation with the seperation of church and state in mind.

Does this mean that a majority of Americans are not christian? Of course not! What it DOES mean, however, is that America is technically religion-neutral, and should not be making policies based upon a certain religious ideal.

Up until the time of JFK, the religious stance of the president was an issue kept very close to the vest. While presidents would many times make references to God Almighty, etc., they prayed in private and went out of their way to avoid being grouped with a certain denomination. That's how important the seperation of church and state was to them.

Our founding documents several times use the word 'creator.' This is a purposefully vague word. They don't specify which god, or if ANY god, is in fact the 'creator.' The concept of atheism, while not unknown, was left out of the document, as the vast majority of all people around the world showed signs of religious beliefs.

All this would lead me to say that America was specifically designed not to promote one religious cause over another, and therefore can be said to be religion-neutral, despite the fact that a majority of the people living there are Christian. Religious oppression was one of the reasons many settlers came to America in the first place; they had no desire to return to that, and specifically set up our governemental structure to avoid that.

Feel free to tear into my argument, this is one of my favorite topics to debate.

Cycloptichorn

I believe the US to be a christian country that is super tolerant of other religions. so much so that everyone is free to practice whatever religion you want. But, I think that national observances of holidays show a heavy lean towards christianity. The laws are written with a christian god in mind. Christians make up an overwhelming majority of the population.

Cycloptichorn:



I believe that 'innate' means that it's naturally occuring, that it is programmed prior to birth, rather than being learned.

Other than that...I agree with you that the USA was founded as a non-religious nation - but I haven't looked into it enough to say it's fact.

My understanding is that a lot of the "God" stuff has been added in to things over the years.

SaintsfanBrian,

All you need to do is research the stuff and point us in the direction that will win, or lose, your argument for you. Let us know.

Cheers,

-Jer-

Like Patiodog I think this will go on forever without consensus so I won't debate it but simply post my take:

It was founded as a deliberately secular nation by Christian individuals who were founding it as a secular nation to protect their religion (as opposed to assail it).

I think the heavy Christian influence on our nation is a predictable consequence of the fact that it is a democracy in which the majority of the religious have always been Christian.

I think Christians seize upon the grandeur of the nation to try to forward their ideology as if acceptance of each together is needed.

I think atheists seize upon the protections the founding fathers have built into our nation as a means to counter religion.

Just a few quotes (cited in Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee," which is all I can give you to establish the veracity, or lack thereof) to mull over should anyone be inclined to mull over the intentions of the "Founding Fathers" in interpreting the Constitution and making plans for future government. All of these are in reference to the "Indian problem," since the moral confusion that slavery brings to the issue is so plain as to lose its effectiveness.








So, bright as they may have been, I think we should be free to think for ourselves.

The U.S. Constitution is a secular document. It begins, "We the people," and contains no mention of "God" or "Christianity." Its only references to religion are exclusionary, such as, "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust" (Art. VI), and "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (First Amendment). The presidential oath of office, the only oath detailed in the Constitution, does not contain the phrase "so help me God" or any requirement to swear on a bible (Art. II, Sec. 1, Clause 8). If we are a Christian nation, why doesn't our Constitution say so?

The founding fathers all came from European countries, with rulers, who thought, they were "God like".

They were painfully aware of the excesses of religious fanaticism. They neither wanted a state dominated by zealots nor a state church dominated by politicians.

But they surely were "children of their time".

Can anyone tell me why this matters?

We do all agree that the United States is a secular Democracy. Who cares about the religion of those who founded our great nation.

America was founded as a Slave Nation. We all now agree that ending slavery was a change for the better.

There are moral issues today that religious people have opinions about.

The good news is we have a way to resolve these issues. The legislative branch passes laws and are accuntable to the people and the judicial branch protects the rights of people. Most of us have been unhappy with each part the process at one time or another. But our democracy is working well and I don't think anyone has a better way.

America is great because religious people have a voice and non-religious people have a voice. Each interprets history from their own viewpoint.

I may have an opinion about the religious heritage of our Nation which I would be more than happy to share.

But, could someone tell me why it matters?

My sentiments exactly!
My thought is that somebody feels, if there are more christians, and it was founded by christians, that that gives christians some kind of exclusive rights to it, particularly in lawmaking!
But nope, although it has happened, it shouldn't continue. We don't need one set of beliefs on which to base the running of a nation. Religious beliefs should be an aside only.

Only a small portion of the Europeans who came to America came here for religious freedom, the Puritans for example. The promise of a new land and especially gold and other riches drew the largest portion of emigrants. The authors of the Constitution included freedom of religion but if anyone hasn't notice there are other rights quite outnumbering that one. If Muslims or Buhddists had discovered the New World, what a difference that would have made. That was then and this is now -- we are a nation of many religions and even the Christian religion is broken up into many sects which aren't even in agreement on how to interpret the Bible. If anyone studies what went on in the old West, they'd wonder if we were truly a Christian nation.

The President/GM of several local radio stations seems to think it matters enough to place some radio spots. The James Madison one is even a false quotation.

Some of the stations are religious programming, others are political talk. Need I mention the political slant?

Actually, they weren't. Most of the Founders (Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, JQ Adams, Hamilton, & probably many others) were Deists.

"One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian."--The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, p. 420


The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.
This is patently untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New testaments.
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/founders.htm

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"--John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

"But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legaends, hae been blended with both Jewish and Chiistian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed.--John Adams in a letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816,

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."--Benjamin Franklin,
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."--Benjamin Franklin
"Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another."--Benjamin Franklin

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."--Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802,

"Christianity...(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ...Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and imposters led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus." --Thomas Jefferson

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." -- James Madison

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."--Thomas Paine

Here's what Thomas Jefferson thought about what is now President Bush's faith based initiative program:
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."--Thomas Jefferson

They weren't exactly atheists either. Jefferson was raised Anglican and had affiliations with the Unitarian church when he was older, He considered Jesus the teacher of a sublime and flawless ethic. Writing in 1803 to the Universalist physician Benjamin Rush, Jefferson wrote, "To the corruptions of Christianity, I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other."

On John Quincy adams - Adams's religious thinking, like his political thinking, appears to have been continuously evolving. Politically, he moved from a Federalist to a near-Republican position; religiously, he moved from a near-Calvinist to a Unitarian position. In 1819 he wrote in his diary that "although the churches here [Washington] are numerous and diversified, not one of them is of the Independent Congregational class to which I belong, the church to which I was bred, and in which I will die." Two years later he became one of the 27 founding members of the First Unitarian Church of Washington. His acceptance of the Unitarian name by no means signaled an abrupt change in his thinking, for he had for a long time evidenced liberal leanings. His acceptance of the professorship at Harvard was made on condition that the usual requirement for a declaration of religious conformity be waived; moreover, his deep interest in the study of theology and the Bible, despite the uncertainties that went with this, indicates that, in the best Unitarian tradition, he was a dedicated seeker after religious truth.


Benjamin Franklin was raised a Presbyterian. Early in life he found some of some of the dogmas of that faith to be unintelligible and others doubtful. Having more important things to do, early in life he went inactive in that church.

He did have some religious beliefs. He believed that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man and that all crime would be punished and all virtue rewarded--either in this life or the next. He found those fundamental beliefs in all religions in colonial America and thus had a measure of respect for all of them. For him, the purpose of religion was to inspire and promote morality. To various degrees every religion did that, so he avoided discourse that might lessen the good opinion others might have of their religion.

The reason he respected some religions more than others was this. He found in all of these religions, mixed with tendency to inspire and promote morality, dogmas that did not inspire or promote morality, but rather divided people and made them unfriendly towards each other. He found the sermons of his own Presbyterian preacher (in 1730) to be very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying, because his sermons focused on the polemic arguments and explanations of Presbyterian dogmas, without a single mention of moral principles. The apparent object of the sermon was to make the listeners good Presbyterians rather than good citizens.

Even though he disliked going to church he did contribute to it financially. His preacher regularly visited him and admonished him to attend the church services. Franklin occasionally went, once for a stretch of 5 Sundays in a row.

It seems that america was founded on christianity simply due to the vast majority of the history that is available today. BUT history is written only by victors.. simply because they were the ones alive to write it. So history itself is usualy one sided or leans FAR to one side.So who were the other people who helped found this nation? Do we / can we even prove they existed and what THIER intentions were when they came here?
Too bad we cant. I would love to see what this country would have been .

I never perceived America as a christian nation; it wasnt founded as a christian nation. The latter statement is based on the fact that the church never dominated, or at least played a large role in politics. One thing must be kept in mind though a religious majority does not necessarily make it a christian state.