zgreatarteest wrote:This country was founded on Christian principles whether anybody likes it or not.
Those who make this assertion confuse the founding of the United States as a political unit with the settlement of North America. It is true that a number of the first Europeans to arrive on our shores were religious dissenters who sought freedom to worship. Many of these people believed they were establishing some type of Christian utopia, and many supported religious liberty only for themselves. Most of the early colonies were theocracies where only those who worshipped according to state orthodoxy were welcome.
Following the America Revolution, political leaders began to construct the new U.S. government. Although a minority clung to the European notions of church-state union, a general consensus emerged that the new country should steer clear of officially established religion. States with government-favored religions gradually began moving toward separation also. Massachusetts, the last state to maintain an official religion, dis-established its state church in 1833.
During the Constitutional Convention, a minority faction favored some recognition of Christianity in the Constitution. In a report to Maryland Lawmakers, delegate Luther Martin asserted that some delegates had believed that "in a Christian country, it would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism." But those views were rejected by the convention, and the Constitution was adopted as a secular document.
Further proof that the founders did not intend for the government to be Christian is found in the Treaty of Tripoli, an agreement signed betewen the United States and the Muslim region of north Africa in 1797 after negotiations under George Washington. The document, which was approved the the Senate under John Adams, states flatly, "The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." (The assertion remained a part of the agrement for eight years, until the treaty was renegotiated.)
zgreatarteest wrote:The atheist Madeline Murray O'Hare did tremendous damage to this country all by herself, while we Christians sat on our hands and let it happen.
Atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair played no role in the Supreme Court's scchool prayer decsion of 1962.
In the Engel v. Vitale case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-1 against New York's "Regents' prayer," a "nondenominational" prayer state education officials had composed for public scholl children to recite. The government-sponsored religious devotion was challenged in court by a group of parents from New Hyde Park - some athiests, some believers. O-Hair was not involved in the case at all.
One year later, a case originated by a Philadelphia-area man named Ed Schempp challenging mandatory Bible reading in Pennsylvania schools reached the Supreme Court. At the same time, Murray O'Hair was challenging a similar practice as well as the recitation of the Lord's Prayer in Maryland public schools. The Supreme Court consolidated the cases and in 1963 ruled 8-1 that devotional Bible reading or other govrnment-sponsored religious activities in public schools are unconstitutional.
The Engel and Schempp cases were a result of the changing religious landscape of the United States. As religious minorities grew more confident of their righful place in America society, they came to resent the de facto Protestand flavor in many public schools. Litigation was inevitable. The high Court's rulings stiking down mandatory prayer and devotional Bible reading in public schools would have occurred if O'Hare had acted or not. And the late atheist serves as a convenient villain for Religious Right propagandists to this day.
