The U.S.A. is not nor has it ever been a Christian nation.

[daaron]

Another article debunking this pernicious lie. It's always useful to review, review, review!

Link to article.

One counterfeit idea that circulates with frustrating stubbornness is the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. It’s one of the Christian Right’s mantras and a favorite talking point for televangelists, religious bloggers, born-again authors and lobbyists, and pulpit preachers. Take, for example, the Reverend Peter Marshall. Before his death in 2010, he strove mightily (and loudly) to “restore America to its traditional moral and spiritual foundations,” as his still-active website says, by telling the truth about “America’s Christian heritage.” Or consider WallBuilders, a “national pro-family organization” founded by David Barton, whose mission is “educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country.” Called “America’s historian” by his admirers, Barton is a prolific writer of popular books that spin his Christian version of American history. And then there’s Cynthia Dunbar, an attorney and one-time professor at Liberty University School of Law. She’s another big pusher of the Christian America currency. Her 2008 polemic One Nation Under God proclaims that the Christian “foundational truths” on which the nation rests are being “eroded” by a “socialistic, secularistic, humanistic mindset” from which Christians need to take back the country.

[Ezlivin]

1. Jesus and the 12 disciples wrote the Constitution

And he crossed the Delaware in Noah's Ark.

Damn you faithless bastards!

[NYC_SKP]

4. God wrote the Pledge of Allegiance and signed the Constitution!

[rexcat]

6. No...

the Constitution comes straight out of the bible!

[PDJane]

2. The US was not founded as a theocracy.

There seems to be a large number of current inhabitants who would like to make it so.

[rhett o rick]

3. I am torn. When we brutally murder hundreds of thousand innocent Iraqi children

is that Christian or no?

[WingDinger]

5. David Hume, And Benjamin Franklin, hedonists, are the soul of the Con.

How better to explain comsumption, and greed, being the soul of our developed economic ethos.

[ladjf]

7. Maybe not. But, it seems to be more Christian than anything else,unfortunately.nt

[daaron]

8. Just because a majority of citizens are Christian -->

doesn't make us a Christian nation. History is not a popularity contest.

[Igel]

9. Sure it does.

On the other hand, it surely doesn't.

Depends on the One True Interpretation of the phrase, "Christian nation."

A nation can be founded as a Xian nation and be populated by agnostics and atheists who don't think it's important to revise an obsolete and disregarded clause. England's not terribly religous. It's formal leader is the head of its official church.

A nation can be founded without regard to a religion but have 90+% of its population adhere to that religion. The US was a Xian nation when it was founded.

We could insist that 100.000% of the population be Xian before declaring a country to be "Xian". That's ridiculous.

The problem is that the fundies insist that the phrase, perfectly applicable in one meaning, be redefined mid-discourse to have the other meaning.

The anti-fundies insist that the phrase can only have one meaning and that they're in charge of defining it, to the exclusion of everybody else. When I was in my teens, I found such word games amusing. That was in the '70s. They haven't changed, the word games; I now find them charged with tedium.

[daaron]

10. I disagree, it's not about the "one true definition" of "Christian nation," at all.

That kind of absolutist definition has no place in reasoned debate where thinking people discuss issues using mutually agreed-upon terminology. The population of a "nation" will have the religious demographics that it has, but when we're talking about a nation; it's pretty clear that we're not just talking about the demographic makeup of a population, but form of government which its people have chosen. When we're talking about the U.S.A., we are talking about the secular democratic republic that was instituted in the Constitution - the government; to be specific, the union of state governments, and the federal government which unites them.

Now if some Christians want to start redefining words and playing word games so that they can rewrite history, that's fine for them in their churches and their homes. Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, however, are going to deliver them hard doses of reality, time and time again. Just because one wants to change "Evolution" to mean "Humans descended from monkeys" doesn't mean scientists who know what evolution actually means are going to accept the redefinition. Similarly with "Christian nation" BS - these know-nothing know-it-alls like Barton, et al. are welcome to use the 1st Amendment this way - but it doesn't give them the right to shut the rest of us up, and we will continue howling "Liar! LIAR!! PANTS ON FIRE!!" until our dying fucking breaths, thank you very much. The last sentence that "anti-fundies insist..." just reads a little bizarre. Anti-fundies aren't redefining words; they're pointing out that fundies are trying to redefine the terms of reality, and naturally everyone laughs with the anti-fundies at the fool fundies trying to pull the wool over. Sadly, everyone but the Tea Party bozos and other RW tools kissing Evangelical ass on the campaign trail. This then gives the fool fundies the impression that someone in authority is taking them seriously. Unfortunately, the people in authority they're relying on are just as big a fucking idiot as the fundies who put them in office.

TBH, I don't know what's going to work. Education might work over the long term, but with states like Louisiana replacing instruction with a TV on a Jesus-loop, this might take longer than we have. The environment is going down the tubes, global climate change is going to become a reality for the next thousand years, minimum, and Americans seem to be trying to run the shit that rolls downhill. "How ignorant CAN we be?" seems to be the question on everyone's minds.

So, yeah, some can call it word games. I call it "Our asses are on the fucking line, here folks." Christian nation my ass.

[ladjf]

11. Your statements are true viewed from the standpoint of political

structure. However, if so far as the vast majority of Americans are
Christian we are at risks of becoming a Dominionist State which would be the ultimate political disaster for us all. We seem to heading in that direction.

[daaron]

12. I don't deny the danger of becoming a theocracy -->

just that we were not founded as one, and there is no support for the "Christian nation" concept in U.S. history. Naturally I'm interested in political structure, since that's something in which I as a citizen have a role. Social demographics and social change are properly movement targets, and I might participate in a movement to push back against Dominionism as a social evil; but the latter problem is protected from the former problem by the same founding document that protects the former institution from the whims of the latter body politic.

It is truly fortunate that we have a federal government, and not a confederacy.

[ladjf]

13. You are more optimistic than I. nt