The Only irrefutable response to those claiming a "founding as a Christian Nation"

[Perky]

Look first of all there is plenty of evidence on both sides that the Founding Fathers were both religious and secularists. It is not a resolvable issue. If you want to argue the merits with a fundie you should get used to pounding sand or you could move the debate.

"America was founded on a euro-centric Judeo-Christian tradition, but that tradition was hardly Christ-Centered. The first generation immigrants were certainly looking to escape the persecutions of Canterbury, but the second, third and fourth generation were looking to grab land and make money under the watchful eye of the British Crown.

"By the time of the Revolution and the Founding, the nation was largely secularized. Whatever claim to a Christ-centered founding you may want to suggest, it was pretty much vanquished not by a lack of reverence for God, but by the arrogance of thinking that you could sustain a Christian identity and expand a "Christian Identity" either on the back of a brutal slave trade or on the ethnic cleansing of the "trail of tears".

"How could a Christian nation be so out of step with the humility and gentleness of Christ? How could a Christ-centered nation have sch shallow a faith that it could so easily and shamelessly lose its way? How could a Christian nation fall so deeply and quickly into such blind idolatry?

"Until this supposedly Christian Nation repents before God for those great national sins which most assuredly grieves his Son, America's claim to being the last great hope for a Christian world probably falls on deaf ears."



Move the debate!


Edited for another thought

[vi5]

1. That won't work because to them....

..Christianity isn't about humility and dignity and human rights. It's about stopping people from having and enjoying sex, and stopping gays from having rights. That's at the core of everything they do, say, and care about. All the other things mean nothing to them so pointing any of it out will do no good.

[Perky]

2. Ha. The straw man cometh.

The underlying element that drives the "we hate sex" crowd is not moral superioirty it actually is moral relevance in a post modern world. The root issue is the same as those claiming "a christian nation" its also is an attempt to remain relevant.


It's their house of cards.

[tetedur]

3. If this were a Christian nation it would be "commune" ish

Dont' you think the founding fathers would have based their society on the example of the apostles as in Acts 2:43? The followers of Christ sold what they had and laid the money at the feet of Peter. They had "all things in common." Everyone was given according to their need.

Oh yeah that sounds like what the "Christians" want.

[Perky]

5. No I don't

The founding fathers were very much British ex-pats. they likely beliveved in the trinity but that had very little bearing on the framing. God is invoked but Christ is never mentioned. These are all the richest men in the country. They were not about to give up their wealth.

[kestrel91316]

15. Some of the most "true" Christians in America, by virtue of how

closely they follow Christ's teachings, are the Hutterites. They live in SD, ND, and up in Alberta and Saskatchewan. They live COMMUNALLY. Except for a very few personal possessions, they hold all their property in common and live on big farms similar to the ones in the Soviet Union. A religious COMMUNE.

I suspect the fundies would gladly stone them, too. Just for being contrary.

[malaise]

4. "How could a Christian nation be so out of step with the humility and gentleness of Christ?

What was gentle or humble about slavery? The problem has always been a vengeful god versus a forgiving one.

[Bonhomme Richard]

6. In 1796 the Treaty of Tripoli states, in no uncertain terms.........

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

That should do it.

[Pale Blue Dot]

7. It doesn't matter if over 200 years ago the founding fathers believed in

an unprovable, invisible deity who can read your mind and circumvent all known laws of physics.

If we were descended from the Greeks should we accept Zeus-based programs?

We should be a rational society by now. Science has moved beyond religion (including Christianity). It's not the founding father's fault that they didn't have all the facts. We do (or we should).

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. From the words of the Founders

James Madison
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." - James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. 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, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
John Adams

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?" - John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816

"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, letter to Thomas Jefferson

"What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine." - John Adams, letter to John Taylor

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes." - John Adams, letter to John Taylor

Thomas Jefferson
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." - Thomas Jefferson, to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814

"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." - Thomas Jefferson, from "Notes on Virginia"

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787

"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests." - Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1803

"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." - Thomas Jefferson to S. Kercheval, 1810

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." - Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813

"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind." - Thomas Jefferson to Carey, 1816

"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent morality, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted fro artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects (The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of the Hierarchy, etc.) is a most desirable object." - Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819

"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentence toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus." - Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, 1820

"The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore." - Thomas Jefferson to Story, Aug. 4, 1820 "The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save." - Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom a slaughter-house." - Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822

"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." - Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823

"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible." - Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks, 1820

Benjamin Franklin

"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did." - Benjamin Franklin letter to his father, 1738

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it." - Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728

"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity." - Benjamin Franklin Works, Vol. VII, p. 75

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England." - Benjamin Franklin

[Perky]

9. .

[LostInAnomie]

10. I always say "If it was founded as a Christian nation...

... why doesn't it say anything about it in the Constitution." Afterall, why would these fine, devout, and upstanding Christians pass up the chance to make sure that the world would know that this country was founded on Christian principles and IS a Christian nation? Shouldn't it be right there in the Preamble?

Either that, or I bring up the Treaty of Tripoli.

[Cerridwen]

12. Aw, you "stole" my thought. :D

Seriously, I was just wondering that.

If one is a Christian one has some relationship with Christ, yes?

Yet Christ is not mentioned, nor even alluded to, in either the Declaration or the Constitution.

Aren't these two documents our "Founding Documents" so to speak? Hmmm.

It's nice to see I'm not the only one on this brainwave.

:hi:

[Mick Knox]

11. Trail of tears was 50+ years after the revolution.

and slavery is historically supported by Christians even with use of the bible.

I see nothing in this argument that would "shut a fundy up".

Your argument is more than refutable even at first glance by me, and I generally agree with your premise.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Jefferson Bibble

that alone should get them going

[johnfunk]

14. I love to irritate evangelicals with the "founded by the Freemasons" evidence

Not exactly the most Bible-thumping Baptist group one could pick as a central front for both independence and establishment of Enlightenment principles. "But-- but-- [sputter] they're Devil-worshipers!!"