Are we a Christian nation

[Blackbird]

I'm sorry you feel that way andehens.

 

[Big Daddy]

When I say public square I'm referring to politics. Public school policies and such. You absolutely are welcome to go stand on a box with a microphone and say anything you want as long as it isn't against the law. By the way I am not one of those that cares about having God in the Pledge of Allegiance or on money. Both were added in the 50's and have nothing to do with our countries basic concepts. Besides you got to trust in something.

 

[me&thegals]

I don't think anybody hates anybody's God. You can't really hate something you have never seen or met. People just don't like having other peoples beliefs shoved down their throats. Religion should be a personal thing. I don't expect atheism to be in the public square and I don't expect any other religion to be in the public square. Decisions that effect everybody should not be made based on religious beliefs. Our founding fathers particularly Jefferson felt very strongly about that.

I totally agree. I have my own particular religious beliefs, but they are just that--mine. I have no right to force them on others. If they ask about them, great. I will tell them. If I want to hear about other people's beliefs, I also will ask. Beyond that, gov't is supposed to be areligious. Not that politicians don't have religous beliefs, but that laws and enforcement and prioirities are not based on particular beliefs.

Anway, Christian or not, the major world religions have the same basic premises that work for our nation: Honesty, love, forgiveness, etc.

 

[Wifezilla]

People just don't like having other peoples beliefs shoved down their throats. Religion should be a personal thing. I don't expect atheism to be in the public square and I don't expect any other religion to be in the public square.

Everybody write this down. This is twice in one week that BigDaddy and I agreed. It might not happen again for ages, so mark your calendar...LOL

Here is some of what our founding fathers had to say about religion and christianity...

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies." - Benjamin Franklin, in Toward The Mystery

"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 Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors." -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church." Thomas Paine - Age of Reason

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear." -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, t renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as ameans of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter." - Thomas Paine

"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, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

"What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith." - Thomas Paine

"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan]way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. [Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures for defense of Christianity.]It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist" - Benjamin Franklin, "Autobiography"

 

[Big Daddy]

Great research.

 

[Beekissed]

Yeah! I didn't know that Thomas Paine was mentally insane. Things ya learn on a SS forum......

 

[Wifezilla]

America was founded by crazy people....yet today people try to pretend they weren't crazy. Gotcha...LOL

 

[FarmerChick]

If you think for yourself you aren't always crazy.

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

This Nation as a whole may not be a Christian nation, but many of us who are a part of this Nation are Christians, and we deserve as much respect and religious freedom as the next person who screams for their rights to believe in something else or to believe in nothing at all.

 

[Wifezilla]

Exactly Quail. And that is why the focus needs to be on INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM....not group rights. The fact that you are a Christian and I am not becomes irrelevant as long as our individual freedoms are assured.

It is when your rights (or lack there of) are tied to what group you belong to that things get all wacky.

With over 90% of the people proclaiming to believe in god, it is really hard for me to see Christians as a whole as a suppressed minority. But then you do see instances where people of a particular religious sect are singled out and harassed. When you honestly think about it it is one group of religious people oppressing another group of religious people because they don't agree with their mode of belief. What burns me is that the atheist get blamed. Excuse me? There just aren't that many of us to go around oppressing anyone!

The entire history of this country is a struggle between different sects. The early treatment of the Quakers at the hands of the Puritans,the oppression and discrimination against Catholics, treatment of the Jews, etc...

"In September of 1654, shortly before the Jewish New Year, twenty-three Jews of Dutch ancestry from Recife, Brazil, arrived in New York, which at the time was under Dutch rule and known as New Amsterdam. This arrival was the beginning of Jewish-American history. Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Amsterdam, sought to bolster the position of the Dutch Reformed Church by trying to reduce religious competition from denominations such as Jews, Lutherans, Catholics and Quakers. He stated that Jews were "deceitful", "very repugnant", and "hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ". He warned in a subsequent letter that in "giving them liberty we cannot (then) refuse the Lutherans and Papists". However, religious plurality was already a legal-cultural tradition in New Amsterdam and in the Netherlands. His superiors at the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him in all matters of intolerance.

Sephardic Dutch Jews were also the early settlers of Newport (where the country's oldest surviving synagogue building stands), Savannah, Charleston, Philadelphia and Baltimore.[4]

There were only about 250 Jews living in North America in the 17th century. These faced a number of restrictions, including being banned from practicing law, medicine, and other professions. As late as 1790, one year before adoption of the Bill of Rights, several states had religious tests for holding public office, and Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Carolina still maintained established churches. Within a few years of the ratification of the Constitution, Delaware, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Georgia eliminated barriers that prevented Jews from voting, but these barriers did not fall for many decades in Rhode Island (1842), North Carolina (1868), and New Hampshire (1877). Despite these restrictions, which were often enforced unevenly, there were really too few Jews in 17th- and 18th-century America for anti-Semitism to become a significant social or political phenomenon at the time. And the evolution from toleration to full civil and political equality for Jews that followed the American Revolution helped ensure that anti-Semitism would never become official government policy, as it had in Europe."

Having worked in print shops since the early 90's in a town full of different Christian denominations, I have gotten a very interesting insight in to how the different Christian sects view each other and it AIN'T PRETTY! We used to copy all kinds of documents from one church trashing other churches all the time. Catholics were a favorite target along with jews and mormons. Pretty nasty stuff.

Anyone, sorry about the rambling, but there is so much history about religion in America that people have no clue about. I wish people would research it more. The one thing a perspective of history gives you is the understanding that is the uniquely American belief of individuals rights that lets so many people with so many different beliefs live together in relative harmony. As imperfect as the practice of individual freedom has been, the ideal shines through.