America was never a Christian nation. That was made very clear in the First Amendment.

American is a nation in which everyone is free to practice their own religion if they so choose, and also free of having other religions imposed upon them.

Joe, any unbiased research of our founding will point to Christian concepts, Christian men, and state governments that had church associations. The Federal government left religion out, but by and large individuals and states, and educational institutions were operated by those who adhered to the Christian faith. Early Supreme Court Justices as well. The USA specifically did not want a state religion, but that did not mean that the bulk of the people were a-religious.

A lot of changes occurred later. As Vipermiata pointed out some time back, it was in many of our own lifetimes that prayer in school was ruled “unconstitutional “. I believe this occurred as the14th amendment began being interpreted that the Federal constitutional prohibitions pertained to state and local governments as well.

For much of US history, many states had religious tests for those running for public office. Something specifically prohibited in the US constitution.

One cannot read only the constitution to understand the history surrounding it.

DNM

That's why the God is mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance. How does that line go again?

If you are in the United States and have any money in your pocket can you please identify every piece that does not say "In God We Trust".

That line was added in 1954, during the height of anti-Communist paranoia and McCarthyism. At the time, atheism was strongly correlated with communism, given that the USSR was officially an atheist state. Thus, rejection of atheism was seen as rejection of communism, which was a big deal at the time.

The big push came mostly from the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization.



This phrase did not appear on any coin until 1892, nor on any paper money until 1957.



Both of these are examples of religion being ret-conned into the country. I'll have a more comprehensive answer to DNMakinson later.

(emphasis above mine)

They were not anti-religious, but they were also not predominantly Christian in the sense we understand it today. The predominant belief system among the colonists was somewhat more what we'd think of as deism or even naturalism today. A few selections:


“The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
- John Adams


“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. … But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding…. “
- Thomas Jefferson


“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God,”
- Thomas Paine



I find your comment that "One cannot read only the constitution to understand the history surrounding it" because this is essentially the same argument made by those who oppose a liberal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

I mean, I agree that one cannot. I've posted several examples above of extra-constitutional context which support this idea. But I'm also willing to entertain a constitutional literalist interpretation, because the argument that "The United States of America has a fundamentally agnostic / hands-off attitude towards religion" works either way.

Exactly.
I intended to post that ironically but I did not do a good job. That whole wall of text is amusing. Here we are 4 years later and people are still claiming "O'Bama" did and said numerous crazy things.
My own family members were certain that he would have overthrown the constitution and made himself emperor by now. Good thing god sent Chester Cheeto to defeat him.

My own family members are certain that Chester Cheeto has overthrown the constitution and made himself Premier.

Full Tilt, I suspected you had posted tongue-in-cheek.

Joe, I will post some other founders’ works. Will need a bit of time.

Paine was a strong Atheist and not representative of the general consensus.

The Jefferson quote does support my view that the scaffolding that the country was founded upon was Christian, even if he believed it to be artificial. But with Jefferson, we can find a wide gamut of perspectives

I am also not opposed to the the direct interpretation of the 1st amendment which contains the negative law of “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” as a containment of the US legislative branch.

DNM

Joe, the Adams quote above is actually a quote from US treaty with the Barbary Coast nation(s) not Adams.

But he did say this:

• The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity, let the blackguard Paine say what he will; it is resignation to God, it is goodness itself to man.
  • (26 July 1796).

On my phone, in the car, makes posting difficult.

DNM

The quote I posted is an except from the Treaty of Tripoli, which was signed by then-president John Adams.

This is one of those areas, much like religion itself, where each of us can cherry-pick different excerpts and also chose how we shall interpret them.

I would posit that under the general spirit of US Law, one who wishes to decrease the overall liberty of the people by declaring the nation to be a theocracy must provide strong and compelling evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the founders intended for it to be a theocracy. But by contrast, one who wishes to preserve the liberty of the people by declaring that the nation was not intended to be a theocracy has no burden of proof whatsoever, aside to refute evidence offered to the contrary.


I challenge you to cite any source in which a founder, or an official document of the United States, asserts clearly that the US is a Christian nation, or similar.

The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, are astoundingly specific and detailed in many ways. And yet they make no reference to Christianity (or any of its saints or deities), nor of religion as a whole in any way, except to distance the nation from it in an official capacity.




Unrelated, a word of advice to black men in San Francisco. If you choose to eat on the train, and then when confronted by a police officer asking you not to eat on the train you instead rapidly escalate the situation, insult the police officer with homophobic slurs, and literally dare the police officer to arrest you, do not act surprised when you wind up arrested. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...39d_story.html

:D

https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net...a5&oe=5E5D6F33


https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net...74&oe=5E60CE79

Joe, I totally agree that the constitution is meant to not address religion. I am in no way advocating that we should, or ever had religious entanglements (church and state) at the Federal level. We agree that, as a government, the US is not a religious entity. However, I am saying that the founders were by and large Christians, not Deists, and will bring along some evidence on that. That, although not, as a government, we were a Christian Nation, we were a nation of Christians.

I do accept the challenge.

DNM

I almost never do this in the Politics thread, and I really genuinely dislike doing it because I acknowledge that it has the potential to compromise my impartiality as a thread-participant, but I have deleted triple88a's most recent post (between this post and the one above), as it was a strawman argument not relevant to the discussion at hand and likely to result in thread derailment.

DNMakinson, give me some time to think on this. I believe that we do agree in principle with regard to the founding principles of the nation, however, I'm not sure I agree that "Christianity" as we know it in 21st century America is something which would have been recognizable / agreeable to the founders at the time of the authorship of the Constitution.

As background, I say this as someone who was raised in a strongly Christian home in the 1970s / 80s, and whose family still practices the faith quite strongly, but who personally has come to take issue with certain tenets of how the modern church interprets what, by all rational measures are mostly apocryphal texts in order to support agendas which are at best irrational, and at worst contrary to the general welfare.

while you guys argue about the most pointless shit, reality is happening:

You're right; an asshole teacher and an armed robbery are definitely more weighty and substantive matters than The Constitution of the United States.

What was I thinking?

You're not arguing the first amendment; you're arguing pointless semantics. We all know plenty of our laws, today and of the past, are based on the faith of the silly lawmakers -- which happens to be christian, as well as having a population nearly solely made-up of the faith. Ergo christian based. Random Example: You could not buy alcohol in Indiana, since statehood, on Sundays until 2018. That's a law from 1816 based on christian faith [Methodists and Baptists].

and yes, I agree that asshole teachers and violent yutes are more weighty and substantive to my direct life.