2/3 believe U.S. is a Christian nation
Faith In Public Life asks Why are many religious conservatives obsessed with invoking the Founding Fathers?That is, why is there such a brisk book trade in re-examining the founders’ lives? For the religious conservatives, the fight is about proving that America was set up as a Christian nation. And their efforts to rewrite American history are paying off, since a recent Pew Forum survey found that 67 percent of Americans believe this falsehood.A cottage industry pushes the false argument that the founders intended virtually no separation between church and state, and this industry (authors such as Dee Wampler, James Kennedy, Gary Demar and David Barton; WorldNetDaily.com; and, especially, FOX News) has been very consistent in pushing the no-separation and Christian-nation messages. ...
posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 4:52 PM
1 Comments:
Most non-Christians in the world view us as a Christian Nation... regardless of what we call ourselves, or how we intrepret the establishment clause.
Fortune Magazine wrote a column back in Jan 1940. They titled it War and Peace: The Failure of the Church to Teach Absolute Spiritual Values Will Undermine Christian Civilization.
Here's the 2nd paragraph,
As the leading democracy of the world, therefore, the US is perforce the leading practical exponent of Christianity. The US is not Christian in any formal religious sense: its chruches are not full on Sundays and its citizens transgress the precepts freely. But it is Christian in the sense of absorption. The basic teachings of Christianity are in its blood stream. The central doctrine of its politicial system --the inviolability of the individual -- is a dcotrine inherited from the nineteen hundred years of Chrsitian insistence upon the immortality of the sould. Christian idealism is manifest in the culture and habits of the people, in the arguments that orators and politicians use to gain their indes: in the popular ideas of good taste, which control advertising, movies , radio, and all forms of public opinion; in the laws, the manners, and the standards of our people. If these applications of Christianity are materialistic, they are nonetheless real; they are nonetheless removed from the barbaric, the pagan, the un-Christian: they are nonetheless humanitarian rather than terroristic, kind rather than cycnical, generous rahter than selfish. The American has always been, and still as, at home among ideals.
I don't call myself a Christian but I accept our civil religion that all people are created equal by the creator with inalienable rights.
For followers of Bin Laden, that's Christian enough... for better or worse that's the label we have, and they're right. That they're repulsed by this is why they're can be no reconciliation. We can only defeat them.
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