Another Religious Email

[Max]

I was browsing through some of my emails a little while ago when I stumbled across one that my grandmother sent me about the US no longer being a Christian nation. I thought 'finally' and opened the email hoping to find some statistics showing that Christianity was no longer the predominant religion in the USA. Instead, I found this ridiculous little paragraph that made me ashamed to be related to the person who forwarded it. Every time I read it [particularly the part about our founding fathers dying so that the USA could be a Christian nation] I have to remind myself that not all Christians are morons. Tell me what you guys think about it.


Dear Friends,

As I was listening to a news program last night, I watched in horror as Barack Obama made the statement with pride. . .'we are no longer a Christian nation; we are now a nation of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, . . . As with so many other statements I've heard him (and his wife) make, I never thought I'd see the day that I'd hear something like that from a presidential candidate in this nation. To think our forefathers fought and died for the right for our nation to be a Christian nation--and to have this man say with pride that we are no longer that. How far this nation has come from what our founding fathers intended it to be.

I hope that each of you will do what I'm doing now--send your concerns, written simply and sincerely, to the Christians on your email list. With God's help, and He is still in control of this nation and all else, we can show this man and the world in November that we are, indeed, still a Christian nation!

Please pray for our nation!

[TheLastMohican]

Our forefathers fathers fought and died for the right of our nation to have religious freedom. It still does, though the government does have its biases.
And since when is that bad thing?

[bricklayer]

I agree with The Last Mohican. Religion should be exercised independently. Does it really matter if we are a Christian nation or not? I don't think we ever really were.

[Karamazov]

You can argue that Judeo-Christian principles may have influenced the founding fathers notions of equality, fairness, and so on, but to say it was actually founded on Christianity, is to be inconsistent.

I'm sure to many who grew up during the 50's, this was generally the conventional wisdom and didn't question it.

[Monte314]

I'm sure to many who grew up during the 50's, this was generally the conventional wisdom and didn't question it.

Yeah, pretty much.

[le Duc]

If Obama actually said the first phrase in that statement (did he? I never trust e-mails), then he's creating trouble where it doesn't need to be, but that's beside the point. The e-mail in the OP sounds like a lame attempt to get fundamental evangelicals stirred up to support a candidate they don't really like that much (McCain).

I'm sure to many who grew up during the 50's, this was generally the conventional wisdom and didn't question it.

I may be going out on a bit of a limb here, but it almost seems to me that the 50's were a very "SJ" period, i.e., x was the way things were, x is right, and we don't veer from it. Why? Oh, I forgot, we don't question it, either.

Without arguing the validity of the viewpoints themselves, I almost wonder if that generation, by viewing lifestyle and culture that way, almost set themselves up for the drastic changes of the 60's when their kids (SPs, NFs, NTs, whatever) demanded answers and were just told "that's the way it is." So they went and did the opposite.

[PHS Philip]

The email omitted a key phrase: "at least not just [a Christian Nation]" To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[blueback]

The rats on a sinkig ship always get stirred up.

[JonD]

Do not be so quick to assume that the US was founded as a Christian nation. Nowhere in the constitution, to my knowledge, does it mention Christianity. Regardless of how religious the Founding Fathers were, they had enough respect for freedom of religion to not make Christianity a mandatory or a fundamental part of the nation.

Thomas Jefferson's own religious views, are evident in Christopher Hitchens' biography Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

In this book, Hitchens brings up a letter from Jefferson to his nephew, Peter Carr, in that one must not be frightened from an inquiry by any fear of its consequences.

'If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in this exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you ... 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.'

Religious people tend to not be so cavalier as to use the questioning of the existence of God to explain the beauty of liberty. To me, this is about as far as he could go without simply stating he is an atheist. Remember, many atheists are pressured to adopt a veil of religious belief to further their pursuit of public office, social status, etc. It is still political suicide to run for the President of the US and admit to being atheist, given the large number of partial Christians there to a Christian candidate.

[le Duc]

'If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in this exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you ... 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.'

Religious people tend to not be so cavalier as to use the questioning of the existence of God to explain the beauty of liberty. To me, this is about as far as he could go without simply stating he is an atheist.

Without making an assertion as to what Jefferson's beliefs may or may not be here, let me question the reasoning of the second paragraph quoted above. The fact that most religious people do not question beliefs as explanations for liberty does not mean that none do. Why wouldn't a philosophically-inclined believer (though I'm not saying Jefferson is one) use the former as an argument for the latter?