It’s for telling my fellow parishioners why I think this guy was full of crap. Because at least a handful of them were saying “Amen” during the sermon, and the sermon was presented like he was trying to convert them to religious extremism or something. He didn’t go so far as to say “Because we’re a Christian nation, we should do this and this”, but…
And that’s a whole 'nother kettle of fish, because the first permanent English colonies in what is now the US were almost purely capitalist - all those colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas.
The stuff we teach the kids about the Pilgrims and religious freedom and so on is how we like to think of ourselves, but it’s only a part of the whole story and not all that accurately told.
In some ways it could be said that the US was founded to escape christianity and to do things their own way and establish something else, forming some semi-christianity things that did not comply with what christianly is. In particular they wanted the ability to form small enclosed societies with strict rules and laws that were absolute.
See my reply immediately before yours.
This may have been true for some of the colonies, but, again, it is absolutely not generally true that the US was formed out of colonies that were trying to ‘escape’ anything or out of some kind of philosophical basis.
It’s what we tell ourselves but it’s absolutely not true. The majority of colonies that eventually formed the US were formed for a very basic reason - money. And while Enlightenment ideals were certainly part of the Revolution, money again was a major driver of the rebellion.
I watched a couple minutes of the sermon you linked (and read this thread) and I don’t know what we mean by “founded as a Christian nation.”
The speaker seems to be focused on the idea that many (most) of the founders were Protestant Christians and that they used religious references. And that’s clearly true. And one might observe that the purpose of the establishment clause was to allow different states to establish different churches (as they did into the 1800s), and those established churches were Christian. But all of that’s sort of demographically-driven: there were some Jewish communities in New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, but it just wasn’t a religiously diverse society.
When the Supreme Court observes in 1892 that “this is a Christian nation,” I don’t think they’re saying anything different from the statement earlier in the decision that “this is a religious people.” (Although, the Court does make a pretty strong argument for the “Christian nation” view in its discussion of the laws and practices of the various states).
“America” wasn’t founded just once. Different settlements, colonies, states, etc. were founded at different times, and for different reasons.
Some settlements were founded with the purpose of following a specific and narrow Christian doctrine, which I’ll bet your guest preacher would to like to follow to the letter.
Some colonies were founded to be religiously free, and while the founders may not have specifically intended them to be havens for Wiccans and atheists, they would likely bristle a the idea that the colonies ought to be limited to doctrine that were present at the founding,
There were states founded to be slave states, back when states were alternately admitted as slave and free. It’s ow illegal for those states to uphold their original purpose; but we repurpose them. Even if a large area of the US was, in fact, founded as “Christian,” there is no reason it could no be repurposed in modern times to reflect modern needs.
Right, and while the Puritan colony was religious, the Merchant Adventurers (a sort of investor cabal) that backed them were backing them for specifically capitalist reasons. They staked the money the Puritans needed to follow their expedition, but they had onerous repayment terms with the Merchant Adventurers, that some early Puritans have described the colony as being “enslaved” to them because they were basically stuck in an economic situation where they collectively owed a lot to their investors and had to keep working to pay them back.
There was actually a colony previous to the Plymouth one that had been staked in the general New England region as well, that failed, and it was for more commercial reasons. While the Plymouth colony gets a lot of attention because it was the first in New England to sustain itself indefinitely, it wasn’t that far into the region’s history when it was significantly eclipsed by other larger and more profitable New England colonies–and those were generally founded on more capitalist lines. Puritans did have some entrenched political influence in the eventually unified Massachusetts colony into the 18th century, but it was fairly weakened by the time of the Revolution.
Another thing that somewhat annoys me is the Pilgrims are often portrayed in popular media as landing in more or less de novo territory barely known to the white man. The reality is, of course, there was a previous (failed) European colony not too far from it, and additionally the entire New England coast was well known to European whalers and such who frequently traded with the Natives on the shores, going back several decades prior.
The one thing that probably made the Pilgrims so successful is the site they picked had actually previously been a Native village, and it was better setup for long term success than other sites that had been considered. Where did the Natives go? The village the Pilgrims occupied had been vacated it is believed because of disease basically wiping it out. The Pilgrims actually unearthed a number of their food caches in the early days that helped them immensely in surviving (and of course one of the nearby tribes also eventually helped teach them the best way to grow corn in the area.)
And many others were not. Jefferson, Backus, and others were against any intermingling of church and state. Which is why the statement that “the Founders” all believed one thing is folly.
And we had a civil war and some Constitutional Amendments, and now a vast majority of the Bill of Rights apply to the States as well.
It seems to me that those who talk about the US being founded as a Christian nation usually mean that the Fiunding Father’s were Christian. Thus I would point out the Founding Fathers whish we’re not, and go into a bit of detail with how they were not. Jefferson and his Jefferson Bible (with the miracles removed) come to mind.
At least, that is what ultimately got me to realize the idea of the Christian-foinded US was bunkum. Though I admit the treaty of Tripoli has poignancy.
You’re trying to convince people who would be convinced by a sermon. And sermons are as much more about oratory and rhetoric as they are about facts.
As for why the OP should, IMHO, try to convince them? Because a lot of the politics of churches gets justified by this idea that we began as a Christian nation. It’s where dominism comes from. And certain fascist-leaning groups use this rhetoric today.
And it works.
Also keep in mind in poli sci terms “nation” and “Federal government” are usually not synonymous. My hunch is this pastor had a political axe to grind and said a lot of dumb things, but the core conception of America being a Christian nation isn’t totally out of line with 18th century reality.
Unless I misunderstood the topic it was about the founding of America, this makes it seem like the topic was changed to America in the present-tense?
America was founded as a Christian nation, in the sense that the founders were pretty much all Christians (at least avowed ones).
In the same sense, America was founded as a White supremacist nation where the only people who had a say in civic affairs were rich (i.e., property-owning) White males.
Ask the preacher if he wants us to honor that legacy.
Better yet, ask anyone promoting that idea what Puritan church they currently attend.
The first amendment to the US Constitution states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The two parts, known as the “establishment clause” and the “free exercise clause” respectively, form the textual basis for the Supreme Court’s interpretations.
Since the people who wrote our constitution are actually known as, “our FOUNDING fathers”, then it is clear that our nation was not founded as a Christian nation. Besides, the ever dwindling number of church goers is rather indicative of that irrefutable fact.
Some history of christianity and common law (PDF, 13 pages, includes gives context to some of this pastor’s claims):
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4290&context=penn_law_review
The more modern thought:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/744320
I stopped watching after his lies about Vidal v. Girard’s Executors and his fundie-porn comment delighting in his belief that Girard had gone to hell (50:04).
Whence comes this notion? A lot of them were Christians, sure, but far from all of them. Our first Vice President and later second President, for instance, was a Unitarian. And plenty of others didn’t hold to any specific creed, but identified themselves as deists. Deism and Unitarianism are neither one of them Christian.
As for the notion that “freedom of religion” means “as long as it’s Christian”, one of Jefferson’s letters says “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my back if my neighbor chooses to worship no god, or twenty gods”. He’s quite clearly not referring to tolerance for Christianity, there.
MOST of its people were Christians. Don’t forget that 2-3% of the population was Jewish. As for Islam, though you’re correct that there was anti-Muslim prejudice, it wasn’t as widespread as you indicate. First, there were almost certainly thousands of Muslims in the Thirteen Colonies: a significant number of enslaved Africans. While most slave owners forced slaves to convert to Christianity, some were convinced that Muslim slaves, who were largely literate and often well-educated, could play an important role on plantations. George Washington said he would welcome Muslims to Mount Vernon if they were good workers. And some of those enslaved eventually gained freedom through manumission and became successful businessmen, such as Yarrow Mamout, an influential and successful entrepreneur.
As for this:
I do not actually believe the Founders were generally very open to Islam
On what do you base this belief–historical records or your own assumptions? If it’s the latter, you’re not alone, but the records do indicate more acceptance than you may think. For instance, in a draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Jefferson included this line:
“neither Pagan nor Mahamedan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.”
It didn’t make it into the final draft simply because a majority of the Virginia legislature refused to limit civil rights to only those religions. Other Founders, including Richard Henry Lee and Benjamin Rush, held similar views to Jefferson’s.
Nor were these views restricted simply to leaders. In 1785, citizens in Chesterfield County, Virginia, petitioned the state assembly
“Let Jews, Mehometans and Christians of every denomination enjoy religious liberty…thrust them not out now by establishing the Christian religion lest thereby we become our own enemys and weaken this infant state.”
We’re only beginning to recognize the contributions of Islam to the development of the United States. I find it fascinating and hope others do, too.
Here are some resources (some of which were my sources) if you’re interested in learning more:
My main evidence that they weren’t particularly open to Islam is:
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Thomas Jefferson was significantly out of step with the norm in his views on religion. He was accused of atheism (which he denied) several times during his lifetime. I think it misrepresents the views of men of his social class, or even just the ~50-75 other people we lump into the category of “Founding Fathers” to suggest his views speak for them all, they don’t. A lot of the Founders flirted with deism, but even then a majority were fairly mainstream Christians, and many of the ones who flirted with deism never went as far as Jefferson, and many later established themselves as being more in the Christian mainstream. The whole deism thing I think is often exaggerated for various reasons by modern writers. While a certain type of intellectual played around with it, most men of property and status in early America were whitebread Protestant Christians.
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The moment we had any significant influx of people who were not aligned with the broadly Protestant “norm” in America, we had extreme bigotry and prejudice, occurring at the highest levels of government. Read about the Know-Nothings, and the reaction to heavy migration of Catholics to the country in the mid-19th century.
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Their lack of Christianity was one part of the reason people were so virulently opposed to Chinese immigration in the late 19th century.
I just see nothing that really suggests to me if say, hundreds of thousands of Muslims started moving to the early United States we would have done anything other than institute bans on their immigration.
II know all about Jefferson’s personal religious views and the reactions to them. They’re irrelevant here, where we’re discussing acceptance of Islam, where Jefferson, as I said, was not alone in his views. Did you miss the part in my post about how the Virginia General Assembly rejected the line in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom about Muslims and Jews because they wanted to be even more inclusive?
You have a choice here: you can view anything differing from your own assumptions as being an attack, or you can learn more about the subject of Muslims in the colonial era, Confederalist and Federalist eras so you can argue more knowledgeably in the future.
I hope you’ll choose the latter.
Islam had virtually no meaningful influence on early America. I have nothing to “learn about.” You’re confusing milquetoast legislative statements with meaningful historical data. This is something people often do with little historical nuggets they find in the past, they are easy to take out of context. Have you ever read the resolutions that get passed by the United States Congress on a regular basis? If you thought that people in the future were going to judge our society based on them, you’d probably take issue with it because many of these resolutions are a lot more sane and reasonable and progressive than our actual society is.
No early American military, political, or religious leader was Muslim. No significant early American explorer, businessman, or artist was Muslim.
Things you might have learned about early Muslims in America might be interesting, but they are not historically relevant when talking about American society at large. Essentially you’re just regurgitating silly anecdote you read about that have no bearing on what American society was actually like in the 18th century. Meanwhile you could educate yourself better on the 18th century if you have any serious doubt that America was a deeply Protestant country in the 18th century and most Americans stuck to their own kind and were not plural. Something like 10% of the country was urban, and many of that 90% that wasn’t urban rarely left their small communities. Most of the rural population quite deliberately lived among “their kind”, and would often deliberately avoid changing things up too much. The idea that America was this amazingly receptive place to religions that were totally outside the Protestant norm, based on some literal nonsense resolutions in the Virginia General Assembly that had no meaning, or random out of context letters written by Thomas Jefferson is absurd.
You should read up on how the early Mormons were treated not that many years after the time of Jefferson, they were nearly driven out of their early communities by armed mobs. But yes, please continue to live in your fictional world where Islam was important in early America and if some large colony of Muslims appeared on the shores of 18th century America it would have been met with anything other than furious violence.