# Help, please...Is this a Christian Nation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 11, 2004, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403 "2004-04-11T01:07:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![psiclone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a6a055/32.png) [@psiclone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiclone)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/41 "2004-04-11T07:18:39Z")
And one more thing before I go to bed, Zagada, I don’t know that this country is any more or less Christian than it ever has been. That was certainly not my experience tonight, where I as a Catholic, spent about 3 hours at an Easter Vigil. The church I was in was pretty full. How full was yours tonight? And the cool thing about the Freemasons founding the country was that the lodges gave Protestants, Catholics and Jews a chance to meet with each other on equal footing without religion getting in the way. Kind of like the US Constitution does. It doesn’t favor any one religion and in fact, prohibts that sort of thing in the Establishment clause. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/42 "2004-04-11T07:23:42Z")
> [@psiclone](#): > > And one more thing before I go to bed, Zagada, I don’t know that this country is any more or less Christian than it ever has been. That was certainly not my experience tonight, where I as a Catholic, spent about 3 hours at an Easter Vigil. The church I was in was pretty full. How full was yours tonight? Why would I go tonight? It isn’t like there is a religious event going on. Ostara, however, was quite fun, thanks much. You still want to keep arguing about sentence structure, or are you done for now? ---
**Author:** ![psiclone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a6a055/32.png) [@psiclone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiclone)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/43 "2004-04-11T07:32:33Z")
> [@Zagadka](#): > > So, according to your understanding of the English language, if I say: > > “Apples fell on my head” > > that means that all apples fell on my head? With nothing more than that statement you give you cannot tell. It very well could mean all of the apples or some. The reader may very well infer either alternative. 633squadron’s missive was written such that no exceptions were included. He did not equivocate and the context is clear. I amquite sure if he wanted to say “some” chirstians he would have. You have become importunistic, however, and like the I-Ching, I do not instruct the importunistic. Goodnight. Have fun playing with yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/44 "2004-04-11T07:36:19Z")
> [@](#): > > noble deists riding herd on a pack of ignorant Christians is is amusing but rather silly. Sorry I responded before this line of utter BS had a chance to process. Christians are not ignorant. Christians of that time are not necessarily ignorant. No doubt many of them were educated **forward-thinking** individuals that knew a secular nation is a necessity for a functional non-oppressive government. A bunch of deists did get together and founded our nation with the backing of a majority of those Christians. Not because of their Christianity taught them self-determination but because they learned such lessons on their own. Or maybe from the inspiring words of Thomas Paine who was so rabidly anti-Christain Theodore Roosevelt called him “that filthy little athiest” ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/45 "2004-04-11T07:37:45Z")
> [@psiclone](#): > > Goodnight. Have fun playing with yourself. Oh, I will. That isn’t a sin to everyone, you know. Christians have the funniest insults. It is like being in junior high again. O\_o ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/46 "2004-04-11T07:38:02Z")
> [@Darkhold](#): > > Ok. Where in the bible does it support self determination and freedom? Where in church practice has that been encouraged? Both the Bible and the Church held utter submission to God to be the highest possible calling and free will is responsible for all sins starting with the Original Sin. Incest, Slavery, Polygamy, Bigotry, Hatred and violence are easy to find in there. As well as rationalizations used to this day to encourage those types of things. Where is the social-political frame work set forth so clearly in Christianity that has shaped our nation? A counter rise in humanistic tendencies in spite of the Christian church is where we seem to get our freedoms we cherish so dearly. > I’m glad you find it so amusing and silly. Tell me where is your rash of quotes showing that they founded the principles of the nation on Christianity? There’s dozens if not hundreds of quotes from that time attesting to how thoroughly they tried to divorce themselves from an oppressive church. They were a bunch of men trying to seprate themselves from the old ways of doing buisiness. Which included Christianity. Here you go. Settle in, it’s good read! Some framing quotes below. [Can We Be Good Without God?- On the political meaning of Christianity - by Glenn Tinder 12/89 The Atlantic Magazine](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/religion/goodgod.htm) > [@](#): > > The most adamant opposition to my argument is likely to come from protagonists of secular reason–a cause represented preeminently by the Enlightenment. Locke and Jefferson, it will be asserted, not Jesus and Paul, created our moral universe. Here I cannot be as disarming as I hope I was in the paragraph above, for underlying my argument is the conviction that Enlightenment rationalism is not nearly so constructive as is often supposed. Granted, it has sometimes played a constructive role. It has translated certain Christian values into secular terms and, in an age becoming increasingly secular, has given them political force. It is doubtful, however, that it could have created those values or that it can provide them with adequate metaphysical foundations. Hence if Christianity declines and dies in coming decades, our moral universe and also the relatively humane political universe that it supports will be in peril. But I recognize that if secular rationalism is far more dependent on Christianity than its protagonists realize, the converse also is in some sense true. The Enlightenment carried into action political ideals that Christians, in contravention of their own basic faith, often shamefully neglected or denied. Further, when I acknowledged that there are respectable grounds for disagreeing with my argument, I had secular rationalism particularly in mind. The foundations of political decency are an issue I wish to raise, not settle. > [@](#): > > CHRISTIAN LOVE > > LOVE seems as distant as spirituality from politics, yet any discussion of the political meaning of Christianity must begin by considering (or at least making assumptions about) love. Love is for Christians the highest standard of human relationships, and therefore governs those relationships that make up politics. Not that political relationships are expected to exhibit pure love. But their place in the whole structure of human relationships can be understood only by using the measure that love provides. > > The Christian concept of love requires attention not only because it underlies Christian political ideas but also because it is unique. Love as Christians understand it is distinctly different from what most people think of as love. In order to dramatize the Christian faith in an incarnate and crucified God, Paul spoke ironically of “the folly of what we preach,” and it may be said that Christian love is as foolish as Christian faith. Marking its uniqueness, Christian love has a distinctive name, agape, which sets it apart from other kinds of love, such as philia, or friendship, and eros, or erotic passion. > > When John wrote that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,” he illuminated the sacrificial character of divine love. This is the mark of agape. It is entirely selfless. If one could love others without judging them, asking anything of them, or thinking of one’s own needs, one would meet the Christian standard. Obviously, no one can. Many of us can meet the requirements of friendship or erotic love, but agape is beyond us all. It is not a love toward which we are naturally inclined or for which we have natural capacities. Yet it is not something exclusively divine, like omnipotence, which human beings would be presumptuous to emulate. In fact, it is demanded of us. Agape is the core of Christian morality. Moreover, as we shall see, it is a source of political standards that are widely accepted and even widely, if imperfectly, realized. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/47 "2004-04-11T07:45:43Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Here you go. Settle in, it’s good read! Some framing quotes below. > > [Can We Be Good Without God?- On the political meaning of Christianity - by Glenn Tinder 12/89 The Atlantic Magazine](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/religion/goodgod.htm) Methinks someone is dodging the questions. Would you care to cite exactly which parts of the Constitution are founded on Christian theology, and from which part of the Bible they are taken from? ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/48 "2004-04-11T07:57:07Z")
BTW, apparently we are a Christian nation, and apparently our soldiers have to [url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s819685.htm]pray for President Bush (I guess so he doesn’t fall in the lake while he is fishing on his ranch) O\_o > [@](#): > > US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush > > They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush. > > Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called “A Christian’s Duty,” a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush. > > “I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God’s peace be your guide,” says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces. > > The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches. > > Sunday’s is “Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding”. > > Monday’s reads “Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics”. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/49 "2004-04-11T08:18:03Z")
> [@Zagadka](#): > > Methinks someone is dodging the questions. > > Would you care to cite exactly which parts of the Constitution are founded on Christian theology, and from which part of the Bible they are taken from? The context of the “Christian perspective” outlined in Tinder’s article, which is the one I was referring to in my original response in this thread, is not seen in some line by line parsing of the Bible with the Constitution, but rather, in Christianity’s consideration (in theory) of the dignity and value of the individual. That day-to-day Christians in practice may regularly fail to achieve this end is to some extent beside the point. The notion that the individual has an inalienable value is a core tenet of New Testament Christian belief. The mindset that produced the Constitution and other statements of principle in the formative years of the United States is, to a significant extent, directly reflective of the rights of the people as individuals. It is this social and political orientation that values the political individual that was informed and shaped by the proto-American Christian perspective that values the dignity and worth of the individual. > [@](#): > > THE EXALTED INDIVIDUAL > > TO grasp fully the idea of the exalted individual is not easy, but this is not because it rests on a technical or complex theory. The difficulty of grasping the concept is due to its being beyond the whole realm of theory. It refers to something intrinsically mysterious, a reality that one cannot see by having someone else point to it or describe it. It is often spoken of, but the words we use–“the dignity of the individual,” “the infinite value of a human being,” and so forth–have become banal and no longer evoke the mystery that called them forth. Hence we must try to understand what such phrases mean. In what way, from a Christian standpoint, are individuals exalted? In trying to answer this question, the concept of destiny may provide some help. > > In the act of creation God grants a human being glory, or participation in the goodness of all that has been created. The glory of a human being, however, is not like that of a star or a mountain. It is not objectively established but must be freely affirmed by the one to whom it belongs. In this sense the glory of a human being is placed in the future. It is not a mere possibility however, nor does it seem quite sufficient to say that it is a moral norm. It is a fundamental imperative, even though all of us, in our sinfulness, to some degree refuse it. This fusion of human freedom and divine necessity may be summarily characterized by saying that the glory of an individual, rather than being immediately given, is destined. > > Destiny is not the same as fate. The word refers not to anything terrible or even to anything inevitable, in the usual sense of the word, but to the temporal and free unfoldment of a person’s essential being. A destiny is a spiritual drama. > > A destiny is never completely fulfilled in time, in the Christian vision, but leads onto the plane of eternity. It must be worked out in time, however, and everything that happens to a person in time enters into eternal selfhood and is there given meaning and justification. My destiny is what has often been referred to as my soul. > > Realizing a destiny is not a matter of acquiescing in some form of relentless causality. If it were, there would be no sin. A destiny can be failed or refused. That is why it is not a fate. True, the very word “destiny” is indicative of necessity, but the necessity of a destiny is not like the necessity that makes an object fall when it is dropped. Rather, it is the kind I recognize when I face a duty I am tempted to evade and say to myself, “This I must do.” Yet my destiny has a weight unlike that of any particular duty, since it is the life given to me by God. As is recognized in words like “salvation” and “damnation,” the call of destiny has a peculiar finality. > > The agape of God consists in the bestowal of a destiny, and that of human beings in its recognition through faith. Since a destiny is not a matter of empirical observation, a person with a destiny is, so to speak, invisible. But every person has a destiny. Hence the process of mutual scrutiny is in vain, and even the most objective judgments of other people are fundamentally false. Agape arises from a realization of this and is therefore expressed in a refusal to judge. > > The Lord of all time and existence has taken a personal interest in every human being, an interest that is compassionate and unwearying. The Christian universe is peopled exclusively with royalty. What does this mean for society? ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/50 "2004-04-11T08:18:17Z")
Astro, I think god must be on your side. I typed out a fairly huge response only to have my page reload for no reason. 😛 Anyway… I’ll ask again for the principles spelled out in the Bible and have been put into practice by the church that supports self determination and freedom. Triple points if I can’t come up with two other parts that support slavery, inequality or oppression. On to the article. > [@](#): > > Enlightenment rationalism is not nearly so constructive as is often supposed. Granted, it has sometimes played a constructive role. Wow I had no idea. I thought the Enlightenment was a HUGE deal. Guess I was wrong. > [@](#): > > It has translated certain Christian values into secular terms and, in an age becoming increasingly secular, has given them political force What a weird sentence. There was an age of increasing secularism that gave rise to our nation. Yet this rising secularism wasn’t the cause of this new form of government but was because of a reinterpretation of Christianity into secular terms? Why would Christianity need that if it had those ideas already imbedded in it? Why hadn’t the long Christian history of Europe made dozens of examples of a ‘Western’ style democracy before this? Why are so many of our principles based on Greek philosophies about government and not most of the Christian nations already in existence? > [@](#): > > It is doubtful, however, that it could have created those values or that it can provide them with adequate metaphysical foundations. Well considering those ‘values’ have been around since before Christianity I do agree it’s unlikely they ‘created’ them. Just put them into practice unlike the aforementioned Christian nations. He’s got me on the metaphysical foundations. Hard for a secular philosophy to create an adequate foundation for the metaphysical. > [@](#): > > Hence if Christianity declines and dies in coming decades, our moral universe and also the relatively humane political universe that it supports will be in peril. _cough\*\*cough_ I think I need a glass of water. > [@](#): > > t I recognize that if secular rationalism is far more dependent on Christianity than its protagonists realize, the converse also is in some sense true. The Enlightenment carried into action political ideals that Christians, in contravention of their own basic faith, often shamefully neglected or denied. Further, when I acknowledged that there are respectable grounds for disagreeing with my argument, I had secular rationalism particularly in mind. The foundations of political decency are an issue I wish to raise, not settle. Well that’s awfully nice of him. Declares rational secularism Christianity without Jesus and says he doesn’t have any major problems with it. Good for him. > [@](#): > > LOVE seems as distant as spirituality from politics, yet any discussion of the political meaning of Christianity must begin by considering (or at least making assumptions about) love. Love is for Christians the highest standard of human relationships, and therefore governs those relationships that make up politics. Not that political relationships are expected to exhibit pure love. But their place in the whole structure of human relationships can be understood only by using the measure that love provides. Wow this reminds me of the time my cousin told me I couldn’t understand love without believing in God. I dunno about you but I don’t think the government loves me. I don’t think the majority of people in the government from the very beginning based their laws off of love. Notions of equality and freedom yes. But not spiritual love. > [@](#): > > The Christian concept of love requires attention not only because it underlies Christian political ideas but also because it is unique. Love as Christians understand it is distinctly different from what most people think of as love. In order to dramatize the Christian faith in an incarnate and crucified God, Paul spoke ironically of “the folly of what we preach,” and it may be said that Christian love is as foolish as Christian faith. Marking its uniqueness, Christian love has a distinctive name, agape, which sets it apart from other kinds of love, such as philia, or friendship, and eros, or erotic passion. Help me with this one. People before Christ didn’t understand other types of love? People that don’t believe in Christianity is incapable of a special type of love that’s only for Christians? I’m not being snarky or sarcastic here I honestly don’t understand this point at all. > [@](#): > > When John wrote that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,” he illuminated the sacrificial character of divine love. This is the mark of agape. It is entirely selfless. If one could love others without judging them, asking anything of them, or thinking of one’s own needs, one would meet the Christian standard. Does this guy even read his own bible? He does judge us and tells us if we do not worship him we will burn in hell for all of eternity. > [@](#): > > Obviously, no one can Yeah including god and jesus. > [@](#): > > Many of us can meet the requirements of friendship or erotic love, but agape is beyond us all. It is not a love toward which we are naturally inclined or for which we have natural capacities. Yet it is not something exclusively divine, like omnipotence, which human beings would be presumptuous to emulate. In fact, it is demanded of us. Agape is the core of Christian morality. Moreover, as we shall see, it is a source of political standards that are widely accepted and even widely, if imperfectly, realized. Er ok. I don’t see my Government even imperfectly trying to sacrifice selflessly. ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/51 "2004-04-11T08:25:38Z")
It’s bedtime for me so I won’t even bother with the torturous logic of the second part of that (maybe in the morning) So far however I have yet to see him come up with ONE connection. We’ve all provided factual evidence to suggest self determination was a REJECTION of Christian principles (quotes of the founders, the Bible vs the principles of the nation etc) without nonsensical definitions of the word ‘love’. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/52 "2004-04-11T09:38:01Z")
Christianity as a religion is unique in its insistence on the ultimate dignity and worth of each individual. Societies with Christian foundations thus establish political systems which are notable for their insistence on “respect for the individual” and “a belief in the essential equality of all human beings”. Thus, historically we can see that when Christianity was the dominant force in European culture–from the 4th century C.E. and the final conversion of the Roman Empire to a Christian state, until the rise of the secularist “Enlightenment” of the 18th century C.E.–was an era in which Christian Europeans built social and political systems in which the inherent equal dignity and worth of every individual was of paramount value, as opposed to systems which valued human beings according to their “class”, “birth”, “station”, or “estate”, and in which some people were considered born to rule, and others born to serve. _ **Next:** Black is white, up is down, and night is day._ ---
**Author:** ![Cerri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3bc359/32.png) [@Cerri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerri)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/53 "2004-04-11T13:08:36Z")
“The United States is in no way founded upon the Christian religion.” – George Washington & John Adams, in a diplomatic message to Malta (from the earlier posted link [http://www.deadlounge.com/offramp/quotes\_religion.html](http://www.deadlounge.com/offramp/quotes_religion.html) by Attrayant) ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/54 "2004-04-11T14:50:02Z")
> [@Darkhold](#): > > Well a good starting point is to point out several of the Founding Fathers were deists and didn’t believe in the Christian church at all. Several, yes. However, the vast majority of them claimed some manner of Christian affiliation ([http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/social\_issues/faithofo.htm](http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/social_issues/faithofo.htm) and [http://www.str.org/free/reflections/social\_issues/whatwast.htm](http://www.str.org/free/reflections/social_issues/whatwast.htm)). Even Ben Franklin’s proclaimed deism is equivocal. He did adopt deism for a while, but abandoned it later on, as was known to quote Scripture within the Federal Convention. As **Astro** said, the USA is a pluralist society, but its foundation was shaped to a great deal by Christian principles and worldviews. This does not make it a specifically Christian nation, but its bedrock was largely hewn by this perspective Before anyone puts words in my mouth, I’m not claiming that all these beliefs were _exclusively_ Christian, but that they helped shape the laws and political formation of the country, as **astro** explained.) ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/55 "2004-04-11T14:58:53Z")
> [@Darkhold](#): > > We’ve all provided factual evidence to suggest self determination was a REJECTION of Christian principles Most of the Founding Fathers belonged to Christian churches, so it’s safe to say that they did not see a contradiction between “self-determination” and Christian principles. Most of them most certainly did NOT reject Christian principles, as your claim would require them to do. Quite simply, the right to self-determination is not absolute. Never has been. The Biblical injunctions against sin, and its penalties for severe sins, do not inherently contradict the principle of self-determination, as the latter was never meant to be an absolute goal to be valued above everything else. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/56 "2004-04-11T15:13:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Quite simply, the right to self-determination is not absolute. Never has been. The Biblical injunctions against sin, and its penalties for severe sins, do not inherently contradict the principle of self-determination, as the latter was never meant to be an absolute goal to be valued above everything else. No society can exist which sets no limits whatsoever on individual liberty–a condition where there are no limits on anyone’s freedom of action isn’t a society at all; it’s anarchy. “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins” and all that. However, the Constitution and laws of the United States take a very different view on what “sins” should be penalized than the Bible does, or indeed than the law codes of a number of the North American colonies did. A number of the colonial law codes (particularly in New England) made such crimes as worshipping “false gods” punishable by death, an impeccably Biblical view of civil government. There is no question that colonial Connecticut or Massachusetts Bay were “Christian nations”. The United States of America, however, has never been based on such a “worldview”, and has emphatically rejected such principles since the adoption of the Constitution. ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/57 "2004-04-11T18:43:35Z")
**JThunder** , I looked at you site. Did you look at mine? The one I linked to had dozens of quotes (I have others but they aren’t laid out as nicely). I enjoyed this line > [@](#): > > For example, Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen may have been hostile to evangelical Christianity, but they were firebrands of the Revolution, not intellectual architects of the Constitution. Paine didn’t arrive in this country until 1774 and only stayed a short time. May have been hostile? And that darn Paine. Forget all of his firey pamphlets that stirred the common man into action. Forget his years of government service where he revealed fraud time after time. He arrived too late and left too early to influence anyone (he left in 1780 to do a book on the revolutionary war at the request of Franklin so obviously none of the Founding fathers were aware of his writings and weren’t influenced by them). Which I guess is partly true after all Paine believed in equality, freedom, but he was anti-slavery (fairly unusual for that time) so I guess he wasn’t promoting Christian values that our nation was based off of. > [@](#): > > As for others–George Washington, Samuel Adams, James Madison, John Witherspoon, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, John Adams, Patrick Henry, and even Thomas Jefferson–their personal correspondence, biographies, and public statements are replete with quotations showing that these thinkers had political philosophies deeply influenced by Christianity. Would have been nice if he had actually included those quotes instead of just one by Benjamin Franklin that’s nicely counter weighed against Franklin’s other quotes. Another proof that site offers is a claim that several founding fathers were on church rolls. I don’t understand how that’s stronger then their many many writings. This was an era when Europe and most of the USA was still under the yoke of the Church. It’s almost like saying I attended public school at one point so I MUST support the government and even if I write something that explicitly states I’m rejecting such teachings it doesn’t count. Interesting sentence > [@](#): > > Though deeply committed to a belief in natural rights, including the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, Jefferson was individualistic when it came to religion; he sifted through the New Testament to find the facts that pleased him. So his commitment to natural rights and his belief all men are created equal is in CONFLICT with his sifting of the Bible? Do they even understand what the word individual means? > [@](#): > > Sometimes he sounded like a staunch churchman. The Declaration of Independence contains at least four references to God. At least four? More like 0 if you’re talking about the specific god of Christianity. Staunch churchman indeed. > [@](#): > > Other times Jefferson seemed to go out of his way to be irreverent and disrespectful of organized Christianity, especially Calvinism. I like how he admits that Thomas Jefferson didn’t like Christianity but it was really just Calvinism that he was really against. > [@](#): > > Virtually all those involved in the founding enterprise were God-fearing men in the Christian sense; most were Calvinistic Protestants. I think there is very little evidence that any of them were god-fearing. > [@](#): > > The Founders were deeply influenced by a biblical view of man and government. With a sober understanding of the fallenness of man, they devised a system of limited authority and checks and balances. Unlike Christian nations that had a divine right of kings and believed someone set over you was done so by god. “Render onto Caesar’s that which is Caesar’s” Doesn’t mean to me 'rise up and rule yourself in a system of checks and balances so you don’t get taken advantage of" > [@](#): > > The Founders understood that fear of God, moral leadership, and a righteous citizenry were necessary for their great experiment to succeed. I wonder if he got this from the Northwest Ordinance? That’s the only example I can think if that implies this at all and even that was put into place before the Constitution from the Ohio Company that forced a provision into the ordinance days before a vote. > [@](#): > > Therefore, they structured a political climate that was encouraging to Christianity and accommodating to religion, rather than hostile to it. I think this one has already been debunked in this debate. At best the Founding Fathers wanted a neutral state. > [@](#): > > Protestant Christianity was the prevailing religious view for the first 150 years of our history. And our prevailing government was a secular institution that has attempted to resist that influence for a long long time. Once again all we get is airy speculation and few facts that can’t be questioned or debunked. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/58 "2004-04-11T18:50:53Z")
It’s important to distinguish between politicians pandering by mentioning God (which they all do, on both sides - John Kerry quoted the Bible last week and attended church with the cameras running), and the government actually enforcing the notion of a ‘Christian Nation’. Which it doesn’t. In fact, even while maybe the most devout President since Jimmy Carter sits in the White House, a judge was thrown off the bench for refusing to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments from a federal building. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/59 "2004-04-11T19:12:38Z")
Am I the only person who thinks it doesn’t really matter whether or not the founding fathers were Christian or not? I’m Italian, but if I open a restaurant, it doesn’t have to be an Italian restaurant. Hey, the founding fathers were all male, does that make this a male country? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403/60 "2004-04-11T19:57:01Z")
> [@](#): > > and the government actually enforcing the notion of a ‘Christian Nation’. Which it doesn’t. Are thou cracked in thine skull? The whole POINT of the Christian Nation movement is to acheive exactly that. That’s the whole reason this debate exists: in order to create precedents that will help dismantle SOCAS piece by piece. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-please-is-this-a-christian-nation/239403.md?page=4)