Is Our Nation Founded On Xtian Principles?

[par4dcourse]

I'm listening to Dubya this morning talk about how rosy the world is since he's taken (literally) office and how freedom is spreading the world over. The nutbag can't put three words together without an "uh" in the middle, yet he's in charge.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the "USA as a xtian nation" argument. It struck me that xtian principles are as far from "freedom" as one can get.

Xtians can't move without asking divine permission or guidance, either by mumbling to thin air or consulting a 2k yo book of myths and fables. They have to give thanks to some unseen force when things go right, or try to find out what they did to piss off the wholly farter when they don't. They have to idolize and worship just so, and live just so, and give thanks for basic needs like food. This was a sticking point in my xtian days. I got up, went to work, put in my hours, went to the grocery, cooked my dinner, and I'm supposed to thank some unseen presence for my "blessings?" Bullshit. I did it, not the big kahuna.

Same for those idiots in sports. Score some points and give thanks. Why? Didn't you exercise, practice, learn the plays, and why did gawd pick you over the other team? No goats to slaughter?

My point (finally) is that xtianity is not about freedom to do much of anything, so how could a supposedly "free" country be based on it? As our civil liberties are being assualted on both political and religious fronts, one can only wonder.

Thanks, I feel better.

[SWIM]

Actually some of the founding fathers were atheist/agnostic. (don't remember exactly which ones atm).

 

"In god we trust" was ADDED to the money later one, so was "One nation under god".

 

It did not start out xtian, it started out as being a seperation of church and state.

[YDOAPS]

If by "christian principles", you mean racism, misogyny, and slavery, then yes we were founded on Xian principles.

 

The official story is quite different, though.

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli

[Mongo]

Par... I hear your angst. Certainly the modern fundy version of history is more romantic than accurate.

 

I do have other thoughts that may run somewhat contrary to the norm here.

 

I'm not going to argue semantics so if any reader wants to frame this discussion solely around the constitution... I'll conceed immediately, however...

 

...the Puritan immigrants that constitute a very large if not primary root in the American family tree have left an indelible imprint on the American psyche and laid the framework for today's xtian fundamentalism in America.

 

America's history is routinely punctuated with significant fundamentalist(perhaps loosely used but I feel legit) events starting with the burning of witches in Salem, continuing on to the proliferation of 19th century dispensationalist churches that routinely predicted Christ's coming, to the age of the televangelist, Pentacostalism, to modern Dispensationalism and now today's Mega-Church mania...

 

...the thread is strong and in that sense points to an important xtian foundation in the formation of the union.

 

I guess the debatable question for which I don't have an answer, is whether these puritans and early fundamentalists were influential or were merely a noisy gaggle of bystanders while main line xtians and agnostics went about forming a nation that was essentially and intentionally humanist and un-godlike.

 

As stated at the top, setting aside the question of any specific role of god in the constitution... what does it mean when one says that America was not founded on xtian principals? There is an interesting argument that the constitution was constructed with the intent that xtians, including the wacko fundys, could ply their slimy trade unfettered - that is without interuption or sanction of the government.

 

I doubt that the agnostics and humanists who participated in the building of the constitution had a covert or overt plan to make a constitution that was "god free" but rather intended to make it "sectarian free" and as a consequence, indeed a requirement of the compromise, left out god as a means to an end.

 

At this point in my understanding I don't think the question of America's xtian foundation is so easily dismissed.

 

Mongo

[oladotun]

This argument about America being founded as a Christian nation is one that so-called Evangelical Christians love to preach. There is even a whole series that plays in regular re-reruns on TBN validating this fact. THis is nothing but an overhyped ploy designed to further a Right Wing agenda...To be sure, there is no doubt that there was a Judeo-Christian influence in the founding of the nation, but like has been rightfully said, many of the founding fathers were Deists, and Thomas Jefferson even went as far as privately doubting the deity of Jesus, even though he respected him as a leader. He was even known to cut out portions of Scripture in his Bible that he did not agree with, something that would be considered sheer heresy today. The founding fathers went through great pains to make sure that we were not a theocracy or Christian nation, because they knew the ramifications, and I am glad, because as one who has seen that what we call Christianity often leads to bondage, I am still recovering from my years of fundie garbage, and I need the real freedom that being an independent thinker brings...

[Mongo]

This argument about America being founded as a Christian nation is one that so-called Evangelical Christians love to preach. There is even a whole series that plays in regular re-reruns on TBN validating this fact. THis is nothing but an overhyped ploy designed to further a Right Wing agenda...To be sure, there is no doubt that there was a Judeo-Christian influence in the founding of the nation, but like has been rightfully said, many of the founding fathers were Deists, and Thomas Jefferson even went as far as privately doubting the deity of Jesus, even though he respected him as a leader. He was even known to cut out portions of Scripture in his Bible that he did not agree with, something that would be considered sheer heresy today. The founding fathers went through great pains to make sure that we were not a theocracy or Christian nation, because they knew the ramifications, and I am glad, because as one who has seen that what we call Christianity often leads to bondage, I am still recovering from my years of fundie garbage, and I need the real freedom that being an independent thinker brings...

 

I don't know.

 

Perhaps these radical xtians were so new to democracy and perhaps even replused by it that only the intellectual (agnostic/deist) elite were attracted to politics.

 

Perhaps it really was a period where they did not unite to speak their minds except to say, "Leave us alone". Perhaps. Historically though, it seems to me to be atypocal protestant behaviour.

 

Protestants are protesters and are named as such for good reason. Even holy saint Martin Luther himself got caught in protestant factional fighting. No no, not spatting and name calling and general church splitting. I'm talking swords and such - not him personally but he took sides in the conflict. What would Jesus do is an after thought. Anyway... as a general rule, protestants don't normally sit idle and watch governments do what they will.

 

Certainly by the 19th century American protestants had indeed found their voice and were petitioning the government to make a state for Jews in what is not Israel.

 

The norm for Protestants is to speak loudly in every venue they are allowed to speak and to be forceful.

 

So for me this is unresolved but I don't have an answer.

 

Mongo

[godlessgrrl]

Two books I highly recommend for info on the subject are John Meacham's American Gospel and Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the United States.

 

Gonick provides an easy-to-read overview of US History with a thorough bibliography, if you want to check additional sources. Meacham focuses more on the roles religion and politics played in the formation of America.

 

I got bad news for y'all: most of the Founders were indeed Christians. Sorry. I wish I could say that the majority of them were atheists or agnostics or Deists, but they weren't (some of them were, but not the majority). They were Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and so on. A lot of them weren't even particularly liberal Christians, though many were very intellectual, highly educated men of the Enlightenment of the 1700's. Collectively they believed that freedom and liberty were things granted to humanity by God, which was a powerful justification for the liberties they demanded and won.

 

However, they also had the sense to realize that when religion and politics mix, both are poisoned. Despite their Christian background (or perhaps because of it), they did not want to set up a theocracy. To the contrary, they were only a century or so out of the tail end of the Reformation, a very violent and bloody time in Europe in which people slaughtered one another regularly over the issue of religion. I suspect one of their goals was to form a nation in which religion could be shown publicly by private individuals, but not encoded into the laws of the state in any way.

 

When ultrafundies claim that America is a "Christian nation", culturally speaking they're correct: Christianity is the religion which has dominated the history and cultures which eventually formed the US. Christians and Christianity have played prominent roles in social movements; Christians, for instance, both justified and upheld slavery, and fought for its ending. Christianity is our religious legacy, like it or not.

 

However, I have noted that when an ultrafundie says that America is a "Christian nation" or was "founded on Christian principles", what he is really saying is that he would like to see Christianity dominate public law as well as private belief. He usually labors under the mistaken impression that American democracy operates under majority rule, and reasons that since most Americans are Christians, therefore we should go with the majority and make the US a Christian theocracy, with its laws serving Christians only.

 

Pure democracy does work by majority rule - but America is not a pure democracy. We are a democratic republic with plenty of checks and balances set up all over the place, with a mind towards preventing the denial of the rights of a minority by majority rule (i.e., the tyranny of the majority). And despite our Christian heritage, the Founders did not intend to set up a theocracy. The ultrafundies are wrong - not only wrong, but arguably UnAmerican.

 

Tangentially, I find it interesting that no one who has ever claimed that the US was founded on "Christian principles" can never actually describe what exactly those principles are. Granted, I know that the claim is bullshit - America drew from a wide variety of sources in its formation, including Greek political systems, English common law, European intellectualism, and so on. But I must say I love to see a fundie splutter when you put them on the spot and demand that they make the case for their claim that "Christian principles" rule the United States. (Same thing if they claim that the US was founded on "Christianity".)

 

Just some food for thought there.

[08 hawk]

If I am not mistaken, most of our Founding Fathers were Deists.

 

It did not start out xtian, it started out as being a seperation of church and state.

 

It should've stayed like that.

 

I haven't posted on these forums in FOREVER.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

A couple of things on this topic that people might find interesting:

 

Is America a Christian Nation?

http://ffrf.org/nontracts/xian.php

 

Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History

http://liarsforjesus.com/

[MathGeek]

I watched a documentary about Atheism, and it briefly profiled the life of Thomas Paine. Arguably, Thomas Paine was one of the men who incited the common folk into fighting for freedom with Common Sense. He also penned The Age of Reason, which let all the "desert monotheisms" have it logically. Sadly, his life ended in 1809 with him being destitute and almost forgotten, with Christianity still intact as a belief system. I would argue that since the Christians that had settled this country one to two centuries before anybody else, they had laid the spiritual groundwork, not the Enlightened thinkers of their day. If any strands of spiritualism won out, it was the Christian strain. If you look around any settlement in this country, from shit-splat to metropolis, you will see churches. You will see churches in places you never believed there were churches. This is why I believe the "Christian nation" debate is pointless, the founders allowed Christianity to flourish and they knew they couldn't do anything to stop it before or after.