Aug 29, 2012 -- 3:36PM, MrDave wrote:

Aug 29, 2012 -- 3:29PM, theinterpreter wrote:

Aug 29, 2012 -- 2:49PM, MrDave wrote:

Aug 28, 2012 -- 10:08PM, Do_unto_others wrote:

Aug 28, 2012 -- 5:36PM, theinterpreter wrote:

The US is now, and always has been, a Christian nation. A Christian nation is any nation where Christians are in the majority. We are the fourth horseman, i.e., the 4th Christian superpower to rule the earth for Jesus. Our weapons bring hell and death.

That's funny. You could be on Leno.

When has the USA ruled the Earth?

We are not Britain, and never have been.

 

The USA is a superpower and does anything it wants. The US and its NATO allies police the earth.

Britain is the third horseman, who conquered with economics.

Since 312 AD, when the sign of the Son of Man appeared in the clouds. Christian nations have been the dominant force on earth, and will be to the end.

What are you smoking?

Resistance is futile.

1. The majority of Americans (76% to 80%) identify themselves as Christians*

2. The top five religious affliliations in the 111th Congress were Roman Catholic (30.1%), Baptist (12.4%), Methodist (10.7%), Jewish (8.4%), and Presbyterian (8.1%).^[1] Protestant denominations have held a large majority throughout congressional history, reflecting American's traditional demographics**

3. Almost all of the presidents can be characterized as Christian, at least by formal membership. Some were Unitarian or unaffiliated with a specific religious body. Some are thought to have been deists, or irreligious. No president thus far has been an atheist, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Sikh or an adherent of any specifically non-Christian religion.***

We have religous freedom in the USA. The majoirity use this freedom to be christians.

We are a Christian nation by numbers alone. 

*en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Un...

**en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111...

***en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_affiliat...

     When did this unique new United States concept of "Separation of Church and State" first appear in the landscape of United States' politics or law?

       There was a founding father, Thomas Jefferson, who espoused this ideal first in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association? There were, indeed, several other oblique or more direct references to the ideal that no religion would be endorsed or otherwise promoted by the government including the Establishment Clause and the First Amendment.

        The United States has always been a melding of diverse religious foundations from the Puritan, Quaker, and Catholic to the Mormon, Native American, Amish, Atheist and Baptists. The ideal of "Separation of Church and State" first weasled into the public through the United States Courts and specifically in a Supreme Court decision Reynolds v United States, (1847) where Thomas Jefferson was cited as an authority based on his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

The United States has NEVER been a Christian nation though this brand of religion has always been the majority.

A lot of this depends on definitions.  What is a nation?  Is it the formal government or the people who live under its rule?

To be sure, the people who came to America (and took this land from the Indians) were Christians.  The vast majority of them were baptized as infants and raised in a Europe where to not be a Christian was to be subject to severe persecution.  In fact, some of these "Christians" came to America to get away from Europe, where a person's faith was decided by the society into which they grew up.  If the king was Catholic, you had better be one, too.  If the king was Protestant, all Catholics would be advised to keep moving.  Even among Protestants, there were consequences for belonging to the "wrong" Protestant community - whether we're talking about Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians or Quakers.

The government, itself, was never designed to be particularly "Christian."  Other than some Deistic references to "Nature's God" and the "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence, and a lone reference in the Constitution to the date of ratification as being "in the year of our Lord" 1787, neither founding document had anything religious to say.  The Declaration of Independence justified the colonial rebellion on the Lockean basis that men have rights, that governments were instituted to protect those rights and that a government which failed to do so, and lost the consent of the governed, deserved dissolution.  

Thomas Hobbes' original conception of "the social contract" came about in a day when kings rules by "divine right," which each king claiming to be the latest descendant of Adam, who was given "dominion" over the Earth in Genesis.  Hobbes' "social contract" imagined an implied agreement between the rulers and the ruled.  Rulers didn't just have the "right" to rule, but the responsibility that comes with it.  Locke's version of the social contract argued that men had rights, logically prior to society, that were not gifts or privileges of society.  Society, instead, was formed by men as a means of securing those rights.  In responding to the "divine rights of kings" crowd, Locke used Deitist language to argue for the divine rights of men.  It was tit for tat.  If you tell me God set kings up to rule men, I come reply that men have rights from God that kings are bound to protect.

Locke's Second Treatise of Government was used as the justification for the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the English version of the American Revolution.  A generation before the Framers, English Protestants had refused to follow a Catholic King James II.  They justified their rebellion on the basis of  natural rights the king was accused of violating.  It set a precedent that Adams and Jefferson picked up on when their committee drafted the Declaration of Independence.  While the first part of that document explains the legalistic rationale for the American Revolution, the rest of it explains, in detail, why the colonists felt their rights had been violated to a point justifying dissolution of the political bonds between them.

The Declaration was not a philosophical treatise on either the existence of God or the messiahship of Jesus.  It certainly was not a declaration that America was to be a "Christian nation."

The Constitution set up a form of government designed to balance power, between the states and the national government as well as between the various branches of government.  It gave the U.S. more power than it had under the Articles of Confederation but it limited power through the specific delegation of powers.  Like the Declaration, it had nothing to do with theology.  It did not set up a "Christian nation."

Identifying the cultural background of the Framers - or of any of the Europeans peoples who settled in America over the century or so prior to the Revolution - is worthwhile in terms of understanding the nation's history.  It does not, however, justify the attempt to turn America into some kind of theocracy.  America was not "founded" as a "Christian nation."  It was "founded" as an "American nation."  That a majority of the colonists and Framers came from a Christian background - Protestant, Catholic or otherwise - means little when it comes to deciding how the rest of us should live, or treat one another, some two centuries later.  There is no obligation that the government endorse Christianity or adopt the language and symbols of Christian groups as part of its function, which is still to protect the rights of individuals and act according to the consent of the governed.

1620 the Mayflower Compact ~ America's first founding document

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten .. the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James .. by the Grace of God of Great Britain .. France and Ireland .. King .. Defender of the Faith .. etc .. Having undertaken .. for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honor of our King and Country .. A Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia .. do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another .. Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic .. for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid .. and by virtue hereof to enact .. constitute and frame such just and equal Laws .. Ordinances .. Acts .. Constitutions and Offices .. from time to time .. as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony .. unto which we promise all due submission and obedience .. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod .. the 11th of November .. in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James .. of England .. France and Ireland the eighteenth .. and of Scotland the fifty-fourth . . . . . Anno Domini 1620

some one got a founding document preceeding this ???