Jun 14, 2012 -- 1:29PM, BDboy wrote:

>>>>>>>>>> Exactly.

However Fox news network may try to sell you the concept of "The original Christian nation" theory.

Having said that, it is agreed that, "modern America" was founded by Christians in most parts.

When Glenn Beck was still on Faux News he would have David Barton as a guest American history "expert." The thing to realize about Barton is that he has a history of inventing quotes and attributing them to Founding Fathers in order make the case that they wanted to establish a Christian nation. An article about Barton and his false quotes can be found Here.

The Christian Taliban, while a minority of American Christians, are relentlessly trying to establish a theonomy in the United States. Our Founding Fathers would find such a concept abhorrent.

Jun 14, 2012 -- 12:20PM, wohali wrote:

America started out as a stolen country.

Damned right we did!

We stole it from the British, who stole it from the French who stole it from the Indians.

We bought the the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, and Alaska from the Czar.

We stole California and Texas stole their own damned selves  from Mexico. 

Jun 14, 2012 -- 12:20PM, wohali wrote:

America started out as a stolen country.

No, we did not "steal" this country. We used biological warfare, wanton murder, and various violent means to take it. To the fine christians that started this country; the natives were in the way, not christian, and therefore; not worthy of respect. It is a religion, and god, of "love" you know.

Jun 14, 2012 -- 7:31PM, solfeggio wrote:

Or, what if the taxation problem had been settled, and, like Canada, the U.S would have become a country established by legislation?  Would the U.S. then be part of the Commonwealth today?

And, to keep on topic, if the U.S. had ended up part of the Commonwealth, would it be considered a Christian country?   

American expansion would have continued.  Louisiana would have been acquired not through purchase but after the defeat of Napoleon.  Expansion at the expense of the Indians and the Mexicans would have continued in general, though perhaps the details (and today's borders) would be different. 

The next crisis would have come (as it did in the US) over slavery, which was abolished in the British Empire in the early 19th century.  

One would imagine the southern states would have not been content to let that ride, just as they were not content to let the election of Lincoln ride.  So something like the Civil War might have happened anyway; with England solidly on the side of the north (or vice versa) it might have ended a lot quicker.

But at some point the sheer magnitude of the size of the American colonies would have led to their functional independence anyway, probably as a member (or functional leader!) of the Commonwealth, just as happened with Canada; perhaps Canada and the US today would be the same nation.

The impact on the vast waves of immigration to the US  from other parts of Europe in the 19th century is something I'm not sure about. Legal issues would have been different, but the social pressure would doubtless have been the same, and I would guess something similar would have happened thouhg again perhaps with different details.

It gets more tentative in the 20th century, but it interesting to speculate what impact closer legal tied between Britain and the US would have had on German militarism in both world wars.

As far as religion goes, the CoE might have continued to be the nominal state church, but I imagine the diversity of American religious life in terms of the flourishing of different denominations would have proceeded apace; these things are driven by social and cultural matters, not politics.

But we surely would not have had something so defined as the first amendment as early as we did.

Ethnic conquest and displacement has been common throughout history, from the Ango-Saxons in Britain to the Turks in Central Asia and Anatolia.

But few seem to have done it as thoroughly or deliberately as in North America.

But the motives were much more economic than religious. When the strategy of converting the Native Americans conflicted with economic goals (as in the case of the Cherokees and related tribes in the early 1800s), conversion quite clearly  lost.