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Do you think this country was founded upon Christianity?

Do you think the U.S. was intended to be a Christian Nation?

  • Yes

    Votes: 28 19.4%
  • No

    Votes: 99 68.8%
  • other

    Votes: 17 11.8%

  • Total voters
    144
Re: Do you think this country was founded upon Christianity?Interesting

Interesting tidbit I just found....

In 1800 Congress authorized for the Capitol Building to be used for Sunday morning church services. By 1867, it was the largest church gathering in Washington D.C. with about 2,000 people a week.
 
For real! I already told em to read the Federalist Papers. Honestly some are blinded by dogma:(

Most of us have, and it does not change the fact (as I pointed out) the vast majority were Christian. Honestly some are blinded their own ignorance of history.
 
Our system of government was patterned after the Roman system of government that was developed when Rome was Pagan. And the Greeks contributed alot too with their notions of democracy that again were developed when the majority were Pagan in religion.

........and?
 
The USA was founded on the enlightenment beliefs of freedom and reason, neither being attributes of religion then or now.
 
Christians are not a tribe in the manner of Jews. You can't organize a national identity around Christianity. It is a theologically and morally invalid idea. A nation is one of the "kingdoms of the Earth" Jesus rejected in favor of the Kingdom of Heaven. You can't realize the ideals of Christianity in economic, military, or political systems. Nations are about mastering the material world through force and strategic manipulation. Christianity gets around that problem through spiritual transcendence -- a lack of dependence on mastery of one's material circumstances. Nations and spiritual transcendence are juxtaposed forces.

Most of the Founding Fathers were self-identified Christians. Some of them weren't. The ones who weren't had varying degrees of positivity toward the religion. A very tiny minority were 'overtly' atheist (Thomas Paine being the one who comes to mind). Some of the original colonies self-identified as one denomination of Christianity or another, but these identifications eroded over time. The federal government was forbidden from promoting a state religion of its own, but it could not stop the state governments from doing so until the Equal Rights Amendment was passed, by which time it was a moot point because states had mostly stopped identifying with particular denominations of Christianity and did not bother to develop themselves into "generally Christian" states.

The idea the United States is a Christian nation is a modern revival, because most people of that caste in earlier centuries tended to think of the "theocratic" character of their governments in terms of their native states, not the nation as a whole. You might still encounter that sentiment in parts of Utah, for example, which is heavily Mormon.
 
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I hear all the time that "this is a Christian Nation". Do you think this is so.

I am going to go ahead and say anyone who truly thinks this country was meant to be a Christian nation is a complete moron. The founding fathers were secularist, there is some evidence indicating Thomas Jefferson was at least agnostic.

" The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes; fools and hypocrites. To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." -Thomas Jefferson

We're obviously mostly buddhists and muslims.
 
The USA was founded on the enlightenment beliefs of freedom and reason, neither being attributes of religion then or now.

In fact, the country was founded on the idea of religious freedom, they came here specifically to get away from religious oppression. It isn't Christianity that we were founded upon, but freedom of religion, or to be free of religion.
 
In fact, the country was founded on the idea of religious freedom, they came here specifically to get away from religious oppression. It isn't Christianity that we were founded upon, but freedom of religion, or to be free of religion.

The thing is that its not as though the early settlers and founders didn't think their religion and beliefs were correct. In fact many states has declared religions and persecuted christians of other sects, banishing and even executing "false believers". The problem was that the states all wanted a federal government but did not want someone else's religion gaining control over it. Thus, the "separation of church and state" idea was implemented. Even then, some states continued to have official christian religions but these declined after some time.
 
I honestly don't know the true answer to this, but I do believe that most of our founding fathers didn't want this to be a Christian nation. If they had wanted this, I don't see why they didn't put something to that affect in the Constitution. (And, no, I don't believe that references to God in any government document prove that they wanted religion to be part of our government, but rather that is the only thing they knew at the time, for the most part.)

What I do know is that in the last 200 years we have advanced our own knowledge and learned many things, including a lot about biology and human behavior that they didn't. Then, a country ruled by its people was a new concept, rarely, if ever, done to the extent that they took it. They incorporated as many concepts about individual freedoms and how to protect them and trying to ensure that the people would be the ones to rule their leaders as they knew and could get support for at that time. Now, such a concept is considered completely normal and it is the goal of many countries to attain this state, most countries that aren't "third world countries" with a few exceptions. And we have come to realize through those 2+ centuries that there are even more ways to attain individual freedoms and to ensure that everyone's views are able to be expressed while still trying to ensure that everyone is treated fairly. The system doesn't always work, and there certainly are going to be times when individual freedoms clash, with others and/or with what the government feels they must do, but that is no reason to allow what direction the founding fathers might have wanted this country to go in (although, it is most likely that none of them agreed completely on this anyway) but didn't include into the Constitution, to dictate where we should take this country. Some of the things that it is obvious that the founding fathers did agree on was individual freedom to the extent that it doesn't violate another person's is important, which is exemplified in the Bill of Rights.
 
most folks here are making the mistake we do in most politics today; assuming that the nature of the entire country is to be determined at the Federal Level.

Generally Speaking, the Founders were very open to a public acknowledgement of the divine in general and Christianity in particular. the day after passing the first amendment, Congress declared a national day of prayer. obviously they didn't intend the government to extend a secularist/athiest approach. they were also quite tolerant (as scourge points out) of State churches or religous boundaries; the first amendment was more of a non-aggression pact between the sects that dominated the various states than it was an actual comment on the ability of the American people to express their faith through their government.

which is the direction that they saw this working in. everyone here focuses on top-down. "should the Federal government encourage 'faith', 'christianity', or 'secularism'" would be, to the Founders, an irrelevant question. the people of that era were (by our standards) intensely and widely religious, and the emergence of their belief system into our governance was a bottom-up phenomena. deToqueville, for example, noted the discrepency between public religion being the most important of our political institutions, and the widespread phenomena that religious leaders did not comment on specific political issues.



SO


having the 10 Commandments on a porch step? the Founding Fathers likely would have been fine with that. having a large religious movement dedicated to a single political party? probably not.
 
Christian principals and philosophy were strongly influential in our nations creation. The vast majority of the population at the time of our creation was Christian as well. We were not founded "upon" Christianity in that the Bible is our Constitution, but Christian beliefs and philosophy were influential in our laws and rights. It is undeniable that the founders believed our rights came from God.
 
I think the country was founded upon Christian morals and the rights we have are ours because the founders believed the Christian God gave them to us.

Most of them who were religious were deists, and the country isn't based on christian morals at all. Most of the laws that coincide with the ten commandments are cultural universals and have been seen almost everywhere, but the first four would require a theocracy. You're wrong, organized has done more harm than good here and it doesn't appear that it will stop anytime soon.
 
I honestly don't know the true answer to this, but I do believe that most of our founding fathers didn't want this to be a Christian nation. If they had wanted this, I don't see why they didn't put something to that affect in the Constitution.

they did at the State level. at the Federal level, however, there was need for an agreement that no one side would ever put the beliefs of their own State(s) into power over the others.
 
Most of them who were religious were deists

an interesting claim. the only self-proclaimed Deist i'm aware of among the Founding Fathers was Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson probably was as well intellectually, but he worshipped at Christian services, and certainly had no problem with public expressions of faith in the Divine.

perhaps you could cite for us the numbers of this "majority" of Founding Fathers who were deists?

as for this notion:
the country isn't based on christian morals at all

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
-John Adams
 
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Most of them who were religious were deists, and the country isn't based on christian morals at all. Most of the laws that coincide with the ten commandments are cultural universals and have been seen almost everywhere, but the first four would require a theocracy. You're wrong, organized has done more harm than good here and it doesn't appear that it will stop anytime soon.

Most of them were Christian. Our first president was very religious. Our rights come from God according to the founders. Our moral code is similar to Judeo-Christian ethics. You are wrong. You cannot deny that the founders and vast majority of the population was Christian, that our rights don't come from God according to the founders, and that Christian thinking and philosophy played a major role in our nation's creation. We are not a theocracy, I specifically said that we are not founded "upon" Christianity. However, Christians and Christian thinking heavily influenced our laws and creation of our nation.
 
Most of them were Christian. Our first president was very religious. Our rights come from God according to the founders. Our moral code is similar to Judeo-Christian ethics. You are wrong. You cannot deny that the founders and vast majority of the population was Christian, that our rights don't come from God according to the founders, and that Christian thinking and philosophy played a major role in our nation's creation. We are not a theocracy, I specifically said that we are not founded "upon" Christianity. However, Christians and Christian thinking heavily influenced our laws and creation of our nation.

our rights did not come from god, depsite what our founders might have believed. if they did, then every person on earth has the same rights, and who are we to deny them those rights? our "rights" were constructed by US.
 
they did at the State level. at the Federal level, however, there was need for an agreement that no one side would ever put the beliefs of their own State(s) into power over the others.

And, we have realized that we cannot operate well as a country with 50 separate nations inside it. Which is why we now have a stronger federal government than state governments. The founding fathers had very little way to predict that people would be able to move from one state to another in less than a day, nor could they have predicted that we might be able to conduct business effectively and quite often between states almost instantaneously. We are not living in the world of our founding fathers. And I do believe that they meant for those individual freedoms that they put into the Bill of Rights to be more important than states' rights.
 
our rights did not come from god, depsite what our founders might have believed. if they did, then every person on earth has the same rights, and who are we to deny them those rights? our "rights" were constructed by US.

Our rights do come from God, they are enshrined in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence because the founders believed God created all men equally.
 
Nah.
US is a secular country, founded on a church and state separation.
 
Our rights do come from God, they are enshrined in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence because the founders believed God created all men equally.

No, they come from the beliefs of man that the founding fathers mistakenly accredited to God. None of the founding fathers claimed to have actually spoke to God, therefore, any ideas they had were either original ideas from them or they were ideas that other people wrote down or employed that our founding fathers found beneficial. It is possible that God inspired all these, but cannot be proven.
 
And, we have realized that we cannot operate well as a country with 50 separate nations inside it.

which isn't what the founders set up, so i'm not really sure why you bring that up.

Which is why we now have a stronger federal government than state governments.

:confused: what? the replacement of dual federalism with cooperative federalism had literally nothing to do with issues stemming from state sovereignty.

The founding fathers had very little way to predict that people would be able to move from one state to another in less than a day, nor could they have predicted that we might be able to conduct business effectively and quite often between states almost instantaneously. We are not living in the world of our founding fathers.

a meaningless phrase. how, exactly, does the development of electronic communication negate need to balance one power against another?

And I do believe that they meant for those individual freedoms that they put into the Bill of Rights to be more important than states' rights.

fascinating. then why did they specifically subordinate those individual rights to states rights? the Founding Fathers even held that States had the right to limit speech as they so chose.

remember, you are forgeting that the Founding Fathers saw the States as the natural protectors of individual rights against the Federal government.
 
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Nah.
US is a secular country, founded on a church and state separation.

No, founded with church and state separation to prevent a theocracy and ensure that people can retain their religious freedoms without a state church or an oppressive secular government from telling them they can't believe/practice freely. Many of the founders saw the damage that state churches brought to religious freedom, many of the pilgrims came to America to flee religious persecution in Europe for not adhering to the state church (Catholic, Anglican, etc.)

No, they come from the beliefs of man that the founding fathers mistakenly accredited to God. None of the founding fathers claimed to have actually spoke to God, therefore, any ideas they had were either original ideas from them or they were ideas that other people wrote down or employed that our founding fathers found beneficial. It is possible that God inspired all these, but cannot be proven.

Incorrect. They believed in God, they believed God created men equally and with rights. They didn't have to say "God told me to do this personally" in order to believe that our rights came from God. It can be proven that God inspired these as the Creator is mentioned specifically as the one who makes men equal and gives us our rights.
 
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