Posted on 01/30/2012 10:10:56 PM PST by ReligiousLibertyTV
Hello,
Right now there is a huge debate about whether the United States is or is not a Christian nation. But what makes a nation a Christian nation?
I'm working on a presentation and was looking for some ideas of what would characterize a truly genuine Christian nation and the society it created? What would the domestic and foreign policy be like? What would the people be like? How would they think?
I look forward to any ideas you might have.
Michael Peabody, Editor ReligiousLiberty.TV
I point to this particular Book of Scripture given Christian Americans hired a Pharaoh to rule over them .. AND after hearing Representative West speak recently I consider myself in good standing to describe liberalism as willing enslavement.
Some thoughts:
- a Christian history
- a majority Christian people
- Christianity strong in our laws
- Christianity strong in our culture
- biblical justice system
- an actual confession of Christianity in founding or charter documents
- a vote of the people
- leaders who are Christian or mainly Christian.
I see the U.S. as a mixed bag. We’re the most charitable, send the most missionaries, have a huge number of Christians, have a largely Christian founding and founders, BUT
we are largely secular, our laws mock Scripture as often as they uphold it, we are home to every kind of cult, are on a sexual and homosexual promotion rampage, and Christians are the big group it’s ok to mock.
I have been in West Africa where many want to have the good life experienced in America and I have spoke to many a man delivering the same message bounded by the following: 1) Basically, you are who you are. Until you recognize and fix that, you will be in a endless loop. I could give you America and Africa to the Americans leaving all assets behind and within 3 years, America would look like Africa and Africa would look like America, actually nicer as there are more resources in Africa.
2) They all acknowledge (even the illiterates who get their information from BBC and conversation) that everything good comes from the G7, the advanced nations. That they are the achievers. I ask them what is the G7’s common thread? Basically that these dudes are the descendants of the guys who rode together to the Christian crusades.
3) Nothing good has ever come from Islam not one invention for modern man
4) That Africa has never had a civilization and that is oppression is rooted in its tribalist ways (which is a basic political structure that we haven’t experienced in a long long time.
5) As a result of the our heritage , being touched by democracy and Christianity we evolved politically and religiously giving us the Magna Carta... which was the basis for rights, liberty and freedom, a process antithetical to islam.
6) That their nation was the last bastion of (Voodeo) Christianity in Africa, that most of it had given in to Islam.
Our success here in America and the G7 was founded in Christianity, however we are suffering dilution due to immigration and self failure in perpetuating the things that made us strong in the first place.
Obama? Phhhhhew. Nothing to do with American culture.
Thats why I really feel his agenda. I dont like paying taxes so the MB can benefit from his traitorous actions.
Just some ideas....
In the early 1830s, while the United States was at its peak regarding rugged individualism, lassez-faire business policies, and unrestricted liberty, Alexis De Tocqueville visited the nation to study the American experiment and to report his observations.
He noted the following:
Regarding other nations: . . . civilizations often confound its {their country's) abuses with its benefits, and the idea of evil is inseparable in their minds from that of novelty. Near these I find others, whose object is to materialize mankind, to hit upon what is expedient without heeding what is just, to acquire knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue; claiming to be the champions of modern civilization, they place themselves arrogantly at its head, usurping a place which is abandoned to them, and of which they are wholly unworthy."
Regarding America:
". . . virtuous and peaceful individuals whose pure morality, quiet habits, opulence, and talents fit them to be the leaders of the surrounding population. Their love of country is sincere, and they are ready to make the greatest sacrifices for its welfare.
The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.
Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention…In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other…They brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion.
America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
I think it is clear that America was once a Christian nation, but the jury is still out on whether or not it still is.
Is it really valid to have one person, a foreigner, define a country the size of America? Did he really speak for all Americans?
In reading the Declaration, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights I find no mention of Christ.
I find many referances to God.
The Founders were overwhelmingly Christian, but from varying denominations, some of which had been persecuted or disenfranchised under the colonial regime in North America, or under state religions in continental Europe. This was a very recent memory or something actually experienced firsthand. The references to God were therefore broad, to permit religious freedom while acknowledging the Creator, from whom all rights and freedom flows. The so-called “separation of Church and State” was intended to prevent an official, enforced State Religion. It was not intended to use the power of the state to squelch public expressions of belief.
Well, for one thing, it doesn’t allow people to sacrifice their children on the altar of Personal Convenience or “Choice.”
The phrase we use so often is not in the founding documents.
Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 to answer a letter from them written in October 1801.
The letter contains the phrase “wall of separation between church and state,” which led to the short-hand that we use today: “Separation of church and state.”
A Christian Nation passes laws that are fair and just for all, and obeys them. Our current lawmakers pass laws to help their friends and donors, to justify their existence, and tax the rest of us to fund their agenda's, with many of these agenda's being contrary to the good of this nation and its people...
No longer is a man's word his bond. There is no honor, there is no honesty, there is only greed and lust for money and power...
Prepare my friends, prepare. The time of change is upon us and the winds of discontent is blowing ever stronger...
While not everyone would think the same things...we do have the gift of free will afterall. A Christian nation would have a predominantly loving, Christian based culture where life is respected, where we love sinners...but hate the sin. Where freedom and individual liberty as well as Christian morality are forefront in the government thinking when making laws and regulations.
A society tolerant of other religions but striving to bring the Gospel to all, without malice but with love as Jesus would have us do.
That is in part what a Christian nation would look like I believe...
It was outsider looking in - he had no vested interest.
But, here is a sampling of observations of some early Americans:
The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.” – John Adams
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God. - John Adams
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. - Patrick Henry
Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is their duty – as well as privilege and interest – of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. - John Jay
The only foundation for . . . a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. - Benjamin Rush
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. - Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Memorial
I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law … There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations. - Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
[The Bible] is the rock on which our Republic rests. - Andrew Jackson
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God … and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. - Abraham Lincoln
This is a Christian nation. - United States Supreme Court Decision in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892
Still, he was just one man. Too bad we don’t have observations recorded by non-famous regular folks or those that may have different views.
“I think many people confuse a belief in God with a belief in Christianity.
In reading the Declaration, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights I find no mention of Christ.
I find many referances to God. “
I hear what you are saying. However at least many meant the God of the Bible when writing/referencing God.
I’ve heard that Patrick Henry did not support the Constitution because it did not reference Jesus Christ. I stand ready to be corrected, but I have heard that a couple of times.
Good ol’ Presbyterian. . .
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