Well there was a time when the church played a larger role in our societies. That was not a bad thing. In a nation like ours however, you do not have to belong to any faith and should therefore not have to modify your behavior in order to not offend a religious person that you do not even know.
We have no right to not be offended in this nation, especially when we are sticking our noses into someone elses private life as long as they are harming no one else.
“We have no right to not be offended in this nation, especially when we are sticking our noses into someone elses private life as long as they are harming no one else.”
That sounds like a standard libertarian fantasy having little connection with American history. Bernard Bailyn is perhaps the foremost scholar on America’s founding era. According to Bailyn the most cited text by the American founders and the First Congress was Deuteronomy. That particular book is full of commands for proper conduct and just about zero advocacy of radical individualism.
America was an overwhelmingly Protestant society that took its legal ideas from the bible and English common law. The law and culture of the country were rooted in the Christian ethos that permeated both of those sources, not in the radical individualism of the likes of Thomas Paine.
The idea that law should have little or no connection with religion wasn’t an American conceit, but it was one for Revolutionary France. So much so that it won the allegiance of Thomas Paine, who foolishly abandoned America for the paradise of the goddess Reason and her guillotine.