Lastly, those are not all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of toleration. - John Locke, Essay on Toleration
None of this proves that American government is an establishment of Christianity. No one here is disputing our godly foundations and the firm belief that our Founding Fathers had in a higher power from whence notions of freedom and respect for indvidual free will eminated. The Founding Fathers took great pain to avoid excluding one set of beliefs or another from valid representation by government, again and again affirming that the citizen's own private beliefs were best left to himself. Moreover, a given inspiration for the Constitutional thinkers, such as Locke's comments on atheists, in no way suggests that the laws of the United States cannot apply to people who profess to not believe in God. To suggest as much would have been a clear violation of the notion that a man's current beliefs were his own private matter.
None of your posts have proven that we have a Christian establishment. They prove that our Founding Fathers accepted that notions of freedom and self-will had emerged from religious beliefs, but in our founding documents they did not name those specific doctrines from biblical sources, nor did they ascribe our law to a particular text in the bible, nor did they in any way suggest with the Constitution that we were to be governed by any man's understanding of a particular Judeo-Christian doctrine.
In any case, the status quo represents my viewpoint. You need to change more than just my mind about this. But I will resist the religious establishment of Christianity in any government with every possible effort that I can make because I believe that is the path that best protects religious freedom. If you can change my mind, I would join you. But my thinking is firmly based on tenets of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, during which man came to understand that linkage between government and religion were an anathema to freedom of conscience and thought.
I recognize valid concerns in your comments, and others on this thread. But you are cheating our great legacy of religious freedom to accomplish short term goals of professed morality, attempting to find a legal if not actual match to your own beliefs in government. History has proven again and again that you would fail in your efforts, left unchecked. There can be no utopia on earth. There can be no "kingdom of Christ" in men's works.
Fighting the oppression offered by ACLU zealots with attempts to undermine separation of religion and state will not accomplish your true aims. They are a stop gap measure at best, and will net you and your countrymen only grief and sorrow. To truly understand how pernicious the ACLU and their ilk is, one must realize that they are the ones who have given the theocrats the tools they need to undermine the most important tenet of American government: freedom of individual conscince. Both the theocrats and the militant atheists are guilty of breaking down something that our government would collapse without. It is a shame. In all candor, I mistrust your camp much less than I mistrust theirs. I think the real battle for the nation's future is in your camp's vision for America. It is you and your fellow theocrats who would eventually find the power to sweep away the core defenses of religious freedom -- all in the name of a false liberty. And that is why I debate this more often with you and not with them.
However, I have also spent a good deal of energy fighting the ACLU online, and you can verify that for yourself. Again, both the theocrat camp and the militant atheist camp are working overtime to destroy America in the name of a soulless vision for its future. Both abandon any vestige of what our Constitution provides. Both would lead to the downfall of our nation and the oppression of millions of its citizens. Neither may be trusted.
You can beat your drum of proselytization all you want and parrot all your Probe Ministries, or 700 Club or American Family propaganda to try to prove what wasn't really there, but it will never change the fact that "Christianity" and "Jesus" were specifically excluded from the founding documents exactly for those reasons. The founders knew that "[but to] ...touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes." (John Adams). And I really don't think he was describing that in a nice way.
Christian ideas were important in the founding of this republic and the framing of our American governmental institutions. And I believe they are equally important in the maintenance of that republic.
I agree completely with those words, I just disagree that the term "Christian" in today's society means the same thing as the Founders felt when they used it. In fact, I would suspect that John Adams probably had evangelical extremists and zealots such as yourself in mind when he wrote the above words about the hornets.
As fierce and rebellious as the Founding Fathers were, they were also schooled and genteel, ethical and moral, well aware of the niceties and courtesies that should be extended to other fellow human beings. I can pretty much guess that when they claim that the rights enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights were "God given" and endowed by their "Creator", their concept of "God" and "Creator" was a far cry from your modern televangelist-wrought, sadistic and retributive "God".
"The faith you mention has doubtless its use in the world. I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would I desire to lessen it in any way; but I wish it were more productive of good works than I have generally seen it. I mean real good works, works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit, not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing, and reading, performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity" --Benjamin Franklin, 1753, letter to Rev. George Whitefield
Why is it when I see droves of people in congregations with eyes closed, tears running down their cheeks and hands waving above their heads as some preening, blow dried, fire and brimstone spewing evangelist spouts extremist exhortations and biblical admonitions to them, another image of multitudes of arms raised high in the air in acknowledgment of his "Vaterland Uber Alles" comes to mind? I know, unfair... it's just what jumps into my head when I see them. Sorry. "Mindless Automatons" is a phrase that usually accompanies it.
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." --Benjamin Franklin
Year ago, I drove cab for some time as a living. One of the experiences that helped shape some of my thoughts on formal religions was when I was dispatched- regularly- to different churches to pick up a churchgoer and take them home. I spent some time sitting, waiting for the "fare" and watching the congregants come out of the churches, get into their cars and damn near run over anybody that got in their way. In fact, I have seen more courtesy in shopping center parking lots by the general public, than from church people who have just been "saved" and obviously have no need to extend any courtesy or good to their fellow man. I have seen nothing that has much changed what I learned from those times, long ago.
"Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man." --Thomas Paine
"...to argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." --Thomas Paine, "The Crisis"
Since I see no reason to give out medicine for the dead, or to subject myself to swarms of hornets, I am out of here also...