I agree with you that the breakdown of the family has had horrible consequences for our society, but I don’t think we can put that genie back in the bottle. I would actually argue that, in the western world, we have the most individual freedom for the most classes of people that any society at anytime has had. Now the question is can a society like that survive? I don’t know it’s never been done before.
I would disagree that the founders created a Protestant Christian nation. They were explicit about a lot of things and they would have been explicit about that if they wanted it to be so. These men were heavily influenced by the enlightenment. Were most of them some denomination of Christianity? Yes. Though Thomas Jefferson attended a church most of his life but read his writings and you can see he was a deist. There is a reason they use creater and God in the Declaration and Constitution. In fact our government was the first government ever formed without a specific religion as the “official” religion. They even went farther and stated that there would be no religious test for public office. There has been several attempts over the course of our nations history to add a constitutional amendment explicitly declaring us a Christian nation. They have all failed.
Protestant Christian nation...”They were explicit about a lot of things and they would have been explicit about that if they wanted it to be so.”
Thank you for your reasoned reply. Read this or not. I enjoyed writing it and I thank you for starting me to.
If explicit, why did the Bill of Rights argument (no rights in the Constitution so we have to name the important ones) cause so much grief and argument? By specifying some things as “in there”, it was feared other unnamed things would be excluded. The whole argument of a defined powers document could thus be defeated.
Articles 9 and 10 were an attempt to address that fear. One patch requiring even more patches.
Ask a thousand Democrats what the Second Amendment means….or a SCOTUS where separation of church and state resides in this document.
Let me suggest you continue to read even further and deeper. Read not just on events surrounding the founding, but also what led to it over the previous 1,000 years. John Locke and his ilk sprang from The Scottish Reformation and the Scottish Enlightenment before that.
Then John Knox and the Convenanteers before that....and consider 40% of the Revolutionary soldiers were Presbyterian Ulstermen. Adherent all to governance at the lowest level driven by laws of Nature and Nature’s God. No King but Jesus.
Parallel to these but guided by many of the same men in secret conuncil, the Scots and English Masons. These and more culminating in the Declaration of Independence...declaring under the laws of Nature (discerned by man from the world around him) and the laws of Nature’s God (His revealed laws in Scripture) that we are free.
1.Nature and 2.Nature’s God. Endowed by their 3.Creator. Appealing tho the 4.Supreme Judge. Reliance on the protection of 5.Divine Providence. 5 times God/Jesus appears in THE founding document.
As Christ obsoleted the Jewish priestly class and is man’s direct link to God in spiritual matters, the general Reformation retook lost ground and broke the back of the Roman priestly class. Our Founder’s laid the cornerstone of our legitimacy as a nation relying on God/Jesus. In effect and design. “No King but Jesus.”
Original Masonry (a study in itself) embraces Christ as the cornerstone. Christ is central to original Masonry. No coincidence that Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capital in a Masonic ceremony.
So the Declaration states our liberties are from God and acknowledges “all men equal” as a consequence is definitely a “Protestant” document.
The Constitution is a mere contract among men to secure those Protestant Christian rights.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It was specifically silent on a national church/faith because one served no purpose in a civil document. Remember 9 of the 13 states had their own churches. To get these old enemy and even warring Protestant denominations to live in peace required a silent and encompassing Federal government within a larger Protestant body politic. There were only 25,000 Catholics in the new USA.
I hope this encourages you to continue exploring it all and treasure even more the wonderful gift we have been given from Christ down through Christian men to Christian men. We welcome all comers. But it is a Protestant Christian bubble of tolerance that was to keep them all from bringing the bloody feuds and oppressions of the old world here.
Until now. As tolerant Christian control is driven from the public square, the old ugliness of humanistic (French philosophy/revolution) supremacy and religious zealotry takes hold once again.
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.“ Galatians 5:1
“I have sworn upon the alter of almighty God eternal hostility over and form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Jefferson in a letter to Ben Rush.
“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” Original motto for the US suggested by Franklin and Jefferson on the first Great Seal.
Peace, brother.