[bvw]

THe US is and isn't a Christian nation. It is, certain that Christianity is the "religion" with the most adherents and that there are a few rare laws, treaties and legal decisions specifically recognizing the US as a Christian nation. Yet "Christianity" is like gumbo in expansiveness and varied recipe -- spanning forms that include in range High Anglican, Tridentine Catholic, Snake-charming Baptist, Mormon, Quaker, Jamacian blended voodoo, Episcapalian, Arab Marionite, South American Italian Reborn Baptist, Unitarian, Shaker (all three of them at last count, I hear), on and on an on.

If anything we are a Meta-Christian Nation, where the "Meta " includes all the Christian Sects, Diests, Jews, Muslims, occasionaly G-d Fearing agnostics, and utopians of various exotic stripes,

The US has always been a "religious" state. It is impossible NOT to a religious state. The only real question is what "religion"?

Israel is a JEWISH PLACE. Note I said PLACE.

As the Creator mapped and set the world, that is the way the is.

[Askel5]

It's exactly in the dumbing down of Christianity to include all manner of objectively non-Christian belief and practices that we have become something other than a Christian nation.

Really thought-provoking post, bvw. I'm going to give your "Jewish place" a little more consideration. Jerusalem's certainly a nexus, no doubt, recognized first by the Jews to whom God did give that and many other places as they annihilated their enemies and took the spoils, "killing all that breathed" ... all with the confidence that is knowing these acts were ordained by God.

Meta-Christian ... still bugs me somewhat given the fact that we are denying absolutely the peculiarly Christian discernment by which respect for life (particularly the weak), the institution of holy matrimony (which actually liberated women and children thanks to patriarchy) and the ability to objectively distinguish among other cultures (as good or bad) without losing respect for the individuals a part of that culture (each of whom was deserving of the genuine liberation that was the Word).

I think we've become an meta Anti-Christian nation in many respects. Our deconstruction of it in the name of "tolerance" and such being the far more deadly attack on it than the overt targeting of Christianity by the courts.