Posted on 09/25/2012 7:24:27 PM PDT by billflax
Few matters ignite more controversy than America’s Christian roots. The issue reverberates anew this electoral season where the faiths of both major candidates have been questioned. Religion imbues politics.
The battle over America’s beginnings muddles wishful hero worship with efforts to commandeer America’s past so to steer her future. The most vocal proponents of Christian America and their counterparts advocating a completely secular state necessarily cherry-pick data to prove exaggerations while discarding inconvenient details.
By transforming our Forefathers into faithful servants of Christ the Religious Right risks compromising the biblical message. Baptist theologian Al Mohler warns advocates of Christian America have “confused their cultural heritage with biblical Christianity.” While Believers must exercise their views, cheapening what constitutes Christianity for political gain profanes the Gospel.
Moreover, Believers should refuse Big Government operating in Christ’s name. As empty pews in Europe testify, politicized religion impedes ministry. Beautiful cathedrals dot the Old World, but with scant congregants, they memorialize a funereal dearth of faith coming from state sanctioned pulpits.
Meanwhile, those most ardently challenging America’s Christian origins wrongly portray the Founders as rank secularists. They would seemingly reduce religious liberty to mere freedom of worship letting Believers pray in their hovels, but in public: Be seen and not heard. Some liberals seem inclined on expunging Christianity. Democrats nearly revolted over a fleeting reference to “God-given potential” at their convention.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Most earlier records regarding Spanish involvement in Chesapeake Bay are lost of course, but to give you an idea what they could do they actually sailed up the Susquehanna to survey the line between Acadia and Virginia ~ we know that because archaeologists found one of their boats in the mud, as well as Spanish artifacts, armor, skeletons ~ if you can sail up the Susquehanna you can explore and make use of Chesapeake Bay as well.
Then there were the pirates in Maryland ~ the Spanish and the Brits cooperated to a degree in clearing out pirates in the Carribean in the mid 1500s! This is where those guys went ~ and later on in later centuries ~ lots of wild country there until the 1800s.
Oh, Boy! . . . Here we go.
In my opinion, nations are not religious. The leaders and the people of a nation may belong to one religion or another, and they may govern by principles according to their religion(s), but the nation itself does not belong to a particular religion.
On another line of thought, each of the early colonies came here to practice their particular brand of religion free from whatever interference that they had received in their homelands. But to the best of my knowledge, none of the early colonies practiced what we would call “freedom of religion”. They came here to be free to practice their own religion, but they were not interested in allowing others to practice a different religion within their colony.
By the time of the revolution, this had changed in some of the colonies, but several of the thirteen original states still had official state religions even after the passage of the Bill of Rights and its guarantee of what we now call “freedom of religion”.
This alone should tell you whether the constitution was intended to apply to the states as well as the nation.
Your point being?
They owned the Ohio Valley for a good long while ~ a couple of centuries before the French tried to move in! They did things ~ long forgotten things. (SEE: Old Stone Fort ~ http://www.midwesternepigraphic.org/croghan.html )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620.[13]
Note: They landed not in Virginia, but Cape Cod.
Articles / writers use the ‘controversial’ meme to rewrite history in support of liberalism. And they/their publications should be told in great number that their credibility ends, as does their income, when they attempt to blatantly lie.
Whether it’s this, the gay ‘rights’ bs or Dem anything, Stop patronizing them, inform them why and that’s about all we can do.
Why people still watch TV or by MSM pubs/visit their websites/then wonder why the MSM has such influence, is beyond me.
True enough Puritans came here to escape official Anglican dictat, and Catholics from England came here to escape both, but there was a lot less of that than is popularly imagined.
America was a tough place to live ~ people struggled to survive ~ many early settlements had a single building used by several religious bodies ~ even those whose members didn't intermarry or socialize ~ try looking up OLD YELLOW CHURCH ~ there are several of them. Everybody went there.
I wouldn’t say were founded as a Christian nation as our founding documents don’t specifically mention Christ and that our authority in our Constituiion powers come from the people and not God, an Enlightement idea. However, there many christians founders who had a alot of influence so I would say we were a country with judeo christian influence.
I just wondered since the subject of the thread is were we founded as a Christian nation. I agree that Jefferson believed in a creator as do all Deist.
I agree that Christian principles had a very strong influence on the founding of this nation, but to me a Christain nation implies almost a theocracy which it is not. As a matter a fact the theocracies of Europe was one of the reasons people came to America to escape.
Arrrrghh! No time tonight, but I must return to demonstrate at length that America was most assuredly founded on Christian principles....but not for the reasons usually advanced.
Your article was interesting, but weak kneed. The truth seldom lies in the center between “extremes” as liberals and moderates seem to fancy. The truth makes it’s own path irrespective of what is today novel or trendy.
Quickly this. We are a republic and republic’s make an end of Kings. Such an end was only made possible by Christ.
The moment Christ died a new covenant was born. The curtain in Herod’s Temple which separated the holy of holies from the people was torn asunder. From that moment forward no one stood between each person and their God. No Priest. No King.
We have a one on one with God. Oh my...that means we are born with rights from God. Oh my....then there is no such thing as a noble. I am equal to any man and every man before God and the law.
It took another 1750 years, a Reformation, and an ocean between us to figure it out....but we did.
All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.....is indeed a Christian principle.
As is the tolerance for sinners and heretics who must find salvation and repentance on their own....not by force or compulsion.
Not all men who say they are Christian were or are. Likewise, not all men who say they are or were irreligious can be so easily filed.
The founders, like all of us, undoubtedly went through many phases of belief and unbelief in their long lives. They would be far too remarkable had they not. But the record does show that for most of them most of the time they lived....they abided by Christian principles as well as any sinner might.
Surely developed under Biblical principals and Christians are the majority of the population, but, no, not a Christian nation. I don’t see where Christ would support abortion, pornography, gambling, name your sin. The US is like any other nation, populated with Christians, but it doesn’t have any unique covenant with God, at least not one that can be found in the Bible.
NO.
It was founded on Christian principles by a majority of Christians
The Declaration of Independence specifically cites that our rights come from God. The Founders were very particular on that point, because it assured that any government was subject to the authority of God.
The State is comprised of people; fallible, whimsical people. Our rights are an integral component of our humanity. The State cannot strip of us our rights, since they are God-given. The State can only actively force or passively coerce us into not exercising them. People-driven (or State granted) rights are not rights at all; they are privileges.
This is NOT what the Founders intended or designed for America.
History clearly shows that whenever a people reach a certain point of oppression, where working within the system does not achieve happiness or when freedoms are seriously broached, the people will rise up. This is a universal trait of humanity. The Founders were looking for an authority higher than any on Earth as justification for rising up - they chose God.
“Was America Founded As A Christian Nation?”
Yes, of course it was.
To try to deny this is to deny Western culture and history.
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally past; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read "” departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
Thomas Jefferson on the 1786 Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom
Yes, Declaration of Independence cites our rights come from our Creator but not specifically the Triune God and specifically Christ. If the founders wanted this to be a christian nation, you would think they wouldhave specifically mentioned Christ in founding documents but they didn’t. Got to remember there were Christians, Jews, Deists, masons that were founding fathers and they all had defition of who God but they never specifically defined who God was. Also many founders were Masons, which is a univeralists form of a relgion and denies the deity of Christ. Hard to argue that this was founded as Christian when many of the founders belonged a non Christian religion. Obviously there many good Christians in the founding and had a alot of influence and still have influence today.. Like I said, we were never founded as Christian but a nation that was influnced by many christians.
“Whatever makes you happy”
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