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To say the nation was founded by Puritans is also ignoring places like the Colony of Virginia (which was Catholic) and a few other.

Not exactly right. VA was never Catholic, unless you mean Anglo-Catholic (Anglican). MD was indeed founded by Catholics, but was taken over later by radical Protestants who persecuted the original Catholic settlers.

I don't believe Roman Catholicism was ever the established Church of any of the colonies, except perhaps for a short period in MD.

Instead of decrying all this supposed evil these people need to be asking themselves why people are fleeing Christianity in droves.

Actually, they're not. It's just that most of them are leaving "mainline" churches and going to evangelical and conservative groups. This trend has been underway for decades. Such churches are not "respectable" in the eyes of most of the litterati. Those who join them promptly become invisible (as being beneath contempt) to the chattering classes.

>>Not exactly right. VA was never Catholic, unless you 
>>mean Anglo-Catholic (Anglican). MD was indeed founded by 
>>Catholics, but was taken over later by radical 
>>Protestants who persecuted the original Catholic settlers.

Who cares? The whole point is that it shouldn't matter what religon people do or do not practice to be considered a good citizen. Whether Virginia was founded by Catholics or not is moot. More important is Jefferson's religous liberty legislation that kept the state out of religion entirely. Those of you who complain about Wiccanism have the burden of showing how it negatively impacts society ... not why you disagree with it (theologically).

Thanks. It's been a while since I read that stuff (old age creeps up fast). That's why I like FR, somebody always knows better than you.

As for the meltdown of the public face of Christianity you're quite right. It's only in those older more "established" churches. On the day of the national prayer vigil for the 9-11 victims I had to drive home from work and back during the prayer vigil, on my way I drove by 3 churches: one a large church of some flavor of Protestant, two little knock offs of completely unknown variety (one is named the Church of the Cosmic Christ, I'm not making this up; the other is actually where I voted in the GOP primary on 9-11 and I first heard what was going on). The big Protestant church was almost empty maybe 5 cars in the lot; the other two were packed.