User

I go to a fundie school and quite a few people are under the impression that the United States was founded by Christians and is primarily a Christian nation.

I know this to be false. The Constitution is a secular document. Many of our Founding Fathers were deists. There needs to be a wall in between Church and State. Christians believed this. Didn't Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and devout Baptist, say that the Church was a garden that needed a wall to protect it from the state?

Many of my classmates and teachers refuse to believe this. I need some more information on our country's secular history.

All you history buffs out there, please reply with your best arguments for a secular U.S.

Grumpy

The United States is a Christian nation. It is now, and always has been, populated by a majority of Christians. While many prominent founders were Deists, most were ordinary Christians of various denominations. The Christian heritage of the USA is deeply ingrained, and won't be going away any time soon.

Which is precisely why it's ludicrous for the government to go out of its way to boost Christianity, or monotheism in general. It's not exactly hurting for help!

Javaman

And if you want to tackle some of the background information, there are many sources like this and there are links at the bottom.

Radcliffe Emerson

The Baptists defended separating church and state the most vigorously, because they were persecuted in the early Colonial times by other groups.
The Puritans came here because there was TOO MUCH religious freedom where they came from, and they wanted no religious freedom at all. I believe they were one of the groups that persecuted early Baptists.

Now, I don't think the Puritans were still around by the time the Constitution came into being, but the memory still lingered with Baptists, so they were very vocal in their desire for church and state to be separated.
In fact, the aforementioned link names a Baptist Church in one of Jefferson's letters about separation.

StrictSeparationist

Although the Puritans did behave rather shamefully upon gaining some measure of self-government in the New World, it is untrue that they left England because they felt there was too much religious freedom. King James, who felt that a rebellion against his religious authority must inevitably lead to a rebellion against his civil authority did undertake persecution of the Puritans, which was one of the main reasons that they decided to migrate.

Radcliffe Emerson

From what I've read, their persecution occurred wherever they left before coming here, because they went somewhere first before coming to America.
Now, I may be thinking of another group. But the Baptists were being persecuted by someone , hence their defense of church/state separation.

Gawdawful

Christians want a one-way wall, one that protects the church from the state, but not vice versa. They know good and well their god was left out of the Constitution on purpose, but they choose to conveniently ignore any fact that contradicts what they'd like to believe.

Gourd, I sound like a fundie, "They know good and well..."


Warren in Oklahoma

Radcliffe Emerson

LOL!!!!

Javaman

And, if you want to tackle something unpleasant, try this. I think I saw some debunked Bartonisms in there.

User

Actually one of my teachers says that only 2% of the population are real Christians. Everyone else follows a heavily adulterated/watered down "Christianity."

When I said our country was not a Christian country I meant that the laws/government do not favor Christianity over any other belief system. There is no state church, nor should there ever be one.

Let's see some proof.

Is it deeply engrained, yes. Will it be going away soon...depends. What do you mean by soon? 10 years, 50 years, 100 years? I see the Christian faith in our nation to be going two ways. Mainstream pop-culture is rejecting tradtional Christian doctrine, and many Christian churches are going wasy on the fire-n-brimstone talk. Yet a dangerous fundie underground is slowly seeping into our national consciousness; lyring in the shadows, waiting to strike at any moment and receive mainstream acceptance.

It's almost like a tug-o-war between the two forces.