America, A Christian Nation?
Did Our Founders Mean America to Be a Christian Theocracy?
This article is one of a series of articles introduced by Flawed Reasons to Believe in God. If you’re new to the series, you should read the Introduction before (or after) reading the material below.
At various times in US history, when large swaths of the Christian Community in the USA sensed they might be able to do so, some sector or sect of the nation’s Christians have made efforts to replace our Constitutional secular government with theocratic rule. I submit that doing this is a bad idea for the vast majority of Americans who are in a different denomination, a different religion, or no religion at all, but it’s an equally bad idea for the Christian Dominionists. May I tell you why instituting Christian Nationalism is a deadly dangerous idea?
It is true that, when the Constitutional Convention was held in 1787, the majority of Americans were Christians. The new Republic’s first census, held in 1850, found that there were 18 principal Christian denominations in the USA. Between 1700 and 1740, an estimated 75 to 80 percent of the population attended churches.
Dominionists often claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. That claim is false. Regardless of how many American Colonists were Christians, many harbored vivid memories of the horrors of Europe’s state-enforced religions and the resulting ubiquitous holy wars. Some of our Founding Fathers were not Christians but deists. Many more were some form of Christian but knew how hideous constant sectarian warfare was. European theocracies persecuting citizens in ‘wrong denominations’ is what sent many of America’s residents to our shores in the first place.
Founding Father and third President, Thomas Jefferson, called our Constitution’s Establishment Clause a “wall of separation between church and state…” Jefferson may not have known it, but tolerance for all religions and for non-religions caused religions of every stripe to prosper in America. Three out of four Americans today identify as believers. Secularization in Europe has significantly outpaced American secularization.
There’s one more compelling reason religious nationalism is a bad idea. As George Santayana eloquently wrote in The Life of Reason, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Invariably, religious nationalism leads to militarism, conflict attempting to export it, and the ruin of the nation-state that embraces it. Unsurprisingly, most other nations don’t want me or you telling them what they must believe. They rise in unison to stop the fascist state.
This article is one of a series of articles introduced by Flawed Reasons to Believe in God. If you’re new to the series, you should read the Introduction before (or after) reading the material above.
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