Most think founders wanted Christian USA
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
Most Americans believe the nation's founders wrote Christianity into the Constitution, and people are less likely to say freedom to worship covers religious groups they consider extreme, a poll out today finds.
The survey measuring attitudes toward freedom of religion, speech and the press found that 55% believe erroneously that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. In the survey, which is conducted annually by the First Amendment Center, a non-partisan educational group, three out of four people who identify themselves as evangelical or Republican believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. About half of Democrats and independents do. Read more here.
Christian USA? Anyone agree with the 75% of the Republicans that were polled and agreed with that sentiment? Even if "the founders" envisioned one I think that it is not helpful to envision a 21st century America through the eyes of 18th century men and women. Really, do we really think that "the founders" had it all together? Progress eventually resulted in the abolition of slavery, voting rights for all and many other things that "the founders" never envisioned.
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Culturally, maybe. But I don't think the founder's intention was to create a "Christian" nation, but rather a free nation. I actually have an issue with the term "founder" but that's another topic. For those Americans of white, European descent, I guess the term 'founder' applies, since they 'founded' the historical narrative of European immigrants to America. Back to the topic at hand, a lot of these immigrants were fleeing religious persecution and I think there was a sensitivity to that in the establishment of the US as a nation-state. I think it's important not to deviate from that, otherwise, Christians too will eventually be persecuted as "extremists" as a result of some Christians trying to enforce their theocratic ideas on others. Maybe I'm wrong... I don't really know how God sees it, I'm just wingin' it in my answer here... :)
ReplyDeleteI'm with Sarah on the idea that the founders weren't establishing a Christian nation. It's an argument my wife and I have often. She's part of the 75% who believes that they did.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Scott and most of what Sarah said. Early settlers were not coming here to have religious freedom as to raise their kids to speak English instead of Dutch. (They had religious freedom in Holland, I'm thinking of the Pilgrims circa 1620 here, not every settler.)
ReplyDeleteStill, the American Revolutionaries that wrote what would become our constitution saw the damage that the "state church" did and sought to create a free nation.