Saturday, March 07, 2015

Even Fox News recognizes that America is NOT a Christian nation.

Courtesy of Fox News Opinion:  

The argument that America was at its founding and remains a nation Christian in character has served as cover for a variety of racist and nativist sentiments for generations. It can be found in the writings of those who warned that Catholics threatened the nation’s “free institutions” and fanned the flames of a mob’s destruction of a New England convent in 1834, just as it can been seen decades later in newspaper reports warning that non-Christian Asian immigrants would cause the West Coast to be “swamped, inundated, despiritualized, and un-Americanized.” 

The insistence that the United States is explicitly Christian arises from the assumption that a majority of citizens have been members of one church or another since the nation’s founding. Yet historians have estimated the number of American church-goers in 1776 to be only around 350,000 -- less than a fifth of the population. 

Christianity as a cultural force was certainly more influential than that, and many Americans no doubt considered themselves Christians whether or not they attended church. But it is a fact conveniently forgotten by many that ministers from a variety of denominations were from the beginning among the strongest opponents to establishing a national religion of any kind. 

Even as a matter of demographics, “Christian nation” raises questions. A large number of the people who we now as acknowledge as Americans often go uncounted when we look at back at our country’s earliest days. 

More than a hundred thousand Native Americans, mostly unconverted before the Trail of Tears, were pushed beyond the borders of the United States with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. 

That same year, the enslaved population numbered in the millions—in much of the South, they made up half the population. Given that only a tiny percentage of the enslaved were Christians when they arrived, early America likely included more men and women with connections to African beliefs than members of many Protestant denominations. What do these uncounted non-Christians do to the idea that America began as a “Christian nation”?

Yeah I know this is only on the Opinion page on the Fox News website, but still just the fact that they allow it on their site is a good sign.  As is the fact that many of the comments on that page are in support of the author's point of view.

Personally I would like to be a fly on the wall when that Todd "War on Christmas" Starnes moron reads this article.

I bet when he gets mad he holds his breath until he passes out.

14 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:18 AM

    As of 2014, there are 14 Democratric governors, and at least as any legislative bodies with Democratic majorities.
    To Hold a Conventionn of the States, the Pee Pond would need 38 state governors and legislators to agree.
    So far, they're short several governors and legilaturses, and who knows what 2016 will bring?
    In addition, by opening up such a Convention, there may well be new amendments that Democrats want that Repbublicans don't -- a log jam.


    This is a machination of the Kock Brothers, but even they, with all their $$, can't change the course of US history.

    Sorry, Sarah, you're riding a dead-horse or snowmobile.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jkarov4:54 AM

    The USA was founded as a secular Republic.

    For centuries, the kings and queens of England were murdering and persecuting people who weren't the "right type" of Christians, and many people fled England just to escape the Christian Taliban of that time period.

    The USA Constitution, which is the foundation of our nation, never mentions god, jesus, faith, bible , or church.

    Article 6, paragraph 3 takes that one step further by *mandating* that there shall never be a religious litmus test for state and Federal judges, legislatures, Congress, and the President.

    In other words, the Founders made sure that an athiest or Buddhist is just as qualified to any state or Federal office as a Christian, assuming they meet the other legal qualifications

    I have had many conversations with conservatives in the USA, and nearly all of them think that some religious foundation must be present to call yourself a "real" conservative,
    and that requires either Christianity or at least Judaism.

    An athiest or agnostic is viewed as nothing but trash by the ChristoFascists, and they are actually offended at anyone not sharing their mythology.

    The Teaparty and the religious right are constantly mentioning "endowed by their creator" from the Declaration, and they natter on about the derivation of our nation from God's natural laws, and the divine origin of the Constitution, which is laughably absurd.

    When I quote Article 6, paragraph 3 of the Constitution to them, they retreat to the absurdity of claiming that a "religious test' just means that all Christian denominations were eligilble to serve in government.

    They live in a bubble outside of which no other religions are valid, and many of the religious right are determined to impose a theocracy on the USA

    ReplyDelete
  3. Caroll Thompson4:59 AM

    It would seem to me that if the United States of America was meant to be a Christian country, the First Amendment of the Constitution would not state in the first sentence that there will be no law establishing a religion. Text below:

    First Amendment
    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    Or as I might add, the First Amendment will be changed over my dead body (and plenty of others too I am sure).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5:17 AM

    Fox News’ Todd Starnes, who I believe has the unfortunate role of being the male version of the appallingly clueless Elisabeth Hasselbeck, got together with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council the other day to talk about the terrible persecution of Christians in this country.

    What has them so riled up? New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision Wednesday to put two Muslim holidays on the school calendar: Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr. New York City is not the first city to do this, but it is the biggest.

    The news had predictable results: rights for Muslims means persecution of Christians.

    http://www.politicususa.com/2015/03/07/todd-starnes-muslim-holy-days-public-schools-persecute-christians.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6:10 AM

      I read somewhere that John Wayne Gacy donated his brain to research scientists in hopes of cultivating insight into the minds of the criminally insane.

      These tools should do the same. I would love to dissect the diseased noodles of these extremist monsters. I am absolutely fascinated by their disconnect, and absolutely desperate for some sort of explanation. I would give anything to figure these bastards out.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous7:37 AM

      Probably come from a long list of common dictators or their peasants with terrible ideas. Failures. the ancestors of the current gang of repukkklicans

      Delete
    3. Anonymous8:09 AM

      More like it came from incestral breeding the last 200 years..

      Delete
  5. Anonymous6:16 AM

    It's very easy now to forget that in 1787, when the Constitution was written, the First Amendment was a huge, HUGE deal.

    Oh wait, I guess it's still easy.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous6:26 AM

    Oh the confusion. Silly people. Power power power. tisk tisk. Have you read? The Doomsday Book? the real doomsday book of 1800? Or maybe do you know of the "Boatman" and who they were and what they did? Make darn sure what ever faith that you worship to put that coin where it belongs or the Boatman will not take you. Perhaps reading ancient history will reveal that America was founded by many of different faiths fleeing the dictatorship of? yes the heathens of the UK beating up on folks and all. The Doomsday book and others is a list of property owners, families, what they owned, owed, etc. and who was who in and who was out ancient times. It is quite fascinating and a must read for all of us that appreciate ancestry and history.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7:31 AM

    There are christian sites that sound christian, until one delves deeper and finds out they believe that God ordained the U.S. as a christian nation, and made a covenant with the Founding Fathers. It's then, that, I as a christian, and many others, know they've been compromised, tainted with some cultish add-ons to the gospel.

    It all sounds well when these sorts talk about their faith, being born-again, and all. But as soon as they open their mouths with the gospel of the Constitution as an addition to being a good christian, they show their true colors.

    Whatever their motives are, to be so blinded by the sense of entitlement as to be an exceptionally more righteous country than any other is strong delusion, warned about in the epistles.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous9:11 AM

    Weird: The Fox News Opinion homepage placed this piece under the heading 'Islam.'

    The author, Peter Manseau (not a FN employee), recently published a book that sounds worth reading, "One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History" and he's "currently curating an exhibit on America's diverse religious past for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History."
    http://www.petermanseau.com/about.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous10:41 AM

    Has anyone read the comments on that Fox page?

    Their people are NOT having anything to do with what the guy said. *shock*

    ReplyDelete
  10. Randall3:45 PM

    Recently, at a gathering of relatives, when confronted with someone foolish enough to suggest that we pass a constitutional amendment establishing "Christianity" as this country's official religion, I loudly remarked - YEAH! Let's make it law that everyone must become Catholic.

    ...silence.

    No. (they said) that isn't what we meant.

    I said, Episcopalian?

    THEN the bickering started
    . . . and I smiled and went into the kitchen.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Interesting rant about Islam (and a bit about RC), and behavior that's criminal in the world outside religion: http://ovo127.com/2014/09/11/trevor-blake-asleep-in-rotherham/

    ReplyDelete

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