Christian America

Just passing this excellent article along. Farrell Till eloquently disproves the current rage among fundamentalists; that the Founding Fathers were creating a "Christian Nation" and have been fighting a tenatious battle to rewrite history in favor of this wishful thinking and fervent belief.

The "Myth" is excellently sourced, I have reviewed several of these books and primary sources myself and his notes are clear and correct. If only there existed a silver bullet that could shut down this nonsense and allow us to come together, secular and faithful, in order to build a more just society.

Thesis:
"The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible."

To believe that this nation was founded by fundamentalists in spite of all the evidence is to completely misunderstand the era of the Enlightenment. Reason, not superstition, was the order of the day. This nation is free and allows all people to worship as they wish. Neither I nor anyone else wants to take away anyone's religion, but that also means I will fight like hell to keep your religion from infringing on my or anyone else's liberty.

In closing:
"Historians, who deal with facts rather than wishes, paint an entirely different picture of the religious composition of America during its formative years than the image of a nation founded on "biblical principles" that modern Bible fundamentalists are trying to foist upon us. Our founding fathers established a religiously neutral nation, and a tragedy of our time is that so many people are striving to undo all that was accomplished by the wisdom of the founding fathers who framed for us a constitution that would protect the religious freedom of everyone regardless of personal creed. An even greater tragedy is that they many times hoodwink the public into believing that they are only trying to make our nation what the founding fathers would want it to be. Separation of church and state is what the founding fathers wanted for the nation, and we must never allow anyone to distort history to make it appear otherwise."