posted on Sep, 27 2015 @ 11:18 AM
a reply to:
3NL1GHT3N3D1
Oh gosh.
1. "Christians" don't think America is a Christian nation. Some Christians in America may, but it's not a doctrinal Christian belief.
2. The Declaration of Independence is *not* the only document you want to cite if you're interested in how the Founders thought. It was a PR document.
Read the federal and state constitutions and other documents at the time to see how they wanted things run. FYI, Jefferson was NOT involved in writing
the Constitution.
2a. The "Founding Fathers" didn't collectively believe the same single thing. There was a huge divergence of opinion among them.
2b. Some (probably most) of the Founding Fathers through religion was necessary for a democratic nation like ours to function. This was a common
belief at the time.
2c. Thomas Jefferson =/= The Founding Fathers. He was one of them. They didn't all think the same. Geez, is this so hard to grasp? People like to take
TJ, quote him out of context, and then pretend he represents the whole of the Founding Fathers. That's malarky. There was a HUGE spectrum of thought
among the founding generation!
3. The Constitution definitely prohibited the Federal Government from establishing a religion. It did not prevent the state governments for doing so.
Some of them had state-sponsored churches up until the 1800s if I recall correctly. The "separation of church and state" idea didn't get applied until
incorporation doctrine came along.
I'm not here to argue for the "Christian nation" nonsense but this decontextualizing of history is appalling.