*EDIT: I realize Protestantism is a denomination of the Christian faith, but for these purposes, when the claim is that America was based around Christian principles, that is a distortion. I contend that the Republican principles from which America was born are in no way directly taken from the Bible.
Far be it from me to criticize religion, organized or otherwise, but, the rate at which modern Christianity seeps into the public domain, as well as our politics, is alarming on an historical level.
How Christian Were The Founders?
Of course Texas is at the heart of the argument...but the larger issue is the conception among evangelical Christians that somehow our founding fathers would fully endorse the pattern of letting religion take over things like public school and science. It is no irony either that the first state to enact statewide curriculum guides in 1998 is the same state aiming to totally alter how their children learn in grades K-12.
I can see it now: thousands of kids taught to believe that The Bill of Rights answers to The New Testament, humans came from God's tears, and liberalism is the work of Satan.
Is that where we want our educational system in America to go? I sure don't. I seem to remember something in The Constitution protecting the state from the influence of religion, and vice versa, in the interest of creating the most free society on the planet. There was one society that tried to govern in the name of God, and England ended up losing its position as the most powerful nation on Earth...because it's most important subjects separated from the crown, and founded a society based on ideas that come from the mind and not God. Even the fucking Arabs came up with mathematics and laws and architecture and philosophy, while maintaining a safe distance from Allah in matters of state.
It seems a fundamental contradiction of ideas when people in the 21st Century are attempting to overpower all other religions in America in the hopes of returning "Gods work" to its true heirs, when in 1776 men of all faiths protected the persecution of Quakers, Baptists, Christians, Protestants, and you-name-its. Thomas Jefferson for one was a staunch defender of the First Amendment, fully resistant to the idea of a president taking involvement with religion.
I personally believe the founders, since their ancestors came from a predominantly Protestant country, are Protestant first and Christian second. There's an academic quoted in that article who says "98 percent of Americans of European descent identified with Protestantism."
I once saw a documentary film called "Constantine's Sword," in which the author of the like-titled book, James Carroll, travels old Christendom seeking an answer as to why the religion he once knew from the clergy has become so different. Perhaps its because people like the Air Force or Gerry Falwell or Pat Robertson act like prophets when all they're really doing is preaching radical Christianity the same way a Muslim cleric preaches radical Islam. I say that because that has happened: the Air Force has had a problem requiring cadets at its school in Colorado Springs to attend religious services, even if they do not belong to the Christian faith. All done in the interest of converting cadets to this altered Christianity
Some think John Winthrop was envisioning a nation that advanced God's work through Christianity. Indeed, the United States of America was to be a "City on a Hill," as a beacon to all free men, but, was it founded on a bedrock of Christian teachings? The First Amendment would indicate that it was not. The Constitution's inherent purpose is to defend against a national denomination, no?
A pretty fascinating debate about some pretty large concepts. If there's one thing that makes me sad, though, it's that conservatives in Texas want Christianity incorporated into teachings of American History, so as to distort all subsequent events since America's founding to reflect a particular view. It's alarming to think what that leads to.
