Founded On Christian Beliefs - Help

I live with and around some pretty religious people. Many express the belief that our country was founded on Christian beliefs. They say things like the Pledge of Allegiance has the word God in it. Of course, "God" was added in the fifties to counter the "godless" Soviet Union. Others say that our founding fathers were Christian and that they "founded" the country based on these beliefs. I know that Jefferson and others were not big believers. Is there a quick resource out there (like a web site, etc.) where I can get reliable and objective history on this issue? This would help me a great deal in speaking with my Christian "friends."

Thanks...

-P

You might go on the offensive. Demand they show you verses of Scripture prescribing a representative legislature, a Union of sovereign states, a census every ten years, however many actual items of the Constitution as you care to hazard. They will not be able to do so, and laughter and scorn is appropriate. On the other hand, it is child's play to find verses dictating Socialism, and Communism, even, in the New Testament particularly: Acts is very good hunting in this regard, and so are the major prophets. It is impossible, too, to find the slightest warrant for freedom of conscience in matters of religion in the Scriptures....

Its called "American History". Your religious friends may not have heard of it.

To Dr. Benjamin Rush, with a Syllabus - Washington, Apr. 21, 1803

DEAR SIR,

-- In some of the delightful conversations with you, in the evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an anodyne to the afflictions

of the crisis through which our country was then laboring, the Christian religion was sometimes our topic; and I then promised

you, that one day or other, I would give you my views of it. They are the result of a life of inquiry & reflection, and very

different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity

I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be;

sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never

claimed any other. At the short intervals since these conversations, when I could justifiably abstract my mind from public

affairs, the subject has been under my contemplation. But the more I considered it, the more it expanded beyond the measure of

either my time or information. In the moment of my late departure from Monticello, I received from Doctr Priestley, his little

treatise of "Socrates & Jesus compared." This being a section of the general view I had taken of the field, it became a subject of

reflection while on the road, and unoccupied otherwise. The result was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus, or outline of such an

estimate of the comparative merits of Christianity, as I wished to see executed by some one of more leisure and information for the

task, than myself. This I now send you, as the only discharge of my promise I can probably ever execute. And in confiding it to you,

I know it will not be exposed to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new misrepresentations &

calumnies. I am moreover averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the

presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that

inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed. It behoves every man who values liberty of

conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his

own. It behoves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by

answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God & himself.



Accept my affectionate salutations.

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http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl153.htm


Edited to add the following link from the Library of Congress:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06.html

:patriot:

You may recall the old call and response: "How many legs has a dog, if you call a tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg don't make it so." Christianity is a body of religious thought defined by certain dogmas, which are widely shared among the various sects of Christianity. One of the most basic of these is belief in the divinity of the Christ, that he is God, and was as a man the incarnation of God. Mere regard for the Christ as a paragon of human excellence, however high, falls well short of recognizing the Christ as the God who created the heavens and the earth. A person who believes the Christ to be a paragon of human excellence, but not God, is no more a Christian than a person who believes the Christ to be not a human but God is a Moslem, no matter how either might describe themselves. You might as well insist the sky on a sunny day is pink rather than blue, as to attempt either thing in seriousness.

Nor does Christianity, taken seriously, anyway, allow the slightest room for freedom of conscience in religious belief. First, it makes the claim it is the only true religion, that all other religious beliefs are false. Second, it predicts the direst possible eternal consequences for persons who do not agree. Third, it holds that there will be divine punishment meted out in the here and now to those who do not behave in the manner prescribed by Christian orthodoxy (that of whatever particular sect is in the saddle at that time and place), and that if this disobedience is widespread enough, this punishment will afflict the whole of the society. It therefore becomes a question of public safety that all behave as believers should behave, and believe rightly. Obviously, by now, not too many professing Christians, in the West anyway, take the matter seriously enough to follow it out as strenuously as any parson of the seventeenth century would do, but that is their error, not an actual change in doctrine or its necessary implications.

The basic problem is this: people often attach their identity as good or moral people to the name of the culturally predominant religion around them, so that they are driven to maintain an identification with that name even when they actually reject it in its entirety.

Here's a link to the Socrates & Jesus Compared, the treatise sent by Jefferson with his April 21, 1803 letter to Dr. Rush:

http://www.archive.org/stream/socratesjesuscom00prieuoft#page/n63/mode/2up

Holidays that were celebrated for centuries before Christ came around: Christians own them.

A land full of Native People; who were getting along just fine, thank you: Christians own it. (Jesus's message of helping the poor didn't make much sense to the American Indian, they didn't have any "poor"; everyone shared equally in their culture.)

Founding fathers who were trying to make a more equal form of government: Christians own them. Beck at Liberty University: "God's finger ... wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This is God's Country."

It's an "ownership society". If you disagree with them, then you are against God. If you are against God, then you should be eliminated. That's their power and they're not going to give it up.

Committing the worse holocaust in history. See how they respond to that one.

I am just saying.

I appreciate the info.

-P

"The United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."--George Washington

Here's another good website you might try: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/myth.html

Slavery, Misogyny, xenophobia, racism, and war. It took us the last 200 years to get away from what the founders created.


You could show them the Jefferson Bible.

Doctrinaire Libertarianism focusing on "the self" runs contrary to the New Testament's focus on what people should be doing for each other.

They certainly didn't want to found this country with a nationalized belief system. It was also popular at the time to question Christianity.

Check out Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason."