filtherton

I know the ff's were largely christian. My problem, in a nutshell, is that the christianity that people talk about when they talk about america is an idealized, innaccurate snowglobe version of christianity. First of all, christianity is not as simple as the word "christianity" would imply. There are enough different valid christian faiths so as to render the word in this context effectively useless in terms of actually conveying anything meaningful. Is amerca baptist? Fundamentalist? Evangelist? UCC? Unitarian?

Speaking specifically of the founding fathers, there were "28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 1 unknown, and only 3 deists". (http://www.str.org/free/commentaries...s/faithofo.htm) Which denomination gets the credit? Certainly they were all christian, but given the myriad different conflicting beliefs that all qualify as christian practically the only common bond among all christians is a belief in the existence of a really important guy named jesus. How would the other denominations feel if instead of saying that this country was built on christianity, we were instead taught that this country was built on the ideas of episcopalianism? I guarantee you that all of the squeeky wheel denominations would scream bloody murder, despite the fact that as far as you want to stretch it such curriculum would be historically accurate.

I think one of the main problems i have is based on my suspicion that many of the loudest christian nationers don't want an accurate portrayal of our nation's history, they just want history to validate their religion. The problem with this is that our nation isn't supposed to be a christian nation. It is supposed to be secular. I'm all for the teaching of our history accurately, but christianity is not the focus of our history. There is a problem when teaching the history of our nation becomes an opportunity to proselytize. This country was set up in a way so as to be inclusive of all religion. The only circumstances under which i would support the explicit mention of christianity as a cornerstone of western philosphy would be if they mentioned it in terms of manifest destiny, labor struggles, slavery, and any other shiner on the face of american history as well as in the context of liberty and justice for all. That is to say, if the morals and philosphies of christians were portrayed as they actually are, not as "Christianity is responsible for everything that is good about america".