Note the "erroneously". For once, the press got it right.Most Americans believe the nation's founders wrote Christianity into the Constitution, and people are less likely to say freedom to worship covers religious groups they consider extreme, a poll out today finds.
The survey measuring attitudes toward freedom of religion, speech and the press found that 55% believe erroneously that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.
Most of the readers of this blog understand that Christianity is not written into the Constitution. In case you do, here is the reality.
NOWHERE in the Constitution do the following words appear:
Jesus
God
Christ
Christian
Christianity
Don't believe me, check it out for yourself - The Constitution of the United States
If the Founders had wanted to establish a Christian nation, it would have been incredibly simple.
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union based on the Christian religion, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America, under the dominion of our Lord, Jesus Christ.That's all there would have been to it. Simple and unambiguous. Instead, they did the exact opposite, including this clause under Article VI:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.Doesn't really gibe with an official Christian religion, does it?
There's also that pesky First Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees reglious freedom:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.So, why would the Founders not make the US a Christian nation? They were all Christians, right?
Wrong. While many of the Founding Fathers were Christian, many were Deists, believing in an uninvolved creator, more a hands-off kind of god, and not Jesus. Plus, many people came to America to escape the state religions of Europe. They came here for religious freedom.
These results really scare me:
Most respondents, 58%, say teachers in public schools should be allowed to lead prayers. That is an increase from 2005, when 52% supported teacher-led prayer in public schools.I wonder how those results might change if people were asked if teachers should lead Catholic prayers. Or Baptist prayers. Or Mormon prayers. It's easy to say you support teacher-lead prayers until you find out they're not praying using your specific beliefs. As far as teaching the Bible as factual history, there's not much else to do but shake my head in disgust.
Half say teachers should be allowed to use the Bible as a factual text in history class.
What these "Christian nation" people don't seem to understand is that keeping the government OUT of religion benefits religion just as much as it benefits the government and every U.S. citizen.
The poll results above aren't surprising. But they're very sad. They demonstrate how uneducated most Americans are about our Constitution, our laws, and our traditions. They demonstrate that the people who often proclaim their patriotism the loudest, know the least about what it really means to be an American.
4 comments:
Quoted for truth: "They demonstrate that the people who often proclaim their patriotism the loudest, know the least about what it really means to be an American."
That, and those who claim to be Christian often know less about their own religion than do the atheists.
Dude, you are on a roll lately!
I’m a little skeptical of polls like this. I suspect those numbers are a wee bit high.
I once received an anti-Muslim e-mail stating that a Muslim could not accept the US Constitution because “it is based on Biblical principles”. I replied, “It is? Where in the Bible is the separation of powers? Checks and
balances? The Federal system? Representitive democracy? Exactly which Biblical principles is the Constitution based upon?”
As you might guess, I never got an answer.
In order to be a "True Christian" (or a fundamentalist of most other religions) you need to have absolute blind faith that what you "know" and believe is the absolute truth regardless of buckets of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Such belief is incomprehensible to normal people because it really is a form of mental illness -- a deeply entrenched delusion. As long as you're passive about it, okay, but as soon as you start trying to force it down the throats of others you become dangerous. When Osama thinks he can force Americans to embrace Islam, he's a terrorist. When American Christian Fundamentalists think they can force Americans to embrace Christianity (and all its perversions) it's called Republicanism.
I think this sounds worse in the abstract than it actually is. The fact that people think christianity is enshrined in the Constitution shows an ignorance of the constitution but it doesn't necessarily mean that people in general want to "force Americans to embrace Christianity." I mean, compared to what the radical Muslims have done, even the Christian right has been pretty tame. No one is being murdered because they make fun of Jesus. There is a difference, after all, between having a general belief (eg, that Christianity is in the Constitution) and actually acting upon that belief. I think it's incorrect to say that Americans in general want to force others to be Christian, even if they believe this is a Christian country.
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