I have been meaning to talk about this for some time. Whatever arguements this causes is up to you.
Glen Beck, who scheduled his little "return to God" fair with exquisite good taste and timing, said that his rally had nothing to do with politics. I have no problem with him organizing whatever he wants. He has a platform, and people with platforms are going to use them. But please don't tell me its got nothing to do with politics. Whenever you hear that phrase, it means it has EVERYTHING to do with politics.
The call was, America is a Christian nation, and the many statements of our founding fathers were used, and continue to be used, to demonstrate how much the liberalization of America takes us further away from "us" being a Christian nation. Christian voters need to vote Christians into office, so Christian laws can be made for Christian values befitting a Christian nation. Liberalization needs to be stopped.....
To which I say, "Duh!" Of course, and if you want to look at history, esp the 20th century, the USA (including all western european democracies) have become more secular, and less religious.
If the Beck crowd is to be believed, this flies in the face of what our founding fathers wanted for America. Ergo, we need to go back to "the way we were", back to god, become a religious nation once again.
There is so much attached to this in recent controversies, gay marriage and gay rights, mosques around ground zero, the baseless rumors that our current president is a Muslim who wants to tear apart this country.....
And here is the thing, I will be the first to tell you that most of the founding fathers were indeed Christian. (Thomas Jefferson was a deist). Most did believe in god, Jesus, and valued the role of their faith in their lives.
So what does this prove? Try this one on for size. In spite of their very strong beliefs, our founding fathers severely limited what was put into law, regarding religion.
Think about it. As private citizens, they wrote tons of material about how good religion was.
But they kept it out of the Consitiution.
They kept it out of the Bill of Rights.
Sure, you were free to express your religion. Thus, Glen Beck, you are free to say all you want that god is great, and encourage all who want to to follow....
You are also just as free to ignore that, and just as free to point out that the exclusion of any language making America a Christian nation in the law was purposeful and by design.
Are you going to sit there and argue that the founding fathers FORGOT to make it a law that this is a Christian nation? Oops!
No. Because there was one principle that the founding fathers held higher then Christianity. Freedom
The experiment was freedom. That a people free would be able to chart their own course individually, free of government intrusion in any respect. The founding fathers simply weren't interested in imposing their personal beliefs on others. They fled that, fled the Church of England, fled a state sponsered religion.
Please tell me where the evidence is that our founding fathers wanted the government to be Christian. They didn't. They had every opportunity to do so many times, and at the end of it all, said nothing. Because to do otherwise would make America, would make you, less free.
They wanted to be free, and wanted others to be free to not be religious if that made you more free to be yourself. It was that freedom that trumped any idea about a Christian nation. More important then being Christian, then being religious, was being free.
The rhetoric of the religious right, is most certainly political.
You are free to be religious.
Just don't take other peoples freedom away to not be religious, and to have their own beliefs and rituals, practiced in the privacy of their own homes. If you have freedoms, they aren't because they are Christian rights. They are American rights. To deny the rights "we" have from minorities because they are "Christian" means that being Christian is more important to some then being free. It means e pluribus unum is a joke.
Freedom is more important then a nation turning back to god.
I promise you, whatever I do regarding god, I will do in my own home, private, and not at the Beck and call of any movement that says I have to be Christian, because that is "what we are".
I am free to be "what I am", and don't anyone dare take that away from me.
E pluribus unum.