Is America a Christian Nation? Should America Be a Christian Nation?

Well, thanks for giving the thought genuine consideration.

 

My religion teaches that they are separate personages like you and your Father. But they are equal in purpose by the Sons submission to his Fathers will. So they are both considered God. When Jesus speaks, it is the word, voice and will of his Father. So if we follow Jesus Christ, we are essentially following God the Father. This is why Jesus said that no man comes to the Father except by me.

 

Good question. I don't know. I know that we revoke them from one another depending on our conduct in adherence to those rights. For instance if we rob, rape, or murder, we are tried and punished accordingly by the suspension of our rights and by imprisonment for a time. But by the eternal nature of God, I think the general rights conceptually are likewise ensured. Now if the whole nation were to throw off that yoke, then we'd lose the rights by our own choice and conduct. The result might be our being conquered by another nation or something....banish the thought.

 

You are so right. I believe for a couple centuries we have lived under a "hedge of protection" of an Almighty God. Sure, we can always cast it off. Many would do so.

 

I believe we have lived under a "hedge of protection" of two very large oceans separating us from other world powers, a land that has an abundance of natural resources and the last 70 years or so having a thermonuclear force that protects us from other countries even thinking about attacking us.

The difference between those things and your "Almighty God" is the things I point to are proven to be real.

 

I agree with you. As faulted as we are, America is too blessed for it to be from our own doing. Even George Washington accredited God for the Revolutionary War victory due to a few crucial matters beyond Washington's control. He could have boasted of his genius and the bravery of his forces. But he didn't. His was the labor and part, but to God he gave the honor of the miracle of our independence. Some say it is simply pandering to religious tradition, as if our founding Fathers were as shallow as their detractors. I take our founders at their word because they followed it with their lives and blessed all the generations that were to come with liberty from God. And even all generations back to Adam and Eve. Because without them, none of us would be here. We carry their genes and their hopes.

 

So when did we make the land, its abundance, and the oceans. I must have missed that part. You make it sound like we are God. Neither did we make our founding Fathers, our scientists and inventors, or even ourselves. Not to mention the universe, galaxy, solar system, the earth, and the laws that govern it all which we are privileged to witness. You suggest that it is vain to worship God. Yet you worship yourself for having passed thru town.

 

I like to think of the United States as a Judaeo Christian country. I want Jews to feel comfortable here, and safe from discrimination and hate crimes.

 

I choose to believe myself, and my own first-person observations and memories from when I died, crossed over, learned a lot, and was subsequently sent or brought back. My story shares some elements with other NDE experiencers, both living and some deceased, though contemporary... These are not 14th hand reports of sht that happened millennia ago, and if you were to bother doing a bit of research, you would realize after hearing as few as a dozen or two (out of tens of thousands or more) to realize just how similar most of them are, especially when you consider how many share some, if not necessarily all of the same characteristics and events.

I look at it like this... If one dude goes scuba diving under a bridge and says he saw a giant hammerhead shark chilling out under it, it's easy to write him off. It was a shadow, a trick of lighting, a prank perhaps, or even an outright fabrication. If that grows to 9 people, well, you know those scuba divers, they were probably both drunk and high, amirite? (No, I'm not, scuba divers are typically sticklers about safety, so...) Same even for a few hundred, especially if the story is starting to spread, perhaps got a late nite news story, or what have you.

But, by the time 5,000 people have dived that bridge, most of whom don't know each other and many of whom don't even know the legend still come back with identical or very similar stories, you might have to consider that... No matter how unlikely you think it might be, there may just be some there there.

 

Oh yeah....I forgot. Those things are just happenstance like life from non life. You are just ungrateful let's face it. What a sad life!

 

Unless you have some sort of compelling evidence otherwise.

 

They are similar because they all have a similar cause....a dying brain.
Even when we are perfectly healthy and our brains are operating as they should we STILL "see" things that are not real. There is no reason to think that a dying brain is BETTER at interpreting the world around us.

 

We are all in the process of dying.

 

Not actively dying as when a brain begins to cease to function.

 

To one degree or another, everyone's brain loses functionality along the course. Look at Biden. To suggest that an NDE is the result of a dying brain, ignores that the experience is described as spiritual in nature by those who have them. For the brain to actually die after the heart stops can take hours and even days according to some research. And many who survived NDE have said that they could see how their total approach to life before had been jaded or in the wrong spirit, attitude and perspective. So it is a conscious judgment and choosing on their part as opposed to being driven by an oxygen starved delusion.

 

Two questions, two answers:

1) Is America a Christian nation?

On an institutional level, I think John Quincy Adams put it most accurately:

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.

For the most part, I think the same thing can be said for Western Civilization.

Since nations are also people and Christianity is the predominant religion in the United States, I think an argument can be made that America is a Christian nation. However, I think it could also be said (and has been said) that America is becoming, to use C.S. Lewis' description of his own country and Western Europe, a post-Christian nation.

Personally, I am more inclined to say we are pluralistic nation. Indeed, Christianity is the predominant religion in the USA, but it is not the only religion, and of course we have our agnostics and atheists.

2) Should America be a Christian nation?

In my opinion, America should be what it is - a pluralistic nation. Lest anyone has forgotten, it is our pluralism and the tolerance associated with it that makes our freedom of religion and conscience possible.

 

Good comments.

We need to recognize our constitution - plus non-Christian religions.

 

I've been hypoxic. I know what that's like. When I died, my memory had already been off for about 8 hours, and didn't turn back on for months when I finally started recovering. Aside from my NDE, I have no memories of anything during that time... Not a dream, not a nightmare, not anything. Not even the hours at home before I went to the ER. And while it did not happen to me, it is quite common for experiencers to see and hear things (like say, the conversations the surgery team was having at the time they coded, as but one example) they couldn't possibly know and reported them accurately. Lest you try to pawn that off on "Well, maybe they were partially conscious", well, not if they had a good anesthesiologist, but many report conversations that happened elsewhere, that they couldn't have heard if they were wide awake and fully in their right minds, and reported them accurately.

And that's before we start talking about memories of past lives that have been verified by survivors who knew the prior person, public records, etc. As just one example, about 12-15 years ago, there was a kid who remembered being a WWII fighter pilot, and dying under enemy fire. He knew the name of the person he used to be, the ship he was on (and it wasn't one most people have ever heard of, so....), the location and circumstances of when, where, and how he was shot down, later verified by DOD records, and even met with survivors of "his" old squadron, and despite being a 4-year-old kid (or thereabouts) he knew who they were, by name, on site, and these were 80- and 90-something year old men at the time. He's now in his late teens or early 20s and no longer remembers it, but it was well documented at the time. And like NDEs, his is just one story of thousands. It would likely be many more if Western parents were more open to listening to their very young kids when they tell similar stories, but they usually get written off as an active imagination.

Do some research before sticking your foot in your mouth.

 

I strongly doubt that being dead is an improvement.

 

Indeed, we do need to recognize our Constitution, and while I believe you are saying we need to practice religious tolerance in this country (and I would agree) I would be very careful about using the word "recognize" around religion(s). For example, the first step in establishing a state religion and/or theocracy is recognition. Furthermore, I think most atheists would tell you that there is no need to recognize religion in general or any religion in specific. Consistent with this is the principle that freedom of religion/conscience involves not only the right to believe, but the right to not believe, thus we can't force people to recognize the legitimacy and validity of other people's beliefs and/or belief systems. In this case, what requires recognition is the fact that rights often operate on both a positive and negative level. A lot of people don't like that, but it's a fundamental feature of many of the rights that are affirmed in our Constitution.

In the context of this discussion and debate and John Quincy Adams' erudite response to the questions mswan posed in the OP, what I would like more people, particularly Christians, to recognize is 1) our history and 2) exactly what Christianity contributed to our civil government, our laws and our rights traditions, and it's my firm belief that as we become, to use C.S. Lewis' words, a post-Christian society, we would all do well to defend and preserve those contributions, for they serve as the bedrock of Western Individualism and Liberalism (in the classical sense of the term) and the rights and freedom that emanate from them. Thus, my advice or message to my Christian friends is to forget the Quixotic Christian Nationalist dream of turning America into a theocracy and strive to your utmost to defend and preserve your religion's contributions to our nation.

 

Great post!

My two sentence post was too short to be thorough.

We do recognize that some religions have key celebrations, important practices such as prayer, dietary practices, etc. and equal treatment does apply.

We do have to be somewhat circumspect about which parts of our history we should try to defend and preserve. We've made progress and we need to be looking forward to continue that progress.

 

Doesn’t this also mean that god approved if the terrible things done by America too? The genocide of the indigenous people, slavery, destruction of the environment wars etc ?

 

Genocide? There are about five to six hundred tribes, totaling about nine million members today in America. It is estimated that in Columbus times there were as few as eight million natives here. What happened was a clash of cultures. The European American culture prevailed.
Slavery was not an American invention. It was practiced worldwide for thousands of years, beginning in the middle east and Africa. Our founding Fathers and our nation were born into that condition. Less than a hundred years after our nations birth, the practice of slavery was abolished in America.
As for pollution, it would seem to be that to live and exist is to pollute. So we clean up after ourselves as best we can. America does a good job at this in comparison to other nations.
America's wars have been justified for the most part. But if you want perfection, you will have to look to God, as no man or nation is perfect. So our blessings as Americans speak to his mercy and charity. It is good to keep this in mind, as to forget is to strain our tethers to the breaking point and be left to shifting seas.

 

*slow clap
You are awesome. Thank you for doing a better job of explaining why your faith based world view is such a terrible way for humanity to live than I ever could.