Turns out some dude who wants to be Prez, John McCain of AZ, is tripping around town tooting about how America was “founded as a Christian nation.” Somebody needs to clue this dude in before he makes a fatter fool outa himself! Any dudette or dude who squeaked through sixth-grade history knows that in the late 1700s Americans weren’t Christians.
First, Washington, Jefferson and the other dudes who stitched us together as a nation weren’t Christian:
“Legal scholar William Lee Miller writes that the chief founders of the nation were all Deists* -- he lists Washington, Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Paine, though many more leaders of the founding era could be added (Benjamin Rush, John Witherspoon, David Rittenhouse, Philip Freneau, Joel Barlow, Aaron Burr, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, Tench Coxe, to name some).Second, back then even the people weren’t Christian:
“The founders were of a ‘liberality of spirit which must forever and properly remain a scandal to the rank and file of professing American Christians.’"
“… at the time of the founding [of the U.S.], historians estimate that only about 17% of Americans professed formal religious adherence, a historic low point.
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* Deists “believed in a divine providence knowable only through reason and experience and not prone to intervene in the affairs of men.”
**The quotes came from a review in the LA Times of the new book by Garry Wills, 'Head and Heart: American Christianities.' Go HERE for more of it.
Thnx to basicabe for the fine foto of Uncle Sam
2 comments:
Well, the Christians sure do want to take it over. That of course would be it's downfall.
Forget McCain - give me Jefferson any day.
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