No one denies that The Christian religion (or better said, Christian religions, since there is no single monumental Christian faith)have had an important role in the development of the US.  The point is, that there was just as spirited a debate about what that role was, which if any christianity would serve, how and when to seperate church and state from the beginning of the republic.  Seperationists can quote the founding fathers who thought that Christianity was dangerous hogwash, Fundies can quote the few devout and conservative Founders, but the poiint is that there has always been dissention; in the early days Christians dissented about the fundamentally secular/enlightenment nature of the constitution an other early structure of the country, in the mid-twentieth century secularists dissented from the religious decision to mention God in the Pledge of allegiance and on currency (though their objections didn’t stop the inclusion of the slogans any more than Christians managed to work god into the constitution).

When the US Constitution was written, there was ample opportunity to make it an explicitly Christian document, but they didn’t.  It is a secular document.  None of that Divine Right crap, authority flowed from the people, which truly was a revolutionary idea.

That, and our national motto from 1782 to 1956 wasn’t “In God We Trust”, it was “E Pluribus Unum”.

In any case, there is ample proof in their writings that even though the founders were either very spiritual or even Christians, they understood the dangers of basing a government on the dogma of faith and took great pains to keep such language OUT of the Constitution.

Whether the founders and their friends were or were not Christian has absolutely nothing to do with it.  If they thought we needed God in our lives to be a morally justified people then they did a piss poor job in their creation of our government.

Stuart, I’ve read The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of The United States already (and you can too thanks to Google Books). It’s pretty bad as far as being historically accurate and outright laughable at some of the false quotes it attempts to attribute to various Founding Fathers.

In short, it’s a very old propaganda piece that is hardly the stunning rebuke so many on the Christian Right seem to think it is.

Funny thing about Christians, they seem to rely largely on very old books for their Truths.

You undereducated folks need to read one book: “Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States”. This is chock full of quotes and support that our nation, its laws, its form of government was founded by and on Christian principles. Read this book before you swallow all the anti-Christian crap that the school teachers and school history book writers, etc. have been trying to sell to us for the past 50 years. It will give you a huge understanding of our Country.  Just read it.

Scott… dude…. asked and answered.

How come people like you have this certainty that if we read that book, we’d say: “Gee, you’re right.  I never thought of it like that.  I will now take years of education, letters by the framers themselves, direct explanations from the framers about what they were trying to accomplish, and a mountain of other evidence and throw it out completely because of a collection of quotes that not at all suspiciously seem to appear only in one small book by someone with an obvious agenda.  I don’t know how I could have been so wrong.“

Yeah.. bite me.

The book can be downloaded here.

The author appears to have repeated every last bit of patriotic+religious glurge at his disposal, along with a lot of flowery language about how the pagan mind cannot possibly comprehend or come up with anything worthwhile.  It is pretty much one long sermon from 1864.  Here’s a sample:

“History, as it records the events of ages, and the progress of nations to higher conditions of freedom and prosperity through revolutions, declares that “religion has been the companion of liberty in all her conflicts and in all her battles.“  The American Revolution adds another grand illustration of this great historic truth.  That splendid victory for liberty and constitutional governments was not won by numbers, nor military genius, nor by armies and navies, nor by any combination of human means, but only through liberty intensivied and made heroic through religion.  This was the breath of its life, and carried it sublimely on till victory crowned our arms and our banners waved over a free republic.  It was the inspirations of religion that girded our heroes for war, that guided our statesmen in civil councils, and gave to all the scenes of that grand conflict a Christian beauty, power, and glory…“

And it goes on like that, and on, and on, and on, attributing devout Christian faith to our glorious blah-blah-blah…

First of all I would like to know when and where the author interviewed “History” to gather these declarations.  Anytime someone intones; “History says this, and that, and this other thing…“ I know they carried their conclusions into battle with them.

No one could doubt that Adams was a Christian, that is not at issue.  Read the Constitution;  it is conspicuously bereft of such language.  They knew what they were doing; it was the subject of acrimonious debates at the time.

...but only through liberty intensivied and made heroic through religion.

You’re kidding, right?  Is he saying that by conforming to religious dogma, I can become even MORE free?

Hey, why don’t I put a straight-jacket on???  That way, I’ll be able to move around so much better.

What cracks me up is that Scott didn’t bother to read the comment I left just before his that says I’ve read the stupid book.

Methinks he needs to work a little more on his comprehension skills.

Probably a bug in their trolling script.

C’mon, Les.  Reading what others write and considering differing opinions is only for poor folks who don’t already know everything there is to know.  How could you be so arrogant as to expect those things from a such an enlightened scholar?

Please read the following:

I direct my deepest concern toward the mentality that has arisen against this backdrop—what might be described as a slide toward fundamentalism. This is not limited to the religious fundamentalism that has been the subject of so much debate, but includes ethnocentrism, chauvinism, racism and a dogmatic adherence to various ideologies, including those of the market. Such fundamentalisms flourish in conditions of chaos and disorder. What is common to all of them is that abstract principles and ideas take precedence over living human beings who in turn are forced into a subservient role. While I will not attempt a detailed analysis here, I believe that Albert Einstein(1879-1955)
expressed the essence of the issue when he stated, “principles are made for men and not men for principles.“ [5]To sustain and put into practice with any consistency the world view evoked by Einstein is not an easy task. People are quick to turn to pre-established rules that provide a ready-made answer to their questions or doubts. To borrow Simone Weil’s (1909-43) metaphor, people and society are ceaselessly dragged down by the forces of gravity (la pesanteur), a seemingly inherent force in human beings that leads us to debase ourselves. The essential nature of this force is that it causes us to lose sight of the sense of self that should form the core of our humanity.

This is from “2008 Peace Proposal,“ by Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, full text at: http://daisakuikeda.org/peaceb/proposals/pp2008.pdf
What fundamentalism, Christian, Muslim, or any other form, does is REMOVE humans from the dialogue. That is also the fundamental purpose of military training for those who must kill other humans: remove the humanity from the enemy, make them “Gooks”, “Japs”, “Infidels”, whatever. If you study the New Testament, you will find that is the opposite of what Jesus tried to teach: love one another (put humans first). “All we are saying, is Give Peace a Chance.“ 

But Jesus also taught put God above all things, abandon your family so you could love him more.

Maybe there were TWO messiahs wandering around Israel in 30AD, and the legends have confused them into one.

Misquotes by misanthropes.   
Please refer to the original Book of Q in “The Lost Gospel, the Book of Q, and Christian Origins,“ by Burton L. Mack.