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Originally Posted by SUBMAN1
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Originally Posted by Redbrow
...or even worse to Christian theology!
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That could be the best thing that happened to them. The US of A is founded on it, as is its morals and laws. That is if you are an American.
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Yes and No. Christianity and especially the church to be a basis of America's founding was explicitly rejected back then, and has not been integral part of America. I lived by the same wrong thought myself too, though, until just weeks ago when some written comments on the issue made me stick my nose into history lessons and I learned that I was assuming totally wrong all the years. The formal Christian aspects like the formula "In God we trust" for example, as well as explicit religious formulations in vows and "one nation under one God" have been added by churchian lobbyism not before somewhere around the middle of the last century.
the treaty of Tripolis also often is given as a document of evidence that America "is not a christian country". during the negotiations witt he pirates in the Med, this was explicitly pointed out in speech and writing.
On a less formal and more general level though one must see of course that the European and American way of thinking, acting, seeing the world and life, and culture in general, without doubt has been massively influental on forming the cultural identity of europe, and america as well - for it were no culture-free people that boarded the Mayflower in 1620. And in good and in bad, Christianity and churches had their massive role to play in forming this european tradition: by forming it, or by seeing it getting formed in explicit resistence to Christian churches, what maybe even has proven to be far more impprtant just consider sciences, philosphy, enlightenment). Public life in america may be dominated by Christian values, but the formal structure of the state was designed not to be basing on Christian religion, or any religion at all. thus the state neither has the right to interfere with relgion, nor has relgion any right to instrumentalize religion for it's own purposes. Both have to stay separate.
Seen that way, the past decades went terribly wrong.
The strict separation of state and religion had light and shadow sides. On the one hand it helped tolerance and coexistence of different cults living side by side. On the other hand it did not prevent religious racism, the KuKluxKlan, and fanatism of the Christian rightwingers. On the one hand you can found any cult you want - on the other hand, things like suicidal sects, man-hurting psycho-cults and Scientology are considerted to be "religion" and are considered as off-limits for prevention and control. On the one hand you have, seen on a general, total scale, a basic attitude that in it's ideals wishes to respect other cultures and general mutual tolerance amongst mankind - on the other hand you see the religious right having secured solid beachheads in governmental and military institutions, bringing Christian fundamentalism into these institutions, and having been able to secure an alarming ammount of seats and offices throughout the federal and military structures. Their influence is growing, and is growing fast.
"All is in a state of flux" (Heraklit). and often, things (or nations) over time turn into exactly the oppopsite of what they wanted to be. And rules that were meant to secure that things stay as they were designed and wished to be - become the tools that implement the opposite that they were once meant to prevent.