Hence begins the first rant.
The first e-mail was one warning me that the Book of Revelations defines the anti-Christ as, in this individual's opinion, Obama. Now I am no fan of either candidate. That is the one political statement I am confident in making. I don't like either one of them. But the anti-Christ? Uhm, no. That is a bit much.
But that isn't even the good part of the e-mail. The e-mail goes on to say the following:
Dear friends, as I was listening to a news program last night, I watched in horror as Barack Obama made the statement with pride. . .'we are no longer a Christian nation; we are now a nation of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, . . . As with so many other statements I've heard him (and his wife) make, I never thought I'd see the day that I'd hear something like that from a presidential candidate in this nation. To think our forefathers fought and died for the right for our nation to be a Christian nation--and to have this man say with pride that we are no longer that.
First off, while we may be a predominantly Christian nation, there are many others in this country who do not adhere to Christianity. Obama's words did not make it so. It just is. If you didn't know that before, you need to crawl out from under that rock once in awhile.
But my favorite sentence..."To think our forefathers fought and died for the right for our nation to be a Christian nation."
Try reading a history book along with that Bible, Jack. Have you actually read the Bill of Rights? Do you know what it really says? Let me help you out here. The first amendment says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The word Christianity is no where indicated in that statement. While yes, the founding fathers were predominantly Christian, they were not all Christian. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, and a strong opponent of organized religion, having authored the following in a correspondence to John Adams:
The whole history of these books [The Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.
Likewise, George Washington, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin are credited with speeches and writings that opposed organized church doctrine.
My point is, it is no accident that the word Christianity does not appear in the first amendment. Our forefathers were not trying to create a Christian nation. In fact, they were fleeing a Christian nation...a nation that held to one Christian doctrine only, and did not allow for variant religious practices, even other forms of Christianity. They were strictly opposed to a national religion, and were trying to create a nation that allowed all individuals the right to practice, or not, as they saw fit.
The freedom of religion does not in any way equate to the freedom to practice Christianity only.
To believe it is shameful to say that we are a nation where all can practice freely, whether we are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, Buddhists, Deists or what have you, you are in the wrong country, Jack.
This is America...Land of the Free. That is what our forefathers fought and died for.
1 comment:
What these people fail to grasp is that America was a Christian nation by default, not by design. That just happens to be the religion - with varying degrees of observance - of the people who lived here at the time. Christianity was sort of like the English language. The Founding Fathers didn't set out to create a haven for their language; it was just a fact in the background.
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