Is America a Christian Nation? – A Hippie Rant For July 4th

So I am still hearing from people insisiting that this nation, the USA, is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles.

So I cannot help but ask, just when was it that the USA practiced those Christian values, and Christian principles?

Was that back in the day when we “removed” the people already living here, either thru wiping them out with bullets, or removing them with disease, or removing them to portions of the country that were less desirable (until gold or other valuable resources were found, then we “moved” them again)?

Was that back in the day when a large part of the population was considered “property”, and could be killed, mutilated, and bred like cattle?

Perhaps America was “Christian” when Pinkerton guards were shooting down strikersat he behest of both miners and the goveremt?

Or perhaps America was “Christian” when it enacted laws that led the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans (the majority CITIZENS) without trial or charge simply because of their ancestry?

Was it when “we” decided that Chinese people/ people of Chinese ancestry were NOT to be permitted to become US citizens no matter how long they lived here, no matter the fact that they had been born in the USA?

Or was it when people were denied the right to vote based on their sex or their skin color?

Perhaps during the period of McCarthyism, which blacklisted and destroyed the careers, reputations, lives of so many because of their (real or imagined) political beliefs?

Maybe America was “Christian” while it engaged in National Security actions that resulted in the radiation, biological, and chemical experiments that killed, sickened, or disabled so many unwitting servicemen and civilians?

Maybe America was Christian when it practiced legal segregation in the South, and defacto segregation in the North, when it treated “her” non-White citizens as second class citizens?

I know that there are those who will my asking of these questions as “America bashing”….I’m sorry if they see that not glossing over these portions/actions of the nation I love as “America bashing. I happen to think that one reason why this nation is so often divided is because we don’t understand ALL our history.

And I am sorry that people would smear’s Christ’s name by still insisting that nation that allows such things is a “Christian” nation.

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Wilson: Early Presidents Not Religious
“The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity….

“Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.”
— The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831, first sentence quoted in John E. Remsberg, “Six Historic Americans,” second sentence quoted in Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father/Mother accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

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