Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s recent First Things essay, “Our Christian Nation,” may warm the hearts of Christian nationalists and confound historians and theologians who worry about continuing threats to the separation of church and state.
Dear Josh:
Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the US Congress 11/4/1796.
“Article 11.
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”As an atheist lefty, Im proud to be considered this traitor’s enemy.
America was never a christian nation.
and if he gave a shit about the founding documents outside of the 2nd amendment, he might know that.
Hell, “In god We Trust” only came around in force cause we thought it’d somehow magically keep the “evil communists” away in the 50s.
America was never a christian nation.
Okay, tap the breaks. America is absolutely a nation of Catholic and Protestant migrants, with much of the lower half dominated by Spanish/French missionaries while the northeast was originally settled by English, French, German, and Scandinavian Protestants fleeing the 30 years war, the Napoleonic Wars, the World Wars, and their attendant aftershocks.
De-Christianization in the US is a very new phenomenon, largely stemming from the economic expansion of the post WW2 era and the rapid circulation of professional workers during the Reagan Era. To say we “were never a Christian nation” you really need to explain where all these damned churches came from. Some of them are really old.
Hell, “In god We Trust” only came around in force cause we thought it’d somehow magically keep the “evil communists” away in the 50s.
Yes, but we’ve been having religious revivals in this country straight back to before the original founding. A big part of our history involves different sects of religious diaspora migrating to the US as refugees fleeing this or that pogrom, from French Huguenots fleeing to Louisiana to West New York Mormons fleeing to Utah to Polish Jews fleeing to Brooklyn to Black Baptists fleeing to Harlem.
The “In God We Trust” thing was the comical low-hanging fruit passed by a 1950s Congress that wanted to conflate the broadly popular idea of Christian religious doctrine with the far more controversial idea of Market Capitalism.
Yeah, the people that came to build european colonies on this land were christian extremists, but that doesnt make America a christian nation… Especially since the very foundation of the nation, a staunch separation of church and state with no law establishing one religion over another, was one of the very beginning principles.
Its right there in the first amendment.
America is a land where religion should have no more presence but between a person and their god, as far as Jefferson was concerned at least, and I’m sure many other founders shared that sentiment.
Yeah, the people that came to build european colonies on this land were christian extremists, but that doesnt make America a christian nation…
Not anymore. But that’s a product of the current generation divesting (or simply losing touch with) the religious communities of their elders. Go back 40 years and you could very credibly claim that America was a Christian Nation in every way that mattered. Billy Graham was a fixture in every White House. Religious fundamentalism was driving foreign and domestic policy. Individual elected delegates were de facto required to be members of large religious communities in order to take and hold office or mobilize large bodies of political activism.
Its right there in the first amendment.
The First Amendment has no teeth. Religious minorities in the US are routinely persecuted, by the state, both explicitly and implicitly for their membership and their beliefs. This hit the ceiling in the wake of 9/11, when any kind of Muslim religious affiliation was borderline criminal. Police wiretapping and surveillance and extrajudicial punishment of Muslim individuals and groups (very obvious breaches of the 4th and 5th and 8th amendments) was routine. People were deported entirely on the grounds of their religious affiliation. States passed laws outright banning the practice of Sharia custom and culture. And that’s just in the last few decades.
You can find all sorts of crazy prohibitions, sanctions, and outright persecution of religious minorities, from the hounding of Mormons across the American Midwest to the denial of legal asylum to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.
America is a land where religion should have no more presence but between a person and their god
Okay, sure, that’s a beautiful ideal. But it isn’t the reality on the ground. Certainly not in a country where clery post the names and addresses of abortion providers, encourage their congregants to kill them, and then suffer no meaningful legal culpability.
The separation between church and state, in practice, is a fig leaf that serves more to protect religious institution from taxation and regulation than to keep religious beliefs from affecting public policy or election results. If anything, it has created a kind of paradox in which religious leaders have more influence over politics than lay congregants.
The United States of America, the nation standing above all others as being most desperately in need of being put out of the collective misery of all the people of the Earth. I wish I had something positive to say about it however I have that odd compunction against lying.
If you’ve never felt the need to lie, you’ve lived a blessed existence.
It’s a common theme. Why lie? Why live in denial blaming demons for urges when if you face reality you live a much happier existence.
Why lie?
Cause your parents will throw you out of the house if they know your true feelings toward people of the same gender or what’s in that vape pen.
Cause your teachers will fail you if you express your real political views or historical understanding on a term paper. Or your future prospective employer won’t hire you, if they know you’ve got union sympathies.
Cause the ER won’t treat you if they know you’re pregnant, in a state that has made it politically dangerous to care for someone having a miscarriage.
Cause your migrant status means always lying about your real nationality.
Cause you live in a Christian Nation and your financial, social, and physical well-being are predicated on people believing you aren’t some kind of baby-eating Satanist for holding heretical beliefs.
When the truth is an excuse to do violence against people, lies are a commonplace means of self-defense.
The same Josh Hawley who tried to overturn the 2020 election? The same who egged on insurrectionists outside the capitol on Jan 6th?
I just want to make sure we are talking about the same Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley here, so there’s absolutely no confusion.
Let’s count the FBI https://twitter.com/FreeStateWill/status/1757071992765698496
