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Is the United States a religious country? What did the people in your state think when they ratified your State Constitution?
Some of you may have received this as a forwarded email message. I did, too, so I don't know the original author...
Nevertheless, it is interesting that there is mention of God or an Almighty Being in every one of the fifty state Constitutions. So, is America a religious nation? Should it be? Most of the polls say yes. What do you think?
#1 - Fri Jun 12, 2009 2:01 AM EDTYes, America should regain her Faith in God, as she was founded on it!
I think that this is still a petty and divisive question, being perpetuated for reasons I cannot comprehend.
Are some/many/most of the citizens religious? Yes. Is the USofA a Christian nation? No, and it is prohibited by its own supreme law from ever becoming such. What's so hard to understand about that?
I've handled this one many times over the years.
Pretty much every one speaks of being grateful, not ruling under the laws of one sect or another. Frankly I'd be happier if, like the Constitution, they just mentioned a creator instead of the specific Christian deity.
I would think that most, if not all, would be struck down in court if pushed, but most people don't see the need since we don't operate under the steel boot of religious theocracy. In the long run, that makes it fairly unimportant as things go since the federal government doesn't push (by Constitutional law) one supernatural belief above any other.
I do think it's kind of funny, though. So many of those mention religious liberty, yet if you threw in Odin, Thor, Zeus, Allah or any other God the outcry would be spectacular. Usually "religious liberty" means "Hey, my religion because it's the right one. The rest of you can piss off."
Since the polls indicate a 75% majority believe in some deity, yeah, we're a religious country. We're just not *run* like one or by one, thankfully.
#2 - Fri Jun 12, 2009 8:13 AM EDTmadbrnr - Your words, not mine...and you're welcome to your opinion of course, as am I. We do have Religious freedom in America, and you are free to worship anyway, and any "deity"you want, as am I.
btw - do you live your life by the poll results, or do you study and make up your own mind. That is what freedom is all about; not being dictated to or harrassed into anything!
Of course they're my words. I typed them. Had they been yours I would have used the quote function and copied and pasted some of yours. So, what does that have to do with anything? A question was asked, the first line in this article, and I answered it as I saw fit. The second question asked was unanswerable since no one alive today *knows* what anyone was thinking 200+ years ago (the earliest proclamations/ratifications), but we can know that only land owning white men had any say in it, for what it's worth.
Of course we can all worship at the alter of supernaturalism as we see fit. What I mentioned was, hey, did anyone notice when written it's only the Christian deity mentioned? I then extrapolated, based on cases I have seen over the 16 years on line, that, IMO, mention of any other deity would result in an outcry. Betcha that if they redesigned the current paper currency to reflect the views of one of the other larger religions in the US and put "In Allah We Trust" on there as well my point would be proven.
I quoted poll results for number of people that are religious. That's it. Studies, counts, poll results - they all show the same numbers, give or take a couple of percent. Now, what does that have to do with anything, least of all how I live my life?
Dave,
I don't know that I would go so far as to say the word God specifically refers only to a Christian Deity. After all, is there really a difference between God and Allah? They both refer to the same Creator. (Of course, that assumes that, ultimately, there is only one Creator of the universe.)
The only point in my saying this, and perhaps I should have been more clear, is that if you examine the pantheon of Gods, at last count over 20,000, there are far more specific words for God or a God. While, yes Allah is a translation of God, I doubt you'd get the majority of people to admit they are worshipping the same thing, for they are not since the religions are fairly mutually exclusive. Pretty much saying "God" is saying what you worship is derived from one of the Abrahamaic derivations whereas "Creator" can apply to most everybody.
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