Submitted by Alex G, Dec 6, 2006 21:53

First off, let's address the issue of America as a Christian nation. The notion is clearly absurd, despite its being rattled off as a foregone conclusion by fundamentalist bloggers and radio personalities. I'll demonstrate.

The derivative defense: America's laws are technical extensions of Biblical prescriptions. Find me an article of the constitution, law or statute that restates an impractical Biblical restriction and you get a cookie. There are plenty to choose from in matters as varied as diet, dress, marriage and sexuality, war and disease. Yet, in constitutional and statutory manifestation, what do we have? Restrictions on murder? They have those in China. Regulation of marriage? China. Not eating pigs? Not China. And not America either.

Typically, the argument is presented in a hybridized form - the founding fathers were Christians, and some portion of American law resembles some portion of Biblical law, hence America is Christian. This brings me to the second defense:

The bloodline defense: The founding fathers were Christian, so the nation is Christian. This is as dubious as the least. The issue of deism has been explored extensively, so I need not rehash the evidence here. It should be sufficient to show that a person's creation only bears the categorical designations of its creator to the extent that those designations were imparted on the object by its creator. Put another way, I may be a Jew but my squash soup is not. It is a nonreligious soup.

The tradition defense: This may well be the most insidious of the defenses insofar as it conjures a mystical Eden where America was absent its current moral dilemmas. It is generally framed: America has always been a Christian nation, and will fall apart if it does not continue to be. What it fails to account for is every injury or inequity that an adjustment in law or culture was intended to repair. We may well have been more Christian a hundred years ago (though, given the number of people that self-identify as Christian now, I rather doubt it). We were also a nation that lynched black people - what happened to that tradition? I don't recall that being an atheistic institution. So when was your Eden exactly?

What saddens me is that these issues are manufactured, as far as I can tell, to increase the conservative vote. It works, but this isn't news - fear has always been a good electoral motivator. The trouble is that, having whipped your bigots into a frenzy, you no longer have a Democrat problem; now you have a bigot problem.

Enjoy your bigots.

Alex

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