alt.education

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:59:32 -0400, buckeye wrote:

> Nope, the term is the one used by the RRR most often
>
> I point you to this comment

Read the court case yesterday.. bad reasoning, bad decision. I read your
challenge before this case.

Anyway, the term "christian nation" should be challenged by better legal
minds it seems, or arguments heard before a less biased court. That
lawyer should never had been able to get away with such a argument.

There are two issues that must be kept separate.

The historically documented religious beliefs of each founder as
individuals. This is an cold academic matter. From what I have gathered,
lumping them all under the label of 'christian' is pretty sloppy from a
religious standpoint. I would hope any historian would be more
sophisticated then to just fling this out without some major
qualifications, as El Guapo pointed out.

The other issue that effects us today of course is intent. "This country
was founded as a Christian nation" does imply religious intent but it
tries to use history to prove the intent by making the term seem self-
evident (i.e. founders were all christian) and therefore neutral.

This bait and switch proof is pretty tricky but should end in defeat.

I can make the argument that because they were 'christian' they did not
want religion inside the state. Again, because they were Christians.
Case being the religion of christianity had, up to that point, led to
intolerable and destructive divisions in the union, as it had in all of
European history, so the matter of religion had to become a non-matter to
the state. This also was pretty cohesive with the humanist philosophies
that influenced these 'Christians' at the time.