I just wish people would take a seriously honest look at the motivations behind their actions.
Exactly why are the Christians asking the government to specifically and exclusively endorse their religion above all others?
Why are the atheists trying to remove references to even the most Deist version of “God” from everything?
I’ve done plenty of research on our founders and while quite religious, they understood (from some very fresh experiences we thankfully don’t have the misfortune of knowing in our lifetime) that a secular government was both proper and absolutely key to protecting the very religion they love so deeply. No, they never wished to completely remove reference to “God” or religion in general from all public arenas, but they absolutely meant to set limits on its use by the government in order to prevent the probable theocracy that would entail.
The founders certainly did not want Christians to take their reference to “God” as their own and use it as some sort of national mandate to push Christianity onto everyone else with public funds and manpower. I think Washington and John Adams (not to mention the entire Senate) were pretty clear about that with the Treaty of Tripoli where they specifically spelled out that this country [United States of America] was not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. Treaty of Peace and Friendship “Treaty of Tripoli”
This Treaty did not “establish” America as being a non-Christian country, but certainly showed the true mind-set of our founders. We can assume they were of the same mind when drafting the constitution. Despite being Christian, they did not want the government “founded” on that, or any other religion.
I certainly can’t speak any better on it than Mr. Jon Meacham, currently a managing editor for Newsweek. He has quite the background in religion to be sure and it would be just as important to read where he’s been as it is to read his thoughts on religion in our country today.
It would be helpful to open our minds a bit (from both sides of the issue) and understand better where we came from and how our founders have kept extremism in check (again, from both sides) for all these years.
Here is a quick Bio on Jon Meacham. I think it will help in believing he has the background to understand both sides of this issue better than most of us.
My frustration is mostly when people make arguments for their “side” without even a basic understanding of the real issues at hand. In the case of the Mt. Soledad Cross, when you state that you want that cross to stand on government land, then you are literally telling the government that you want them to help control your religion. As I’ve said, be careful what you wish for.
Forget for a second that it is an atheist leading the action against the cross’ location (I’m not saying he has the best intentions). Think only of the issue. The cross is on government land. When you take the emotion out of it and just look at the facts of the case, it’s actually a pretty easy call. That’s why the atheist won over 40 times in a row in court. He didn’t even have a lawyer the first few times, or the ACLU for that matter (he didn’t really need them).
