It's a natural byproduct of church & state. When one merges with the other, the church is corrupted with people only pursuing their own ends and using their religion as a mask, behind which they can justify their actions (or, in the fine case Tristan gave, advance their own goals under the idea of "when in Rome, do as the Romans do"). Likewise, the government itself suffers. People are pursuing the goals of their religion under the dogmatic (and false) idea that they have to advance it, lest society crumble. Never mind one nation "under God."

As I keep saying, religion has basic principles which are usually to do good, work hard, and stay reverent. It's when they abandon these and take lessons from smaller, more insignificant parts to benefit themselves or hurt others that things go bad.

You must be pretty rightious to sit in judgement of the church. Is there coruption in the church? Of course, its run by men. That being said, so is everyone, and everything else. Christian believeing people are the founders of the greatest nation that ever existed. Our country is a model of Gods particular grace tward the christian movement. No ones perfect, but no other country has done it better. And as folks like you take him out of our goverment, and our schools, you will see his grace leave from our goverment and our schools.

JayD,

The Lord needs no defense, nor does a people who follow him...
I really become quite sad when folk try to sell the idea that this country was founded on Christianity.
I think it is a worn out human attempt to gain ground with a facade of origin or strength in numbers.

OD
The Christian Nation Myth (click for whole article)

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Farrell Till Whenever the Supreme Court makes a decision that in any way restricts the intrusion of religion into the affairs of government, a flood of editorials, articles, and letters protesting the ruling is sure to appear in the newspapers. Many protesters decry these decisions on the grounds that they conflict with the wishes and intents of the "founding fathers." Such a view of American history is completely contrary to known facts. The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible. These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in Age of Reason, a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as "the father of the American Revolution." To this day, many mistakenly consider him an atheist, even though he was an out spoken defender of the Deistic view of God. Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe. Fundamentalist Christians are currently working overtime to convince the American public that the founding fathers intended to establish this country on "biblical principles," but history simply does not support their view. The men mentioned above and others who were instrumental in the founding of our nation were in no sense Bible-believing Christians. Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was fiercely anti-cleric. In a letter to Horatio Spafford in 1814, Jefferson said, "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes" (George Seldes, The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371). In a letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith, he wrote, "It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest" (August 6, 1816). Jefferson was just as suspicious of the traditional belief that the Bible is "the inspired word of God." He rewrote the story of Jesus as told in the New Testament and compiled his own gospel version known as The Jefferson Bible, which eliminated all miracles attributed to Jesus and ended with his burial. The Jeffersonian gospel account contained no resurrection, a twist to the life of Jesus that was considered scandalous to Christians but perfectly sensible to Jefferson's Deistic mind. In a letter to John Adams, he wrote, "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise" (August 15, 1820). In saying this, Jefferson was merely expressing the widely held Deistic view of his time, which rejected the mysticism of the Bible and relied on natural law and human reason to explain why the world is as it is. Writing to Adams again, Jefferson said, "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" (April 11, 1823). These were hardly the words of a devout Bible-believer. Jefferson didn't just reject the Christian belief that the Bible was "the inspired word of God"; he rejected the Christian system too. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he said of this religion, "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites" (quoted by newspaper columnist William Edelen, "Politics and Religious Illiteracy," Truth Seeker, Vol. 121, No. 3, p. 33). Anyone today who would make a statement like this or others we have quoted from Jefferson's writings would be instantly branded an infidel, yet modern Bible fundamentalists are frantically trying to cast Jefferson in the mold of a Bible believing Christian. They do so, of course, because Jefferson was just too important in the formation of our nation to leave him out if Bible fundamentalists hope to sell their "Christian-nation" claim to the public. Hence, they try to rewrite history to make it appear that men like Thomas Jefferson had intended to build our nation on "biblical principles." The irony of this situation is that the Christian leaders of Jefferson's time knew where he stood on "biblical principles," and they fought desperately, but unsuccessfully, to prevent his election to the presidency. Saul K. Padover's biography related the bitterness of the opposition that the clergy mounted against Jefferson in the campaign of 1800 The religious issue was dragged out, and stirred up flames of hatred and intolerance. Clergymen, mobilizing their heaviest artillery of thunder and brimstone, threatened Christians with all manner of dire consequences if they should vote for the "in fidel" from Virginia. This was particularly true in New England, where the clergy stood like Gibraltar against Jefferson (Jefferson A Great American's Life and Ideas, Mentor Books, 1964, p.116). William Linn, a Dutch Reformed minister in New York City, made perhaps the most violent of all attacks on Jefferson's character, all of it based on religious matters. In a pamphlet entitled Serious Considerations on the Election of a President, Linn "accused Jefferson of the heinous crimes of not believing in divine revelation and of a design to destroy religion and `introduce immorality'" (Padover, p. 116). He referred to Jefferson as a "true infidel" and insisted that "(a)n infidel like Jefferson could not, should not, be elected" (Padover, p. 117). He concluded the pamphlet with this appeal for "Christians to defeat the `infidel' from Virginia" Will you, then, my fellow-citizens, with all this evidence... vote for Mr. Jefferson?... As to myself, were Mr. Jefferson connected with me by the nearest ties of blood, and did I owe him a thousand obligations, I would not, and could not vote for him. No; sooner than stretch forth my hand to place him at the head of the nation "Let mine arms fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone" (quoted by Padover, p. 117). Why would contemporary clergymen have so vigorously opposed Jefferson's election if he were as devoutly Christian as modern preachers claim? The answer is that Jefferson was not a Christian, and the preachers of his day knew that he wasn't. In the heat of the campaign Jefferson wrote a letter to Benjamin Rush in which he angrily commented on the clerical efforts to assassinate his personal character "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." That statement has been inscribed on Jefferson's monument in Washington. Most people who read it no doubt think that Jefferson was referring to political tyrants like the King of England, but in reality, he was referring to the fundamentalist clergymen of his day. After Jefferson became president, he did not compromise his beliefs. As president, he refused to issue Thanksgiving proclamations, a fact that Justice Souter referred to in his concurring opinion with the majority in Lee vs. Weisman, the recent supreme-court decision that ruled prayers at graduation ceremonies unconstitutional. Early in his first presidential term, Jefferson declared his firm belief in the separation of church and state in a letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptists "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state." Before sending the letter to Danbury, Jefferson asked his attorney general, Levi Lincoln, to review it. Jefferson told Lincoln that he considered the letter a means of "sowing useful truths and principles among the people, which might germinate and become rooted among their political tenets" (quoted by Rob Boston in "Myths and Mischief," Church and State, March 1992). If this was indeed Jefferson's wish, he certainly succeeded. Twice, in Reynolds vs. the United States (1879) and Everson vs. Board of Education (1947), the Supreme Court cited Jefferson's letter as "an authoritative declaration of the scope of the [First] Amendment" and agreed that the intention of the First Amendment was "to erect `a wall of separation between church and state.'" Confronted with evidence like this, some fundamentalists will admit that Thomas Jefferson was not a Bible-believer but will insist that most of the other "founding fathers"--men like Washington, Madison, and Franklin--were Christians whose intention during the formative years of our country was to establish a "Christian nation." Again, however, history does not support their claim. James Madison, Jefferson's close friend and political ally, was just as vigorously opposed to religious intrusions into civil affairs as Jefferson was. In 1785, when the Commonwealth of Virginia was considering passage of a bill "establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion," Madison wrote his famous "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" in which he presented fifteen reasons why government should not be come involved in the support of any religion. This paper, long considered a landmark document in political philosophy, was also cited in the majority opinion in Lee vs. Weisman. The views of Madison and Jefferson prevailed in the Virginia Assembly, and in 1786, the Assembly adopted the statute of religious freedom of which Jefferson and Madison were the principal architects. The preamble to this bill said that "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical." The statute itself was much more specific than the establishment clause of the U. S. Constitution "Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise [sic] diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities". Realizing that whatever legislation an elected assembly passed can be later repealed, Jefferson ended the statute with a statement of contempt for any legislative body that would be so presumptuous "And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with the powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable, would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right" (emphasis added). After George Washington's death, Christians made an intense effort to claim him as one of their own. This effort was based largely on the grounds that Washington had regularly attended services with his wife at an Episcopal Church and had served as a vestryman in the church. ...

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JayD,

The Lord needs no defense, nor does a people who follow him...
This is true. I just get sick of people using the church as there personal punching bag. Blaming it for everyones problems.
I really become quite sad when folk try to sell the idea that this country was founded on Christianity.
I wasnt just talking goverment, I was talking about the nation as a whole. Were they corupt? YES, they were men, but it was common to see families at prayer for dinner.AND before bed. Prayer in the school. Prayer at goverment meetings. Churches were filled on sunday morning. God, Jesus, was a big part of Americas everyday life especialy when it was founded. Thats What most came here for.
I think it is a worn out human attempt to gain ground with a facade of origin or strength in numbers.

OD
The power of the prayers of many, can be strong.

Yeah.
It should be the atheists, the secularists, the feminists, the gays and lesbians, the ACLU...
THEY should be used as the personal punching bag, blamed for everyone's problems...
< end sarcasm >

I see no precedent in the bible for invoking a necessity that church and state be entangled. I see no command from God that his rules need to be adopted by the state.
Heck, Jesus functioned in a government that was clearly different from his religious teachings, and did he ever preach that his religion should be promulgated in the government???

I find irony in the pretense that if we take religion out of government, then the government will fall or be hindered by influence of a scorned God. Isn't God still in the hearts of the PEOPLE???
Which is more important? God being in the hearts of the people? Or God being in the government?

Quite frankly, this whole pretense that government will be harmed if it removes God is nothing more than a lame threat to try to justify religion's insinuation into the government. It's typical of some who use their religion as a weapon of fear, instead of others who their religion as an instrument of hope.


And why isn't it today? At least 75% of the nation counts themselves as Christian. I know of no statistics over time on the issue, but has that number really dropped at all over time?
And how does that get "fixed"? Do we bring back Christianity to the people by putting it into the government?
Because quite frankly, I think the insistence that the government and Christianity be intertwined is part of the reason people take a dim and suspicious view of some of Christianity.

If the men who follow Christianity need to be increased, then quite frankly I suggest the people concerned WORK ON THAT instead of trying to get religion into the government.


I don't think it's "prayer" which is really the issue here.
Not really.

One of my favorite phrases is "As long as they still give tests in school, prayer will never be banned."
One of the reasons it's my favorites is because it acknowledges a truth.
Prayer IS NOT banned in schools. Kids can STILL pray in school. Silently.

Jesus preached about how people should pray in silence by going into their closets. He taught about how people who pray demonstratively for show should be seen.
And quite frankly, a kid can bow his head and pray in school any time he wants. But some want the demonstration of a group praying out loud instead.

What good does it do to insist on prayer in school if the kid gets home and the family doesn't even bother to pray over their meal before chowing down?
I think there is a lost focus here.
If God needs to be anywhere, he needs to be in the hearts of his people.

Uh, oh, He's gonna withhold His grace and forsake America. Better scramble for your rosaries and start repenting.

Is the church necessary? No, we can just as easily find truth within ourselves. Following a book doesn't bring knowledge. A set of written codes, laws, and rituals only serve to complicate things and restrict our knowledge. What's worse, unflinching belief in such things (as you appear to be demonstrating) means that even if you're wrong, there's no way you can be enlightened. I'm not saying christianity is wrong (even though it is flawed), just that one has to be open in order to advance their own wisdom.

LOL, foundit, your crazy. I wasnt saying half that.

You are correct. I was talking about things which you originate at least half of.
I was simply trying to put some perspective on why some of Christianity was being scrutinized.

If anybody thought that you were originating some of the stuff I was talking about, that would be a mistake.

From JayD:

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This is true. I just get sick of people using the church as there personal punching bag. Blaming it for everyones problems

But isn't it so that judgment is to begin at the house of the Lord?

Shouldn't that which is to be the giver of light to the world ought to either stand tall and right or be corrected and humbly repent?

JayD, I don't say these things to snare you with difficulties. But I do say them to acknowledge the severe disparity in the big old showy stuff of Christianity and the meek and lowly-hearted lover of all mankind who walked the sea of Galilee.

How much has that persona been overtaken by the Westernized Christian elite who demand rights and cast judgment on others?

OD

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