This American Life on NPR: Godless America

[evlbstrd]

"At a time when House Majority Leader Tom Delay calls for enacting a "Biblical worldview" in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals in the selection of judges, in public school science classes and elsewhere, This American Life spends an hour trying to remember why anyone liked the separation of church and state in the first place. Julia Sweeney, among others, gives a full-throated defense of godlessness. Julia's faith began to crack after reading Biblical passages like the one pictured here, of Abraham about to cut the throat of his beloved son, Isaac."

Julia Sweeney gets most of the last half of the hour, and pretty much mirrors my own rejection of religion. Whether you are a practicing an Abrahamic faith or not, this is worth hearing.

edit to add link, dammit.

http://www.thislife.org/

[cap]

1. even the religious amongst us ask, "Whose Bible?"

Biblical worldview... ask the Pilgrims why they came to the US in the first place. They didnt want to worship the way the Church of England wanted them to.

The rest of us dont want to worship the way Tom Delay wants us to.

[evlbstrd]

2. Did you hear the broadcast?

That point is made very clearly. But, for me, Sweeney's monologue "Losing God," was incredible. She was raised Catholic, as I was, and decided to attend a Bible Study Class. Now, religious education in the Church didn't actually involve a lot of Bible reading, more Church doctrine. As she read the Bible from beginning to end, she had more questions, and a patronizing priest to answer them.

[tjwmason]

4. Going back to the beginning

As you say there were strict puritans - but in Connecticut and Virginia the C.ofE. was the established church. America has always been the land of religious diversity - which caused the ban on religious tests and a national church in the constitution.

Whose Bible? and now whose religion?

[cap]

5. my point exactly...

whose Bible? and whose Religion? That's why Protestants split from Catholics and then all the Protestant sects arose...

Never mind what about all the non-Christians -- which book do they choose?

[NMMNG]

3. I'm sorry I missed this

I did read a wonderful article in "The Week", however, on the Founding Fathers and the roots of our nation. It's helpful to have on hand when dealing with those who insist that the FF intended us to be a Christian theocracy.

{snip}the Founders declined to give religion the official endorsement of their new government.

{snip}

What were they afraid of?
The same intolerance and bigotry that drove many of the original settlers to the New World. The monarchs of the Old World, they knew, had often invoked God as an excuse to make war. Not only had Europe’s kings and princes waged the Crusades in the name of Christianity, they had fought bloody battles of succession and conquest among themselves, with Protestants and Catholics slaughtering one another for political power. “I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross,” wrote John Adams. “Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!” When the Founders gathered to write the Constitution in 1787, they were determined to set a different course, so as not to repeat the mistakes of history.

How did they achieve this?
By largely excluding God and religion from our national blueprint.

{snip}

What was the result?
For all practical purposes, it put the U.S. on the road to secularism. The earliest official expression of this sentiment probably came on June 7, 1797, when the Senate ratified the Treaty of Tripoli, which made peace with the Barbary pirates of North Africa. In declaring that we had no quarrel with the faith of any “Mehomitan” (Muslim) nation, the treaty—ratified unanimously—stipulated that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” Evangelicals of the time were outraged, but the nation’s course was set.

http://www.theweekmagazine.com/article.asp?id=975


edit to add {snips} which wouldn't show up when enclosed in brackets [] ?