“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”—John Adams
We must resist becoming a Theocracy
"As we witness yet again the brutal and bloody consequences of religious intolerance in the form of ISIS, we have a majority of Republicans pining for a Christian America. Proponents of converting the United States into a theocracy do not see the terrible parallel between religious excess in the Middle East and here at home, but they would not because blindness to reason is the inevitable consequence of religious zealotry.
Conservatives who so proudly tout their fealty to the Constitution want to trash our founding document by violating the First Amendment in hopes of establishing Christianity as the nation’s religion. This is precisely what the Constitution prohibits:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
How terribly ironic that the louder Christians protest against the excesses of Islam, the more they agitate for Christian excess. We really need to stop this ridiculous argument about being a Christian nation. If there should be any doubt, let us listen to the founding fathers themselves.
This from Thomas Jefferson in an April 11, 1823, letter to John Adams:
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. ... But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding....
These are not the words of a man who wishes to establish a Christian theocracy. Jefferson promoted tolerance above all and said earlier that his statute for religious freedom in Virginia was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammeden, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.” He specifically wished to avoid the dominance of a single religion.
Let us be perfectly clear: We are not now, nor have we ever been, a Christian nation. Our founding fathers explicitly and clearly excluded any reference to “God” or “the Almighty” or any euphemism for a higher power in the Constitution. Not one time is the word “god” mentioned in our founding document. Not one time.
The facts of our history are easy enough to verify. Anybody who ignorantly insists that our nation is founded on Christian ideals need only look at the four most important documents from our early history — the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers and the Constitution — to disprove that ridiculous religious bias. All four documents unambiguously prove our secular origins."
(Jeff Schweitzer Scientist and former White House Senior Policy Analyst; Ph.D. in Neurophysiology-Huffington Post)
Our constitutional rights are at risk.
Secretary of Education Candidate Betsy DeVos favors charter schools and vouchers over public schools.Charter schools draw tax payer funding away from public schools and charter schools aren’t burdened by the cost of sports as are public schools.
Vouchers can be used to pay tuition for religious schools that teach creationism and denies the science of evolution. Vouchers are funded by taxes we all pay whether we are religious or not.
Trump has promised to gut the Johnson amendment, an IRS rule prohibiting non-profits, including churches from funding or promoting political candidates.
Trump has included right wing Christian conservative, Jerry Falwell Jr. as head of an education task force. Falwell is anti LGBT, anti-pro-choice and anti-science, including the science of climate change caused by man. Our taxes pay the salary of Falwell.
Vice President Pence is an active right wing Christian conservative.As governor of Indiana he pushed through a law that would aid and extend legal protections to Indiana business owners (for example Hobby Lobby and a wedding cake maker among many others) who didn't want to participate in same-sex weddings, citing their religious beliefs; opponents argued that he was sanctioning discrimination.