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From Pine View Farm by Frank Bell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.pineviewfarm.net.
From Pine View Farm

American Taliban 0

At the Boston Review, Richard White turns the light of history on the spurious claim that “America was founded as a Christian nation” in considering two recent books on the topic. He points out that those who make such a claim almost always do so in pursuit of a particular political and economic agenda, rather than in pursuit of salvation.

Here’s a bit of his discussion of Steven Green’s Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding:

Green dates the idea of a Christian nation to the Second Great Awakening, which occurred at a time—the antebellum era—when Americans were striving to create a cohesive national identity. Religious competition remained intense, but more and more of the competing denominations were evangelicals who conflated their nationalism and religion in ways that made divine intervention and providential thinking suitable for politics. It was this second American generation, rather than the Founders, who created the myth that has been with us in various forms ever since.

The various forms are important; the original myth is not the same as the one currently in fashion. Both see God’s guiding hand behind the nation’s history and regard Christianity as the basis of republican principles. The old myth, however, was optimistic and tried to be inclusive, which was possible in what was still an overwhelmingly Protestant country. It was oriented toward the future and intent on explaining a providential American destiny. The new myth, by contrast, is sectarian and divisive in a country full of Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc., not to mention agnostics, atheists, and the sometimes-inchoate mass who define themselves as spiritual. Rather than look to tomorrow, today’s myth appeals to those who think they have lost an ideal past.

Do read please read the rest. It will help you better understand our home-grown Pharisees.

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March 23, 2017 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Culture Warriors, Politics of Hate |

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