America is not a Christian nation

April 14, 2009 | Is America a Christian nation, as many conservatives claim it is? One American doesn’t think so. In his press conference on April 6 in Turkey, President Obama explained: “One of the great strengths of the United States is … we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” (…)

The idea that religion is important because it educates democratic citizens in morality is actually quite demeaning to religion. It imposes a political test on religion, as it were — religions are not true or false, but merely useful or dangerous, when it comes to encouraging the civic virtues that are desirable in citizens of a constitutional, democratic republic. Washington’s instrumental view of religion as a kind of prop was agreeable to another two-term American president more than a century and a half later. “[O]ur form of government has no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith,” said Dwight Eisenhower, “and I don’t care what it is.” And it’s indistinguishable from Edward Gibbon’s description of Roman religion in his famous multi-volume “Decline and Fall”: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.” President Obama, then, is right. The American republic, as distinct from the American population, is not post-Christian because it was never Christian. In the president’s words: “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” And for that we should thank the gods. All 20 of them.

Michael Lind is the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation.

 

 

 

Trouvé sur le site : http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/14/christian_nation/index.html