I’m not American I’m Norwegian, but I have studied American history a little bit and there is one thing I’d like to remind my American friends.
Church and state has always been separate in USA. Thomas Jefferson was very concerned about separating the new democracy from three things: the millitary, business and the church. All three are good ideas, I think. But your biggest problem is not the separation of church and state. And the whole merry christmas debacle is only about symbols. I like to leave symbols to the symbol-minded.
USA was not founded on christian ideas. The constitution was not guided by divine inspiration. All the good stuff are in the amendments, which were put there reluctantly as concessions to get it past the will of the people. (And the constitution is regularly broken anyway.) Benjamin Franklin made a suggestion about starting all constitutional debates with a prayer of guidence, but Alexander Hamilton refused because he didn’t think they needed help from foreigners.
“God’s own country” is just a phrase. Not something that describes or helped form USA. You can wrap phrases like that around anything, but it does not make it truth. Even Hitler said “Gott mit uns”.
Keep state and church separate! It is good for democracy, and it is good for the church. And remember that the state is not the same as the democracy.
For more on this I recommend books by Professor Michael Parenti. He can also be found on mp3 on www.radio4all.net.
Finally, from my heart, God bless America.
