Rep. Mary Miller ― a Republican from Illinois who once praised Adolf Hitler ― wrote, edited and ultimately deleted a social media post decrying “a Muslim” speaking in Congress.
“It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen,” she wrote Friday. “American was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth. May God have mercy!”
The man leading the prayer was guest chaplain Giani Singh, a follower of the Sikh faith, not Islam. Miller’s Republican colleague Rep. Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) introduced him as such on Friday.
Sometimes I really wish the founding fathers were around to just say, “Yeah, we were all atheists when we did this America thing. It just wasn’t fashionable at the time. So this idea that American was founded on Christianity, is well, just bullshit”
I mean they were literally fleeing religious persecution. Why would they bake religion into what they were creating?
In fairness a lot of the people “fleeing religious persecution” were the nutcases who thought there wasn’t enough of it.
Not so much the founders, though.
Well they weren’t fleeing persecution at all. Most of them were born in the US, years after the Quakers had stopped being persecuted in England.
Mostly Christians, but in the same way my parents say they’re Christian. A churchless general belief in god and heaven. Deists, I think the proper word is.
While they were fleeing religious persecution, they were not atheists. The original Pilgrims were Christians who believed the church of England to be beyond redemption. All of the founding fathers were raised in some Christian belief system, and more or less practiced their respective branches of Christianity.
They were certainly more open-minded in accepting beliefs that deviated from their own, but also certainly not atheist.
Eh, some were about as close to atheist as the social norms of the time would really permit. If you look at Jefferson, he made his own version of “the” bible in which he excised all the superstition. In their day, the Inquisition was still going on (ended in 1834) and making your own version of “the” bible was exactly the kind of thing that would get you declared a “heretic”.
And then there is Thomas Paine…certainly being a Deist is something likely to get you in trouble with the crazy Inquisition types…as well as the Southern Baptists today…
That’s the very definition of irony.
Because everyone thinks their opinions are the right ones.
Someone persecuting you doesn’t mean you’ll go somewhere else and not persecute others who are not on your side.