An Obama Nation of Citizens

What a great article--right on the money (so to speak).

I appreciated your clarifying the "rest of the story" regarding what our president said. Too often we tend to take a snippet of another's remarks and run with them before knowing what we are responding to.

Reading the other comments as well as your article reminded me of a situation a few years ago. I was visiting a Baptist church regularly to hear the pastor conduct a bible study on the Book of Mark. This man had nearly 30 years under his belt as a minister and was very knowledgeable.

At one point he stopped and looked at those listening to him and said (as nearly as I can recall), "I am not a Baptist. I am a follower of Christ. And, if you think of yourself as a Baptist, a Methodist, a Catholic, or any other denomination or religion, you are missing the mark. And, you need to reconsider your relationship with God, because that is all that counts."

During another session he said, "I don't believe that you need to be baptized to get into heaven, but you do have to be baptized to be a member of this church!"

Too often we fixate on the wrong things--probably because they are easier to do than to strive to be more gentle, kind, honest, loyal, merciful and pure. These qualities are foundational for all major religions, and in performing them in our own way we unite as one in a better world.

It's a good column, this, certainly what I'd call a more 'moderate' Christian view, though maybe too apologetic about the fact that, while, yes, many civilized values are in fact ones our Christian friends value as well as any other America, they do not have their *origins* in Christianity, nor does 'Christianity' have the right to claim to grant or remove them or make them conditional.

Not in America, anyway.

This kind of notion we hear too much of from 'Christians' is mostly based on the idea that anything non-Christian must be evil, corrupt, decadent (ha, also commie treehugging bent on destroying our plasma TVs and Hummers.) That any goodness and freedom among us, Christians 'created' and thus, like their God, are empowered to 'take away'

Many American values have also become Christian values... don't doubt that the Enlightenment didn't also have a strong element of people thinking the God of Christianity or the Providence of Deism wouldn't also be much-better pleased by America than the oppressions and destructions of a Europe torn apart by sectarian war.

Though this has not always been the case, with Christians and Christianity, and all too easily you fall to fear and temptations of a sense of vanity and control, even when it hurts you.

What's different about America at her best is in *fact* that our government has been shaped *beginning* from a notion that we are essentially good and free and capable of being sufficiently-wise to *honor* what we have been given to use, unalienably.

That we may believe as we see fit, but must *strive to live as though* all peoples are capable of governing ourselves by reason, under Liberty, and that this is the *only* business of government, not interpreting Bibles or 'commanding' thou shalt have no other Gods or ceremonially-appointed representatives before some view or other.

But *freedom.*

Even if you have to believe that your view of God wants *me* eternally-tortured, that maybe it's not for you to bring that kind of irrationality 'down here' for him.

I think your statement is useful because it reflects how our nation is open to people who hold a variety of religious & moral beliefs. Still, your statements can be misused by ideologues which today are prevalent on the right of our political spectrum in today's Republican Party who eagerly advocate restricting religious freedom & individual liberty based on religious arguments in areas of abortion & gay marriage (both of which many religious & non-religious institutions in the U.S. accept).
It would've been even more useful if you discussed how our Constitution's Framers sought to protect religious freedom & individual liberty by not allowing strictly religious principles, Christian, Jewish, or otherwise to be the basis for our laws & rights. For example, if we're a Christian Nation why would our founders prohibit religious tests for elected office if they supposedly wanted certain religious ideals to be favored? if we're a Christian Nation why would our founders include in the Constitution the principle of equal rights if they favored the rights of its Christian citizens? The answer is that from a legal & Constitutional point of view, we are not a Christian Nation.