"So Help Me God"

[Hyena Dandy]

The Catholic hierarchy still hates Protestants,

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
The Christians hate the muslims
And everybody hates the Jews!

[BookstoreEscapee]

Yup, Arizona. Kyrsten Sinema is Atheist (Some sites refer to her as non-theist) and also openly bisexual.

From what I've read on the Friendly Atheist blog, she doesn't use the word atheist, and seems to prefer to keep her religious views private. Which is as it should be, in my opinion.

See America was supposed to be all about religious freedom..ALL religions. Two words...Salem Witch Trials..

The Salem Witch Trials were in the late 1600s, long before there was a United States of America. The Puritans were not particularly interested in religious freedom for anyone but themselves. If you didn't live by their religious precepts, at best you were welcome to leave. The MA colony was a Christian colony (and a specific flavor of Christian, too). The country created by our "Founding Fathers" was not.

I still have to disagree that we are not a Christian nation however. One nation, Under God. In God We Trust. Just look at some of our documents and our money. I agree the landscape is changing, and that the silent majority is finally making headway..but I don't think we are there yet. It's going to be an uphill battle.

What documents? The Declaration of Independence does mention a "creator" but does not specify the Christian god; it also has no bearing on our laws. The Constitution is entirely godless, however. God on the money and in the pledge was already addressed by someone else; those additions were nothing more than a political tool.

We may be a majority Christian population, but our government is meant to be secular. People who insist on calling us a Christian nation are deliberately conflating two different meanings of the phrase. Our laws should not be based on any religious reasoning (which is not to say that they aren't in some cases, but any that are only in place due to solely religious reasoning should be struck down). If you can't make a case for why something should be law without resorting to "God says so," then you don't have a case.

[Panacea]

That's why, today, it seems like the Christian religions are this monolithic, unstoppable wave. But there's still friction between the sects - it just goes on behind the scenes these days. The Catholic hierarchy still hates Protestants, and vice versa, and all of them still view each other as petty pretenders and poachers*. They've just gotten polite enough to keep the feud out of public eyes.

* The true believers view other religions as pretenders. The opportunistic manipulators view other religions as poachers.

The First Amendment was created to protect the truth faith from the other true faiths, that much is true.

But Catholics don't hate Protestants any more than Protestants hate Catholics. Oh, a few isolated nuts on both sides might. But there is a strong movement towards ecumenicism between Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and other faiths to find common ground. Try to avoid broad stereotypes; there is a lot more to these various faiths than most people give them credit for.

[Nekojin]

The First Amendment was created to protect the truth faith from the other true faiths, that much is true.

But Catholics don't hate Protestants any more than Protestants hate Catholics. Oh, a few isolated nuts on both sides might. But there is a strong movement towards ecumenicism between Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and other faiths to find common ground. Try to avoid broad stereotypes; there is a lot more to these various faiths than most people give them credit for.

Two things.

First, you should attribute quotes to the people who actually said them. I'm the one who said the section you're quoting, not Mytical.

Second, you really should read your history a little more closely. It hasn't been that long since there was outright and open bigotry between rival churches (often, but not always, bordering on racial lines, such as Irish) - less than a century.

Second and a half - Reread all of what I said. Think on it a bit. Did I make any broad stereotypes? Why, no, I didn't. I said nothing about religious folk in general, just the Church hierarchy.

[Panacea]

Two things.

First, you should attribute quotes to the people who actually said them. I'm the one who said the section you're quoting, not Mytical.

Second, you really should read your history a little more closely. It hasn't been that long since there was outright and open bigotry between rival churches (often, but not always, bordering on racial lines, such as Irish) - less than a century.

Second and a half - Reread all of what I said. Think on it a bit. Did I make any broad stereotypes? Why, no, I didn't. I said nothing about religious folk in general, just the Church hierarchy.

I apologize for the quoting mistake, but stand by the rest of what I said. Look back at the first line of my post, which you quoted: I get that religious rivalry existed in the past, and still exists today.

But you said, "That's why, today, it seems like the Christian religions are this monolithic, unstoppable wave . . . " You were talking in the present tense rather than the past tense. That's where my discussion of ecumenical movements came from. I wasn't talking about the past, I was talking about now, just as you were in the post in question.

You still can't paint Church hierarchies with that broad brush, not when they're doing good work to bridge divides between different faiths. Not all the leaders of every Church, but high profile people of many well known Churches, including the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and prominent members of other faiths.