JohnStOnge wrote:Perhaps I titled the thread poorly, but the main assertion the research makes is that Christian values being the foundation of the US is actually a recent idea born from opposition to the New Deal
If that is the case, how is it that Alexis de Tocqueville came to observe the United States culture and, in a work published in 1835, wrote this:
Religion in America...must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief.
I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion -- for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.
In the United States, the sovereign authority is religious...there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
In the United States, the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people...
Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent...
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/onug/detocq.html
That was an independent observer from another land making observations about the culture of the United States during the early 1800s.
If the assertion of the research is what you say it is, the research is pretty clearly full of crap.
John, when do you stop embarrassing yourself with this...?
Misquoting Alexis de Tocqueville is old hat for Fundamentalist Christians
and your site is a Religious HACK site
The rest of the Alexis de Tocqueville quote is as follows...
"I found that they differed upon matters of detail alone, and that they all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point."
I went to school John and de Tocqueville is perhaps the most misquoted historian by Christians...
and I'm glad to see you also misunderstand the man and America to suit your needs
Christians will stop at nothing to re-write American history and their own damned Bible
which largely goes unread along with American history
Left-wing (Democrats, liberals, whatever you want to call them) are God's gift to the USA.
is awesome...
