Forcing Religion On Kids

ALTHOUGH DEVOUT CHRISTIANS seem fond of proclaiming that the United States of America was founded on "Judeo-Christian" principles, and was intended from its beginning to be a "christian nation", they are, as they are about so many fundamental things, dead wrong. The United States was founded on the principles of John Locke and other enlightenment thinkers, to be a secular republic, governed by an elite educated propertied class, with a strict separation between church and state, and freedom of religion, from religion, and religious tolerance. If the United States had been founded on Christian values, it would be a dictatorship; the Christian faith is not a democracy, nor even a republic, nor a plutocracy, as the United states was intended to be, always has been, and still is; the Christian religion is a dictatorship, of God. Madison and Jefferson agreed that there must be an "Impenetrable wall' between the two, between church and state. The word "God" is not mentioned in the constitution, on purpose. In the Declaration of independence, Jefferson uses the term "Nature's God": God is created by nature, not the other way around. In 1797, Congress passed a law unanimously saying that "the United States of America is no more a Christian nation than an Islamic nation" (they used the word "Mohammadian"). The law, called the "Treaty of Tripoli" was signed by the president, and remains on the books today, as well it should. In the constitution all treaties entered into by the U.S. government are law. In his seminal monograph "Nature's God: the Heretical Origins of the American Republic" by historian Mathew Stewart, all this is carefully explained. He explains that the first six presidents of the United Stats were not Christians, that Andrew Jackson, the seventh, was the first true Christian president, although the others attended church regularly, to keep up appearances. Jefferson in fact believed Christianity to be "superstition", and said so. Nobody could figure out what George Washington's religion was; he never talked about it. Hamilton and Jefferson had an ongoing wager over who would be the first to discover it. Neither ever collected, but like the others, Washington was actually a "deist", a popular form of religiosity among late eighteenth century intellectuals, who believed that the universe was intelligently designed, but not by any sentient, anthropomorphic deity which any extant human religion espouses. In 1962 the Supreme Court forbade organized prayer in public schools as a violation of the first amendment, but did not prohibit prayer in public schools. Anyone can pray in any public school in america, just not in unison with a class led by a teacher, out loud. And yet, even as their primitive religion slowly declines in adherents throughout western civilization, in a last gasp desperate effort, American evangelicals, in at least one school district in America, intend to hold worship services before school, and in another, plan to hang "in God we trust" banners in the hallways, in this upcoming school year, 2019, the year of our lord. Both actions are not only pathetically and blatantly un American, they are blatantly unconstitutional, and will soon be shown as such, in court, no matter how many extreme right wing religious fanatics the conservative religious extremists, and their leader and hero, Donald J. Trump, manage to force down our throats and into America's judiciary. Religious fanatics die hard, but they do mercifully die, as do all religions, including our present primitive barbaric ones. In due time, once and for all, the school children of America will be free of religious indoctrination foisted upon them for generations by the perhaps well meaning but seriously misguided not so moral devout.