What do you mean by a "Christian nation"? A nation ruled by the Christian religion, or some denomination of it?
When religious conservatives claim that "America is a Christian nation", they are correct in only one sense. It's a nation in which the majority of the people happen to be Christian, following that religion to some degree or another.
At the time of this nation's founding, Christianity was pretty much the only religion. But today, there are millions of Americans who are Jews,
Muslims,Hindus,Buddhists, Baha'is, Wiccans, and many other faiths, as well as more theists and agnostics that most people might think.
The problem is that those who call America a Christian nation pretty much want to give Christianity (or evangelical Christianity) too much power to make laws and interfere with the freedom of non-christians, or even Catholics.
But what is written in the Bible has absolutely no foundation as the basis on which to make US laws. Just because it contains passages allegedly condemning homosexuality ,for example, is no reason for anti-sodomy laws to exist. These are not only dated but barbaric.
Many Christians want prayer back in our schools. But whose prayer?
If you go into any classroom in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, you will probably see youngsters whose parents are Jews,Muslims,Hindus,Buddhists and other faiths. Are they to be subject to Christian prayer? And what if some of them don't want to engage in prayer at all? That should be their right.
But if we were to return prayer to schools, what might happen if there were a highly religious evangelistic teacher in school, and Johnny said he didn't want to participate? That teacher might think,Johnny doesn't want to pray. Therefore,I'm going to lower his grades.
The claim that because prayer was removed from our schools, that this caused morality in general there to decline is just plain ludicrous.
Any immoral conduct you might see there or out of school is the result of many different causes, but not because of the removal of school prayer.
Students can still pray all they want in church or at home. No one is stopping them.
And as the old saying goes, when there's a math test, there's still plenty of prayer in school. Just the silent kind.
Christians in America are still absolutely free to worship as they please and attend church . No one in America is being persecuted for being a Christian.
