Rep. Mary Miller ― a Republican from Illinois who once praised Adolf Hitler ― wrote, edited and ultimately deleted a social media post decrying “a Muslim” speaking in Congress.
“It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen,” she wrote Friday. “American was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth. May God have mercy!”
The man leading the prayer was guest chaplain Giani Singh, a follower of the Sikh faith, not Islam. Miller’s Republican colleague Rep. Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) introduced him as such on Friday.
Sometimes I really wish the founding fathers were around to just say, “Yeah, we were all atheists when we did this America thing. It just wasn’t fashionable at the time. So this idea that American was founded on Christianity, is well, just bullshit”
I mean they were literally fleeing religious persecution. Why would they bake religion into what they were creating?
While they were fleeing religious persecution, they were not atheists. The original Pilgrims were Christians who believed the church of England to be beyond redemption. All of the founding fathers were raised in some Christian belief system, and more or less practiced their respective branches of Christianity.
They were certainly more open-minded in accepting beliefs that deviated from their own, but also certainly not atheist.
Eh, some were about as close to atheist as the social norms of the time would really permit. If you look at Jefferson, he made his own version of “the” bible in which he excised all the superstition. In their day, the Inquisition was still going on (ended in 1834) and making your own version of “the” bible was exactly the kind of thing that would get you declared a “heretic”.
And then there is Thomas Paine…certainly being a Deist is something likely to get you in trouble with the crazy Inquisition types…as well as the Southern Baptists today…
That’s the very definition of irony.
The pilgrims weren’t really fleeing religious persecution. In the UK they faced the consequences of their religion’s actions after they took power during the interregum and were just the fucking worst, including banning Christmas. So they fled to the Netherlands where they were horrified to learn that religious freedom didn’t give them the right to force their religious beliefs on others. So they fled religious tolerance to America where they were able to be as awful as they wanted
Because everyone thinks their opinions are the right ones.
Someone persecuting you doesn’t mean you’ll go somewhere else and not persecute others who are not on your side.