Our country wasn't founded by Muslims. Our country was founded by Christians, which is evident by how deeply ingrained in our society the Christian God has been since our country's inception. You might have a valid point if our founding fathers and many of our historical documents referenced the Koran and Allah, but they don't.
I have people hand me stuff all the time on the street. Sometimes I accept it, sometimes I don't. It never bothers me.
I participated in a Buddhist prayer in my office a year or so ago. I went to a Mormon church a few weeks ago and took part in their communion. Didn't bother me one bit. I'm not threatened by other religions.
Now, what about the extremist positions taken by the ACLU that both Colossus and Headhunter have mentioned?
Are you sure our founding fathers reference Jesus or Christianity as a source for the establishment of our country--namely the constitution?
They surely did not.
The U.S. Constitution is a wholly secular document in that respect.
It contains no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ.
In fact, the Constitution refers to religion only twice in the First Amendment, which bars laws "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," and in Article VI, which prohibits "religious tests" for public office. Both of these provisions are evidence that the country was not founded as officially Christian.
The Founding Fathers did not create a secular government because they disliked religion.
Many were believers themselves.
Yet they were well aware of the dangers of church-state union. They had studied and even seen first-hand the difficulties that church-state partnerships spawned in Europe. During the American colonial period, alliances between religion and government produced oppression and tyranny on our own shores. Source:
http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=resources_brochure_christiannationThey may have been christians, deists or atheists, but our government, our United States, is secular.
From that vantage point, the US is not a Christian nation. Never has been.
The goal for religion in this country has been to have a plurality. That is commensurate with the country's goal for race/ethnicity too.
Respect for religious pluralism. . .became the norm.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, for example, he spoke of "unalienable rights endowed by our Creator." He used generic religious language that all religious groups of the day would respond to, not narrowly Christian language traditionally employed by nations with state churches.