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What are the main reasons why the U.S. is not offically a Christian nation while Israel is considered officially a Jewish state?!
This is very unfair and Anti-Christian. It seems like the UN favors one religious ethnic group over another.
USA has 80% Christians while Israel is 75% Jewish!
So I assume the USA is unofficially a Christian nation then?
What makes Israel a "Jewish state" is not the percentage of the population that is Jewish, but the relative POWER and PRIVILEGE the Jewish part of the populations enjoys as compared to others. A Jew born anywhere in the world can claim Israeli citizenship; and Arab born in Palestine cannot even enter the country to work without permission. Apartheid South Africa was a white nationalist state for the same reason. Although whites made up only about 10% of the population, they completely controlled the society. The owned all the wealth, were the only ones allowed to vote or engage in politics, and the ones ones who enjoyed unrestricted movement in the country.
The "Jewish state" of Israel has been a disaster, both for Arabs and for Jews. In an area as small, densely populated and diverse as historical Palestine, you simply cannot privilege one group over others without creating a perpetual state of war. And that, of course, is what exists in Israel. I don't want that for the USA.
What are the main reasons why the U.S. is not offically a Christian nation while Israel is considered officially a Jewish state?!
This is very unfair and Anti-Christian. It seems like the UN favors one religious ethnic group over another.
USA has 80% Christians while Israel is 75% Jewish!
So I assume the USA is unofficially a Christian nation then?
Because different countries have different founding ideals.
The United States is free to repeal the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; thus far, it has declined to do so. To the contrary, through Amendment XIV and Incorporation, it has strengthened it.
Israel is free to implement something similar to the Establishment Clause; thus far, it has declined to do so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lambados
Why does it have that? That means the government promotes secularism/atheism.
Why can't Israel have separation of church and synagogue?!
The United States does not promote atheism any more than, by declining to assert that leprechauns exist or by aligning itself with a particular leprechaun faction, it promotes aleprechaunism.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lambados
First Amendment is Anti-Christian then...
Utter nonsense. Christianity thrives in this country in myriad denominations in large part because the government removes itself from issues of religion. It is that free market, so to speak, of religious ideas in which Christianity is so rampant. Compared, for example, to the United Kingdom with its official (though moribund) church and its largely-unbelieving and scarcely-ever-attending-church populace.
The United States is not officially a Christian nation because of taxation. At least, that's why the First Congress of the United States put the establishment of religion clause into the First Amendment.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Prior to the revolution, the colonies were part of the British Empire, and the British Empire's official religion was the Church of England, aka Anglicanism. The British government taxed the entire populace to support its official religion; so in the colonies, the people who were Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Catholics, Jews, Deists, Agnostics, and Atheists all paid taxes to support the local Anglican churches.
After the revolution, the states each had their own sovereignty and constitutions. Some, like Pennsylvania, did not establish a state religion, while others, like Connecticut, picked one religion as the state religion. Massachusetts straddled the divide, by not declaring a state religion but providing in their constitution for a tax to support local churches - as most people in Massachusetts were Congregationalists, the taxes always went to support Congregationalist churches.
When the Constitution of the United States was ratified, part of the unspoken agreement for ratification was that the First Congress could pass a Bill of Rights to establish amendments to the Constitution that would place restrictions upon the new federal government to keep it from infringing upon the rights of the people.
This is where the Establishment of Religion clause comes in. There were many different mainstream religions being practiced in the United States, most of them being Christian; however, there was no way anyone was going to declare one religion to be the "federal" religion - nobody wanted to pay taxes to support a religion to which they didn't belong.
That's it in a nutshell - the United States was founded as a non-religious nation because the matter of an official religion was left to the individual States. And by the 1830's, the last states that recognized a state religion passed amendments to their state constitutions abolishing the recognition of their official state religions.
What are the main reasons why the U.S. is not offically a Christian nation while Israel is considered officially a Jewish state?!
This is very unfair and Anti-Christian. It seems like the UN favors one religious ethnic group over another.
USA has 80% Christians while Israel is 75% Jewish!
So I assume the USA is unofficially a Christian nation then?
What are the main reasons why the U.S. is not offically a Christian nation while Israel is considered officially a Jewish state?!
This is very unfair and Anti-Christian. It seems like the UN favors one religious ethnic group over another.
USA has 80% Christians while Israel is 75% Jewish!
So I assume the USA is unofficially a Christian nation then?
It is. Don't let LSD's or secularists or other left wing whack jobs tell you otherwise.
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