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Washington himself punished blasphemy in his army with 25 lashes, no court-martial.
Context, people. Context.
Yeah Context is right, an army =/= to a government unless you want to make America in to Syria, and mouthing off to officers still gets you in trouble in the army.
The only workable solution is a return to an explicit Christian state. The experiment whereby the government pretends "neutrality" is too easily exploited by secularists and the enemies of the Christian faith. The doctrine of religious pluralism is, paradoxically, a cleverly wielded tool of secularization.
The USA has never been an explicit Christian state. We have no federal laws or mandates on anyone to practice or observe any religion at all, much less Christianity. It is completely American to be born, live and grow old and die, and never once stepping into a church or picking up a bible.
You are away that the entire US government specifically stated in our first international treaty we are not founded on the Christian religion, and Thomas Jefferson absolutely hated the theological side of Christianity right? He called Jesus' supernatural aspects on par with Minerva and Jupiter. He called Revelation the ravings of a maniac. He called the Gospels nothing but lies and superstition. He hated so much of the Bible he created his own and removed the majority of the supernatural aspects. He rejected the resurrection, Jesus' divinity, virgin birth, atonement, the trinity, etc. etc.
The founders did not resemble anything like modern day American Christianity.
About Jefferson .... he was just one of 55 founding fathers, 2/3 of whom belonged to the Anglican church.
He was also a conflicted man. What you have said about him can be discerned from some of his writings. He seriously thought that all Americans would eventually become Unitarians.
However, Jefferson had no problem using federal tax dollars to fund Catholic missions specifically for the conversion of the Indians in the Louisiana territory, or requiring chapel attendance at his tax-supported University of Virginia, or authoring a bill that punished sodomy with castration, or any number of things that would horrify today's secularists. Though he was not himself an orthodox Christian, his thought patterns were habitually in Christian categories.
The USA has never been an explicit Christian state. We have no federal laws or mandates on anyone to practice or observe any religion at all, much less Christianity. It is completely American to be born, live and grow old and die, and never once stepping into a church or picking up a bible.
BUT, if you are American, we will defend your right to worship the way you please with our lives--it is your constitutional right. That's the part that some of these people don't get. Only a secular democracy would work aggressively to protect the rights of all viewpoints, INCLUDING fundamentalist/evangelical Christians.
To the OP and others: Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that a theocracy was even on the table and we're starting a new country. Let's pretend that everyone belongs to a Christian faith, and there are no other religions or nonbelievers. The big question then becomes whose version of Christian faith gets to make the decisions.
If you are an evangelical/fundamentalist, would you like to live under a Mormon government that established law based on the rulings of Mormon leaders, or a Catholic one based on the bishops? I know fundamentalists who are convinced that the pope is the anti-christ, and that priests conduct secret satanic rituals in the basement of the rectory, so I don't think that would work well. How would you feel if your child was forced to say the Hail Mary at school if they're not Catholic, or wait for adult baptism if you're a catholic? How would Catholics feel if all reference to Mary were banned, and catholic children were forced to take protestant communion daily at school with noncatholic children.
You're assuming that all the different faith groups would hold hands, sing kumbaya, and everyone would live in peace and harmony. Show me one theocracy in the history of the world that didn't degrade into the religious persecution of other faiths--including other divisions of Christianity (protestants vs. catholics), and criminal penalties for failure to follow the guidelines of the dominant faith. All I can say is, be careful what you wish for. Your best protection for freedom to worship the way you choose is the system we have now, whether you want to believe it or not.
If you want to be like this then do like certain hassidic jews do, and the amish. Create your own little communities out of the way of the rest of us and live the way you want .
Show me one theocracy in the history of the world that didn't degrade into the religious persecution of other faiths--including other divisions of Christianity (protestants vs. catholics), and criminal penalties for failure to follow the guidelines of the dominant faith. All I can say is, be careful what you wish for.
Christian state =/= theocracy, in the first place.
I gave some examples of modern Christian states in the OP.
Canada through the early 20th century is a good, convenient, close-to-home example. You had crucifixes hanging above the bench in the courtrooms of Quebec. The state in all provinces supported Christian schools with tax dollars, both Catholic and Protestant. The oath of allegiance included the phrase "on the faith of a Christian". Etc.
And we are to believe that Canada until the 20th century was a raging persecutor of infidels on the level of the Taliban ...
The Holy Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years. That seems to have worked out pretty well.
If you think that about the Holy Roman Empire you probably don't know much about it. It was a place that was in civil war more often then not and from the 16th century onward it was the place where the European powers settled their scores rather then fighting in their own lands.
Christian state =/= theocracy, in the first place.
I gave some examples of modern Christian states in the OP.
Canada through the early 20th century is a good, convenient, close-to-home example. You had crucifixes hanging above the bench in the courtrooms of Quebec. The state in all provinces supported Christian schools with tax dollars, both Catholic and Protestant. The oath of allegiance included the phrase "on the faith of a Christian". Etc.
And we are to believe that Canada until the 20th century was a raging persecutor of infidels on the level of the Taliban ...
Yes well that was in the past
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