The United States Was Not Founded on Christianity

I recieved this forward through my e-mail a few weeks back:


"Missouri teacher's letter to Obama, wow!

This Missouri teacher certainly says it all about Obama. I doubt Obama will be sending Ms Lyday a Christmas card. Folks, This just about says it all, and I admire the teacher who wrote it. Even if you voted for the our current President, you surely are beginning to have doubts about for whom, and what he stands.

April 17, 2009
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington , DC 20500


Mr. Obama:

I have had it with you and your administration, sir. Your conduct on your recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally. You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of America . You are responsible to the citizens of the United States .. You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth. I personally resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world. Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe ? Are you brain dead? What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about? Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century? Where do you get off telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country? Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States ? This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country, at least until you came along, come directly from this heritage. Do you not understand this? Your bowing to the k ing of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans. Our President does not bow down to anyone, let alone the king > of Saudi Arabia . You don't show Great Britain , our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia . How dare you, sir! How dare you! You can't find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don't want to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey . You offended our dead and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the German people from themselves. What s the matter with you? I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you. You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend to do about them? Anything? I seriously doubt it. What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members on top of the $2.5 million in20automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer. You haven't said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn't! Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that's $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million not a bad take. Who authorized that and why haven't you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now. I resent that you take me and my fellow citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you idiots do. We are watching what you are doing and we are getting increasingly fed up with all of you. I also want you to know that I personally find just about everything you do and say to be offensive to every one of my sensibilities. I promise you that I will work tirelessly to see that you do not get a chance to spend two terms destroying my beautiful country. Sincerely,

Every real American P.S. I rarely ask that emails be 'passed around'...PLEASE SEND THIS TO YOUR EMAIL LIST...it's past time f or all. Americans to wake up!

Ms Kathleen Lyday Fourth Grade Teacher Grandview Elementary School

11470 Hwy. C Hillsboro , MO 63050

(636) 944-3291 Phone (636) 944-3870 Fax "

Granted, this was written several months ago, but it's still worth a comment! First of all, let's get the first thing straight, several sites including snoopes.com, find that this teacher did not write this. It was actually traced back to a conservative blogger....surprise, surprise. They seem to be famous for glazing over true fact. Second of all, this "letter" is littered with biased OPINIONS, that the majority of Americans do not share, and frankly I find VERY offensive! What I really found amazing is that this person got so worked up about Obama saying that this is a country of many faiths. Wow...what a rash and controversial statement. And by the way, he is speaking truth! We are a country without a national religion! This county was founded on the right to believe, or not to believe, in whatever each citizen so chooses. I'm sure our fore fathers would roll over in their graves if they could hear that this is "a Christian Nation!" They fought, struggled and died so that we could have the freedom of religion, and not a national religion like the one they left behind in England. And, if by Christian foundation you mean its principles involving human rights. (But then, I don't know of any major religion that doesn't include basic moral guidelines such as love and respect at its center. And there are those who will claim that Islam does not, they are the same ones who have not bothered to explore that religion beyond their preconceived notions.)

Christian extremists operate under the delusion that Christianity is the first and/or only religion to subscribe to such principles. It's that lack of humility that turns many off, and it looks as though this statistic is growing. Even if we could agree that religion is the foundation of our system...which brand? And this bit about the country being founded upon Judeo-Christian ethics...precisely which ones were these? Certainly in neither the Declaration nor the Constitution (the Constitution does not even mention the word "God" in its text, and the Declaration contains ONE reference each to "nature's God," the "Creator" and "Divine Providence"). Sorry, the fact that we make generic references to God in the pledge and on our money is not good enough. And even if it is true that more people profess the Catholic or Protestant faith, or some strain thereof, than any other in this country, it does not then follow that this is a Christian nation.

The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to depict the founding fathers as Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.
This is untrue. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New testaments. Examples:

George Washington never declared he was a Christian, but championed the cause of freedom of religion. He was called an Agnostic.

John Adams (who was quite ambivalent about his own religion) It was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." He was a Unitarian.

Abigail Adams, wife to John Adams, wrote the following: "when will Mankind be convinced that true Religion is from the Heart, between Man and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or creeds and tests?" John Adams also found the Catholic religion rather distasteful, but I imagine bringing that point up would only serve to muddle the religious right's arguments within this issue.
She was also Unitarian.

Thomas Jefferson was a Unitarian, and believed that the Unitarian beliefs would be very common in the U.S. He referred to the Bible as nonsense.

James Madison - Not a religious person. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for noble enterprise."

Ethan Allen - Commander and a Deist, inspired congress to pursue a war of independence, "Jesus Christ was not God as evidence from his own words."

Ben Franklin - Deist

I could go on and on. Knowledge is power. Going on with the assumption that this nation was founded on Christianity, and ignoring true fact, is absurd! And, I wouldn't want this to be a Christian Nation as it is suppressive. We already see this suppression vividly through the fundamentalist right wing. I think that Abagail Adams said it right, and it's worth repeating "When will Mankind be convinced that true Religion is from the Heart, between Man and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or creeds and tests?"