Our nation was founded one nation under God?

Question

Freedom of religion was originally intended by our fore fathers to mean freedom to worship God in any way you chose, agree or disagree?

Answer 1

I agree that that is what it means today. what it meant back then was the freedom to just go to a church, not catholic. The roman catholics where dictating how to worship. And a bunch of people who where called blasphemers because they didn't want to pray and do what the church said to do at the time, left for the new world to pray the way they wanted to. which was the Presbyterians, baptists, Lutherans, etc.So in reality the New World" America" was established so that Christianity could have a place without persecution. And I suppose, for all you overly sensitive non faith people. It also means that you have the freedom to have no religion. As well as the freedom, and separation of church and state. If the law starts to impose on people that you have to pray than we are no better than the Old World from where our fore fathers escaped religious persecution. Don't any of you get it.

Answer 2

Agree but not for the reason you'd think. Believe or not we have progressed greatly socially.yes our fore fathers were about equal rights but were probably not open to other religions. They were still a product of their time. They weren't perfect but they did their best.

just because it was founded that way does not mean it should be in our government. remember there's still "separation of church and state"

Answer 3

Jayleites has it right.

The founding document is the Constitution.
There is NO mention of god.
This nation is secular because history had shown by 1791 that mixing religion & politics leads to trouble for the minority, always.

Today we seem to have forgotten US history as well as world history, and so history is starting to repeat because of our ignorance.

Religious worship & expression in public was & is practiced both 200 years ago & today, by thousands of sects,largely without encumbrance , a few high profile cases notwithstanding.

This entire issue has been raised to advance the political power of a group of individuals pushing a specific agenda fron one brand of one religion, & its success is impressive.

Answer 4

To address this, we need to look at the Constitution, Amendment 1.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

This essentially means that there can be no legal endorsement of any one religion. Also, one may not prohibit another person from practicing their religious beliefs.

Your question does not cover the case of someone not wishing to worship any god. I see the First Amendment as allowing any degree of religion, to the point of none, to be legally allowable. My free exercise of religion is to not participate, and any law compelling me to do so, to any religion, to any degree, is violating my rights as a citizen.

Answer 5

I agree look in any court house across the US and you will see In God we Trust . What are people thinking? Our fore fathers indeed knew what they were doing, These idiots that are running our country today have messed it up totally with all of there trying to separate church and state.

Answer 6

Agree. The constitution forbids the government from imposing religion on people.

Escape, don't be a putz, you know what the question meant, and so does everyone else. Also, separation of church and state is NOT IN THE CONSTITUTION! Liberals...you'd think they'd at least know how to read the constitution.

Answer 7

It also includes freedom NOT to worship at all! Jefferson rejoiced that religous freedom included not just Christians but
"... Hindoos and infidels of every stripe." Religious Freedom requires that the government stay out of it, not take sides, not show favoritism.

Answer 8

The "under God" phrase was added by Conservatives to the Pledge of Allegiance during the 1950s Red-Scare witch-hunts as a kind of loyalty oath.

Our founding fathers would never have polluted our democracy with stuff like that!

Answer 9

That's right. And many early colonists still remembered what it was like living under the State Religion, Church of England, back in the old country.

Answer 10

Well, the answer to that question is in our history books. There is no disagreement with history because history is history.

For example - history on freedom of religion:

by Thomas Cooley

A careful examination of the American Constitutions will disclose the fact that nothing is more fully set forth, or more plainly expressed, than the determination of their authors to preserve and perpetuate religious liberty and to guard against the slightest approach toward the establishment of an inequality in the civil and political rights of citizens, which shall have for its basis only their differences of religious belief. The American people came to the work of framing their fundamental laws, after centuries of religious oppression and persecution had taught them the utter futility of all attempts to propagate religious opinions by the rewards, penalties, or terrors of human laws. While careful to establish, protect, and defend religious freedom and equality the American Constitutions contain no provisions which prohibit the authorities from such solemn recognition of a superintending Providence in public transactions and exercises as the general religious sentiment of mankind inspires, and seems meet and proper in finite and dependent beings.

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By Richard S. Storrs

The arrangement of God which makes man's conscience his guide to action, is beneficent every way. The results will be seen in the end in a purer piety; in a nobler self-devotion; in a grander and more powerful grasp of the principles of duty; in a more exalted communion with God in His holiness; in a higher disregard of the blandishments of time; in a mightier unfolding of all spiritual force; in a deeper impression on the history of the world.

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by Roger Williams

For me, though censured, threatened, persecuted, I must profess, while heaven and earth last, that no one tenent that either London, England, or the world doth harbor, is so heretical, blasphemous, seditious, and dangerous to the corporal, to the spiritual, to the present, to the eternal good of all men as the bloody tenent (however washed and whited), I say, as is the bloody tenent of persecution for cause of conscience.

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by Thomas B. Macaulay

The whole history of the Christian religion shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance with the civil power than of being crushed by its opposition.

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by Philip Schaff

Religious liberty, like civil liberty, the liberty of speech, the liberty of the press, and every other liberty, is liable to abuse and consequent punishment. Every man's liberty is limited by the golden rule, not to do unto others what we would not have them do unto us. Nobody has a right to trespass on the rights of his neighbor, or to do wrong. A government consults its own interest by protecting all and persecuting none.