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COMMENTS:
* American evangelicals are equal to the Taliban. There is nothing wrong with faith, but when you constantly try and force everyone into your version of the religion then I have a problem. Today's society doesn't have a long memory. Our nation's founders did. They remembered the Protestant/Catholic wars from a hundred years before our revolution. The reason that the 1st amendment was written, and radified, was that there were too many sects here already and they couldn't agree on one for the nation. So, they compromised and did what Jefferson had written and Virginia accepted--freedom to choose religion and practice it without the state having a preference of one over another. That kept the peace. The Bible isn't a democratic book anyway. There are way too many 'lords, masters, kings and queens' and not many elected officials. Maybe we've outgrown the tribalism that started religion in the first place?
* Sorry to point this out but the US hasn't been a "Christian" nation for some time. A large portion of people who claim to be Christians are only cultural Christians, that is they claim to be Christians because their parents are Christians so they think they inherited Christianity like they inherited their parents genes. Despite their claims to be Christians many don't have any deep seated religious beliefs and rarely attend church. These CINO (Christians in name only) are the ones that have no problem voting for Donald Trump and his decidedly un-Christian ideas about how to treat other people.
* It is amazing that evangelicals, in particular, have imaginary historical "facts" and then believe them implicitly. What is worse, they then expect to be granted special privileges and rights based on those none existent facts. There is school of thought that it is people with no internal moral compass that need a book of instructions to guide them. Since they also find it easy to act in their own interest, regardless of the harm, a system that forgives and wipes the slate clean is very attractive. Most Atheists make a point of saying that they were born knowing right from wrong and don't need a book to learn from.
* Perhaps if they acted Christian, the evangelicals might see it differently. Christianity is becoming more like Islam every day. Just as many people killed in the name of Christianity as Muslims in history of religion. Women's rights, sexual preferences, social issues, involvement in politics-- your track is not great. Going to church does not make you Christian, it is all about your deeds and actions. It is 2016, not 1816. Where is the church on guns? Seem to be very quiet. I have God, but not religion. There is only one, by the way. I do not need a church to be the intermediary to God, especially with the track record of late.
* This country has citizens of every religion, including non Christian ones, along with millions of others who do not believe God exists. So, my question would be..how can you call a whole country "Christian" when millions of it's citizens are not. Also, many of the "Founding Fathers" as they are called, considered themselves to be Christian, but they belied it by the things they did...such as have mistresses, and kidnap people from Africa & enslave them, so calling this country Christian is actually a misnomer in itself.
* About friggin' time. People can believe and worship, or not believe and not worship as they wish - that is a Right of being American. But damn, I am sick of these ignorant faith-based jerks pushing their beliefs on others. The GOP was the rational party until it hooked up with the Religous Right - now it is imploding as it has become "The party of stupid (quote of Bobby Jindal)", with the influence of the Religious Right taking over and the simple message of minding our own business and fiscal responsibility thrown out the window.
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Why Evangelicals say US is no longer Christian
By Lucy Schouten, June 25, 2016
Evangelical Christians are mourning a cultural shift they see as a loss in both their influence at home and the nation's ability to hold a Christian standard for the world.
A majority of white Evangelical Protestants - 59 percent - say the United States has lost its Christian identity, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institution. This represents an 11-point jump from 48 percent in 2012.
"[Donald] Trump's politics of nostalgia calling to 'Make American Great Again' resonate with the great majority of Evangelicals," R. Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, tells The Christian Science Monitor. "[They] miss the Reagan era or even the Eisenhower years when, in their view, a more masculine and Christian nation commanded greater respect abroad and reflected their own white Evangelical political and cultural attitudes."
Evangelical Christians do not welcome the rise of the secular "nones," and the data shows 70 percent believe the country has changed for the worse since the 1950s. The general feeling that the country is on the wrong track is echoed by 72 percent of Americans generally, however, suggesting the view partly reflects an Evangelical Christian interpretation of the country's mood overall.
Politics play a role, as the mostly Republican Evangelicals are lamenting both the traditional give-and-take of the two-party system and the reality that they have lost several key political battles.
"Seven years of a Democrat in the White House have caused most of them to feel relatively powerless in the face of great changes that they steadfastly reject, such as same-sex marriage," Professor Chesnut says. "Kentucky county clerk [Kim Clark] became a lightning rod of resistance when she was jailed, but gay marriage remains the law of the land."
Neither former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz marshaled enough support beyond Evangelicals to win the Republican nomination. Although presumptive presidential nominee Mr. Trump is courting Evangelicals, he has demonstrated too much unfamiliarity with their faith for them to be comfortable making him the standard-bearer for American Christianity, Chesnut says.
“Over the last four years, a growing number [of white Protestant Americans] are seeing that [their cultural dominance in the US has been] lost irretrievably,” said Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, according to Religion News Service. “That has massive implications for our politics going down the road.”
The perception is also backed by demographic and census data. The demographic reality is that Protestant Christianity has been losing ground for half a century, and even the conservative sects long thought to be immune have seen membership decline over the past decade, as The Christian Science Monitor reported previously.
China replaced Mexico as the top source of new America's immigrants in 2013, and Asians have been the nation's fastest growing ethnic group since 2000, according to data released Friday by the US Census Bureau.
Asians have maintained this growth through immigration, rather than birth rate, thus supplying a continual stream of immigrants from traditionally non-Christian countries such as China or India, the Associated Press reported. By contrast, other immigration waves in the 20th centuries originated in predominantly Catholic Ireland, Italy, or Mexico, or from the more traditionally Christian nations of eastern Europe. These immigrants altered the nation's cultural and religious landscape, but they did so without diminishing its perceived Christian character.
High levels of immigration are making Americans generally feel threatened, particularly when the immigrants are not Christian. Almost six in 10 worry that the values of Muslim immigrants conflict with the American way of life, and that fear is heightened among Evangelical Christians, the survey shows. Muslims represent just 1 percent of the country, but their disproportionate media presence belies their actual numbers, contributing to an Evangelical sense that cultural and political power have vanished irretrievably.
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