It's too bad that the flag-wavinest, most rah rah flag fetishists actually hate America and serve to undermine and destroy everyghint ath America is really about.
If it only weren't for that "goddamned piece of paper", the US Constitution, this could actually a christian nation all all of these unAmerican idiots could have their second run at the middle ages.
He provides quotes from John and John Q. Adams, who were critics of Christianity as practiced and had lots of bad things to say about organized religion. There are lots of quotes from the Founding Fathers at this site, some of which I quote below: http://www.positivea...
Some samples:
But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
-- John Adams, letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816
There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.
-- John Quincy Adams, diary entry for May 27, 1838
Here's an interesting article on the whole notion of our being a Christian nation: http://www.infidels....
Jefferson was especially antagonistic:
Thomas Jefferson: We find in the writings of his biographers ... a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.Thomas Jefferson, to William Short, August 4, 1822, referring to Jesus's biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
As for teaching the Bible in public schools, prayer in schools, etc., I leave you with the words of Ben Franklin:
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
-- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780, quoted from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 93.
(And I see from the CNN story that I missed the huge Ted Nugent endorsement.)