AG repeats moot ‘Christian nation’ trope
In running across some old statements by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week, I was reminded that he—and the entire Trump administration—continue to disingenuously assert the trope that the United States is fundamentally a “Christian nation.”
As America’s top law-enforcement official, what Sessions says matters. Their respect for the office and whoever fills it causes people far too often to indiscriminately accept at face value whatever the AG says. So, if what Sessions is saying is inaccurate, it’s tantamount to spreading known lies among the American people.
For example, he was not excoriated as he should have been when he said this in 2016: “We are at a period of secularization in America that I think is very dangerous. It erodes the very concept of truth, the very concept of right and wrong, and there are people out there who enjoy attacking people who follow biblical directives.”
Let’s unpack that statement for a moment. What he is saying is that the country is endangered if Christian morality isn’t our society’s only foundation. That truth and right or wrong are only valid as the Bible presents them (otherwise being inaccessible to people). And that it’s somehow wrong for opponents of this supernatural view to push back against the arbitrary scriptural agenda of the conservative Christian Right. Apparently because it’s not nice to criticize religion. He’s not the only prominent person to spread these views.
Undoubtedly, many Christians buy into the Bible-centric view that America is a Christian nation (despite our Founding Fathers laboring mightily to avoid that) and that any erosion of any of its dominant Christly national traditions, habits, rituals and core assumptions portends societal doom. But at least a quarter of the population—a burgeoning segment unaffiliated with any religion—emphatically don’t. They comprehend, as evidence proves, that Americans are quickly becoming less religious as a whole, as their Western European cousins are already.
The handwriting seems to be on the wall that neither America nor Europe are a Christian nation and that wide swathes of the world are steadily—some much faster than others—growing more secular by the day. Certainly, greater global access to education is part of it, as people learn material truths about the real world that constantly and compellingly contradict religious imaginings.
Whatever our attorney general may say, there is no evidence whatsoever that, without fealty to the unverifiable edicts of scripture, human beings are unable to comprehend what is fundamentally true and morally right. Nonsense. Indeed, secular people, who are as admittedly imperfect as anyone, still often behave in ways far more Christian than Christians.
Actually, I’ve seen it many times myself.
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