We’ll see what happens in 2025, of course.

  • ToastedPlanet
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    2 days ago

    Namely, even though they were all, broadly speaking, Christians

    The majority of the founders were deists.

    https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214

    Although orthodox Christians participated at every stage of the new republic, Deism influenced a majority of the Founders. The movement opposed barriers to moral improvement and to social justice. It stood for rational inquiry, for skepticism about dogma and mystery, and for religious toleration. Many of its adherents advocated universal education, freedom of the press, and separation of church and state. If the nation owes much to the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is also indebted to Deism, a movement of reason and equality that influenced the Founding Fathers to embrace liberal political ideals remarkable for their time.

    it was only a matter of time before someone whose religion was not agreeable to take over and start doing things that you don’t like

    Not just a disagreeable religion, but any religion.

    https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/establishment-clause-separation-of-church-and-state/

    Both Jefferson and fellow Virginian James Madison felt that state support for a particular religion or for any religion was improper. They argued that compelling citizens to support through taxation a faith they did not follow violated their natural right to religious liberty. The two were aided in their fight for disestablishment by the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and other “dissenting” faiths of Anglican Virginia.

    The christo-fascist MAGA movement is not consistent with the origins of our nation and the Constitution despite originalists claims to the contrary. We are not a christian nation, but a secular nation. All religions, including Christianity, were deemed dangerous to mix with the government.

    I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it in your argument, but these misconceptions are what the MAGA movement will use to push christian nationalism on all of us and to exclude people based on their faith or lack of faith.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      In the context of the Government subscribing to a particular religion, I use the word “religion”, but I guess I really mean “religious belief”, i.e. a belief about religion, in the broadest sense. I would consider deism to be a religious belief under that definition.

      So to reiterate my point, if you, the designer of a system of government, allow the state to hold and enforce a religious belief of any kind, eventually a government will take power which holds a different religious belief, and use the state"s ability to deal with religious matters to enforce their different belief upon the people. And this will inevitably happen. So the best protection you can design against this is to withhold this power from the state by explicitly declaring it to be secular.