This Would Be the Best of All Possible Worlds, if There Were no Religion In It

There was a recent poll released by Yahoo News and the Associated Press, in conjunction with Stanford University, that concluded that if there were no racial prejudice that Barack Obama could receive about 6 percentage points more support. Lots of bloggers and opinion pieces have been written about this poll recently and CNN's Campbell Brown devoted her entire show to it last Friday.

I found a piece by conservative political commentator Glenn Beck on this survey that interested me a great deal. It should come as no surprise that Beck was discounting this poll as unfair and ridiculous (he did have some legitimate claims), but what interested me was that he said, "You ask me do I consider myself Christian first or an American first? I'm going to say Christian first and here's why. I say a Christian first because my Christianity, my faith actually builds my faith in this country. My faith in God actually builds the faith in our founding and our founding documents."

If you want to consider yourself a Christian first, I find no fault in that. However, in regard to government, I find that statement to be offensive. The first line of Thomas Paine's 1776 revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense is: "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins."

Evangelicals will suggest that we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles by:

1. Displaying a list of quotes that contain the word God from prominent men in history, including our Founding Fathers.
2. Asking why "under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" is on our paper money.
3. Saying that God is mentioned in all 50 state constitutions.
4. Claiming that either the Ten Commandments are posted in the Supreme Court or that our legal system is based on the Bible.
5. Citing Christian references in the Declaration of Independence.

All of these claims can be contradicted.

1. There are just as many quotes from prominent men in history against religion, including our Founding Fathers (and including the title of this blog, a quote from John Adams).
2. "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 by a McCarthyist Congress and "In God We Trust" was added to paper money in 1956.
3. All 50 state constitutions do have the word God (mostly in preambles thanking God), but there is no mention of Jesus or Christianity.
4. Only three of them are relevant to modern law and those offenses were invented long before religion.
5. The Declaration of Independence was a document to dissolve political ties and has nothing to do with government.

I have nothing against Christianity. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of all to practice any religion they see fit, as long as it doesn't impose on anyone else. But when Reverend Arnold Conrad prayed for McCain to beat Obama in the election "...because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons," it makes me think that we have lost our way as a country.

This is not a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. If it were, the only document that really matters, the United States Constitution, would declare it proudly. This is a nation founded on liberty and freedom from tyranny. And since this is an election between men, not Gods, religion has no viable place in it except distorted influence.