Once again, a theocratist insults history and current reality (letter, 11-10). My father was a veteran of World War II. He was the most highly decorated soldier from our Texas county in that conflict, earning two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and the French Croix de Guerre. He did not fight for “Christian heritage.” He fought for secular American values, and for his American buddies beside him, against a nation that threatened the world (and was supported by most “Christian” churches in Nazi Germany, along with their ally the uber-Christian Italy).
The writer bemoans the loss of “higher ideals” when, in fact, the more homogenized “Christian” America he laments could not have been less concerned about such ideals: sanctioning slavery, bigotry, child abuse, wife beating, labor abuse, not to mention the unfettered exploitation of the environment. It was progressive secular forces that led the way toward the far more humane nation we have today.
America has never been a Christian nation. The Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were doing disallowing a national religion, or even a nod in the direction of any particular faith. Most of them were dubiously Christian, or not at all. Ditto Lincoln, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Twain and millions of other distinguished Americans.
If you wish to celebrate religious warriors, there are many theocracies to choose from. But not America.
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