here is a billboard at the stadium where I work, with big golden letters advertising: AmericaBlessGod.com. I've been meaning to investigate the site for weeks, but finally remembered today.

Note that it's not GodBlessAmerica.com, which doesn't exist, as far as I can tell. Oddly, GodBlessAmerica.com doesn't show up at all with an Internic Whois search, but I refuse to believe that no one has tried to buy it yet.  So I'll assume it's being withheld for some reason.

Anyway, we're not talking about GBA.com, we're talking about ABG.com.  What's on the site? About what you'd expect.  It's not some sort of GodHatesFags garbage, but while being less hate-mongering, is actually a lot less substantiative.  The whole site is a mere two pages, as far as I can tell, with pop up windows for their "founding father" quotes.

The opening paragraph tells more or less what it's about, as well as demonstrating the site's general ignorance of historical fact.  And proper grammar, for that matter.

As I have been growing in my faith, learning about God, country, life, and all that makes up our life, I have rediscovered that we, America, the United States, were founded as a God honoring Christian Nation. The men and women who came to this part of the world came with a vision from the God of the Bible. The vision was to have a homeland that was Christian. I know that many disagree, and say that America is a land made up of many different beliefs and many different philosophies, but if you do an honest search and study of our origin, you can’t deny the facts that America was established as a “Born-Again Christian Nation.”

So who do they mean, with that "were founded" and "was established" stuff?  Founded by who?

The site has a lot of fuzziness about the time line of things.  It refers to the founding fathers, and the original settlers, and their alleged Christian intentions.

Well obviously the first settlers in the Americas were here thousands of years before Christianity was invented in the Middle East, and they didn't know anything about Christianity until the Spanish Conquistadors arrived and butchered them for their gold.  Christians first came to this part of the world in 1496, which is when Columbus is said to have landed ( in Haiti). Even the most devout Christian wouldn't try to claim he came to found a Christian homeland, being as he was sailing for India to open a trading route.

So they must mean later on.  Many settlements were founded in the 1500's, but America didn't really begin to take shape (on the East Coast) until the 1600's, with settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts.  Those people were indeed religious fanatics. Read this for more info.

The settlers of Massachusetts came to America to have freedom to worship for themselves, but they had no intention of creating a refuge for others to look to as a sanctuary for democratic freedom. In fact, the leaders of Massachusetts fought religious liberty with every weapon at their disposal. Such leaders as Winthrop, Dudley, Endecott, and the Rev. John Cotton, were strongly opposed to democracy, were fanatical in their zealousness to prevent any independence in religious views, and had NO trust in the people at large.

That's how they felt.  Whether this is the sort of "founding fathers" attitude we want to celebrate today is highly debatable. Keep in mind that early voting rights were held only for the rich property owners, the new world aristocracy.  These people came from a Monarchy, and wanted to continue the same values; they were essentially nobles without a king to tell them what to do.  "America" today is much more associated with freedom, liberty for all, pursuit of happiness, etc.  None of these things were ideals the early settlers held dear, and in fact were things most of them strongly opposed.

So ABG.com is perhaps technically correct in their assessment of the goals of many of the initial settlers.  However that's not who they quote.  They quote the so called "founding fathers", the guys whose names you see on the Declaration of Independence, or who were early presidents (or much later ones, in the case of Lincoln.  Remember how I said they were fuzzy about the time line?)

Here are a couple of quotes from the site.

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." - PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON (on September 17th, 1796)

"The reason that Christianity is the best friend of Government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart." - PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON

The problem with this is that you can find a lot more quotes from the same people in which they espouse very different PoVs.

George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
From: George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)

Thomas Jefferson
"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth."
From Six Historic Americans, by John E. Remsburg, letter to William Short

"The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ."

I wouldn't expect to see this last one by Jefferson used in too many "Christian Founding Fathers" arguments, eh? heh

A way to reconcile the extreme contradictions between these quotes is that the pro-Christian ones are rather philosophical and non-specific, and were made to the public. Politicians must, by definition, pander to the ignorant masses.  This has always been true, and likely always will be true.

At any rate, the GBA.com one from Jefferson one is far from an endorsement of Christianity.  In fact it's sort of a criticism, basically analogous to the famous Nietzsche quote that "Religion is the opiate of the masses." I don't think anyone would disagree with Jefferson's quote above, it's just a matter of how deeply you want to read into it.  Superficially it's pro-Christian; with a little harder look it appears to be saying that Christianity is a great way to manipulate and control the mob, which I wouldn't look at as real high praise.

On the other hand, I don't see any way you could rationalize his lower, longer quotes to turn them to anything other than contempt for Christianity and those who practice it.

It's also sort of funny that we revere the words of early politicians to such an extent (on both sides of this issue), while assuming that virtually anything they (politicians) say today is a calculated lie.  Politicians were greater back then than they are today, and there wasn't such constant spin and re-election positioning, but elected leaders have to tell the people what the people want to hear, at least to some extent.  This has always been true, and always will be.  I'd put a lot more importance on a quote from a leader to a trusted friend, in private correspondence, than on what he said in a speech to the general public.

So what is my take or opinion on the whole AmericaBlessGod.com site? I think it's semi-despicable.

It's something put up for relatively opportunistic reasons by a church, with quotes carefully-selected to back up their opinions.  It's an obvious attempt to ensnare religiously-indifferent people who may be shocked or mentally floundering after the 9/11 terrorist attacks; religions all have a long history of offering comfort/converting people after a tragedy.

I've long wondered how bad something would have to be for people to reject religion.  To say, "Enough of this, obviously there is no god, or at least no 'just and loving' god, or He wouldn't allow these sorts of horrible things to happen."

The answer, I have come to believe, is "Nothing."

There is nothing bad enough, horrible enough, tragic enough, to make most people look at their world view objectively and rationally.  Quite the contrary, people tend to become more religious when they suffer a tragedy, personal or public.  You see the whole, "Pray for the family/flood survivors/kidnap victims/etc." concept put forward, and this frankly baffles me.

God is all knowing, all powerful, etc, in their world view.  He therefore allowed the murder/disaster/tragedy/etc to occur, fully knowing how horrible it would be for the people involved.  So does He do this, and then sit back and wait to see if enough people ask Him to fix it?  Is there some sort of heavenly abacus, and every time someone else prays to save the kidnapped child/make the flood waters recede/turn aside the hurricane, he tallies up another bead, like keeping score in a foosball game, and if enough people do, He will intervene?

Can you imagine someone conducting a survey of this sort of thing?  Charting every disaster/tragedy, ascertaining how many people actually included event X in their prayers, and then graphing that vs. the actual event outcome?  I'm certainly not volunteering, and it's probably (hopefully) blasphemous to even suggest a qualitative measurement of prayer-answering. That being said, no amount of prayers has ever brought any dead relative back to life or repaired a disaster-damaged city, you'll note.

Anyway, back to my initial point.  Immediately after the 9/11 events, when Christians were hopping around, my thoughts were cynically, "Why don't they convert to Islam?  Clearly the Muslim god is stronger." After all, there couldn't possibly be a Christian god, or he wouldn't let something so horrible happen in a "Christian Nation".

Of course there's an easy answer to this apparent quandary, and it's the one Jerry Falwell proposed.  Speaking on the 700 Club, September 13th, 2001, he began by blaming the ACLU, and then continued:

"But throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the Pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

So basically his view, which Pat Robertson fully agreed with, was that God has grown angry with America for our secularism, and therefore allowed the Muslim terrorists to strike at us so successfully.  Falwell was broadly-condemned for this and had to offer up some half-assed apologies, but I don't see how his view can be denied, by any true believer.  What other possible explanation could there be, if you truly believe that God Blesses America, and loves this country best?  There must be some reason that He would allow us to be hit so painfully, right?  To believe otherwise would be to accept that God is dead, or disinterested, or allows the world to exist in a chaotic fashion, and those are all basically the same as saying that there is no God at all.

Is this spoiled child view of the world, this megalomania, part of the reason fundamentalism is so much stronger in the US than in any other Western/Christian nation?  That by the economic strength and military good fortune that has made the US the only real Superpower, they can see that as proof of God's favor?  If the US got whipped repeatedly in international conflicts (Vietnam is overlooked, apparently.) would the "fundies" start to re-evaluate their beliefs in Divine Blessings?

Heh, I know, silly question.  As I said above, nothing is enough to convince people to not believe something they really want to believe in. Fundamentalists would just go the Falwell route and blame freedom of/from religion for God's wrath, and try to turn their anger on fellow Americans who disagree with their religious policies. This is a rather cheap way to pass the buck from God, if you think about it. If He really were a just/merciful/etc god, he wouldn't let such things happen.  Why not hold Him to some actual standards?  Demand that he smite down the evil terrorists right now, to prove to us that He really does love America the best?

Of course no one does, since when it didn't happen, it would be awkward to explain.

Yes, this is a very old argument, and one of the first that an intelligent child comes up with when pondering the existence of God.  It's also the first time that most parents are left floundering for explanations as they wonder exactly how to answer that to the child, while trying not to think about it themselves, lest they commit the mortal sin of cognitive dissonance. Generally one of the all purpose, dissent-stifling nonsense quotes like "The lord works in mysterious ways." or "No man can know the mind of god.", are trotted out, with "Because I said so." held back as an emergency, secular, response.

None of which are adequate replies to any thinking person, but that's exactly my point, while simultaneously being beside their point, if you see my (convoluted) meaning. 

You can also easily see that the beliefs espoused by the AmericaBlessGod.com site are in much more agreement with things the fanatical Muslims believe than with what most Americans believe.  Obviously their ends are different, but both mindsets stress blind adherence to the leaders who will tell you what God's will is.  Both feel that God has chosen then specially to fight against the disbelievers, and is on their side.  Both twist historical fact to try and back up their case.  Both have no tolerance for diversity or dissent.

Obviously they vary wildly in practice (and not just because the Taliban actually practice what they preach), but the essential message of both isn't all that different.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.