Monday April 9, while in Turkey, Obama said
One of the great strengths of the United States is ... we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.I agree.
President Obama and 76% of American citizens call themselves Christians (whatever that may mean to them). But we are a country of many religions or non-religious and we choose to consider ourselves unified by what we do have in common - certain ideals and values. The U.S. is about 70 to 75% Caucasian but we don't go around calling ourselves a "white" nation. If we called ourselves a Christian country, does that mean that 24% of Americans are not part of this country?
For anyone wanting to argue whether the U.S. was founded "Christian," they will need to address the fact that the nation became a majority "Christian" and majority Caucasian only after killing and driving out the original residents.
Frankly, isn't Christian a meaningless term anyway? Is there a universal definition? Don't Baptists define it with words that end up sounding a helluva lot like their religion? Catholics the same? On and on?
We may or may not see the end of a majority Christian America. But I'm ready to declare an end to calling our country "a Christian country." Next on the list is hopefully "the greatest nation on Earth...."
