Should those of religious faith be allowed to run this country?

OK, I'll bite. I agree with GDR that if a Muslim president were elected fairly by the voters we'd simply have to live with it.I also agree with whoever said it would be a very different world at that point, if this Muslim president observed all the Muslim rituals as he should.Myself, I'm inclined to expect that Islam will eventually be calling the shots in this nation in one way or another anyway, because their aim is and always has been the subjugation of the entire world to Allah, and we have no will to stop them, having abandoned our Christian roots.That being the case, I'm inclined to believe it's God's judgment against us because we've abandoned the true God, who is certainly not Allah. The Israelites were warned (in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) of the destruction of their nation if they didn't obey, and you can follow the fulfillment of those prophecies up through the history of Israel and even up to this day. The New Testament tells us to take the whole Old Testament, including what happened to Israel as admonitions to us about how God does things.{edit to correct grammar}This message has been edited by Faith, 06-03-2005 08:38 PM

No.

Typical leftist propaganda delusion. The leftist support of Islam is going to bite them in the butt big time some day. Islam from the beginning has had the goal of subduing the world to Allah. The left is feeding right into their hands these days. No, they have no intention of leaving anybody alone when they have the opportunity to make a move for Allah. Yes, we *know* this. You may not know it, but that's because you've been listening to the propaganda from the Leftist butt that's going to be bit big time.We should have known something about Muslim intentions if only from the actions of the Muslim pirates who kidnapped and enslaved American sailors in the time of Washington and Adams, because America was considered by them to be a Christian nation, and Christians like all "infidels" worthy only of humiliation, servitude or death. Nobody's proposing subjugating Islam, simply keeping them from subjugating us, and the reason I am suggesting for why we may not be able to keep them from it is that *as a nation* we've been violating God's laws. Our complete destruction is probably taking so long to arrive in full force simply because there ARE lots of God-fearing Christians who keep praying for the nation even while the Left does its best to bury us all.There are times, I must say, when I feel like saying, "Bring it on, Lord, I'm sick of this nation that hates You and Your law. I'd rather have my head sawn off than see it go on another day." But guess what, unlike me God is merciful to all you ingrates and continues to give you time to repent.

Yes I'm aware of the Treaty of Tripoli and that Washington assured the pirates that they were wrong, that we are not a Christian nation. All he meant was that unlike Europe our state and church are separate. If he meant what all the secularists claim he meant I have to rethink my appreciation of our founders as he betrayed the vast majority of American citizens in that case.HOWEVER, none of this is relevant to the point, which is that the Muslim pirates considered American sailors to be Christians, and Christians to be fair game for kidnapping and enslavement. Don't change the subject.

Right Jar, the English were impressing our seamen and enslaving them, because they were Christians and the English believe that Christians are infidels who need to be treated like dogs and they too needed to be assured that America was not a Christian country. Right.

It was obviously a bait thread from the getgo, an opportunity to ridicule as usual. Nothing new there. One may decide to take the bait anyway, knowing the rules, the REAL rules, not the written rules.

This is nothing but revisionist propaganda. Sure they're upset about the Crusades: We won, we saved Europe from them, we foiled their effort at that time to take the world for Allah and they've had to pull back and regroup for the last millennium. They think they have a right to Europe, and in fact to any place they ever conquered however temporarily. And hey, they're winning it back. The Europeans are so crippled by leftist-inspired political correctness, multiculturalism and the stupid propaganda that says the Crusades were nothing but wrong, they are incapable of doing anything to save themselves from them. Well, give up your Christian roots and you get the alien god Allah, that's the lesson here. Any chance America will heed it? Naah. Might as well get yourself a prayer rug and a hijab for your wife -- or mother and sisters if you don't have a wife. It's coming. Bye bye freedom, bye bye equality, bye bye all the Christian blessings of the West, hello Sharia law.Edits for clarity and to be a tad more politic.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-04-2005 11:14 PM

Why then did Washington feel the need to assure them America was not Christian, in order to keep them from persecuting what they considered to be Christians?

I would, I do, as in fact I thought I'd said quite clearly. God's punishment. Definitely His will. The end of Western civilization because the West has abandoned Him. Thought I'd said this over and over. I hope He might change His mind because it's going to be brutal. Why? Certainly they are establishing themselves in Asia too but there's no reason they can't take down Europe first and then America. We're ripe for it. What ARE they doing to the Tibetans?Do you care at all what the Chinese government is doing to its Christian citizens?

This REALLY REALLY explains why Washington felt the need to explain to them that America is not a Christian country to get them to desist.

Well it seems to me that Pres. Bush doesn't take a hard enough line on Islam, but this has nothing to do with his being born again.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-05-2005 07:23 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 06-05-2005 07:25 AM

Trying to wake people up is the opposite of fatalism by the way.

Well, I haven't proposed an authoritative Christian government, although I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the term. This thread focused on whether Christians would accept a Muslim President. I answered that if that's the way the country voted, there would be no choice but to accept it, but went on to add that it would be a very bad sign for the health of the country, which I would take as God's judgment against us, which we richly deserve in my view. What "separation" means to you and what it meant to the founders may be entirely different things. I'm not sure it's completely clear what they meant, however, because the topic is so clouded by heated rhetoric from both sides, but I'm very sure they had no idea of eliminating Christianity from the public arena as it is now interpreted. The nation was solidly Protestant in their day. Local government revolved around Christian prayer at least in the New England area. Seeking God's will in the affairs of government was considered an important duty. Preachers preached on various political issues, on the rightness or wrongness of the war of independence, for instance, on the shaping of the proposed federal government and its constitution. Just to read a little in the lives of the movers and shakers of that day is to see Christianity intimately interwoven with every facet of life. It is very hard to see how one gets from that impression of a religion-soaked America to the present notion that the founders wanted a government and a public life devoid of Christian influence.This is not to deny that they wanted a separation between the church and the state of some kind however. At its most basic, this was intended to keep Congress from establishing one sect as dominant over the others, because that was a recipe for persecution of the non-established sects, which is what had happened in Europe. Getting from that to the idea they wanted a secular government scrubbed free of all Christian influence is quite an unwarranted leap, however. I would think that notion is more than contradicted by the fact that they themselves instituted Christian prayer to open all the functions of government. This is a very complex subject. The meaning of the separation of church from state isn't at all obvious, as I say above, and neither is **what the Christian right is trying to do.** The Christian right is not a monolith but represents a variety of opinions, and sorting out their views in the atmosphere of near-hysterical opposition to anything they have to say at all is usually a lost cause on a message board. Um, I'm sure you don't mean "everyone" ahould *step back,* you mean Christian fundies should realize they're wrong, period. However, there's a lot that could be discussed in this paragraph too. How we got to BE a smorgasbord of viewpoints could be an interesting investigation in itself, and whether it is a good thing for a cohesive and healthy nation is another question to think about, and THEN we can talk about whether "a government independent of faith" (the term "faith" needing much discussion in itself) is 1) needed as you claim, 2) a good idea if so.I'm not sure all or any particular one of these topics belongs in this thread.

Ah yes, the politically correct multiculturalist delusion of our time, exactly the attitude that will usher in what I'm predicting. Rather reminiscent of the serpent's assurance to Eve: "If you eat of it you will not surely die."

But you are missing the point. This is not about people, it's about ideas, beliefs, ideologies. One can certainly respect people no matter what they believe, but if they believe that you should be dead because you refuse to accept their ideology, then respecting them may not sanely include trusting them very far.