Now I believe that in answering the question, are we a Christian nation, we must apply the same standard that Christians apply in verifying a group's Christian credentials. I say this because Christianity (like many other terms) find their true meaning by looking at what they meant historically, because the true meaning of the term Christianity is historically qualified within the Christian Church. In other words, I would not look to Marxism or Communism for the definition of a Christian.

What then defines a Christian, whether it be a Church, country or person? May I suggest that at least four ingredients are necessary for such a declaration?

1. One must believe in the inerrancy of the 66 books of scriptures.

2. One must believe that these 66 books are the inspired words of God.

3. One must believe that Jesus Christ is the Only Son of God and that He is the sufficient and only savior of mankind.[4]

4. One must believingly submit (from the heart) to ingredients 1, 2 and 3.

Now upon reading the constitution of the United States (which I did), I found no declaration of the inerrancy of scriptures. I found nothing about our country being bound to Holy Scriptures and I found nothing even beginning to resemble a declaration of our country's submission to Jesus as lord over us. We do find that these Christian principles governed the lives of most of the Framers but we do not find that fact expressed in our constitution. Indeed, our constitution was informed by the Framer's Christian worldview, even though they stopped short of creating a Christian Nation. It is not as if the Framers scratched off Holy Scriptures and wrote United States Constitution. Moreover, I defy anyone to show me that the United States constitution was intended to be a summary of the Bible in the same way a Church's Confession of faith is.

I wished the framers were more candid about their Christian worldview as they penned the Constitution. I wished they included the Lordship of Christ over this country. They did not and so I am lead to the inescapable and disappointing conclusion that Obama may have been right about this one. But he is right only within the narrow scope of his conclusion that this is not a Christian nation. The fact still remains that the set of values he alluded to that binds us as a country, are indeed Christian values even if the President doesn't think so.  

Danian Michael,
Political Agenda.

Footnotes:

[1] I found the quotation on The Huffington Post website (www.huffingtonpost.com)

[2] Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopalian Church, accounts a conversation he had with Archbishop of Canterbury that the Bible is basically subjectively qualified based on your own interpretation. Basically; the Bible is what you make it. To read his comments follow the following link: (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2009/03/gene_robinson.html)

[3] ("No other God: A response to open theism" by John Frame) John Frame answers some of the main claims of the open Theist for example: Since mankind has free will God can be wrong in His prediction of the future.