1/ Can Utah still be "Utah" if it ceases to be White & Mormon? Can America still be "America" if it ceases to be White & Christian?
Utah: Founded, colonized & built by White Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS). In the 1990s, after a 49-year colonization period followed by 100 years of statehood, Utah was still 90% White & 75% LDS. Note that LDS membership hasn't ever been required to hold office or establish residency in Utah, nor has the LDS church ever been enshrined as the official state church in any founding document. Even so, anyone who's spent any time in Utah would easily observe Utah's distinctly peculiar White Mormon culture permeating everywhere, impacting nearly everything. Even the grid-layout road system is Mormon!
Regardless of someone's personal feelings toward the LDS faith, any intellectually honest soul would acknowledge that Utah would cease to be uniquely "Utah" if it ever ceased to be [White + Mormon]. Anyone alleging otherwise is simply too stupid or disingenuous to even waste breath on.
America: Founded, colonized & overwhelmingly built by White Christians of various European ethnicities & Christian denominations. In 1965, after a 169-year colonization period followed by nearly 200 years of nation-building, America was still 89.5% White & 93% Christian.
So, I ask again: Can America still be "America" if it ceases to be [White + Christian]? Can your answer really be any different than your answer for Utah?
In this thread, we will review some of the White Christian origins, organizing principles & foundations of America. Please leave your comments and feedback.
2/ America Was Built By Christians & Christian Systems
Everywhere the European settlers & colonizers went, they built churches and organized themselves & their communities around their congregations & Christian beliefs.
Typical founding/organizing documents include the Mayflower Compact (1620) & the Charlestown-Boston Church Covenant (1630). These were covenants made between the individuals in the community & God, in the name of Jesus Christ.
As time went on, these Compacts and Covenants grew, merged & evolved--eventually developing into the great colonial charters & state constitutions, which then became the templates for the US Constitution. You can draw a straight line from these early community covenants and the US Constitution. Without these and others like them, we literally wouldn't have the US Constitution.
Everywhere the European settlers & colonizers went, they built churches and organized themselves & their communities around their congregations & Christian beliefs.
Typical founding/organizing documents include the Mayflower Compact (1620) & the Charlestown-Boston Church Covenant (1630). These were covenants made between the individuals in the community & God, in the name of Jesus Christ.
As time went on, these Compacts and Covenants grew, merged & evolved--eventually developing into the great colonial charters & state constitutions, which then became the templates for the US Constitution. You can draw a straight line from these early community covenants and the US Constitution. Without these and others like them, we literally wouldn't have the US Constitution.
3/ American-Style Government "Of, By, And For The People" Is Directly Rooted In Protestant Christianity
The Protestant concept of the "priesthood of all believers" taught that each person had equal spiritual authority & direct access to God. This led to congregational church governance where members ruled themselves through mutual consent.
In early America, this church model influenced local civic life—town meetings & community decisions mirrored congregational practices, often being one and the same: the church meeting was the town meeting, and vice versa. Over time, this spiritual self-rule evolved into a political ideal: government of, by, and for the people--grounded in consent, not hierarchy.
When they say "America is an idea," this is one of the vital core ideas, and it's profoundly Christian. Without Christianity, this American ideal simply wouldn't even exist. If this isn't a fundamental national organizing principle of the United States, I don't know what is.
The Protestant concept of the "priesthood of all believers" taught that each person had equal spiritual authority & direct access to God. This led to congregational church governance where members ruled themselves through mutual consent.
In early America, this church model influenced local civic life—town meetings & community decisions mirrored congregational practices, often being one and the same: the church meeting was the town meeting, and vice versa. Over time, this spiritual self-rule evolved into a political ideal: government of, by, and for the people--grounded in consent, not hierarchy.
When they say "America is an idea," this is one of the vital core ideas, and it's profoundly Christian. Without Christianity, this American ideal simply wouldn't even exist. If this isn't a fundamental national organizing principle of the United States, I don't know what is.
4/ Revolutionary America: A Christian Nation
By the time America was founded on July 4, 1776, 9 of the 13 states had official state-sponsored Christian religions subsidized by taxes. 12 of them had some kind of Christian requirement for holding public office--the only exception being Rhode Island, the smallest & least populous state--and it was still 98% Christian anyway. In most of the 12 states, these religious tests persisted for several decades, with New Hampshire being the last holdout until 1877. Overall, >99% of the White population in the US was some kind of Christian.
Christianity was a fundamental organizing principle of America.
By the time America was founded on July 4, 1776, 9 of the 13 states had official state-sponsored Christian religions subsidized by taxes. 12 of them had some kind of Christian requirement for holding public office--the only exception being Rhode Island, the smallest & least populous state--and it was still 98% Christian anyway. In most of the 12 states, these religious tests persisted for several decades, with New Hampshire being the last holdout until 1877. Overall, >99% of the White population in the US was some kind of Christian.
Christianity was a fundamental organizing principle of America.
5/ "Sam, If America Is Supposed To Be A Christian Country, Why Don't The Founding Documents Say So?"
Our founding documents and laws were parsimoniously tailored to the people they were written for, as John Adams (2nd US President, signer of the Declaration of Independence) famously observed and as the Constitution itself explicitly references: He literally says who the Constitution was written for (a moral and religious people, i.e. Christians), and the Constitution itself literally says who it's written for ("Our Posterity," >99% of White Americans were Christians).
To be a little facetious, if a basketball team got together and drafted rules for their basketball team, would they need to specify the rules are for basketball players and not football players? No, it's just a given.
The Constitution doesn't explicitly say the country was to be White European, either, yet it implicitly was, just as it was implicitly Christian.
One of the reasons why the Constitution was relatively short & sparse, and left so much power to the States and the People is because it could! The church-going, religious Christians were people of "good character" already highly organized in their communities around their congregations and civic life.
Finally, as I noted above, the Constitution is itself partially an outgrowth of earlier Christian documents, covenants, compacts and charters.
Our founding documents and laws were parsimoniously tailored to the people they were written for, as John Adams (2nd US President, signer of the Declaration of Independence) famously observed and as the Constitution itself explicitly references: He literally says who the Constitution was written for (a moral and religious people, i.e. Christians), and the Constitution itself literally says who it's written for ("Our Posterity," >99% of White Americans were Christians).
To be a little facetious, if a basketball team got together and drafted rules for their basketball team, would they need to specify the rules are for basketball players and not football players? No, it's just a given.
The Constitution doesn't explicitly say the country was to be White European, either, yet it implicitly was, just as it was implicitly Christian.
One of the reasons why the Constitution was relatively short & sparse, and left so much power to the States and the People is because it could! The church-going, religious Christians were people of "good character" already highly organized in their communities around their congregations and civic life.
Finally, as I noted above, the Constitution is itself partially an outgrowth of earlier Christian documents, covenants, compacts and charters.
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