It is America's political, not religious, culture that calls
for foreign enemies, and Catholicism played that role long before Islam
At the Values Voter Summit in Washington
DC last weekend, leading members of the American religious right rallied around
the notion that the US is a Christian nation. One speaker, the leader of a Texas
megachurch, cited the advice of John Jay, a revolutionary-era American
statesmen, that Americans should elect Christians. In an 1816 letter, Jay wrote:
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the
duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select
and prefer Christians for their rulers." When Jay and other 18th and
19th-century Anglo-American evangelicals spoke of "Christian", they meant
Protestant. Catholics, Jay was implying, are not Christians, as well as suspect
Americans.
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