Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected Republican House speaker, used to conduct a seminar in churches premised on the idea that the United States is a “Christian nation.” This ministry, as he has referred to it, is yet more evidence that Johnson is committed to a hardcore Christian fundamentalism that shapes his views of politics and government.
The seminar, titled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity,” was organized by Onward Christian Education Services, Inc., a company owned by his wife, Kelly Johnson, a Christian counselor and anti-abortion activist who calls herself a “leader in the pro-family movement.” The website for her counseling service—which was taken down shortly after Johnson became speaker—described the seminar, which featured both her and Johnson, as exploring several questions, such as, “What is happening in America and how do we fix it?” The list includes this query: “Can our heritage as a Christian nation be preserved?” There were different versions of the seminar running from two-hour-long lectures to retreats lasting two days.
Going off just the headline and not the dog whistling. We are. The nothing in particular group are just secret Atheists who grew up in religious households though lol. The agnostics are just cowards who don’t want to commit.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
Would you also say the US is a white country? See how that sounds?
He definitely means it in the sense of a country run by and for the benefit of Christians, not just a country where most of the people happen to be Christian. Quit trying to let him off the hook.
I just love how Lemmings are even better at making up imaginary arguments nobody mentioned just so they can be even more offended than Reddit ever was while completely ignoring any and all context lolcatnip.
I wouldn’t class agnosticism as cowardly atheism, it’s very much its own class.
Atheism is the disbelief of gods or enlightened creation.
Agnosticism is just a “we don’t know” catch-all. There might be an Abrahamic god, with a heaven or hell that follows. There might be connected life and consciousness in the form of pantheism, where our consciousness dissipates and gets absorbed into the rest of existence. We might be living in a simulation, and wake up to a world with an entirely different set of rules and beliefs. Or maybe traditional atheism is right, this is our only existence, and we return to nothingness after death.
On a tangent, I’m weirded out by staunch atheists in the same way I’m weirded out by organized religion. We’re living subjective experiences of reality fed to us by electrified sacs of meat in our head, and even that could just be the truth on paper given to us by a simulation. We don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t remember what it was like before birth, but a nasty blow to the head could make it so we don’t remember what it was like yesterday. Observable and measurable fact is all we have, and anyone who claims to know what’s behind it or between the lines, or for that matter what isn’t there, is just elaborating on their own worldview, not empirical evidence.
I mean, technically there is no such thing as empirical evidence since we only know about it through our senses.
That being said, I personally find it far more interesting and amazing to assume that the universe is as we observe it. The idea that all the complexity we see results only from interactions between a small handful of different types of tiny wave-particle things is oddly inspiring to me.
Yeah, something like ~30% are unaffiliated or outright unbelievers. I look forward to the day when the sum total of xtians is under 50% and all the pandering to xtians can finally just stop. So sick of it. They are welcome to have their faith and practice it in their house or place of worship, but I’m sick of pols that wear it on their sleeves, or worse, assume it is the government’s role to create more xtians.
I would say the same thing if Buddhists were >50% and all the pandering was just nonstop to them. We’ll all be better off if no group has a majority and no pol feels compelled to cater to them.
By the way, it’s interesting that “just Christian”, Catholicism, Protestantism, and “Mormonism” are broken out differently - they are all xtians. I mean Protestants have many sub-sects within them, and hardly agree on all the finer points of doctrine.
I remember my mind being blown the first time that I learned China was a largely Atheist country. They have tons of their own issues but even in our media we presume every other nation must be largely god-driven with religious dogma often being one of their defining characteristics.
Chinese? Must be buddhist! India? Must be Taoist! Japanese? Better have them praying at a shrine with secret christians in the mix.
I also can’t wait. Honestly a lot of the ‘Just Christians’ I’ve met are just secret atheists who don’t want to upset family too. Or those who managed to brainwash themselves so they don’t have to be so scared of oblivion lol. The one part about religion I’m envious of.