Dumb and Dumber Republicans

So as Senator McCain supposedly backpedals from his "Christian nation" comments on BeliefNet, ex-Senator Thompson puts his foot into it. This site sums it up pretty well while offering a running commentary from all sides, and the History News Network tries to put the controversy in a more learned context. Some people think it's enough to say that since a majority of Americans were Christian at the time of the Founding that the country was Founded on a Christian basis. Leaving aside the absence of God from the Constitution, it boils down to what you mean by "Christian." Some people equate Christendom with Western Civilization and would credit all the accomplishments of the latter to the former. Others include the Deist Founders among the Christian majority even though Deism is essentially un-Christian in denying the divinity of Jesus in particular and the miraculous in general. That's an important distinction, because to the extent that many Founders invoked God or Providence, they meant something they inferred from history and nature rather than something taken from scripture on faith. By comparison, when today's fundamentalists and theocons talk of a Christian nation, they mean a country that would take the Bible as an infallible guide, on faith. The Founders (or, let's face it, the ones who counted) would regard such assertions with amused contempt.