one nation under God

This has been on my mind for while, ever since my brother and I had a conversation about atheists trying to ban or remove crosses from military sites or other sites of sacrifice or loss. The whole concept confuses me. If I came to your house after a loved one died and tried to erect a cross in your front yard, then your protest would be understandable. I fully support your right to not believe in God, and you shouldn't have to act like you do. But the other side of that coin is that you can't run around yelling at other people who do believe in God and act accordingly that they are cramping your style.

But there is a bigger picture here that I don't expect any atheist understand or agree with, but I think it implies a great responsibility for the rest of us.

America is Christian. There, I said it. And I don't mean as a sum of its parts, that the majority of citizens are Christian. I mean America is Christian, just like the Bible is.

We recently celebrated the 4th of July, the "birthday of America", our independence day. We celebrate on this day because it was the day that our founding father's signed the Declaration of Independence, even though our fight for independence hadn't even begun.

This is the first paragraph of that first, American document.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

See? Nature's God? It was an appeal to our God-given rights that created our great nation in the first place. And it is to that God that we owe thanks that our great nation survived the War of Independence. Consider the last verse of our National Anthem, that struck me as we sang it on Sunday.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

I'm sure I don't need to enumerate other evidences such as the pledge of allegiance as referenced by my post title or the reminder on our money "In God we Trust". But I will quote a verse from the Book of Mormon that underlines my point. Ether 3:2 says,

"And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fullness of his wrath should come upon them."

I guess what I'm saying is that if atheists succeed in robbing us of one of the most important aspects of our nation, or if we casually forget what America is, what makes it great, we are in for big trouble. Again, I'm not trying to force Christianity on anyone, but if you don't like the fact that America is Christian and are hell-bent on changing that, maybe you should consider Europe. It's nice there.