Response to America Being Protestant

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Franky

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I’ve seen this a few times on different social platforms (Tweets from Evangelicals, discussions/comments on Catholic debate videos, etc). What’s an apologetic response to someone who states that America, being the greatest nation in the world, was founded on Protestantism, and therefore Protestantism is somehow divinely favored over Catholicism? Basically suggesting that since America is so prosperous and it was founded by (and mostly is currently) Protestant, that this somehow shows that Protestantism is the “correct” religion (I guess you can say).
 
What parts of America’s political foundation is uniquely Protestant? If anything. it’s just plain Christian.
The one uniquely Protestant thing I can remember is Prohibition, and we all know how that ended.
 
It’s always amusing when claims are made that the United States was founded on Christian principles or that the United States is a Christian nation, Protestant or otherwise.

The United States was founded on Enlightenment values, not Christian ones. Your founding fathers were deists and even Masons. Some were Protestant. Some were even Catholic Christians.

Just goes to show that the United States founding cut across confessional and belief lines. For better or for worse, but don’t make any pretenses that the United States was founded as a Christian state or is one today. It was, from the beginning, a secular, Enlightenment state, and that remains the case today. A lot of your founding Fathers treated God as an impersonal, apathetic force, and this is pretty much still the attitude of the United States today, as a state. In God you (as a state, not individual Americans) may trust, but God you do not love, nor do you believe that God loves you. As a matter of state policy, that is.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. Read your own founding documents. Your Declaration of Independence and 1788 Constitution is dripping with secular and Enlightenment philosophy. Your heroes include men like Thomas Paine. Granted some of it is compatible with Christianity. A lot of it is even good, very good. But they themselves are not Christian documents.
 
I think someone who finds America Protestant is more showing just how influenced by the Enlightenment a lot of modern-day Protestantism has become.
 
One wonders what the infant United States would have looked like governmentally had the 13 colonies been settled by Spain and not England. Tend to doubt that freedom of religion and speech would have been enshrined as constitutional values.
 
Statistically the numbers of Protestants, along with Catholics, is declining in America, according to Pew Research. Most believers are also older. The correlation with prosperity is inverse, the richer a person the less religious in general. Jesus was right, very hard for the rich to enter the kingdom.
 
But which group constitute most of the doctors, lawyers, professors, scientists, artists, and so on in proportion to the percentage of their numbers? Jews, of course! This is proof positive that G-d favors the Jews and Judaism is the correct religion. Case closed. LOL
 
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No way. Affluence as a percentage of members?

God is a scientologist.
 
There are those who make this claim that the US is a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) country. Point out that they are incorrect. Read about Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who signed the Declaration; and his cousin Bishop John Carroll. Also read about Daniel Carroll and Thomas Fitzsimmons, who signed the Constitution.
 
I’d say that, to the extent those people have a point, America was founded on the denominations that today comprise mainline Protestantism (Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, etc.). If Catholics are somehow discredited by lack of representation in the founding, then so are the Evangelical Protestants who are (I suspect) likeliest to try this line of argument. We’re birds of an un-American feather!
 
“The correlation with prosperity is inverse, the richer a person the less religious in general.”

That depends, as I define prosperity and wealth differently than you. Prosperity could mean less war, and wealth not possessions, but family. I am in the US, by the way though. My Spanish teacher in high school was always quick to point out that America is the whole West, not just the USA.
 
Franky said:
What’s an apologetic response to someone who states that America, being the greatest nation in the world, was founded on Protestantism, and therefore Protestantism is somehow divinely favored over Catholicism?
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America is definitely a country deeply influenced by Protestantism. But it does not follow that it is divinely favored over Catholicism. Also, “greatest country in the world” is a subjective opinion, not a fact.
 
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Of course the point is not to be attached to material wealth but to use it wisely. Maybe you know people like that, but it is more common for the rich to want to get richer and accumulate more.
 
Im thinking of Genesis 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Please be open minded when interpreting the bible?
For many roads lead to the great path of salvation. Many have not seen the forest for the trees, the big picture for the small details in the way. The basic argument of good and evil exists to everyone but those with no sin. Its really just what things are done in the name of that makes them good or evil. Halo’d are those who have seen the end from the beginning.
 
My response would be; prove America is Protestant. I have a good friend who moved to the “Bible Belt” from Kosovo. He said “I don’t get it. You have churches everywhere, but no one believes anything!” I think that sums up how our country, as a whole, views religion. Not just Protestantism. We claim there is a god. But think just believing god exists is good enough. And don’t talk about god. You might offend someone. Or it might be bad for business…we sound like masons. Hahaha. In short, we’re christian by word, but not by action.
 
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I would imagine the Protestants are boastful over it. Aren’t we proud of catholic Ireland? I don’t think it much matters. I will say because of Protestantism so blantantly in the schools early on we have a flourishing catholic parochial schools system and a Jewish private school system develop as well. If he who has the most people wins the atheists and Islam are probably going to win.
 
Franky said:
What’s an apologetic response to someone who states that America, being the greatest nation in the world,
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Other nations would disagree with that statement and call it patriotism. A dangerous ism.
 
North America was already settled. If Protestants want credit for what happened next, fine. Much of the US was bought from France and Russia who also occupied territory that wasn’t vacant. Spain had parts of the Southwest.
 
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