"... A growing culture of radical secularism declares that the nation cannot profess the truths on which it was founded [...] We are told that our public schools can no longer invoke the creator, nor proclaim the natural law nor profess the God-given quality of human rights. [...] In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms [...] Too often, the courts have been biased against religious believers. This anti-religious bias must end ..."

-- Newt Gingrich, speaking at Liberty University
Gingrich: Challenge 'radical secularism' (AP via Pioneer Press)

How much of our history is merely perception colored by those seeking to attain power?  This nation was not founded on Christianity, why does that simple fact continue to elude these twits?  Shall we go back to Jefferson and check... AGAIN?

"Believing... that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists, 1802. ME 16:281

"[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom... was finally passed,... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:67
 

The great Virginian Thomas Jefferson understood that our country must espouse no religion, in order to protect them all.  Theists who hold their religions near and dear (especially Christians) should be very wary of those who want to infuse their religion into politics.  I discussed this last October in my article Looking Into the Abyss:

...If you are a religious person, and if you believe that politics is largely despicable, then it follows that you may believe that getting your religion into politics will improve the state of politics and make it less dirty.  But, like the mixing paints, doing so will also infuse the dirt of politics into your religion.  Priests will become politicians, and politicians will become priests, each less suited to their role than they were before.  Keeping your religion away from politics is the best way to keep politics away from your religion... if you don't eventually you'll find that the power-hungry have invaded your churches and turned them into something they were not intended to be.  Mixing the two leaves you with neither...

Southern Baptists, at least the ones who cheered Newt on at Liberty University, are pushing this nation toward theocracy.  It desperately concerns me that they haven't thought this through.  For his part, Newt is considering a run for president in 2008.  And so once again, the power hungry tell the religious what they want to hear in order to win votes.  Jefferson understood this too:

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21
 

Fellow citizens, we have our work cut out for us.