That's what we say, but...
A great deal of the anti-immigrant grumbling I hear on a semi-weekly basis has been about three things: point of origin/race, poverty, and religion.
I used the fore slash on the first point because when pressed on the issue, the person who said it will backpedal and say something like "I'm not prejudiced" or "I'm not racist" or "Not that there's anything wrong with coming from (fill in underdeveloped country/region)."
The unspoken addition to all those sentences is "...but..." followed by a sentence that proves that the person is, in fact, prejudiced, racist, and opposed to that undeveloped country/region.
The second point is even more insidious, in that it carries the assumption that a poor immigrant is somehow lazier than a home-born US citizen, or that if too many of "them" are allowed in, our country will be just as poor and badly-managed as their countries of origin are.
These assumptions show a near-complete ignorance of our history--former immigration waves, including the Irish, Eastern Europeans, Asians, and the forced immigration and enslavement of Black people, have grown and improved the USA on all levels. (The Black sons and daughters of the Middle Passage have yet to reap the fruits of their labors, a situation that we ought to find appalling but do not.)
Such assumptions also show a bias toward the faulty idea that poverty and ill-management are inborn traits...a belief strongly held by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. But we know more now about the environmental stresses that keep poor families stuck in their condition like a phonograph needle in a scratched LP groove--how poor nutrition stunts children's mental development, which in turn leads to poor grades and behavioral problems, which shoves these unfortunates into the world with few skills and fewer opportunities, which leads to despair, apathy, crime, and violence. And the cycle continues when these young people produce children of their own.
But that's environment. Put people like that into a better environment, with better opportunities, and they will do better than their forefathers.
Then there's the point about religion.
I remember a number of years ago, there was a big flap in one of the southern states, where a Muslim woman objected to having to remove her hijab (head scarf) for her driver's license photo. I can't remember what the courts decided about it, but I do remember an Internet posting that my mom forwarded to me titled "Immigrants, Not Americans, Must Adapt." The writer was sick and tired of having to move over and make room for the customs and cultures of those who come here from somewhere else. The hijab was only one of his gripes; he also objected to having to accommodate people who don't speak English (never mind that English is very difficult to learn as an adult, especially if a person has never spoken any other than his cradle language. Fun fact: The more languages you learn as a child, the easier it is to learn more languages later. Not so fun fact: Most poor immigrants have never had the opportunity to learn any but their own language.) and the overwhelming of "our" culture by all these weird new customs. His opinion in a nutshell (emphasis on "nut") was that immigrants should forget their own languages, religions, and cultures, learn English, and be hyper-patriots who salute the flag and never say a bad word about the good ol' US of A.
The point being...?
Along with those grumbles against immigrants, I also hear about how we are a "Christian nation." That's the accepted reasoning for not allowing people in who practice some other religion (especially Islam, although white supremacists object to Judaism as well).
I would laugh at this if I weren't so horrified.
I remember reading a book called In God We Trust by Norman Cousins. It was an overview of the religious beliefs (or lack of them) of our Founding Fathers, and it was quite the eye-opener: With a very few exceptions, most of the FF's were Deists, meaning they believed in God as Creator of everything, but also believed that He created Man as a reasoning creature with the power to choose between good and evil. Having done that, He left the universe to its own devices, trusting us to make the right choices for ourselves and our communities.
One of those Deists, Thomas Paine, was a militant believer in the triumph of Reason over emotional religion (there was a Great Awakening in progress right before the Revolution), and he wrote a book titled The Age of Reason in which he ridiculed the Biblical account of Creation, the idea of God actually speaking to people, and any miracles whatsoever. Thomas Jefferson, another Deist, produced a version of the New Testament that excised all the miracles of Jesus and any of His words regarding His Divinity. Jefferson firmly believed that Jesus was a great moral teacher, nothing more; he blamed the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation on the corruption of Jesus' teachings by Paul and others.
Ben Franklin, though still a Deist, was much gentler toward those who disagreed with him. He heard the preaching of George Whitefield, whose dramatic style of speaking helped fuel the Great Awakening, and though he had great respect for Whitefield's powerful sermons and their effect on people, he could never bring himself to convert to Whitefield's brand of Evangelicalism. Franklin was more concerned with living a moral life than with any ecstatic "new birth" experience.
Of the very few who weren't Deists, one (I think it was John Jay) was a militant anti-Catholic, and another--George Washington--kept his religion very private.
If any doubt remains in the mind of the reader, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment ought to erase that: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or preventing the free exercise thereof." In modern language, that means the federal government is not allowed to create a national religion, favor any existing religion, or keep people from worshipping any god they wish...or none, if they so desire. James Madison said that the reason for that clause was to keep the religious wars of Europe out of the United States. He also believed that pure religion flourished better without government influence.
Why the myth dragged on
So how did we get to thinking we were a Christian nation when our founders weren't Christians and our Constitution wasn't designed for it?
Well, in simple terms, Christians were in the majority. Mostly they were Anglicans, but there were Methodists, Friends (Quakers), and Catholics as well. Later came the Baptists and Lutherans, as well as some odd spin-offs such as the Shakers, the Christian Scientists, and the Mormons; but all those groups at least named Christ as having some influence on them. States had religious laws on their books (Blue Laws--no businesses open on Sunday; adultery and homosexual acts as prosecutable crimes), and no one who had any influence objected. In fact, business leaders knew that belonging to the "right" church was essential to their standing in a community.
But as time went on, we began to get people coming in who weren't even nominally Christian: Jewish people, Asian people (Confucianism,--more an ethical system than a religion--Shintoism, and Buddhism), Indian people (Hinduism and various branchings), and Middle Eastern people (mostly Islam, but also some Zoroastrianism as well). As these groups and their influence grew, the influence of Christianity as the dominant religion has waned, and more legal challenges have been raised to counter the comfortable assumption that Christianity is the only right way to define our nation.
Some people--especially if they adhere to the teachings of various loud-mouthed televangelists--believe that this trend is a sign of the End of Days. I don't think so. If we want to be Biblical about it, God has only ever made a specific covenant with one people group: the Israelites. The Israel of the Old Testament was supposed to be a theocracy, with God Himself as their King. After some disastrously-corrupt priests abused their power, the people rejected that model and asked for a human king, which God allowed.
But the New Testament changed that. Now God's covenant is with anyone, anywhere, who trusts Jesus Christ for salvation. Different denominations argue about what that means, but we all agree that Jesus is at the heart of the matter.
And what does that mean for America?
Well, it means that we American Christians ought to behave like Christ's followers, and not go around judging others. Which brings me back to my original title.
If we were a Christian nation...
- We would not go around bragging about how great we are.
- We would seek peace with all nations, whether they agreed with us or not, and would go to war only as a last resort.
- We would care more for the poor, the sick, the oppressed, and the prisoners in our midst.
- We would spend our money on things that benefit everyone.
- We would have upright leaders who didn't take bribes (read: campaign contributions).
- We would have a justice system that dispensed justice based on law rather than wealth or influence.
- We would be more concerned about pollution and climate change, since God set humanity as stewards of His creation.
- We would repent of the evils we have done in the past to Native Americans, Blacks, Nisei, and many others, and we would do whatever we could to make things right.
And finally:
- We would welcome immigrants into the country, since everything we have is the gift of God, intended to be shared with others.
