The United States: NOT Founded on Christian Principles!
The Fundamentalists claim that the United States was founded on "Christian principles." Here's one glaring problem with that.
[Romans 13:1] Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
[2] Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
[3] For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;
[4] for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
[5] Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake.
[6] For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.
[7] Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.
The American revolutionaries were not just rebelling against the government and army of Britain, they were rebelling against the long-established Christian idea that governmental authority comes from God. In challenging King George III of Britain, they rejected the idea that God had given him a divine right to rule over them.
Consequently, when it came time to frame the Constitution, the founders began with words that made it clear the former colonies were rejecting the idea that government was ordained by God:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (emphasis added)
American democracy starts with the presumption that the authority of the government comes not from God but from the consent of the governed, in other words, from "We the people." This clearly contradicts Paul.
Consider, too, the Ten Commandments, which you can read in full here.
The first, to have no God before Yahweh, is opposed to the First Amendment of the Constitution: Congress can make no law promoting religion, therefore this first commandment has nothing to do with American law.
There is no law, constitutional or otherwise, against idol worship, using the Lord's name in vain (well, in some places there is), adultery, or coveting, and there is no law enforcing parent-honoring -- and in the U.S. there never have been. Some places still have "blue laws," which prohibit certain things on Sunday, but Sunday is not the Sabbath anyway. On the whole though there is no law prohibiting work on the seventh day of the week. We do have laws against murder, theft, and perjury, but we do not need the Bible to tell us these things are wrong. With regards to the American legal system, the decalogue is three for ten -- so there is no basis for the assertion that it forms any sort of basis of our ethical or moral standards.
If we did try to establish laws enforcing these things, they would come up against American moral standards in other ways. Laws against worshipping other gods, or worshipping idols, or using the Lord's name in vain, would go against the Constitution. Laws against adultery would be seen as an invasion of privacy. Laws against working on the Sabbath would be seen as restriction of commerce. And laws to enforce parental-honoring or to ban coveting would establish "thought crime" as law -- something Americans would strongly resist.
So there is no sense in which we can claim that the United States is "founded on Christian principles."
http://religion.netscape.com/story/2007/05/21/the-united-states-not-founded-on-christian-principles
