Well, yes, they had been british settlers beforehand. European settlers were mostly Christian by default, that's all there is to it.

The idea that the individual has rights and is not determined by religion or society and that all men are created equal are values and ideas that stem from humanist beliefs and the enlightenment movement/philosophy. It doesn't stem from christian values but they are included in that because the enlightenment movement happened in Europe and Europe is predominantly christian.

 

This is what's called "arguing semantics".

Regardless, they were Christians, and based their new nation's system on traditional Judeo-Christian values, and the idea that God bestows individual rights and freedoms at His discretion. This was an ideal which served us well until the 1960s, when, culturally, we started to seriously question and drift from that notion, and it's really been all downhill from there.

I am sorry, it is more than just arguing semantics. Christian moral values are present in the enlightenment movement, but it was not a fact of life in 1776 that everybody should be treated equal and has the same rights, the idea of human dignity,  that the individual matters, that reason and logic are more important than ideology and religion and that religion or society should not determine one's future. The consitution is a testament to humanistic achievements and not the result of faithful christians, even though humanist philosophers were christians. You just have to go and look how the world was ruled in the 18th century where the church was a political power and the society was organized in a feudal way where you were born into a certain class, peasant, aristocracy or clergy and that determined who you could be. That is also part of judeo-christian values and history. You seem to have a pretty misty eyed idea about that. 

Human dignity is derived from the fact that man is the only being capable of reason and thus can give himself laws and binds himself to follow this laws and rules and moral values. Man is borth subject and object of the law and moral values and only beings that can do both have dignity. I can't further into exact detail of philosophy here because I don't know enough to make a reasoned argument here, but it's still more true than your idea of a christian state.

You should read up on some of these humanist philosophers, Jean Jaques Rousseau, Fichte, Emanuel Kant, Schopenhauer.. they were pretty smart and their ideals are what glues most modern democratic constitutions together, not religious values.

---utemia

Well, that's funny; here, all this time, I thought that was why the first Pilgrims came to the New World, and why America was fashioned in the manner in which it was....because they didn't care for the way Europe did things, and wanted to make a country where those mistakes were not made.

It wasn't perfect, no....but then, it had to be built within the parameters of their culture and world as it was then. That's one reason why they left slavery in, even though none of them really liked it. It was just part of the economic game back then. Jefferson said 'Slavery is like holding a wolf by the ears; you don't like it, but you don't dare let it go."

And I never said Christianity was "what held it together"....I simply stated that the men who built the framework for America were Christians, and designed it to be a Christian nation with the values that went along with it.

Jesus said "the first shall be made last, and the last shall be made first"....this means that, in God's Kingdom, everyone will be equal, as He intended.

They tried to do that as well as they could, in that time period.

 

That doesn't really jive with what I know of the pilgrims and their strict religous beliefs woud have never allowed for the individual to do what they want. They were rigid and prejudicial and alltogether pretty horrible and dreary people - especially since they had been persecuted themselves. Just read Hawthornes "Scarlet Letter" and you get a good idea about how society was like. They didn't really mind the church having political power and ruling peoples lives, they just minded that it wasn't them who had the power and that's why they left to a place where they could do what they wanted. I don't think the pilgrims really minded the fact that some were born to rule and others were born to serve and that everybody had their designated place in life and that no personal merits could change that.

If they had really wanted to do things differently they well damn should have left that out. It just illustrates the fact that the individual didn't matter as much as the group/society with its norms and rules did. And the the constitution changed that because for the first time it was written down as a law that everybody should be treated equal and that every individual, regardless of sex or ethnicity and social background, has the same entitlement to be treated accordingly. The idea of the individual was radically new and totally opposite to the pilgrims society. It is not something that religion came up with, the churches (and any cults around the world really) like it when people follow their rules and obey. Freedom and equality are threatening their exclusive claim to spiritual leadership and power, and that! is what the consitution did. It disempowerd the political hold of the churches over the government and at the same time also made sure that the government had no control over the churches.

They were christians because almost everybody was, it wasn't by design. But as I said above, the values of freedom, equality, individual rights, the entitlement of everybody to be treated according to those rights, these things are secular humanistic achievements. Otherwise you'd have had a theocratic religious dictatorship and not a country where everybody can be someone, no matter where you come from, what you believe, what background you have. It is a tremendous accomplishment, and much bigger than any religous dogma or nebulous values that allowed for slavery among other things.