Where did the idea originate that America was a Christian nation?

[Baruch]

There is the history you know (and is wrong) and the history you don't know (and is right).  History from the beginning, was and remains, propaganda.  Among this propaganda, which motivated some of the early English-speaking colonists, is Anglo-American Israelitism.  That the Anglo-Saxons are a lost tribe of Israelites.  This particular theology went back to John Wycliffe, who invented the English Reformation 150 years before Martin Luther's German version.  Basically 1375 vs 1525.  The conventional story about the origins of the Protestant Reformation are ... propaganda.  Part of the backstory to this early Reformation was the notion that the Anglo-Saxons aka English ... are crypto-Jews.  And that the British royal family are biological descendants of Jesus.

Now Jesus is an archetype, based on Moses ... and it is the fate of Anglo-Saxon Israelites to be led to a Promised Land.  This did eventually figure into Gen. Allenby's conquest of Jerusalem in 1918 and the Balfour Declaration ... but before that, it figured into Francis Bacon's plan for the New World, called New Atlantis.  So when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the New World .. they understood the natives to be Canaanites to be driven out or exterminated ... and that the other Europeans were no better than Philistines.  So when Queen Elizabeth I (of Davidic ancestry) successfully stood up to King Phillip II of Spain (aka Goliath the Philistine) ... the English knew their hour had come.  It is on that basis, that the original British Empire (in America/Canada first, in India later) was conceived.

Now I don't think any of this propaganda is truthful, but I think it is historical ... and that powerful people believed in it.  I know a local person who still believes in it.  Madness perhaps, there are Japanese who believe that they are a Lost Tribe of Israel too.  Modern American Christian fundamentalism ... is a third Great Revival ... and the backstory behind all three is this myth of Anglo-American Israelitism ... that reappears in modified form in the Book of Mormon.  The point being that the real America isn't just Christian, it is Israelite, and will usher in the Second Coming of Jesus.  To people who believe this, your mere facts are distractions from this underlying reality ... everything that happens is translated into terms that match the mythology.

[Savior2006]

Out of someone's ass.

Literally the first thing I thought.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There is the history you know (and is wrong) and the history you don't know (and is right).  History from the beginning, was and remains, propaganda.  Among this propaganda, which motivated some of the early English-speaking colonists, is Anglo-American Israelitism.  That the Anglo-Saxons are a lost tribe of Israelites.  This particular theology went back to John Wycliffe, who invented the English Reformation 150 years before Martin Luther's German version.  Basically 1375 vs 1525.  The conventional story about the origins of the Protestant Reformation are ... propaganda.  Part of the backstory to this early Reformation was the notion that the Anglo-Saxons aka English ... are crypto-Jews.  And that the British royal family are biological descendants of Jesus.

Now Jesus is an archetype, based on Moses ... and it is the fate of Anglo-Saxon Israelites to be led to a Promised Land.  This did eventually figure into Gen. Allenby's conquest of Jerusalem in 1918 and the Balfour Declaration ... but before that, it figured into Francis Bacon's plan for the New World, called New Atlantis.  So when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the New World .. they understood the natives to be Canaanites to be driven out or exterminated ... and that the other Europeans were no better than Philistines.  So when Queen Elizabeth I (of Davidic ancestry) successfully stood up to King Phillip II of Spain (aka Goliath the Philistine) ... the English knew their hour had come.  It is on that basis, that the original British Empire (in America/Canada first, in India later) was conceived.

Now I don't think any of this propaganda is truthful, but I think it is historical ... and that powerful people believed in it.  I know a local person who still believes in it.  Madness perhaps, there are Japanese who believe that they are a Lost Tribe of Israel too.  Modern American Christian fundamentalism ... is a third Great Revival ... and the backstory behind all three is this myth of Anglo-American Israelitism ... that reappears in modified form in the Book of Mormon.  The point being that the real America isn't just Christian, it is Israelite, and will usher in the Second Coming of Jesus.  To people who believe this, your mere facts are distractions from this underlying reality ... everything that happens is translated into terms that match the mythology.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

[Solitary]

Even if this is a Christian nation, why should religious dogma over cede common sense of what is right or wrong that causes harm?

[Baruch]

Gawdsilla Sama - or we can just assume Nietzschean social darwinism.  Random people form random groups, in random places and times ... and that whatever they may think they are going ... in fact they are achieving material, racial and sexual dominance.  There are relatively few atheists, empirically.  So they are always on the losing end of any contest with theists ... assuming that they are even noticed, while the dominant theistic configurations duke it out.  Mammals hiding out while the dinosaurs go tooth and nail.

However ... in ancient Greece, young men were educated in Homer.  The whole point of Plato was to overturn this Homeric education.  Meanwhile the average Greek was finding their own archetype in the characters that Homer invented.  Personally, I rather like Odysseus myself.  And can we ignore that President Lincoln idolized President Washington (whether the stories were true or not) ... and that strongly characterized his presidency?  So do ideas, even mythos, matter?

While the Anglo-American Israelitism is a mythos, and it was primarily 17th century ideology, can we say that it isn't still circulating under the water level?  There are many aspects of current American politics, that have echos from the first decades of American government.  Yet we are not people living 200 years ago.  The colonial ideologies are still present ... our view of things passes on, but the things themselves remain.  People and societies are like ogres, layers, but not like parfaits.

Solitary ... what is this common sense that you speak of?  I haven't seen any evidence for it in American society.  On the other hand, I agree it is a pathology ... any reality denying theology or ideology.  For example the idea that all Americans can become Christians, let alone attend the same denomination.  Where is common sense in a society where insanity is the norm?