Certainly one of the reasons for American culture being more Christian oriented is that the culture was very strongly shaped by the first century or so of immigrants having being religious exiles. Their already strong commitment to faith, coupled with a tremendous gratitude to God for bringing them to ‘the promised land’ made for a culture that was pretty close to theocratic. The Puritans were both community leaders and church leaders and even though the many key framers of the constitution may have been Deists, the tradition of church and state being one “under God” was already firmly entrenched.

It is precisely this intertwining that has allowed the Neocon movement to rely so comfortably on the backing of the Bible belt and evangelical right. A very strong argument has been made over the last decade, that the interpretation of the constitution should be done in Christian terms and any other interpretation (e.g. Libertarian) is a denial of the original intent of the framers and amounts to judicial activism.

The point takes on relevance for out discussion as this very argument has been used in the education system to argue that ID should be given as much, if not more, importance than the teaching of evolution.

Even today, somewhat less than 50% of the American public would accept evolution as a valid scientific theory of origins.

Certainly the entire matter is much more complicated than this, but it is a very interesting question. Perhaps there has always been a feeling that mind should be less important than belief/doctrine. Thus modernism itself has perhaps only a ‘surface’ role, and I suspect that in many ways it does make it easier rather than harder to get Christians to believe in a more PoMo way.

Live to serve : Serve to live