Thanks, I’m catholic raised and educated and had a childhood priest who was very much like Sazed and encouraged me to think for myself. Christianity is the religious water we swim in and air we breathe and in that it becomes nothing but a symbol of in group status. Turning the other cheek goes from a command from one’s god on how to live your life to a platitude like a penny saved is a penny earned. And by that means with the justification of sola fide and sola gratia and a handful of calls to violence, a religion that can demand radical pacifism eventually finds its way to ripping the tongues out of the living skulls of those who profess our non belief. Christianity when it holds the power of the state has never been a religion of peace because by handing it the power to do violence those who wish to do violence celebrate this justification and warp it to whatever ends justify it. The American civil religion is one manifestation of this but it wasn’t the first. And my religion is no better on that front. Eventually the religion falls to the power it holds.

And these people don’t even understand that they are apostates as much as I am. We have all rejected the teachings of Christ. But I rejected them knowingly, I didn’t buy it and found my way to a religion that spoke what my soul had ached to hear.

And I should be clear here, when I call the founding fathers deists I don’t mean it as the same as the deists of today. Deism of the time was a hedging of one’s words against religious violence. To deny the Christian god outright was not safe even when you were founding a nation. The professions of belief under duress no matter how mild cannot be taken as certain though we also cannot boldly assume they’re not true either.