Dear Editor:
Mr. Boldt, I don't know what "fundamentalist zealots" are adamant about, but I can read at a higher level than the eighth grade and can observe what several of our founding fathers wrote about our country being formed as a Christian nation.
That does not mean that everything we as a country have done is the best example of what the Bible says a Christian should be. Of all the other countries in the world, which ones do the people have the liberty we Americans have? Not only liberty but the shear amount of material things we have.
If an Islamic country is what you desire, there are many to choose from and they might even accept your crowd of believers. Except if you don't convert, you will become garden fertilizer. Just pay attention to the country of Iran where they want to execute a man who has converted to Christianity.
There have been many atrocities performed in the name of Christianity, but they are Christian in name only. Just because an individual says they are a Christian doesn't mean they are one. You know the old saying, "Your talk-talks and your walk-talks, but your walk-talks more than talk-talks."
When President Harry Truman wrote to Pope Pius XII in 1947 that, "This is a Christian nation," he certainly did not mean that the United States has an official or legally preferred religion or church. Nor did he mean to slight adherents of non-Christian religions. But he certainly did mean to recognize that this nation, its institutions and laws, was founded on Biblical principles basic to Christianity and to Judaism from which it flowed.
Revolutionary leader Patrick Henry said: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship."
Samuel Adams, who has been called "The Father of the American Revolution" wrote The Rights of the Colonists in 1772, which stated: "The rights of the colonists as Christian, may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institution of the Great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament."