Fifty Questions That Christians Can't Answer

[Rhizomorph13]

Oh, my this was much more complicated than I originally thought!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_co...e_Americas

The ones taught about in American High Schools (The Puritans) were Protestants fleeing tyranny from the CofE.

Many groups of colonists came to the Americas searching for the right to practice their religion without persecution. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century broke the unity of Western Christendom and led to the formation of numerous new religious sects, which often faced persecution by governmental authorities. In England, many people came to question the organization of the Church of England by the end of the sixteenth century. One of the primary manifestations of this was the Puritan movement, which sought to "purify" the existing Church of England of its many residual Catholic rites that they believed had no mention in the Bible.

Our founding fathers were not Christians but they were Deists:

http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html

When the Founders wrote the nation's Constitution, they specified that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article 6, section 3) This provision was radical in its day-- giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no single religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had.

Fun fact - The Jamestown settlement that spawned the Thanksgiving tale was primarily an economic settlement funded by the Virginia Company. The Virginia Company owned the parcels of land and ran the colony using Socialist ideals so that all work efforts went to the company and the company would provide for the colonists no matter how much work they did! This was the main factor that led to the near demise of the colony. It wasn't until the colony was divided into parcels and people were given ownership of their land that they became self-sustaining.

They were sponsored by common stock companies such as the chartered Virginia Company (and its off-shoot, the Somers Isles Company) financed by wealthy Englishmen who understood the economic potential of this new land. The main purpose of this colony was the hope of finding gold or the possibility (or impossibility) of finding a passage through the Americas to the Indies. It took strong leaders, like John Smith, to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter and that "he who shall not work shall not eat." (A direction based on text from the New Testament.) The extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists.

How Libertarian of John Smith!

So, yes the original colonists were a mix of faiths, but NO America was NOT founded by Christians and was NOT meant to be a Christian nation.

Rhizo