Thank you Steven Waldman for getting our constitutional history straight. Every American schoolchild knows that the Puritans came here in 1620 to escape religious persecution, which makes religious freedom one of the earliest foundations of American culture. As Waldman also points out, Thomas Jefferson advocated fervently for religious neutrality in governing, as did Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and John Adams, to name a few.
What’s more, Bishop Jackson seems to be living in an anachronistic Christian bubble. According a large 2001 survey, there are sixty million non-Christian Americans or 20 percent of the population, the majority of which are non-believers. This group jumped two-thirds from the previous decade. If the trend has continued, non-Christians would comprise a third of our population or 100 million Americans today, 75 million of whom are non-believers.
Fortunately our new president knows his history and the composition of the population he governs.
If Bishop Jackson, and the rest of the fundamentalist Christian right want a religion-based government, they should move to a totalitarian country.

These people need to stop whining.

A nominal atheist thanks you very much for this post, Mr. Waldman.

I second the above in saying “Thanks” , Steve, for stating well the actual history regarding “religion” and the founding of this country.
We are so not a Christian nation, no matter how hard some have tried to convince folks it is. Those who have a problem with the idea that “non-believers” are contributing members of this country need to find a country that has an official religion…and there are many. Or perhaps they can “grow-up” to reality.

This believer was delighted to hear the President include non-believers. Thank you for the excellent post.

And this non-believer was delighted to hear the President include non-believers. Of course, I would have preferred to dispense with all the prayers, but, not believing in lightning bolts coming down from Heaven, I am an incrementalist.

I was raised an atheist. When I asked my parents what we were, they replied, “Nothing.” I thought that was a fine response, but during the time of regular prayers in public schools, kids were not kind. “How can you be nothing? Are you a communist?” they demanded. I held to my nothingness. (The Buddhists would approve.) Today I have many beliefs, and I cherish my right to have — or NOT have — them. Thank you, Steve, for writing this blog. And thank you, Mr. Obama, for being MY and everybody’s president.

Hard as it is for the esteemed pastors to accept, we’re not an “Anything” nation. Similarly, hard as it is for them to accept, we have an Establishment Clause in the Constitution (which was written by a group made up primarily of Deists and Freemasons, btw), in the very first line of the Bill of Rights.
So it is the esteemed pastors, not the president, who are trying to rewrite heritage and redefine who we are. And since they can’t seem to do so without the coercive power of the state, it makes them cranky when the state refuses to abet their efforts.
That is all this is.

Great post. As an atheist who voted for McCain, I was very impressed with Obama’s mention of nonbelievers. He may have even got my vote in 2012 just for that.
Finally, there is a president who is brave enough to dare mention the irreligious as valid constituents of the United States. These bishops and pastors mouth that we are solely “Judeo-Christian” forever…it’s clear that they have a pathetic wish for a homogeneous society, that will never occur, if I have anything to say about it.
That kind of language, if put into action, would lead to terrifying measures to achieve the goal of uniformity. As free-thinkers and religious people alike, we must stand strong against these kind of closed-minded fools who ignore real history. Every serious student of history knows that the men of the enlightenment who so brilliantly founded this nation were far less religious than is generally thought. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, cut out all the parts of the Bible he thought useless…obviously not a fundamentalist…
Thanks, President Obama, we appreciate your comment. Don’t let the thin-skinned prevent you from continuing your efforts to broaden inclusiveness in public discourse.

Although Obama says he is Christian he is a secularist through and through; not that I’m necessarily saying that this is a bad thing. My point is that he already shares many common viewpoints with atheists, agnostics, and progressives. Therefore, what made him think that atheists needed to be reached out to, or that they didn’t know that they were worthy constituents (they can vote for crying out loud, can’t they?)?
If this makes atheists feel more included as a voting block and they are willing to overlook inaugural prayer services, then all the power to them. As a traditional Christian I’d be more surprised if he reached out to the Conservative Christians (and actually factored in our opinions while he’s shaping public policy.) Never the less, I tend to view this more in terms of PR control, not just for atheists but for the general public as well, so he can appear as a man of all people.
I do tend to disagree with the ministers who took issue with this, however. This nation may have been founded as predominately Christian, but the consensus on what it means to be Christian has changed considerably within the past two centuries, with everyone having differing opinions as to the makeup of authentic Christianity.

By objecting to the simple statement, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers,” these ministers are essentially saying that they don’t consider all of those groups to be part of our nation. Is that really what they believe?
Tom: yes, we nonbelievers can vote. However, we can’t run for national office, at least not with any chance of winning — over half of Americans say they would not vote for an atheist even if the atheist shared their political views. We are also acutely sensitive to the many ways in which some believers try to write their religious beliefs into laws that are supposed to be neutral with regard to religion. Those are some reasons President Obama might have thought it was a good idea to reach out to us and assure us that we are included in his vision of America. Anyway, I don’t know what these ministers are complaining about — the inauguration ceremony as a whole was thoroughly Christian. If there had been any more prayers and invocations of God, it would have been a church service.

I am amazed at the willingness of some people – including President Obama – to twist American history like a pretzel to deny our obvious Christian culture and heritage. True Chrsitians love everybody and we are all free to believe what we choose, but facts are facts. By the way, last time I looked, Protestantism was part of Christianity. I think for the most part it still is. Jesus walked the earth as a Jew, ergo, Judeo-Christian. Christianity was birthed out of Judaism. Now if someone can show me that the Pilgrims, Puritans and Founders were not steeped in a Biblical understanding of life and morailty or that they were closet Hindus, Muslims and atheists, I will concede the point. Or if anyone can show me that our progress as a nation is unrelated to the faith of our ancestors – black, white or other – in the God of the Bible, I will no longer object to those who wish Americans to embrace mindless, relativistic sycretism in which all ideas are equal and we each make up our personal morality to suit our own selfish desires. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord and I will keep fighting to see that my country does so consistent with being a pluralistic, constitutional republic. The Founders clearly believed that these values are not incongruous but interdependent.

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