Reply #64: The LaHaye quote is telling:

[bleedingedge]

"This Christian consensus is easily verified by the fact that prior to 1789 (the year that eleven of the thirteen states ratified the Constitution), many of the states still had constitutional requirements that a man must be a Christian in order to hold public office."

Notice that he says "Oh yeah, there was a Christian concensus, certainly, for sure" but...

In the same breathe says that PRIOR to the Constitution's ratification, these 11 states had protections in favor of Christians, not after.

This quote is essentially a tacit admission that the separation of church into an arena separate from politics and government was a part of the Constitution! Otherwise, those same 11 states would have kept their provisos intact, allowing only Christians to represent the populous.

As someone else has already stated, it's one thing to say we were founded on "Christian principles" and quite another to say we're a "Christian nation". LaHaye's quote affirms the former (which is harmless) and disproves the latter (which is virulent).

Phalange

P.S. And the fact that a "Christian concensus" don't mean shit because nobody asked the Goddamned noble savages and negros what the hell they believed in in 1776. If you took a census of those two groups, their population is bound to have some sort of impact on the concept of a "concensus". This concludes the Vice-Presidential-language section of the post.