A Christian Nation?

On Faith posted my response to President Obama’s statement about the US not being “a Christian nation” here. A quote:

I agree wholeheartedly with historian Richard Hughes, author of “Myths America Lives By” and of the upcoming “Christian America and the Kingdom of God.” When we in the US flatter ourselves with a mythologized national identity — seeing ourselves as the Chosen Nation, as Nature’s Nation, as a Christian Nation, as a Millennial Nation, and as an Innocent Nation — we make it more likely not only that we will behave unjustly, but that we will be ignorant and un-self-aware as we do so. So I was glad when President Obama simply told the truth.
When people tell me that we are or have been a Christian nation, I want to ask, “When?” Was it in the colonial era or during westward expansion, when we began stealing the lands of the Native Americans, making and breaking treaties, killing wantonly, and justifying our actions by the Bible? Was it in the era of slavery or segregation, when again, we used the Bible to justify the unjustifiable? Was it in more recent history, when we dropped the first nuclear bomb and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, when we overthrew democratically elected governments in the Cold War era, when we plundered the environment without concern for the birds of the air or flowers of the field, or when we sanctioned or turned a blind eye to torture earlier this decade? Was it earlier this week, when I turned on the TV or radio and heard people scapegoating immigrants and gay people and Muslims?