Rep. Mary Miller ― a Republican from Illinois who once praised Adolf Hitler ― wrote, edited and ultimately deleted a social media post decrying “a Muslim” speaking in Congress.
“It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen,” she wrote Friday. “American was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth. May God have mercy!”
The man leading the prayer was guest chaplain Giani Singh, a follower of the Sikh faith, not Islam. Miller’s Republican colleague Rep. Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) introduced him as such on Friday.
America is not a fucking Christian Nation
Sometimes I really wish the founding fathers were around to just say, “Yeah, we were all atheists when we did this America thing. It just wasn’t fashionable at the time. So this idea that American was founded on Christianity, is well, just bullshit”
I mean they were literally fleeing religious persecution. Why would they bake religion into what they were creating?
While they were fleeing religious persecution, they were not atheists. The original Pilgrims were Christians who believed the church of England to be beyond redemption. All of the founding fathers were raised in some Christian belief system, and more or less practiced their respective branches of Christianity.
They were certainly more open-minded in accepting beliefs that deviated from their own, but also certainly not atheist.
Eh, some were about as close to atheist as the social norms of the time would really permit. If you look at Jefferson, he made his own version of “the” bible in which he excised all the superstition. In their day, the Inquisition was still going on (ended in 1834) and making your own version of “the” bible was exactly the kind of thing that would get you declared a “heretic”.
And then there is Thomas Paine…certainly being a Deist is something likely to get you in trouble with the crazy Inquisition types…as well as the Southern Baptists today…
The pilgrims weren’t really fleeing religious persecution. In the UK they faced the consequences of their religion’s actions after they took power during the interregum and were just the fucking worst, including banning Christmas. So they fled to the Netherlands where they were horrified to learn that religious freedom didn’t give them the right to force their religious beliefs on others. So they fled religious tolerance to America where they were able to be as awful as they wanted
That’s the very definition of irony.
In fairness a lot of the people “fleeing religious persecution” were the nutcases who thought there wasn’t enough of it.
Not so much the founders, though.
Well they weren’t fleeing persecution at all. Most of them were born in the US, years after the Quakers had stopped being persecuted in England.
Mostly Christians, but in the same way my parents say they’re Christian. A churchless general belief in god and heaven. Deists, I think the proper word is.
I tend to call this type “nominal xtians”. They might not have thought too much about the topic, don’t really know anything at all about “the” bible, the doctrines of the denomination their parents/grandparents were part of, never go to church except maybe for weddings/funerals, etc…but also don’t consider themselves agnostics or atheists. Often they may say they are spiritual, but not religious.
they were literally fleeing religious persecution. Why would they bake religion into what they were creating?
Because everyone thinks their opinions are the right ones.
Someone persecuting you doesn’t mean you’ll go somewhere else and not persecute others who are not on your side.
the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion
– Treaty of Tripoli, 1797
My face when I found out the US has opening prayers in the house of government:
Seperation of… What was it again? logic and reason?
Money and fools.
(We’re the fools, they get the money.)
Yeah, that’s the really fucked up part of all of this. Being a USian, I knew this kind of thing, though.
This Karen is just miffed that xtianity is not given maximum unwarranted special privileges: “oh, we’ll allow you people who have not opted in to our chosen lifestyle to exist (for now), but at every opportunity, we’ll rub your noses in it that we think our chosen lifestyle’s adherents are special little snowflakes that deserve praise for their lifestyle, and use the government to do it.”
Do you not? And if so help, I’m stuck on a continent filled with nutjobs
The US was founded as a secular state… No getting around that. There were only a few devout christians in the original group of founding fathers. Most were deist. They had the recent memory of the thirty years wars where catholic and protestant armies had rampaged back and forth across Europe stealing the peoples food. Raping and burning out anyone who wouldn’t convert. They did this to many who did convert. It was said at the time that they everyone kept two sets of bibles. They just hid one or the other depending on who had taken over at the time. That asshole regressive wouldn’t ever be willing to admit that. Because she is too stupid to learn it.
A secular nation shouldn’t be having in house prayers from any denomination.
if we want to keep it secular, we need to make christians fear for their lives.
I would take it one step further and say they (founding fathers) were possibly even atheists, or at the extreme, very agnostic theists with the idea that IF god does exist, he doesn’t care or bother about us (which of course is deism). It would have been very unpopular back then to say god doesn’t exist, so deism was a step in that direction. Just my theory.
In some cases sure. Hamilton was very religious. He was also tolerant of other. The main consensus among the founding fathers was tolerance of differing beliefs. Something these ignorant fools today never learnt or most probably ignore.
Today’s reactionaries hate the (actual) American project as much as Tories way back when did.
They hate it with every fiber of their being. All their rhetoric about “America first” and the flag-waving and the pearl-clutching over “the troops”…all performative bullshit. They hate liberal democracy, they hate the Constitution, they hate the rule of law, and they hate freedom.
Very true.
It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen
I believe our government should reflect that truth.
She’s right: leading prayer in Congress at all should never be allowed. Government should reflect the truth of a secular government.
Yes. Government should be led by law not theology.
I’d say that you are spot on and people in the West who want to believe in strange middle east cults can do so quietly at home and not bother anyone with their hokey faith. That goes for Muslims, Jews, Christians and the rest of them.
This lady won with 73% of the vote in 2020, 71% in 2022, and unopposed in 2024. She is exactly what the people in that area want and that’s sad. The US is like social media. It’s not the platform it’s the users that make it garbage.
But the platform promotes garbage, too.
I mean, that’s also because the DNC stopped really giving a fuck about anything but corporate donors a long time ago.
But social media are garbage because of the platform. It’s just built the way to present it as how the users are.
It’s like saying that gasoline is not the cracking process, it’s the oil.
Poor Sikhs always catching strays…
Also, yo, I kind of hate this country.
“America was founded as a christian country”
You mean back when Christian people were so rabid that they thought of Catholics, the OG jesus folks, the way this lady sees any non-christian religion?
Maryland was created as the birthplace of religious freedom in this country specifically because catholics had nowhere else to go in the colonies without getting harassed. Ultimately, the concept of religious freedom would be elevated to a higher place of importance than christian snobbery by the time America was forming a country. Religious freedom was part of escaping the thumb of the King of England and other monarchs.
So, on the one hand, Miller is truly going old school by being a bigoted fuckhead. But on the other, she seems to have no idea that “America” would not exist if people hadnt been willing to tell the bigoted majority of protestants to shut the fuck up, and force them to live and let live
GOP keeps saying ‘this is a Christian nation’, but they don’t want understand separation of church and state.
There is no state religion. If you open a state body to prayer, then all prayer is allowed, not just the prayers you want.
Long live the satanic temple.
There should be no prayer in a secular institution
It’s a place for running a government not magical thinking
Oh they understand perfectly well. Hence why they’re trying to destroy the separation of church and state.
a few bullets would go a long way to keeping us on track. destroy all religion for the sake of humanity
Every president has been Christian.
It is a christian nation.
It shouldn’t be, but it is.
The current on is not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_affiliations_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
Yes, all of them.
Lincoln was based, but still unfortunately Christian.
Yeah he went to church with Mary and the kids, believed in a higher power and talked about it often in his speeches he just disliked organized religion
Probably true, as long as we relax the No True Scotsman thing so very many white evangelicals engage in when it comes to who is a “real” xtian.
I think that if modern day politicians were to talk in terms like the Deists of the past, I am quite sure the Karens of the Southern Baptist type would call them “pagan” or “atheist” or at least heretics.
What a cunt.
Ignorant cunt at that. Calling this a Christian nation is a joke to anyone who isn’t a fascist hoping to use religion as a bludgeon.
Dumbfuck can’t even get her religions straight, and apparently she thinks America was founded to be a Christian theocracy. Astoundingly ignorant and misinformed, yet there she sits Congress, governing the nation with her 2 brain cells.
Her average constituent sees turban and thinks Muslim.
She represents her district in more ways than one.
She probably has no idea what Deism is.
I was going to make a “DEIsm is woke, DEIsm is getting abolished, etc” joke… But it’s impossible to create a parody so extreme that some users won’t mistake it for the genuine thing. Poe’s Law is in full effect here.
/s works wonders when text can’t transfer the needed nuance and no one knows you.
The people would likely think its a cult worshiping Dhalsim from Street Fighter 2.
And thus call for all Deists to be deported.
Pepperidge farms remembers when bigots were shamed away from talking not their target minorities.
She 100% doesn’t know that Muslims and Sikhs are different, and doesn’t care.
Terrified of all brown people, like half of America post 9/11
Wow just the fact that she feels emboldened enough to dribble out this poison and post it online is telling.
Who’s doing anything about it? Nobody is marching on their representative’s homes and offices. No letter-campaigns, we can’t even be bothered to vote as a country without it turning into the apathy-olympics.
big oof
The thought path of a short-minded individual: Turban->Muslim.
I’m all for a minimum IQ to enter politics. This would probably disqualify 50% of Congress & Senate. And 100% of the cabinet.
I heard somewhere that one of the first hate crimes against Muslims following 9/11 was against a Sikh person…
IQ is a poor metric (for just about anything).
We do need to work on election reform so that our elected representatives are more representative. Getting more people to vote (turn out in the U.S. is fairly low), avoiding partizan gerrymandering, using something other than FPtP.
That notwithstanding, but being as stupid and uneducated as US politicians regularly appear, such a regulation would be helpful regardless of how they are elected.
I disagree that an IQ restriction would be an improvement. It would just be another tool used by authority to marginalize. Competency tests have been used as such in both the U.S. South and Nazi Germany.
Improving the electorate and having the output of the voting process reflect their will is the only way forward.
Why does the House of Representatives even have prayer in the mornings to begin with?
Seriously. When is the designated time for thoughts?
“Thoughts and prayers!”
“Uh we’d like some more thoughts, please.”
“Well we’re OUT of thoughts! We only had three bits and we didn’t expect such a rush.”
“So my choice is ‘and prayers’? I’ll have the chicken then, please.”
I would like to know the actual answer to this. When did it start? Has it been there from the beginning?
Because 'Murica
Because the foundation of US instritutions was largely Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V from Westminster, where morning prayers are the only time MPs are allowed to come and reserve a seat for the rest of the day. It’s probably a lot more attended in the American version though.
Once again, I am asking the British to stop fucking up governments worldwide
The British government has been functional since the civil war over 370 years ago. If there are functional issues with the US system, (and there are, to the point it actually shuts down sometimes) that’s their own meddling and the warranty is void.
It was founded as a secular nation you dumb cunt.
The first openly atheist Congress member became open about it in 2007.
The second “non-religous” member was Krysten Sinema.
There was a Congressperson that came out as gay in 1987 but didn’t admit he was an atheist until he left Congress.
You can say it was founded as secular, in theory, but in reality it’s been basically Christofascist in fact for its entire history.
Then why is a chaplain leading prayer in Congress? A secular nation wouldn’t even have opening prayers at any branch of government.
Because religious zealots have infiltrated and subverted our government into something barely recognizable. Separation of church and state is a vital part of the US constitution, it’s quite sad to see that forgotten or ignored by our supposed “leaders” in Congress in order to appease radical religious fundamentalists.
