America, many religions, but no National Religion

America does not have an ‘official' national religion, which is prohibited by the Constitution, but some 85 percent of our citizens profess to be Christians. That makes Christianity America's unofficial religion. That's important. Look at the problems being suffered by Mitt Romney as he runs for President. He is a Mormon and many mainstream Christians consider The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a heretical offshoot of Christianity.

"The rhetoric between evangelicals and Mormons has been almost abusive," said Richard Mouw, president of the Fuller Theological Seminary in California.

Christians are not a monolithic group. There are more than nine-hundred Christian denominations in America, ranging in the political spectrum from liberal to evangelical conservatives. This diversity places some limits on the power Christians have to influence political policy. Collations have been built around single issues such as abortion, especially in the evangelical community, however there is not a general consensus among American Christians.

In America of the 21st century religions influence has diminished from the days of fire and brimstone preachers of the 19th century, or even the Scopes "Monkey trial" of 1925.

Now the problem is the nation-state, "in circumstance of accelerating global integration, the nation-state has become too small for the big problems and too big for the small problems of life" Anthony Giddens, University of Cambridge.

Religion is probably a best mechanism to fill this dichotomy, however with more than three-thousand religious groups in America, there is too much diversity to ever form a national religion.

It takes Parents to raise a child

It doesn't take a ‘village' to raise a child, but it takes parents. If they do a good job, society benefits from their efforts. Babies don't come into the world with a sense of morality, they are a blank slate and it's their parents that will fill in the void.

The first thing a child needs to learn is obedience. They have to be taught the authority adults have over them. Without obedience children will run wild, ignoring their parents and society's rules. They won't last long violating their parent's rules. Ignoring the rule "Don't cross the street" can result in the kid becoming road kill.

Once the child grasps the concept of obedience, it time to teach moral responsibility. That's the hard part. If the parents are immoral, they have no basis to pass on the concept to their offspring. Fortunately most parents have a sense of morality. The best way to pass it on is by example. If a child sees their parents acting morally, they will emulate them and develop a sense of moral responsibility. Parents are not alone in this job. They have help from their Church, relatives and friends.

Religion may be "The opiate of the masses," but it is a great teacher of morals. It doesn't matter which religion, all subscribe to the same basic moral principals. The Christian concepts of "Do onto others as you would have them do onto you" is ubiquitous to virtually all religions. In Judaism, the Torah can be summed up as "Don't do to your neighbor what you would not do to yourself."

It is when the parents fail that society steps in. It has the responsibility to keep order, and obedience and morality are essential to that goal. If caught early, the child will have some chance to become a productive citizen, but society as represented by the state is an inefficient teacher. It usually fails, then both the child and society are the losers.