Elijah John wrote:I think culturally we are Judeo-Christian, and the population of Christians dominates.
Perhaps, but I would think that in reality our culture might be best described as post-Christian Enlightenment. We have many of the cultural observances of Christianity (holidays etc.) but few cultural values that are distinctly Christian. Jewish, not so much. Jewish holidays are perceived as
other, as is Jewish cuisine.
Elijah John wrote:Legally? Not as much, especially in the U.S with the separation of Church and State having the weight of law. (Is it that way in Canada too?)
We borrowed much of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (a part of our constitution) from the American Bill of Rights (we ignored the gun owning part), so yes, Canada is a de facto secular state. Our ceremonial Head of State, the monarch, is obliged under UK law to be a member of the Anglican church, but Canadian law makes no such requirement.
Elijah John wrote:The closest folks in the US can come to legitimately claiming the US legal system is built on Judeo-Christian values is citing the 10 Commandments, but even then, not the first four, as we do not live in a theocracy. The remainder deal with human relations each to each other, and are pretty much universal.
Any public allegiance to the ten commandments is ceremonial not actual. The only parts of the Decalogue that we pay attention to are not distinctly Christian in nature.
Elijah John wrote:Behaviorally? Despite the profession of Christianity, (especially in the US) Western Civ in the modern day often falls short of Christian and Jewish ideals. Aggression and competition is championed above humility and meekness, and rampart materialism ("he who dies with the most toys, wins", reads a well known bumper-sticker) over Spiritual values and "treasure in Heaven".
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is not a Biblical set of goals, is it?
It has been pointed out, that the idea of the separation of Religion from Government is a Christian idea, probably originally because political power was so far out of reach to the Christians in their formative period that the idea was not considered. Christianity began as a powerless minority, so naturally they had to develop ideas of their own independence from governmental power, without necessarily rebelling from it. This idea of separation, if it really existed, was then largely forgotten by Christianity as it became dominant in Europe, not to be re-introduced until the sixteenth century. Although, a remnant of that separation, the power struggle that Emperors and Kings had with the Pope, remained as a reminder of the separation.