In response to "Christians have the right to be defensive" (CT, Dec. 5) and "Faith did in fact play a role in founding our nation," (CT, Nov. 29), I don't find the use of religion in government to be offensive.

I do not doubt that religion had a role to play in the founding of this nation, because religion has had its hand in nearly everything created by humans. I do, however, find the idea of having religious symbols placed in government buildings and leaders who believe that the apocalypse is near unnerving.

There seem to be two main arguments for having something like the Ten Commandments in front of a religious building. The first is that it is the base of nearly all laws and thus nondenominational and universal.

The second is that our founders were Christian, God-fearing men who created this country with the idea of it being a Christian nation. I think that the fact that there were laws prohibiting stealing and killing before the Ten Commandments should show that they are not the base of America's legal system.

Add in the fact that only about three of the Ten Commandments (four depending on how you count "Honor thy father and mother") or that every nation (including those created without any help from the Old Testament God) have had some prohibition against murder.

As to our founders being Christian, most (if not all) historians agree that not all of our founders were. In fact, most were Deists. If you look at the other "Christian" nations before America, they all had a national religion.

Why was America the first "Christian" nation to not have a national religion? Wouldn't it make sense if our founders were true Christians to have all good citizens in church on Sunday? That was, after all, a commandment.

Religion and politics are hard to separate, because religion is such a huge part of the person. Many movements in America were started in churches, from the abolitionist movement to women's suffrage and prohibition. The problem is not having leaders who believe in God or having senators who love Jesus.

The problem is that many people in high-level positions in the White House truly believe that the world will end in the next few decades and that we are seeing the beginnings of the Apocalypse. When you have foreign policy being dictated by a 2,000 year-old book, there's a problem.

When you have leaders who don't care about global warming because the world is going to end anyway, there's a problem. When you have a kind of hubris and supposed moral high ground that is reminiscent of British and Spanish decline, there's a problem.

Maybe some day the anti-Christ will come and the battle will come between America and the axis of evil, but until then let's all take a deep breath and read a little history. Not biblical history, but the reasons for decline of Rome, Spain and Britain. History repeats itself, or so I've been told. Religion is as a part of America as apple pie, but too much pie can make you sick.

Alan Hicks

Freshman, Business