Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who told Glenn Beck in 2010 that “atheists are parasites,” made another untrue claim on the Wallbuilders Live! radio show yesterday.
Not only did he say the U.S. was a Christian nation, he even offered a bizarre piece of evidence: The mail isn’t delivered on Sunday, the Christian day of rest, therefore checkmate, atheists.
When I speak about America’s commitment to the Bible, I get hate mail because people cannot believe, and refuse to believe, that that’s a reality.
And I explained to them in Israel they don’t deliver mail on Saturday. You know why? Because Israel is a Jewish country. And in Pakistan, they don’t deliver mail on Friday. You know why? It’s a Muslim country.
And how about the United States? Have you noticed the days we don’t deliver mail here? Sunday and Christmas. Unfortunately, depending on where you live, it could be a lot of other days as well, but that’s another discussion.
There’s a reason for that, yes, it’s a Christian country. Not a Christian government, but it is a Christian country. Our social polity was formed by Christianity. And it was only because that was so real and so vital that the political reality was able to follow and was able to exist.
There’s so much wrong with what he said…
Basically, the mail was delivered on Sunday after the founding of our nation and for a long time afterwards. But that changed after new technology made daily postal service less of a necessity, and organized labor pushed to have a six-day work week. They had the support of religious leaders, no doubt, but when Sunday delivery finally ended — in 1912 — it was for a host of reasons, not to appease our nation’s supposed Christian heritage.
That didn’t stop Christians from taking credit for the change, but their eagerness to rewrite history doesn’t make the story true.
You would think a radio show hosted by pseudo-historian David Barton knows a little something about that.
(via Right Wing Watch. Image via Shutterstock)