Catholicism has always been America’s foreign devil | Sam Haselby | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/15/catholicism-america-forign-devil
Then as now, speaking of the US as Christian nation remains as much a negative as a positive act, though the excluded has changed from Catholics to Muslims. Despite the anti-Islamists’ claims of endemic conflict, their particular cause is a new and superficial characteristic of American political culture. The relevant history is not in any inherent conflict with Islam, but in the need of American political culture for a foreign devil. Not so long ago, atheistic communists played that role. For most of American history, however, the foreign devil was Catholicism.