America a nation of Christians of convenience

[memphis]

Furthermore, the US has never had an established Church to rebel against,

That was good for a chuckle.  While true in the literal sense, since the Federal government formed as a result of the American Revolution never had an established Church, without the rebellion during the First Great Awakening of the 1740s against the established churches of the various colonies the character of the American Revolution would most certainly have been different, assuming the Revolution happened at all.

That's actually what I meant. There was no "state church."

There were plenty of states in the early republic with state churches though.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Wicca is a huge part of the culture in Vermont and Massachusetts.

WTF?

In a 2001 study only 2% of Vermonters identified as part of "Other Religion" which would include Wicca. In 2008 that was up to 4%, but with such small numbers MoE alone could account for that. And not all of that is Wiccan. The last such survey also had Massachusetts as 7% "Other", which I'm sure not even a majority is anywhere near Wiccan. Wicca isn't a major part of the culture ANYWHERE in the US.

I have a feeling that a larger percentage, especially people who claim to be spiritual but not religious, might dabble in Wicca/witchcraft or go through goth phases as teenagers, but of course that's far from actually believing in Wicca or accepting all the religion's teachings. It's also entirely possible that some Evangelical Christians might be erroneously assuming that "spiritual but not religious" is actually a code-word for Wicca or witchcraft.

And no, Wicca isn't a major part of the culture anywhere in the U.S. It may be a major part of the counter-culture in some areas (ie in some high schools), but really Wiccans are a vocal, visible, but tiny minority without any real power or influence.

[Frodo]

Furthermore, the US has never had an established Church to rebel against, and the kind of churches that America's freedom of religion allowed have historically been more often of the more emotion-based, anti-intellectual, and sometimes outright anti-philosophical variety. This has been especially true in the South…

Explain to me, once again, how a church holding to NT basics is “anti-intellectual” in comparison with liberal churches of the JSojourner/Nathan/Andrew variety?

Is it really logical at all to claim to be a Christian while openly disagreeing with the NT?

I could be wrong, but I believe in terms of "anti-intellectual" he's referring to the greater tendency of American Christians (in comparison to European ones) to believe in young Earth creationism and possibly to a lesser extent those who completely reject any notion of climate change for religious reasons, both positions which require rejecting a good deal of scientific knowledge in various fields. Rather than having anything to do with holding to NT basics, it's more about those that hold to a more literal view of the OT.

This phenomenon (i.e. Young Earth Creationism) is primarily restricted to Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants -I doubt Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant (what's left of them, that is) churches are into this kind of nonsense. 

[Tetro Kornbluth]

When talking about religion, "belief" is an incredibly overrated concept.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Plenty of stupid American Christians hate other Abrahamics for no reason. Of course they hate us non-Abrahamics even more. Discrimination against atheists is still considered perfectly OK