The abuse of atheists on Fox News during this last holiday season was so outrageous that I thought I should let you know about a resource your persecutors will find hard to argue against.

For me, the holiday season has one really depressing aspect: watching my co-religionists make asses of themselves as they wail and gnash thier teeth over displays that atheists put up in response to the Christians'. The message that comes through loud and clear is "America's supposed to be a country of, by, and for Christians, and everyone else should just shut up and feel lucky to be allowed to live here".

Athists are entirely justified in taking offense (and alarm!) at such dominionism. Most are also aware that like most "Christianity", this view of the relation between Believers and secular power has no foundation in the beliefs and practices of the earliest followers of Jesus. However, it can be inconvenient to hunt down what those earliest Believers actually said on that subject. A good, accessible (and FREE) source is Eberhard Arnold's Early Christians in Their Own Words, available as a pdf at plough.com. Modern theocratic facists-in-waiting will find it difficult to argue against the unanimous opposing opinion of "people who were following Jesus to the death, even before the word 'Christian' was invented".

Along the same lines, here's an effective argument against Christian superpatriots who back bloodthirsty solutions to America's problems: point out that even though the world had those same sorts of problems when Jesus walked the earth, He explicitly rejected such remedies. When the superpatriot is done sputtering, you can then say something like, "Well, since you seem to think you know better than Jesus does, why don't you leave Him out of it, and just tell us what YOU think?"

Hope this helps.