I have asked this question in a slightly different form before.
It was: Who owns Jesus? That should be an easy question to answer.
Christians own Jesus. But, again there is a "but". Which Christians really,
really own Jesus all by themselves? There are a lot of claims for primacy
here and for the longest time it was the universal, the Holy Roman Catholic
Church that owned the rights to Jesus. Of course there was the schism
between the Greek speakers and the Latin speakers so there were two Holy
Catholic Churches. Then, again there was the need for a special Catholic
Church for Russian speakers. And so on and so on it went especially after
Martin Luther formalized the break with Rome by posting his grievances
(theses) on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. For a while there was a
lot of Reformation going on that still goes on.
It gets to be silly after a while - the spectacle of each faith
excommunicating the believers of a slightly different sect or break-away
group. But what remains for us today is the spectacle of a teacher in
Cupertino, California, a CHRISTIAN, wanting to teach American History as
"Christian" History. I disagree with his reasoning. In the papers today
there is a depiction of the Declaration of Independence and the words:
"under God", "Creator", "Creation" and "of Nature's God" are highlighted.
These are stressed by this teacher. He believes it is his right to teach
that this country was founded by Christians for a Christian purpose and it
remains that way today. But the word "Christian" is absent from the document
Jefferson wrote.
So, it seems to me it comes down to questions of the ownership
of God. The Jews started it all when they called themselves the "Chosen"
ones. They claim that God gave them that status if they agreed to live up to
his stipulations on how to live according to a few rules; at first (the
Noahide laws) and then the either nine or thirteen that devolve around the
TEN Commandments. You can read these Commandments in several ways.
Then, being a disputatious people they found room in the Torah for 613 laws
completely obscuring the personhood and being of "God". The very pious do
not like to spell the unutterable, the name of "G-D".
Thus it a pious 6th grade Californian proclaims himself to be
"A" (or THE) Christian arbiter about how to teach history and he wants the
right to add to the misery of teachers everywhere by inserting claims of
Christianity into the teaching of a nation founded on secular principles in
order to avoid the conflicts about religion that they left behind in Europe.
It seems that what once was is here again.
Who owns God? Well there are the Jews, Christians of all
stripes, Islamic peoples and many others who see him/her in multiples along
with Angels and Devils. Perhaps we can simplify things and leave G-D to
disputations in houses of worship.