I have heard over and over again the past two years and a half years, with increasing shrillness, how “good christians” need to rally together and take America back. I presume that they mean take it back from the first African-American to hold the office of presidency and his “militant” progressives and give it to a nice white guy/woman with fundamentalist leanings (AKA Perry or Bachman).
But maybe I am wrong, so I started to think of where it is that fundamentalist/patriots might want to take america back…
1981…when it was ok to discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation or
1971…when being gay was still considered a mental illness or
1966…when you could be discriminated against because of your age when looking for a job or
1964…when African Americans still could not vote or
1961…when there was not equal pay for equal work or
1961…when being gay was still illegal or
1959…when women did not have any available female birth control or
1953…when segregation was all the rage in schools or
1937…when there was no minimum wage, maximum work hours, or child labor laws
1873…when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of states rights to restrict women from any profession to uphold the law of the Creator
1869…when women could not vote or
1868…when the KKK rose to life or
1857…the Dred Scott decision declared that African-Americans had no rights or
1847…when women had not rights
1641…where Massachusetts becomes the first colony to recognize slavery as a legal institution
What really scares me about some of the fundamentalists ranting? A few of them would not be opposed to eliminating some of these laws and standards.
So my response to the take America back crowd…”No, it is not yours to take back!”
Musings of a "not so good" Christian 
It is always an interesting statement when someone says “we need to take back America.” As you point out, the Constitution has been amended to include freedoms which the founding fathers did not spell out–many of them were slave owners so I am not sure they would have even envisioned the freedoms we now have.
It is the same way with getting back to the early church–well, tradition–the teachings of the early church fathers to Martin Luther to John Calvin to John Wesley to John Piper to NT Wright–have all shaped the Church and are still shaping the Church. To say the Church is to be stagnant to the first century is to do a disservice to the Kingdom making it completely irrelevant and impotent in society.
To say we need to get back to the Constitution is in a way to say the 200 years of American history amounts to a big mistake of getting off course. But in those 200 years–amazing human right issues have been fought, argued and moved forward–slavery, women rights to vote, child labor laws, etc.
I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward knowing where I have come from and following the projection of that beginning. Ultimately, I want to follow Christ and bring His Kingdom.
What worries me a great deal is the rise of what I call a new “Neo-Paganism” at work in the American church…and it is being pushed with greater vigor than I have ever seen before. Wether it was Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor” last summer, or Perry’s prayer-fest last week, it is that the church is being co-opted by political forces, and masked as “Trying to protect christian America from some un-named evil. (i.e “Our political opponents.) Billy Graham warned about this back in the 1980s.
Biblically, there is no such thing as a “Christian Country/Nation” other than the kingdom of God/Heaven. To elevate any nation, no matter how wonderful it is, to such a level is a form of idolatry and paganism. (History has clearly demonstrated what toxic things result when a given country buys into this bad theology) You simply can’t wipe some “Jesus Polish” onto a nation, party or political stand and assume that it lines up with the way Jesus operates, or is biblically accurate.
When I hear people saying phrases like “Taking our country back,” it is merely a code phrase that implies a Jesus is on “Our” side, and we need to rescue him from these other naughty people. It is nothing more than christianity mixed with American mythology…and that is absolutely pagan.
P.S. The “Left” can often be guilty of this too, but not nearly as much in recent years as the Far-Right.