If religion were the source of democracy we should be hailing the Greek gods.
It follows that democracy is a product of polytheism.
Hail 
Posted on 08/16/2006 12:58:48 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
In 1639 representatives from the Puritan towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield in the Connecticut River Valley assembled in Hartford to create the world’s first written constitution that established a functioning government. It was the progenitor of the Constitution of the United States.
Students are not told anything about this aspect of our history. Instead they are taught that Puritanism was a theocratic, and therefore wholly repressive and undemocratic, mode of society. Thus, in the left-wing liberal construction, to form the United States, Americans had to reject Judeo-Christianity and the Puritanism on which New England was founded.
What progressive historians such as Charles A. Beard and Vernon L. Parrington have taught since the early 1900s is that the true spirit of American history is rooted in the 1789 French Revolution, which suppressed Christianity and turned France toward the atheistic materialism of socialism. Students are taught, by implication if not directly, that the French Revolution’s stirring motto, “Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood,” expresses the true nature of American democracy.
Students are taught that the Declaration of Independence was a hypocritical document, because Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal (this is a deliberate misrepresentation, as Jefferson was speaking not of slavery but of the estate of mankind under God). Students are taught that the French Revolution’s Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen expresses the true aspiration of American democracy, which in liberals’ view ought to be the French-style socialistic welfare-state.
Such falsifications are the ideological basis upon which the mythology of our present-day left-wing liberalism rests.
The truth is starkly different.
Bancroft Prize-winning historian Clinton Rossiter, who described himself as a centrist, somewhere between labor union radicals and the late Senator Barry Goldwater, wrote in “The First American Revolution”:
“Finally, it must never be forgotten, especially in an age of upheaval and disillusionment, that American democracy rests squarely on the assumption of a pious, honest, self-disciplined, moral people. … Whatever doubts may exist about the sources of this democracy, there can be none about the chief source of the morality that gives it life and substance. From Puritanism, from the way of life that exalted individual responsibility, came those homely rules of everyday conduct – or, if we must, those rationalizations of worldly success – that have molded the American mind into its unique shape. … The men of 1776 believed that the good state would rise on the rock of private and public morality, that morality was in the case of most men and all states the product of religion, and that the earthly mission of religion was to set men free.”
Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the Connecticut River Valley in 1639.
Puritanism was indeed exclusionary in the sense that the settlers of the Plymouth and Boston colonies had come to these shores to establish Christian communities that conformed as nearly as possible to the pious and moral life prescribed by the Bible. Excluding individuals who rejected Bible-based Christianity was the settlers’ right, because they had purchased the king’s colonial charters with their own money and had endured great suffering and death to establish their new homes.
For many decades this had no practical effect of excluding individuals from church membership and civil government, because with very few exceptions everyone was of like mind.
Nonetheless, groups who differed about specific Christian doctrinal matters continually arose within older congregations and left to form new church communities. In this manner, led by their minister Thomas Hooker, dissidents in the Newtown, Massachusetts, congregation went to the Connecticut River valley in 1636 and over the next few years settled the Puritan communities of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield.
Because their existence was threatened both by hostile Indians, and by Dutch settlers from the Hudson valley to the west, they sought mutual protection. A General Court was established at Hartford. It opened with a sermon by minister Thomas Hooker who asserted among other things that:
“.... the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people.... that the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.... [and that] they have power to appoint officers, and magistrates have the right also to set bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them.”
These ideas of representative democracy were incorporated in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut adopted in 1639, the first written constitution in history to establish a continuing civil government.
As historian John Fiske expressed it in “The Beginnings of New England”:
“The government of the United States today is in lineal descent more nearly related to that of [Puritan] Connecticut than to that of any of the other thirteen colonies. The most noteworthy feature of the Connecticut republic was that it was a federation of independent towns, and that all attributions of sovereignty not expressly granted to the General Court remained, as of original right, in the towns. Moreover, while the governor and council were chosen by a majority vote of the whole people, and by a suffrage that was almost universal, there was for each township an equality of representation in the assembly.”
That constitution continued as the basis for the government of State of Connecticut until 1818. Because of our socialistic educational doctrines, very very few people today know that its adoption is the reason Connecticut is known as the Constitution State. Nor do they know that Puritanism was the source of our earliest institutions of representative democracy.
Bookmark to read later.
Another wooden stake in the heart of lieberals.
If religion were the source of democracy we should be hailing the Greek gods.
It follows that democracy is a product of polytheism.
Hail
I think it is understood better in a Christian sense. This makes sense with regards to beliefs and ideals our fore fathers were thinking about. I believe the "Pursuit of Happiness" is the seeking of heaven and the freedom to choose from different "goods" not evils.
Just my two cents.
Democracy works best under Judeo-Christian values and morals. The more those values and morals are washed away the more the American system of democracy suffers.
You're confused.
The correct terminology is this:
The biblical worldview is the source of republicanism.
Click my screen name and scroll almost half way down the page to get up to speed.
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” - James Madison
Okay, should the day come when we live in a democracy, you can hail the pagans.
Rhode Island:
Providence, was founded in 1636 as a settlement by English clergyman Roger Williams, after he was banished by the Massachusetts Great and General Court. Williams selected the name in gratitude for "God's merciful providence" that the Narragansett have granted him title to the site. Anne Hutchinson was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638 and brought more settlers who were attracted to the colony by the promise of religious freedom
http://www.rootsweb.com/~rigenweb/history.html
Maryland:
George Calvert died in April 1632, but a charter for "Maryland Colony" (in Latin, "Terra Maria") was granted to his son, Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on June 20, 1632. Some historians view this as a form of compensation for his father's being stripped of his title of Secretary of State upon announcing his Roman Catholicism in 1625. The colony was named in honour of Queen Henrietta Maria[1].
Lord Baltimore was a staunch Catholic, which was extremely stigmatic for a nobleman in 17th century England, where Roman Catholics were widely regarded as enemies of the crown and of the country. Baltimore's two goals were to create a haven for British Catholics but at the same time turn a profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Maryland#Colonial_Maryland
This country did NOT start with a premise we would have a particular religious denomination shoved down our throats.
At our founding it was a local issue. Massachusetts didn't disestablish until 1820. It wasn't a matter of it being "shoved down our throats" in the way secular humanism is now. People could move to places more attuned to their personal beliefs.
Good for you, Tailgunner Joe, for telling it as it was.
That and the true story of the witch trials needs to be brought back to light to counter the sick propaganda that's trying to destroy this nation.
A work on the influence of Judeo-Christian sensibilities on the
founding of the USA:
On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding
by Michael Novak
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1893554341/qid=1155762983/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/002-9564349-3853600?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
The original phrase was "Life, Liberty, and Property," but was altered in revision to "Pursuit of Happiness". Presumably to (not be only limited to property and)include things such as property but also other things besides property which one could do (perhaps voting, religious freedom, etc.) Later more enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
So what is the "denomination" which you think someone has tried to force down anyone's throat in this country? Aren't you really speaking of the Christian religion, which was in fact adhered to by almost the entire population of colonial America? If not, what are you referring to?
I always thought we got some inspiration from the Indians, as Benjamin Franklin was impressed with the multiple tribes uniting for common good and defense in the Iroquois Nation.
A Democratic Republic is a form of Democracy, as opposed to a form of Dictatorship or Hereditary or Military rule, or a Theocracy.
Other forms of Democracy are Palimentary and Direct. Our Republican form is better, but it's still a Democracy.
People who beat up on other posters when they say we are a Democracy are incorrect, in my opinion, or playing silly word games.
"So what is the "denomination" which you think someone has tried to force down anyone's throat in this country? Aren't you really speaking of the Christian religion, which was in fact adhered to by almost the entire population of colonial America? If not, what are you referring to?"
No, I said nothing of the kind.
The implication of the article is that "puritanism" holds, or should hold, a dominant position in this country, since it was the basis for the start of the country.
I mentioned two examples where puritanism was not the basis. The Quakers later, would be another example.
I further contend the earliest colonists included people searching for religious freedom, as well as searchers of wealth, adventurers, etc.
No single denomination ran the whole place. And over 150 years later, the country wrote a rule to prevent that, in the Constitution (amendment).
So today, as a descendant of colonials, including puritans and others, I am not interested in having anybody's particular religious interpretation shoved down my throat.
That applies to various Christian interpretations, as well as non-Christian.
Obviously the overwhelming majority of early Americans were Christians. But from the start, and equally true today, not all Christians agree on many issues.
So if we were to try to use church teachings, doctrines, to set public policy, we would start off with disagreements. That is probably why there are so many denominations.
That, and the need for a place for all the ambitious, pious preacher types. And don't forget fundraisers, chapels to the television gods, parsonages fit for movie stars.
Oh, yeah. The preachers are like movie stars, now, aren't they?
Most churches don't impress me much, anyway. Did you know Elvis wore a cross and a star of david? Said he didn't want to get shut out, on a technicality.
By the way. By the writing of our Constitution, there were several influential Jews in America. I believe if our founders wanted Christianity to be crowned as the state religion, they would have mentioned it, in the documents. They didn't.
If they had intended portions of the Bible to be writ of law, they would have referenced them, by section or copied verbatim. They didn't.
And so the laws of this country do not xerox copy the Bible (or the Torah, the Quran, etc.) That is how they intended, IMO.
So as a civil citizen, you can shove the written laws of the country down my throat, but not the laws of the Bible.
Now if I happen to become a member of your particular denomination, you and the preacher can visit me, and try to shove the denomination's laws down my throat.
And if I revolt from that, the civil laws protect my right to go about my business, free from further harrassment from you and the preacher.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.