Posted on 07/04/2018 7:22:43 AM PDT by OneVike
Plenty of people are saying theocracy, or were until it kind of went out of fashion politically.
And plenty of churches are revealing the taint of dominionism, even if they don’t explicitly teach it or dare to say it. The whole “improve your life through God” cult. It’s the apostasy that we were warned about, or at least a part of it. Even “improve the world” can be a bit suspect if something like social justice becomes your religion.
I’m sure the founders called upon God privately. As proof of that, we still exist! That’s what the Israelis say too.
...It cannot be overlooked that the entire argument of "declaring independence" from tyranny was worded as such because of Biblical prohibitions of "Rebellion"...
"For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king."
http://biblehub.com/kjv/1_samuel/15-23.htm
Jefferson needed to word the Declaration of Independence from British Tyranny in the manner that he did in order to avoid putting forth a national position of the sin of rebellion!
Jefferson would have had no reason to declare independence from Tyranny so eloquently if the Bible had not been so specific about the evil of "rebellion".
Lincoln also must have understood this. I faintly recall Lincoln using the word "Rebels" for the Confederacy, and this moniker carried a terrible religious weight against the Southern cause, a weight our modern day mindset cannot truly fathom.
The 'law' Constitution mimics the 'law' of God... Any student worth their salt in the WORD would know who rains Supreme. Course now, Jesus did foretell what would be of those that sit in the seat of Moses, the law-giver. It reads like today's newspapers/internet and boob tube. No one can attribute 'precedence' to being from God, that is a man made tradition. The Supremes bucked the Constitutional 'system' right out the gate.
I didn’t cite that as proof of intentional theocracy. You made that up.
But the references are there and they are proof of what most of the founding fathers believed.
Whatever Jefferson was, he clearly studied the Bible, having composed two works about Jesus.
“No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances towards rational Christianity.”...
“I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also.” - Jefferson letter to Adams
Jesus’ life was the only event in human history to prompt everyone on the planet set their watches.
Eighteenth century America was religiously diverse, and by the time of the Revolution religion was widely viewed as a matter of voluntary individual choice. The Constitution acknowledged these realities......and in its omission of key contexts of these statements, presents a very different picture to the contemporary reader than the actual context in which it was written, and indeed, its foreseeable intention.
The words "religiously diverse", while sounding high-mindedly tolerant, is misleading. The actual religious diversity that the Framers were daily faced with was the array of different sects of Protestant Christianity, who in total formed the majority of the colonial population—perhaps 95%.
The numbers of persons in the colonies professiing Judaism (some 2,000 mostly Sephardic Jews) or even Catholicism (only one colony established RC primacy, but even that law was soon rescinded) were greatly fewer in number. Even so, those creeds shared many commonalities with colonial varieties of Protestantism or Deism, most importantly the belief, regardless of whether or how one regards the Messiah or the Christ in history or in faith, that there is One Supreme God, culturally understood as the God of Abraham. All acknowleged the Ten Commandments of the Jewish people and religion.
The numbers of what were then called "Mohametans", as well as Hindus, Shinto, Buddhists, Ba'hai, et cetera, were so tiny as to have only miniscule impact on the generally accepted moral values of society, based in the Ten Commandments.
Today's diversity cheerleaders like to use such sweeping generalities to place religions with direct and irreducible opposition to JudeoChristian/Western Civ in the same intellectual box—for purposes of promoting an overthrow of traditional American moral values, including whether God even exists, and if so, how is God defined for purposes of suppressing majority Christian social values in favor of the "rights" of people professing Islam, NewAge, and even Satanism? This ignorance of context, also known as "category creep", confounds intelligent discussion and effective decision-making regarding policy, and serves as a means to silence and oppress Christians under the guilt flag of tolerance.
As of 2017, Jews still only represent 2% of American population and muslims, 1%. A far bigger group is those professing no religion. Figures I've seen vary from 15% to 25%; yet professing no religion does not necessarily indicate a non-belief in God; but perhaps only an aversion to or ignorance of belonging to an organized denomination.
The "religious freedom" phrase often cited in reference to our Constitutional Repubic is more accuratly illustrated by a non-sectarian Bible study group of 350 that I belong to. Members from several counties meet once a week, and come from 91 different congregations of various denominations of Christianity, including many types of and Protestants and evangelicals as well as Roman Catholics. That is "religious diversity" in the long American tradition.
Selected sources:
Library of Congress: Religion and the Founding of the American Republic
Wikipedia: Religion in the United States
Facing History blog: Religion in Colonial America: Trends, Regulations, and Beliefs
Excellent, TY
Agreed.
My only point was Jefferson clearly understood the Biblical problem of inciting “rebellion” against authority.
Because he knew it could appear they were instigating a Biblically sinful rebellion, Jefferson’s entire raison d’être for writing a declaration of the Colonies’ independence was to establish a justifiable moral separation from Tyranny.
How Jefferson morally justified being a slaveowner etc., in latter years was a problem Lincoln knew he had to deal with.
That’s true. The Declaration not only lays out our reasons for separating from Britain, but warns that such a course is not to be taken lightly.
I’m always comforted at how the entire nation, even Lincoln in one of his speeches, were profoundly affected by the deaths of both Adams and Jefferson on the 50 year jubilee anniversary of the Declaration in 1826.
As Lincoln discussed (I think he gave the speech on July 4th, 1863, after the victories of Vicksburg and Gettysberg) he saw the hand of God on the Union victories in the same way God honored Jefferson and Adams by taking them from this earthly toil on this important American day.
A theocracy is a top-down political system overtly declaring itself aligned with a specific religious tradition. A society is a natural, organic mass of persons whose beliefs influence their thoughts and order their actions. These two things should have remained distinct in American jurisprudence, so that while church may not intrude upon the state, neither should the state have routinely intruded upon the society of believers in Nature's God over the past 70 years, distorting our republic to its present state of utter moral relativism without a unifying basis in law.
As but one example, over the past fifteen years, two-thirds of U.S. state legislatures passed laws specifically limiting marriage to "one man and one woman", indicating that the societies of those states wished to remain within the JudeoChristian traditions representative of their electorate. All, count 'em, all of these laws were overturned by activist judges.
It shouldn’t be the reason we follow Christ, however.
And Jesus improves your life in a totally different way than the one most people in these churches are counting on.
The word “blessing” and the use of A.D. are proof of nothing of the kind. They would have had to be crazy to reject A.D. in particular when it was the only thing anyone ever used at that time for what some now call C.E.
We know they worshipped God, because of other sources. The idea that the use of “blessing” and “AD” is some kind of dogwhistle to the believers is preposterous.
I didn’t say they weren’t believers.
OK, I’ll accept that.
Thanks for clarifying.
What an extremely valuable post. Thank you.
Well said.
They intended it, however, no matter what their vision was.
Not every concept in the Constitution is stated only one way, so it is foolish to say the Constitution writers were not aware of the concept. In fact in this case they were careful to keep the MENTION of God out of it, although the whole thing was inspired by Christian love for others.
Wouldn’t you love to have been in on these discussions? Not everything is covered in the Federalist Papers. Purposely.
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