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To: risk
There's not a single thing about Christianity

Actually, there is

19 posted on 08/29/2004 5:22:28 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: Tribune7
Actually, there is

What a long-shot. They wrote the equivalent of "A.D." when describing the date, and you're saying that justifies dogmatic laws in this country?

Every time anyone writes a Gregorian date he's doing exactly the same thing. With comments by our Founding Fathers abounding that indicate their deep and well-reasoned concern about keeping religion and government separate, such as the following two, I find no basis for an argument that depends on a Gregorian representation of a date as proof that they intended our Constitution to be Christian in nature.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. --Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists
And
The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.(1819). --James Madison
The revisionists are the ones who would either divest our culture of Christianity with laws, or who would (re)Christianize it. Both are in fierce violation of our Constitution. There are partisans on both sides who exaggerate the fears of their constituents based on either camp's wishes.

It's only all too unfortunate that we can't ask our Founding Fathers to help us resolve these conflicts.

We have to think them through for ourselves. Christianizing our government is such an obvious mistake to any student of the reformation and the enlightenment, and yet we must confinually defend the notions of John Locke, John Milton, and Jean Rousseau -- all three of whom were passionate defenders of government without the power to impart religious establishment on their people.

Freedom in government is all about representation. That is where it always goes awry. A Christian government would exclude a massive segment of the population from true representation. Any taxes for them would suddenly be onerous. The intercessions of their clergy/officials would susdenly be tedious and oppressive. Furthermore, many Christians would suddenly disagree about dogmas represented in the government. Europe's history is of one religiously motivated war after another. All of that was made obsolete when we finished our American revolution against the English crown and its onerous championship of Anglicanism against Catholicism.

45 posted on 08/29/2004 8:20:29 PM PDT by risk
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