Posted on 10/22/2006 4:28:56 PM PDT by KayEyeDoubleDee
Not since the medieval church baptized, as it were, Aristotle as some sort of early — very early — church father has there been an intellectual hijacking as audacious as the attempt to present America’s principal founders as devout Christians. Such an attempt is now in high gear among people who argue that the founders were kindred spirits with today’s evangelicals, and that they founded a “Christian nation.”
This irritates Brooke Allen, an author and critic who has distilled her annoyance into “Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers.” It is a wonderfully high-spirited and informative polemic that, as polemics often do, occasionally goes too far. Her thesis is that the six most important founders — Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton — subscribed, in different ways, to the watery and undemanding Enlightenment faith called deism. That doctrine appealed to rationalists by being explanatory but not inciting: it made the universe intelligible without arousing dangerous zeal.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I dont know what the Founding fathers thought about God, I do know they didnt try to stop others or interfere with others who believed like todays ACLU.
"I don't think we want a state religion. Why? Invariably, someone will get the idea to forcibly convert others. Then we will have a rebirth of the Inquisition (an American version, but an inquisition, nonetheless)." ~ punster
Exactly.
It is for that very reason that our Founders, who held to a biblical worldview, placed the Constitution in the way of all tyrannical mentalities - and that includes *some* professing Christians. [Click my screen name and scroll 1/2 way down the page to the 1999 Emory Report, if you want to understand that premise to their thinking).
C.S. Lewis understood their reasoning perfectly:
C. S. Lewis addresses theocracy (the most potent form of Religious involvement in government) in an essay entitled, "A Reply to Professor Haldane" (Lewis, C.S. "A Reply to Professor Haldane." On Sotries. ed. Walter Hooper. Harcort & Brace Co. Orlando, Florida. 1996.):
If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme--whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence--the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication (75-76).
The tumult and the shouting dies
The captains and the kings depart
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
Far-call'd our navies melt away
On dune and headland sinks the fire
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
- Recessional, Rudyard Kipling
The Christian conscience is evident througout the correspondence and papers of the Founders. Any attempt to deny it is pure revisionist claptrap.
In the late 1960's I was a minister at the Unitarian church in Quincy, Mass where Adams is buried. His faith was not Deist. He was a Christian who did not accept the 3 Gods interpretation of the Trinity. Unitarian thought in the late 18th and early 19th century was explicitly Christian. It has only been since the 60's of this century that the Unitarian Universalist Association began to define itself as other than Christian.
"Allen neglects one argument for her thesis that the United States is a 'secular project':
the Constitution mandates the establishment of a political truth by guaranteeing each state the same form of government ("republican"). It does so because the founders thought the most important political truths are knowable. But because they thought religious truths are unknowable, they proscribed the establishment of religion."
I missed this paragraph the first time through. It's intellectually dishonest not to point out that, while the Constitution forbids the establishment of a federal religion, it makes no such rule for the various States, most of which had established religions at the time.
A '"Republican Form of Government" for "Every State in this Union" effectively prevents an official state religion from being instituted in a new states proposed constitution. -- As Utah found out in its 40 year fight for statehood.
And the "religious Test" clause of Article VI stops a State from using an 'established religion' in any official capacity; "-- as a Qualification to any office or public Trust under the United States. --"
That was interesting. Thanks.
You're welcome.
God: Missing in Action From American History
Was George Washington a Christian?
George Will went to the dark side a while ago.
I did used to regularly read George Will and respected his libertarian intellect. In the law few years, I have no idea what the f$#k he has up his butt but it isn't libertarianism. He has just become another pompous windbag bucking for Andy Rooney's chair what that fat turd croaks.
Thank you. This was informative. I always wondered what the origin of the Unitarians that we see today was.
George Will is a flaming Lib. How he ever became associated with the right I'll never know.
I have to admit, I have not been reading him for several years, and I do catch his column sometimes and think...what's up with him? However, I don't think he quit being a smart guy (which he is). I just don't know what happened, because some of what I read him say now does not sound like the George Will I read for years. Wonder if something happened in his life?
susie
Its somewhat of a mystery to me as well. But it happened after W got into office. Something similar happened with Howard Fineman, Chrissy Matthews and Norah O'Donnell at NBC. They went from being somewhat detached democrats to just open antagonists to all things GOP. George Will isn't quite in their camp but he is a reliable ally for them since they rarely disagree anymore. Will is more of a Goldwater republican than a Reagan republican.
Well, W makes me mad too, but he's better than the alternative.
susie
For some reason, you left out David Barton's (rather mealy-mouthed) retraction of the phony "founding fathers" quotes that he previously cited as factual.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=20
Your point? Feel better?
My point? I don't know, maybe that David Barton is a less than reliable source? That the "Christian Nation" project is a bunch of hooey? That you presented as authoritative a collection of cites from David Barton without including David Barton's own retraction of the phony quotes he fobbed off in his prior claims? That not much is left of David Barton's credibility? You choose.
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