I was simply indicating that there is no comparison between what Catholics and Protestants went through 3 or 4 Centuries ago to what factions of Islam are currently going through in terms of scale. More people are killed by Islamists each year than in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined. Since the inception of Islam, Muslims have killed more than 270 non-Muslims worldwide, not to mention the Muslims killed by other Muslims.
We are fighting seventh century barbarians and likening Catholics and Protestants to these barbarians is ludicrous, and most particularly on this thpe of thread.
And as the Protestant Reformation was the foundation of the American Revolution in many respects, I certainly was not likening it to a molehill.
... At any rate when the Constitution was written the vote was for no establishment of religion, which mistaken or not, I equate with secular.
You are entitled to your opinion about what the Federal Government ought to but you are mistaken about what it was actually founded as. There is NO historical evidence to support the notion that it was a secular government in the modern sense in which you are using the term:
§ 1868. Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.§ 1870. But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner, which, they believe, their accountability to him requires. It has been truly said, that "religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be dictated only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." Mr. Locke himself, who did not doubt the right of government to interfere in matters of religion, and especially to encourage Christianity, at the same time has expressed his opinion of the right of private judgment, and liberty of conscience, in a manner becoming his character, as a sincere friend of civil and religious liberty. "No man, or society of men," says he, "have any authority to impose their opinions or interpretations on any other, the meanest Christian; since, in matters of religion, every man must know, and believe, and give an account for himself." The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority, without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as of revealed religion.
§ 1871. The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, would furnish out a chapter, as full of the darkest bigotry and intolerance, as any, which could be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals. Apostacy, heresy, and nonconformity had been standard crimes for public appeals, to kindle the flames of persecution, and apologize for the most atrocious triumphs over innocence and virtue.
Document 69Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 3:§§ 1865--73 1833
