Posted on 06/29/2003 11:26:04 AM PDT by Polycarp
Both of these men moved closer and closer to orthodox Christianity as they aged, though neither of them ever embraced any particular denomiation. As for your charge that Jefferson eliminated the "supernatural" from his version of the Bible, you have to bear in mind his purpose for writing this version. It was to establish a moral code for people to live by, as he loved everything that Jesus said. It was not to give the world yet another version of the full New Testament. Hence, he focused on writing what Jesus taught from the moral standpoint; which utterly proves my original thought, and reason for making the post. Namely, it was to refute another poster who said that "Christianity in government is vicious". My point in quoting Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers was to make it known that they lived, thought and acted according to Christian morals and values, ,(not necessarily Christian doctrines and dogmas), and therefore our Constitution was steeped in Christian principles and standards. As a man thinks, lives and believes, he writes.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to William Canby, "Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus." He described his own Bible version to Charles Thomson as "a paradigam of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen." In this same letter he wrote of his Bible: "there will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."
So while it is a fact that Jefferson and some other Fathers were never Christians in the traditional sense, they most certainly were men who lived entirely by Christian ethics and morals, hence our Constituion has the fingerprints of Christianity all over it.
Agreed, of course. Yet in the study of people, there are almost always at least two extremes. If you'd like an example, though about how people can be so fuzzy minded they think govenment doesn't have a role where it naturally has for ages, check this out:
Poll in the conservative state news site, Illinois Leader: http://www.illinoisleader.com
Question: "Today we ask the identical poll question as the current Chicago Free Press (which bills itself as "the Midwest's #1 Gay Newspaper"): Will gay Americans be able to marry in the U.S...."
Someone's write-in answer: "Why is the government in the marriage business to begin with? Let the churches decide who they want to recognize as being married,"
gooodgoogeleymoogeley.....
This is a thorny problem, and I don't know what the answer is, Luis. When that happens, I usually try to figure out what I actually know about the "basics" of the situation.
It seems clear to me that it's not the federal government per se that is mounting the attack on the traditional family -- though it is accommodating the highly-motivated "activists" of essentially totalitarian mindset who are hostile to the norms of traditional American order for that purpose. I think that's an important distinction to recognize. These people have enablers in Congress and on the bench -- sometimes even in the Oval Office. But our government is designed to be responsive to the people; it's just that the "wrong people" -- defined as the people who seek to undermine America and everything she stands for -- are the ones who are being listened to these days. And will probably continue to monopolize the attention of the political class so long as "the other side" -- that is, political conservatives and strict constitutionalists -- remain divided as to goals and methods.
In the second place, the nation-state has only fairly recently inserted itself into the marriage business. Before about 150 years or so ago, governments were not at all involved in defining or regulating marriage, issuing licenses and so forth. Before that, marriage was primarily contracted by and authenticated by families. If there was any record of the fact that a marriage had occurred, the place to go see it would have been the parish church. The so-called "marriage contract" was not a legal idea or document, but an informal arrangement guaranteed by the families of the parties thereto and the wider community.
This is just one more thing that traditionally had been regarded as something within the private sphere that has become increasingly politicized over the years. So it's not surprising that political activists want to take it to the next level of politicization by demanding that the "right" of marriage be extended to individuals who will not at ALL (by definition) be engaging in the prime function of what a marriage is all about: the birthing and rearing of children.
Instead, such individuals have in view the securing of spousal benefits and, perhaps even more important than that, undermining the concept of marriage as being essentially, vitally related to the function of bringing a new generation of human beings into the world. Marriage -- instead of being about children -- is to be primarily, exclusively about sexual relationship. Any type of sexual relationship that "consenting adults" might wish to contract.
There are social costs here, direct and indirect, financial and also cultural. Leave aside the financial impacts, and look to the cultural implications. The "traditional family" -- husband and wife, male/female, and their children -- is the most basic unit of any society, on which the welfare and stability of the total community and nation rests. This is simply a biological, social, and historical fact. To "innovate there" seems very dangerous to me.
Leaving the issue to the several states to settle may well smuggle the issue of gay marriage in through the back door, even in states that have rejected it. That's because of Article IV's "full faith and credit" clause: "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State."
If Massachusetts sanctions gay marriage, then a gay couple married here, moving to another state, could sue to have the legal status of their marriage recognized in their new state of domicile. What do you think the SCOTUS would do, once the appeal got to them? (Betcha anything they'd trot out the good ol' Fourteenth Amendment one more time....)
Congress would need to act to prevent this, either by constitutional amendment (on which you frown), or by enacting a statute invoking the second clause of Article IV's Section 1: "...the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."
I read that to mean that Congress may, by statute, make an exception to the "full faith and credit clause" in the case of recognition of gay marriage in non-gay marriage states.
Were it not for Article IV, Section 1, paragraph 1, I could go along fairly cheerfully leaving the matter of gay marriage up to the several states. Certain states would have gay marriage, others would not, and people would be entirely free to move to whatever state(s) they find congenial.
But -- the danger is the ever innovative left would probably use any state law extending marriage to same-sex couples as a Trojan Horse under Article IV -- and (if Congress ditches its responsibility as usual) gay marriage could be expected rapidly to become universal among the states, thanks to judicial, not legislative, action.
Well, that's my take on the problem so far. What do you think, Luis?
"A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its Author never said nor saw." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Thompson, 1816. ME 14:385
Jefferson definitely considered himself a follower of Christ. He also maintained membership in his local Episcopal parish, although he was not active. He might be closer to what we today would call a Unitarian.
From a healthy "cultural anthropologist's" point of view, this tends to beg the question of what a "government" is, I think. Also, if the 150 years is true, it is true in Western civilizations struggling to come out from ecclesiastical management. (BTW, isn't the tradtion of marriage by the captain of a ship older than 150 years? Captains aren't generally recognized as elders in the church, by default.) ;-)
Alas, it gets more twisted than that. Sigh.
The previous instance of course is abortion - the subject being too politically "hot" to handle, Congress allowed the Supreme Court to make new law.
The court ought not to make law but rather to interpret law. Allowing the court to make law grants legislative authority to trial lawyers!
My strongest objection, however, is one of moral absolutes on which this country was founded. When the people abandon those absolutes, the nation will lose its blessing and protection from God. But then again, this may be a fulfillment of prophesy...
'splain somethin' to me Jeanie.
Why do we conservatives still want to bank so much on "leaving it up to the states," when doing so in the case of very basic/fundamental/foundational issues, would leave us a fractions people?
Think of the slavery crisis, for example. I hope we've learned something from that, about our union... republic... nation....
And can anyone else tell me why we think the hit-and-miss idea of "leaving it up to the states" is so good, for critical matters foundational to our People? (Abortion, international drug trade, marriage, and whatever other examples.)
Also, is this what we really want for policy haveing to do with food and pharmaceutical standards, space exploration, the Internet, the Interstates, superconductors, etc.?
I think we've grown up some as a nation, since the Constitution was drafted and a part of returning us to constitutionality would be to adapt the Constitution to our present realities.
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*gay
adj 1: bright and pleasant; promoting a feeling of cheer; "a cheery hello"; "a gay sunny room"; "a sunny smile" [syn: cheery, sunny] 2: full of or showing high-spirited merriment; "when hearts were young and gay"; "a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company"- Wordsworth; "the jolly crowd at the reunion"; "jolly old Saint Nick"; "a jovial old gentleman"; "have a merry Christmas"; "peals of merry laughter"; "a mirthful laugh" [syn: jocund, jolly, jovial, merry, mirthful] 3: given to social pleasures often including dissipation; "led a gay Bohemian life"; "a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies" 4: brightly colored and showy; "girls decked out in brave new dresses"; "brave banners flying"; "`braw' is a Scottish word"; "a dress a bit too gay for her years"; "birds with gay plumage" [syn: brave, braw] 5: offering fun and gaiety; "a gala ball after the inauguration"; "a festive (or festal) occasion"; "gay and exciting night life"; "a merry evening" [syn: gala(a), festal, festive, merry] 6: homosexual or arousing homosexual desires [syn: queer, homophile(a)] n : someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex [syn: homosexual, homo]
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gay
Oh-oh... mental images of that black hole are coming to mind, again....
Yes, Alamo-Girl: I come to the same conclusion. These absolutes really are the laws of human life, the only laws that dignify and liberate true human nature. Without them, there are no stable individuals, no stable families -- nor stable societies, which rest on the first two stabilities.
At the root of the present disorder is the idea of unfettered sexual liberation. I'm not speaking of this out of mere "prudish" antipathy. Rather, not for nothing the promulgation of the ideology of "free love" was a key goal of Marx. (Another was the progressive income tax.) Well he understood that unfettered sexual liberation would undermine and finally destroy the family, the last bastion standing in the way of achieving the complete dissolution of the social structures maintaining "traditional" society, which he detested. After all, his own plans for creating "perfect" society depended on individual men being totally defenseless, because no longer supported by humane institutions rooted in human nature, which he was trying to "revolutionize" -- as if man were merely clay in his hands to be freely reshaped, recreated according to his preferences. ALL his epigones -- his progressivist followers from Lenin through Hitler to Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot -- have learned the value of "freeing people" from the constraints of "traditional" sexuality.
The fact that we in the West have fallen for this strategy on a mass scale sets up the erosion of our societies from within, starting with the family. The children are the first victims of these "innovations." But the devastation is for all of us, at the last.
You may well be right that "this may be a fulfillment of prophecy," for the trend appears irreversible, and can lead only to one result in the long run. I pray God that this will not come to pass, that we humans still have the freedom and the will to alter our fatal course before we get totally shipwrecked and drown in our own concupiscence, vanity, selfishness, brutishness, and loss of love.
Well, I'm not saying I'm "right" about this; but the way I see it, this represents a tactical retreat. The disorder is so out of hand, and so totally focused on and expressed through the institutions of the federal government, that to me it's preferable to "devolve" this power from one power center to 50. If nothing else, the projection of "progressivist" power would be much less efficient under 50 different power centers than under just one.
Secondly, when you're hemorrhaging, the first thing you need to do is stop the bleeding. Progressivist "social change" has gone so far, and been so accepted by so many for so long, that it may not be reversible in the short term, if ever. Time is needed, to get an effective handle on the political process and, more importantly, to build a base of cultural power and try to shore up support for sensible change. Gradualism was the route that took us to where we are now; and gradualism will be the route back to sanity, if we are ever to get there. IMHO FWIW
Indeed, Christians need to muster all the courage they can to return this country to moral absolutes. But should we fail, we can remember that God always has his "remnant" which He cherishes and protects.
But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to [the image of] Baal.
Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. - Romans 11:3-5
Sigh. It does indeed. If you ask me, if a woman wants to be a mom, she ought to go get herself a husband, not a semen donor. It's only fair to the child -- in order to develop in the way that Nature (not Marx) intended, the child needs a mother and a father, not just "two mommies."
I have a gay sibling, in a 25+ year relationship. My family has accepted this very well, as have I. But increasingly, what disturbs me is the ominous sense I get that, at bottom, homosexuality is really about trying to repeal "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God." If it weren't for that -- and all the personal and social disorder that inevitably issues from such a stance -- I wouldn't have much to object to....
The "in your face" activists really burn me...but not all gays are of this type. I know several who live quietly, don't go to "gay pride" events, are conservatives when it comes to the Constitution, and often vote Republican. I have absolutely no problem having people like this for my neighbors.
Plus some of the greatest figures in human culture and history have been homosexual. As a student of these areas of human achievement, I am in their debt.
Even ignoring the consequences, that very objective, as it may be imagined, will cause opponents to ridicule (and very reasonably so).
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