Posted on 08/19/2003 3:01:13 PM PDT by Arthur Wildfire! March
Yes, but those were his personal beliefs, and they are not found in the text of the Declaration itself.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
This is non-sectarian. A Sikh or a Hindu could agree with it.
"The Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth [and] laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity." John Quincy Adams
Again, great care was taken in all of our founding documents to avoid these personal expressions of beliefs. There was much debate about how much of a Kingdom on Earth our nation could become, and cooler heads prevailed: it would be a non-sectarian nation.
"No people ought to feel greater obligations to celebrate the goodness of the Great Disposer of Events and of [the] Destiny of Nations than the people of the United States ... And to the same Divine Author of every good and perfect gift we are indebted for all those privileges and advantages, religious as well as civil, which are so richly enjoyed this favored land." James Madison
But Madison's words are quite comfortable for me. The Divine Author could be evolution, for all I know.
...But I would point out that in the beginning of our system of government, and even before, the concept of equality before the law came from the concept that we are all alike before that Sovereign to Whom Adams referred. It was basically derived from the Scripture that "There is no partiality with God". I happen to believe based on the evidence of history that the degree to which God is shut out of public life will be proportionate to the degree of the continued degradation of both the precept and the practice of equality before the law. Just my two cents.
The Enlightenment was all about the pinnacle of individual interpretation of religious truth. The Founding fathers knew that it was a personal journey, not a state-sponsored one.
Yes, I have been watching this with great interest, and I have been in contact with FreepForever supporting his efforts several times with private and public comments of encouragement and admiration.
FreepForever knows better than any of us how it is when the state begins to take a strong interest in the personal religious affairs of its citizens.
Many a violent struggle in our nation's history, all the way back to the Gunpowder Plot has come out of the state's oppression of individual religious beliefs.
On November 5, 1605, a solitary figure was arrested in the cellars of Parliament House. Although he first gave his name as John Johnson, a startling series of events gradually unfolded under torture. Guy Fawkes, as he was really called, was one of thirteen who had conspired to blow up the parliament, the King, and his Lords, thereby throwing the country into turmoil, out of which these traitors hoped to raise a new monarch, sympathetic to their cause, and return England to its Catholic past.The events surrounding the Gunpowder Plot would inspire the Pilgrims, who ended up coming to America. There are scholars finding more and more connections between it and the American experience all the time.
America wouldn't have existed without hot-headed individuals who refused to abide by a government that instituted and required religious interpretations on its citizens. It is this very deep mistrust of religion in government that brings us to where we are today, debating what role Judge Moore's stone blocks should play in a state of Alabama's courtroom.
I submit that this is all a healthy sign, that you disagree with me, and that I disagree with you, and that the Supreme Court of our land has gotten involved, and that Bill Pryor has made his comments, and that we are debating this in the open on FreeRepublic. Our republic is demonstrating its health and vitality through this entire process.
We each have our own agendas, but our system of government and our freedom to complain about and debate over it are intact.
Yet in an earlier statement in this thread you you state that something IS sectarian "because it's Judeo-Christian." What, only Juedeo-Christian belief is sectarian? You can't have it both ways.
If our system of government had arisen from a Sikh or Hindu or Mohammedistic root you might have a point. But it didn't. Good old T.J. borrowed the phrase regarding inalienable rights from Mecklenberg Declaration, i.e. from Scottish Presbyterians. Our entire system of government is derived from what you term, "personal expressions of religious beliefs". There is a huge mass of historic, organic utterances that prove this fact beyond cavil.
Beware, if you sever the root the tree will die.
When George Washington said that we should only with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion", and that "Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle", the religion to which he was referring was NOT Sikhism or a Hinduism or Mohammedism. It was Christianity.
Madsion's words can only be comfortable to you if you completely wrest them from their context and re-interpret them to mean something completely different than what was intended. The notion that Madison meant "evolution" when he used the words, "Great Disposer of Events and of [the] Destiny of Nations" and to "the same Divine Author of every good and perfect gift" [a phrase directly taken from the Bible] is simply preposterous. Madison was trained as a Christian theologian. To interpret his words any other way other that the personal God of the Bible is just historically anachronistic. So it seems to me at least that if you wish to re-define words such as "sectarian" the burden of proof is on you.
Cordially,
I'm saying that the 10 commandments are Judeo-Christian, and when their presence in a courthouse is defended because our government is based on Christianity, then it's sectarian.
Good old T.J. borrowed the phrase regarding inalienable rights from Mecklenberg Declaration, i.e. from Scottish Presbyterians.
But he was wise enough to remove all vestiges of Christianity or Judaism from the statement. Judge Moore has had no such restraint, especially in that CNBC interview I heard.
So it seems to me at least that if you wish to re-define words such as "sectarian" the burden of proof is on you.
Not so. I'm defending the status quo. I think it serves us well. Some Christians are unhappy, but many others who believe that the government should have no role in religion are not.
He is also sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. It's as binding on state judges and justices as much as federal ones. If Justice Moore is violating the Constitution by the display of the Ten Comandments, what are Congress and the US Supreme Court doing? The latter opens with a prayer, The building of the latter depicts Moses, the "lawgiver" who brought the very same commandments down from the mountain, on it's East Pediment (Warning PDF file)
Similarly, the Congress, the state legislatures and the military, as well as many police and fire departments have official chaplins. Are these also violating the Constitution?
Does this mean he would confiscate the arms of the people if a court ordered him to do so? Would he lock up a newspaper office and arrest the editors and publishers for some political disaggreement with a judge, if the Court told him to do so? I'd hope not, but I suspect he would. The AG, of all the states, are sworn to uphold the Constitutions of their state and of the United States. At some point they, personally, must decide what that means, as must the rest of us who have sworn the same or a similar oath to "support and defend".
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