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To: RegulatorCountry
Well, as you know, we can go all the way back to the Scottish Calvinist revival/Campbellism, and the rise of low church and high church Anglicanism to see the source of American Protestanism in all of its various strains, but I digress.

What I was trying to point out was so many historical revisionists try to make the rather odd point that the Founders were fire-breathing revivalists, when they were not. Of course, our Constitution is rooted in English Common Law, which in and of itself is heavily influenced by Christianity, as well as Enlightenment Revisionism. Jefferson's Declaration, however, is clearly a product of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment and deism, rather than Calvinism or high Anglicanism.

As far as the mass of the population is concerned, you are forgetting a very important point about the migration to Appalachia and the interior: there was initially a severe lack of clergy to go along with the migrants, which created a void filled by the early 19th century revivalists. The Second Great Awakening did NOT happen in a vacuum, but, nevertheless, did arise in a period and region where organized churches were weak on the ground.

63 posted on 05/28/2010 12:13:15 PM PDT by Clemenza (Remember our Korean War Veterans)
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To: Clemenza

... and you’re forgetting a key Biblical precept, where ever people are gathered in His name is the Church. Over half the local churches historically associated with the people from whom I descend started out with lay preaching in a literal brush arbor. “Appalachia,” such a freighted term to outsiders, was and is no different, nor was the Cumberland Plateau, nor were the Great Plains or the Rockies.

You were raised Catholic, weren’t you?


65 posted on 05/28/2010 12:18:28 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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