[PieterCasparzen]

I put it down to lack of reading of history and in other cases, lack of reading of the Bible.

Cronos, please permit me to offer some constructive criticism. You actually made a post that equated Calvinists with jihadis. You've made all sorts of accusations on this thread which, to me, distort the history of my own ancestry as well as America's history. I can only surmise that you're trying to defend Roman Catholicism but have gone a bit overboard. I restrain myself from answering on this thread as I'm sure many others do, since the time required to successfully refute posts is simply more than the typical person has available. But of course on the other hand one feels compelled to respond to outlandish remarks so readers can see valid refutations.

On this thread it appears that you desire to live in a country that is totally Roman Catholic, that all non-Roman Catholic Christians represent an evil scourge to be eliminated from America. If this is the case, you should move to the Vatican, a nation that is both Church and State, and entirely Roman Catholic. As you know, here in America, we do not have a single, official state Church, a national American Church that is synonymous with the American civil government. Here in America, the civil government and the Church are two different entities. As far as a Church having dissenters who break away and form their own Church, resulting in a multiplicity of Christian denominations, well, the U.S. Constitution does not grant the U.S. civil government any right to force people to belong to any specific denomination. In America, people are free to form their own Churches and congregations according to their conscience. Clearly the framers sought to avoid the upheaval that happened in Europe when government and Church were one and the same, so the Constitution was written such that the Church can not usurp the government's role in society and the government can not usurp that of the Church.

I don't have time for reading this let alone responding to every post, I don't think many others do and, IMHO, it clogs FR and the internet with confusion and misrepresentations as opposed to filling it with engaging and edifying content.

While theological debate is wonderful, and debates about history are wonderful - and even debates about the history of theology are wonderful - you'll notice that I refrain from berating Roman Catholics for massacres of my ancestors. I refrain from calling them heretics. I refrain from calling evangelicals heretics. I refrain from a lot of things. And this is not to my credit; it is nothing to boast of, of course, it's simply the bare minimum of public discourse. These days it seems impossible to have a discussion on the internet about religious matters without people resorting to impoliteness and vile accusations. IMHO, posters of accusations should look inside themselves and consider where the accusations are coming from. If a poster is defending the truth of their doctrine, the truth of their doctrine should not need to be defended in such a manner.

Grace and Peace, may the Lord guide us in our thoughts, words and actions.

[BlueDragon]

Thank you. And my apologies to you also, for not having been able to display the same fine spirit which you have, and did on this thread before my own original comment here.

[Gamecock]

The point of this article is the foundations of out Republic were first put forth in Geneva.

Those principles took a few centuries to fully develop.

The fact is that any nastiness conducted by the leaders of Geneva were learned from Rome, who had mastered the art of persecution quite well during the Middle Ages. Can anyone say Inquisition?

[Cronos]

You actually made a post that equated Calvinists with jihadis.

Actually I didn't -- I replied to BD saying Now if you want to talk about how Calvinists were like Jihadis -- If BD's post compares Calvinists to Jihadis that up, it's BD's problem, not mine.

[Cronos]

You've made all sorts of accusations on this thread which, to me, distort the history of my own ancestry as well as America's history. -- None are accusations against your or my ancestry. There are facts about the Huguenots that I've posted:

• They were tolerated by the French kings initially
• they attacked Churches a burst of iconoclasm
• they supported the losing side in a civil war
• They attempted to kidnap a French prince

all facts

[Cronos]

On this thread it appears that you desire to live in a country that is totally Roman Catholic, that all non-Roman Catholic Christians represent an evil scourge to be eliminated from America.

"you desire" -- that's against the Forum rules.

and also false btw, it would be boring without a difference in opinion

[Cronos]

On this thread it appears that you desire to live in a country that is totally Roman Catholic, that all non-Roman Catholic Christians represent an evil scourge to be eliminated from America.

"you desire" -- that's against the Forum rules.

and also false btw, it would be boring without a difference in opinio

[Cronos]

Clearly the framers sought to avoid the upheaval that happened in Europe when government and Church were one and the same, so the Constitution was written such that the Church can not usurp the government's role in society and the government can not usurp that of the Church.

And that goes against Calvinism which in the Nederlands and in Geneva also had a close tie-in between Church and State -- especially in Calvin's police state. Hence the basic premise of this article that "john Calvin was a founding father" is laughable...

[Cronos]

I refrain from berating good. also note that quite possibly in your ancestry and mine there were folks on both sides of the theological divide.

The entire concept of Huguenots being poor, persecuted is not correct -- nearly half of the French aristocracy were Huguenots as were much of the industrialists. They also fought on one side of a civil war, which they lost

What happened to losers of a civil war in the middle ages? They were killed. Whether they were Catholics in England or Huguenots in France or various folks in Catholic Spain or various folks in Germany or Russia etc. -- if you are part of a group that tosses it's hat on one side of a political civil war, then, if your side loses the war, it loses it's life

If the Huguenots won inFrance, Catholics would have been persecuted, just as they were in England -- and it would be a mixture of political and religious.

[Cronos]

In America, people are free to form their own Churches and congregations according to their conscience. Clearly the framers sought to avoid the upheaval that happened in Europe when government and Church were one and the same

And at the same time that America was doing this, another country, which 300 years previously had already guaranteed this freedom was being snuffed out --> don't think the US was the first to guarantee this. The Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth from the time of it's union in 1389 had a mix of religions -- Catholics, Orthodox, Jews and Moslem Tartars and later on Lutherans and Calvinists and Polish Brethern (Unitarians) were free to choose their own religion and even proselytize.

Just because Western Europe was tying in religion to state doesn't mean one should brush all of Europe with the same broad brush.

For that matter, the Swiss confederation was tolerant, but later, in the 1800s the non-Catholic counties went to war against the Catholics ones in the Sonderbund war "The Radical Party and liberals made up of urban bourgeoisie and burghers, which were strong in the largely Protestant cantons, obtained the majority in the Federal Diet in the early 1840s.....they had taken measures against the Catholic Church such as the closure of monasteries and convents in Aargau in 1841,[

The "reformed" cantons wanted a strong centralized government while the Catholic ones wanted the old dec-centralized structure. To see it as just religious would be simple, but one must also note that the Catholic cantons were also the predominantly agricultural cantons (just as our mid-western states now oppose centralization)

The non-catholic counties won and this being 1848, there were no medieval massacres but punitive measures put on the catholic counties...