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>>>”Well they would have called it neoclassical, but it amounts to the same thing. It stems from the popular Gibbonian idea of the perfection of pagan antiquity. The movement was not just architectural, but sociological as well. Thomas Jefferson is one of the best exemplars of this. And, though it’s a little after the time of the founders, works of art like the “Apotheosis” do represent the popular feeling about the Founders (in this case Washington). No one can see that mural and not think “pagan,” you’d have to be willfully ignorant of the times and the spirit of that age.”<<<

That is the biggest bunch of Barbra Streisand I have read in a long time. You have been brainwashed, sonny.

First, I assume when you reference “Gibbonian” that you are referring to the anti-Christian “historian” (so-called) named Gibbons who declared that the fall of Rome was caused by Christianity, even though many other historians believe it was caused by the decadence resulting from Rome’s gradual fall into liberalism. Or, as Eugen Weber, the great historian from UCLA stated in disagreement with Gibbons, (paraphrasing) “400 years is a long time to have a fatal disease” (the time when Constantine adopted Christianity as the state religion to the fall of Rome).

Second, Thomas Jefferson was not anti-Christian as the liars from the separation of church and state clowns claim. Thomas Jefferson clearly stated in his letters to others that he was indeed a Christian, and that he believed in future rewards and punishments, which all Christians believe.

While Jefferson was President of the United States, he also served as the chairman of the committee on education for the public schools in Washington, D.C. He demanded that two books MUST be taught in D.C. public schools: the Holy Bible and Watts Hymnal.

Did you know that two days after Jefferson sent that letter to Danbury (the letter the corrupt ACLU uses to bash Christianity) he attended public Christian worship services in the U. S. Capital building? Did you know that Jefferson authorized the use of the War Office and Treasury building for church services? That he provided, at the government’s expense, Christian missionaries to the Indians? That he put chaplains on the government payroll? That he provided for the punishment of irreverent soldiers. That he sent Congress an Indian treaty that provided funding for a priest’s salary and for the construction of a church for the missionaries to the Indians so the Indians might be won to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and, thereby, civilized?

In 1822, four years before his death, Jefferson wrote, “In our village of Charlottesville, there is a good degree of religion, with a small spice only of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either church or meeting-house. The court-house is the common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. Here, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others’ preachers, and all mix in society with perfect harmony.”

Also in 1822, he wrote, “In our annual report to the legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the university, so near as that their students may attend the lectures there, and have the free use of our library, and every other accommodation we can give them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other.”

I don’t know where you got your education, sonny, but if I were you I would demand my money back.

Do you like to read more into what I write than what is there, or are you just angry? I never claimed Jefferson was in any way anti-Christian. I merely wrote that he was a neoclassicist, which he was. This sentiment was not always at odds with accepting Christianity, but to many philosophers of the "Enlightenment" there was a conflict. Certainly their were, and still are, fundamentalists who would take issue with much of the dubiously named "Age of Enlightenment."

My assertion that the "Founders were nerds who wanted to recreate a new pagan antiquity" was tongue in cheek. What I meant to convey was that in "looking for signs and wonders" we could draw all kinds of ridiculous conclusions about Revelations. Specifically I was critiquing the idea that we can interpret that which is "of no private interpretation." Frankly I don't understand why you have the need to cast accusations of liberalism at me over it. I should tell my liberal friends about it. Since they consider me so reactionary I make Rush look like a communist they'd no doubt find it amusing.

However in the Christian spirit of charity I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have recently had a bad experience with some ACLU college types, and consequently are looking for an argument to vent your anger.

So that you know where I am coming from let me explain that my comments about the Founders and "The Spirit" of the revolutionary age in fact came from a fundamentalist origin; those which Jefferson would call "fanatics." Not a leftist ACLU one.

Having said that however, I should point out that personally I don't think Jefferson was a particularly "good Christian." His anti-Catholic sentiment -- especially his irrational hatred of the Society of Jesus -- precludes that epitaph in my book.

Also, as a Catholic I'm a little disappointed you didn't try to correct my "ignorant" denunciation of the "Apotheosis" as pagan idolatry.