Posted on 02/12/2003 8:35:27 PM PST by rwfromkansas
You are confusing Salvation doctrine with worship...Calvinism is a about salvation not worship..Presbyterians ( as calvinists )believe in the presence of Jesus in communion (spiritually) the Calvinist Baptists believe it is a rememberance
What defines Calvinist is how they look at man in relationship to God...not how they worship
When you read the 39 articles they are Calvinist in salvation theology
Who needs the courts when we have people like you to tell us what the court's would say? So much for separation of powers.
Some people could make the same argument about St. Paul. Some people say the same thing about Christianity in general.
Washington's Birthday
February 22, 2003
George Washington was commander in chief of the Continental army during the American Revolution and first president of the United States (1789-97).
Early Life and Career.
Born in Westmoreland County, Va., on Feb. 22, 1732, George Washington was the eldest son of Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington, who were prosperous Virginia gentry of English descent. George spent his early years on the family estate on Pope's Creek along the Potomac River. His early education included the study of such subjects as mathematics, surveying, the classics, and "rules of civility." His father died in 1743, and soon thereafter George went to live with his half brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon,
Lawrence's plantation on the Potomac. Lawrence, who became something of a substitute father for his brother, had married into the Fairfax family, prominent and influential Virginians who helped launch George's career. An early ambition to go to sea had been effectively discouraged by George's mother; instead, he turned to surveying, securing (1748) an appointment to survey Lord Fairfax's lands in the Shenandoah Valley. He helped lay out the Virginia town of Belhaven (now Alexandria) in 1749 and was appointed surveyor for Culpeper County.
George accompanied his brother to Barbados in an effort to cure Lawrence of tuberculosis, but Lawrence died in 1752, soon after the brothers returned. George ultimately inherited the Mount Vernon estate.
By 1753 the growing rivalry between the British and French over control of the Ohio Valley, soon to erupt into the French and Indian War (1754-63), created new opportunities for the ambitious young Washington. He first gained public notice when, as adjutant of one of Virginia's four military districts, he was dispatched (October 1753) by Gov. Robert Dinwiddie on a fruitless mission to warn the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf against further encroachment on territory claimed by Britain. Washington's diary account of the dangers and difficulties of his journey, published at Williamsburg on his return, may have helped win him his ensuing promotion to lieutenant colonel. Although only 22 years of age and lacking experience, he learned quickly, meeting the problems of recruitment, supply, and desertions with a combination of brashness and native ability that earned him the respect of his superiors.
French and Indian War.
In April 1754, on his way to establish a post at the Forks of the Ohio (the current site of Pittsburgh), Washington learned that the French had already erected a fort there. Warned that the French were advancing, he quickly threw up fortifications at Great Meadows, Pa., aptly naming the entrenchment Fort Necessity, and marched to intercept advancing French troops. In the resulting skirmish the French commander the sieur de Jumonville was killed and most of his men were captured. Washington pulled his small force back into Fort Necessity where he was overwhelmed (July 3) by the French in an all-day battle fought in a drenching rain. Surrounded by enemy troops, with his food supply almost exhausted and his dampened ammunition useless, Washington capitulated. Under the terms of the surrender signed that day, he was permitted to march his troops back to Williamsburg.
Discouraged by his defeat and angered by discrimination between British and colonial officers in rank and pay, he resigned his commission near the end of 1754. The next year, however, he volunteered to join British general Edward Braddock's expedition against the French. When Braddock was ambushed by the French and their Indian allies on the Monongahela River, Washington, although seriously ill, tried to rally the Virginia troops. Whatever public criticism attended the debacle, Washington's own military reputation was enhanced, and in 1755, at the age of 23, he was promoted to colonel and appointed commander in chief of the Virginia militia, with responsibility for defending the frontier. In 1758 he took an active part in Gen. John Forbes's successful campaign against Fort Duquesne. From his correspondence during these years, Washington can be seen evolving from a brash, vain, and opinionated young officer, impatient with restraints and given to writing admonitory letters to his superiors, to a mature soldier with a grasp of administration and a firm understanding of how to deal effectively with civil authority.
Virginia Politician.
Assured that the Virginia frontier was safe from French attack, Washington left the army in 1758 and returned to Mount Vernon, directing his attention toward restoring his neglected estate. He erected new buildings, refurnished the house, and experimented with new crops. With the support of an ever-growing circle of influential friends, he entered politics, serving (1759-74) in Virginia's House of Burgesses. In January 1759 he married Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy and attractive young widow with two small children. It was to be a happy and satisfying marriage. After 1769, Washington became a leader in Virginia's opposition to Great Britain's colonial policies. At first he hoped for reconciliation with Britain, although some British policies had touched him personally. Discrimination against colonial military officers had rankled deeply, and British land policies and restrictions on western expansion after 1763 had seriously hindered his plans for western land speculation. In addition, he shared the usual planter's dilemma in being continually in debt to his London agents. As a delegate (1774-75) to the First and Second Continental Congress, Washington did not participate actively in the deliberations, but his presence was undoubtedly a stabilizing influence. In June 1775 he was Congress's unanimous choice as commander in chief of the Continental forces.
American Revolution.
Washington took command of the troops surrounding British-occupied Boston on July 3, devoting the next few months to training the undisciplined 14,000-man army and trying to secure urgently needed powder and other supplies. Early in March 1776, using cannon brought down from Ticonderoga by Henry Knox, Washington occupied Dorchester Heights, effectively commanding the city and forcing the British to evacuate on March 17. He then moved to defend New York City against the combined land and sea forces of Sir William Howe.
In New York he committed a military blunder by occupying an untenable position in Brooklyn, although he saved his army by skillfully retreating from Manhattan into Westchester County and through New Jersey into Pennsylvania. In the last months of 1776, desperately short of men and supplies, Washington almost despaired. He had lost New York City to the British; enlistment was almost up for a number of the troops, and others were deserting in droves; civilian morale was falling rapidly; and Congress, faced with the possibility of a British attack on Philadelphia, had withdrawn from the city.
Colonial morale was briefly revived by the capture of Trenton, N.J., a brilliantly conceived attack in which Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 and surprised the predominantly Hessian garrison. Advancing to Princeton, N.J., he routed the British there on Jan. 3, 1777, but in September and October 1777 he suffered serious reverses in Pennsylvania--at Brandywine and Germantown. The major success of that year--the defeat (October 1777) of the British at Saratoga, N.Y.--had belonged not to Washington but to Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates. The contrast between Washington's record and Gates's brilliant victory was one factor that led to the so-called Conway Cabal--an intrigue by some members of Congress and army officers to replace Washington with a more successful commander, probably Gates. Washington acted quickly, and the plan eventually collapsed due to lack of public support as well as to Washington's overall superiority to his rivals. After holding his bedraggled and dispirited army together during the difficult winter at Valley Forge, Washington learned that France had recognized American independence. With the aid of the Prussian Baron von Steuben and the French marquis de LaFayette, he concentrated on turning the army into a viable fighting force, and by spring he was ready to take the field again. In June 1778 he attacked the British near Monmouth Courthouse, N.J., on their withdrawal from Philadelphia to New York. Although American general Charles Lee's lack of enterprise ruined Washington's plan to strike a major blow at Sir Henry Clinton's army at Monmouth, the commander in chief's quick action on the field prevented an American defeat.
In 1780 the main theater of the war shifted to the south. Although the campaigns in Virginia and the Carolinas were conducted by other generals, including Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan, Washington was still responsible for the overall direction of the war. After the arrival of the French army in 1780 he concentrated on coordinating allied efforts and in 1781 launched, in cooperation with the comte de Rochambeau and the comte d'Estaing, the brilliantly planned and executed Yorktown Campaign against Charles Cornwallis, securing (Oct. 19, 1781) the American victory.
Washington had grown enormously in stature during the war. A man of unquestioned integrity, he began by accepting the advice of more experienced officers such as Gates and Charles Lee, but he quickly learned to trust his own judgment. He sometimes railed at Congress for its failure to supply troops and for the bungling fiscal measures that frustrated his efforts to secure adequate materiel. Gradually, however, he developed what was perhaps his greatest strength in a society suspicious of the military--his ability to deal effectively with civil authority.
Whatever his private opinions, his relations with Congress and with the state governments were exemplary--despite the fact that his wartime powers sometimes amounted to dictatorial authority. On the battlefield Washington relied on a policy of trial and error, eventually becoming a master of improvisation. Often accused of being overly cautious, he could be bold when success seemed possible. He learned to use the short-term militia skillfully and to combine green troops with veterans to produce an efficient fighting force.
Look back at some of the posts..you wanted to make doublepredestination the test..but that is not the test...then you wanted to make Eucharist the test ..but that is not the test..
You are 100% correct that in Anglicanism and in Luthernism there is a mixture of Roman and Calvinist beliefs...What makes a Calvinist is the understanding that man is depraved and can not save himself (Luthers bondage of the will) ..that God is sovereign..that is clearly seen in the 39 articles and it is that belief that would have made them believe in freedom of religion and the chescks and balances we see in the constitution. Where it "counted" they were Calvinists:>)
LOL nick..seeing that Luther and Calvin based much of their doctrine on Augustine maybe we should say they were Augustinians:>)
Calvinism is a short hand phrase for the doctrines of Grace..or reformed doctrine..
No, they were not. It is very simple. You and others post a list naming Episcopalians as Calvinists. That was dead wrong. Episcopalians are not Calvinists. The rest of it has been Calvinists trying to claim more credit than is their due.
Listing Episcopalians as Calvinists is an error. To stubbornly maintain an error and to refuse to acknowledge one's error exposes something else altogether.
No, I didn't. They were not 'tests' but part of my observations on just how ridiculous it is to claim that Episcopalians are Calvinists or to quote the 39 Articles when one has a limited grasp of their meaning, their historical context, or the Anglican methodology for authority on doctrine, namely tradition, Scripture, and reason.
In the next place, let me affirm that religious freedom is a peculiarly Protestant idea in Church history. The religious freedom clause of our Constitution's First Amendment really was a kind of flowering of the Reformation.
***
It is worth mentioning as an aside that the above two points are interrelated. The fact that religious freedom is a Christian idea taught in the New Testament is ultimately why the Protestants, not the RCs, picked up on it.
(As you should already realize, the RCC's doctrine of spiritual authority defines the broader positions of the Church as authoritative. This position tends to make the RCC less careful about what the Bible actually teaches.
I am trying not to be inflammatory, but I am also trying to be clear. The problem is, the RCC invariably presupposes that the Bible agrees with the RCC. You know this as well as I do. What you have never admitted, however, is that the Protestants have cogently argued that Bible clearly doesn't agree with the RCC on a great many points--for example, the RC notion of the priesthood [a priesthood which Protestants regard for serious Scriptural reasons as fundamentally illegal].
***
When we realize that the New Testament really does insist on a very real separation of Church and State, the fact that the framing of our Constitution was dominated by mature Protestants explains everything.
Your speculation that the Americans had softened toward RCism because of the support given them by Catholic France misses an extraordinarily important point. What you need to realize is that our First Amendment actually represents a repudiation of RCism (since the RCC had historically asserted Church-Statism).
In other words, the reason why RCs were granted full civil liberty in a Protestant-dominated nation is because those Protestants remained very much opposed to RCism. The Protestants insisted on religious freedoms which would NOT have been granted if America had been under the control of RCs.
Perhaps it sounds crazy to say that RCs were granted religious freedom because our Framers hated RCism, but it is ultimately correct. Our nation's founders had not forgotten that Catholic France had killed tens of thousands of Protestants over purely religious disagreements only a couple of centuries earlier. America's founders were determined to make sure that this Word-hating, murderous mess of Constantinism never happened over here.
Someone might very well ask "If this is true, how could America's allegiance have forged an alliance with a thorougly Catholic France during the Revolution?"
The answer is simple. It goes back to what I have been saying all along, i.e., that the Church is not the State.
(Our nation's founders regarded the military alliance with France as a matter of State, not a matter of the Lord's Church acting as such. They realized that the military alliance contained no endorsement whatsoever of RCism--because our State cannot, indeed, must not establish religion.)
Someone might very well ask "If this is true, how could Americans, in their allegiance to Protestant principles, forge an alliance with a thoroughly Catholic France during the Revolution?"
[et cetera]
X. OF FREE WILL. (39 Articles of Religion).
The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.
That is calvinism
XVII. OF PREDESTINATION AND ELECTION
Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption:they be made like the image of his only- begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.
that my friend is reform doctrine. (called Calvinism).
You may not like it . You can keep denying it ..but Calvinists ..including Anglican Calvinist wrote the constitution..you have not produced anything but your personal denials..notone bit of proof ...show us the beef..:>)
Yes, I am having to broaden my knowlege of the "flowering of Protestantism". I'll get back to you on this subject.
The Episcopalian Founding Fathers were not Calvinists. Anglicans had a long, bitter, and horrible experience of Calvinists before the restoration of the monarchy, and even the adept and intelligent views of Richard Baxter could not overcome the huge chasm between the 2 camps.
By the way, the 39 Aritcles were null and void as the Episcopalians divided from the Church of England. And the Episcopal Church only approved their own revised Articles in 1789. Moreover, The Book of Common Prayer is the most important document in understanding Anglican theology, and while Calvin tried to influence that Prayer Book, the ideas of Martin Bucer and Zwingli outgunned Calvin's, much to his dismay. If you have any interest in the development of the Book of Common Prayer, I have some books I can suggest for further reading.
Oh, and once again, the Episcopalian founding fathers were not Calvinists.
LOL yes they were..almost all protestants were calvinists then..but one thing we do know for sure they were not Catholics or there would never have been freedom of religion:>)
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