Jefferson knew of what he was talking in this instance. We can document the deterioration that has happened in schools ever since they took prayer and GOd out in 1963. God out, contraception, condom pushing sex-ed in....that's the way the secularists want it...oh wait a minute..the Muslims can have their private prayer time in schools though. As Gilda would say, Never mind.

I like that Jefferson got hold of a Koran; read it, understood what was needed (and it wasn't appeasement) and took care of business in Tripoli.

yeah life ws great before 63...everything was wonderful before those evil beatles invaded.

oh, that it were as simple as that!

No, seriously, in some respect, I understand that for some those were the good ol' days...."She loves me, yeh, yeh, yeh..."

Good article Sean, even though I have to disagree. It's easy for you make this point, as yours is the prevailing view these days.

This is how I see it....when the Pilgrims left Europe, they came here, wishing to be able to worship God as they saw fit. They built the foundations of the country on worshiping God.
Those beliefs were then handed down, through the years, to the Founders, who realized why their forebears had to leave England in the first place....the establishment of an officially-stated and recognized national theology, i.e. the Church of England. So, in order to avoid that pitfall, they set about creating a nation that, while operating under the belief that there was a deity to be worshiped, there would be no adoption of an OFFICIAL religion of these USA. Religion and God are acknowledged by and in our system, but are not supported by it. That way, Americans could worship any way they pleased; anyone could come here from anywhere and bring their style of faith with them. It worked fine, up until the early 60s, when....well....you know what happened then.
But....despite leftist denials, it has been acknowledged that up to 80% of Americans in some fashion worship the Judeo-Christian God. In the old days, before group politics and the Great Litigation Offensive that brought about the Reign of the Minority, that would have led anyone with common sense to nod their head at the statement that America IS, in fact, a Christian, religious, nation.

Rightwinger, in general, you've made some good points however, your mention of the Pilgrims (devout Protestants) gives me pause.

I'll throw into the mix this can of worms. Ever since the US Civil War and the Northern victory, the Puritan heritage has become evasive for many people today, which may be due to revisionism in history books. I've heard American ideology defined as "secularized Puritanism". Anyone who has read Nathaniel Hawthorne, a descendant of the New England Puritans, knows the so-called Pilgrim fathers were Puritans. They had suffered persecution in England, left there and first went to the Netherlands where they were "tolerated". From there, they sailed for the New World.

Like you, most people say they came here for religious freedom...they wanted religious freedom to worship God all right...but only for themselves. They brutily attacked the mildest of religious sects, the Quakers. An eminent Baptist clergymen, Roger Williams, founder of the state of Rhode Island, and Anne Hutchinson, among a multitude who suffered from the vicious intolerance of the New England Puritans.

These were not the only non-conformists whom the "defenders of the freedom to worship GOd" persecuted. They were fanatically 'intolerant' of Catholicism and gave no liberty whatsoever to Catholics. The colony of Maryland had been founded as a refuge for Catholics with religious freedom for ALL people. Maryland Puritans resented having Catholic Charles Calvert as the colony leader. In 1689, they took over Maryland and passed anti-Catholic legislation. The laws required Catholic children to be raised as Protestants and those who refused were whipped and fined.

In the early 1700s, the Jesuits had instituted an excellent school system in New England. One of the victims in this reputed "land of the free" was Fr. John Bapst, a missionary who had served among the Abnakis and Narantsouac Indians. The Mass. Puritans who coveted their land sought to exterminate them, with the priest and all the Catholic settlement as well. He was tortured by tar and feathering, and the Puritans took place of the Jews in mocking him with blasphemies and laughing as they told him to call upon the Virgin Mary for help. The Jesuit order to which Fr. Bapst served at College of the Holy Cross and later established Boston College.

Besides that, the Puritans lost little time in making Massachusetts the first british colony to officially legalize slavery.

lulapilgrim:

I never said they were nice, only that they believed in God and Jesus Christ, and wanted a place to worship Him unfettered, in their own fashion. The Colonies were founded by Christians, tolerant or otherwise; that was my point. The Founders made some appropriate "amendments", so to speak, to the nation they were building. I'm sorry if maybe I'm missing your point, though.
No offense intended to you, but I have to say that I find it ironic that so many "tolerant" folks here in America can point out the intolerance of Christianity, while being so intolerant themselves, of its practice and its obvious place in the fabric and history of the nation.

good point. It's true. We, as Christians, are now the intolerable, that the left can't tolerate. So much for tolerance!   

You'll have to forgive Lula RW....she's got Catholicism on the brain. Otherwise....she's a pretty good egg!   

Rightwinger posts:

No offense taken, RW, maybe I shouldn't have brought that up; I just thought it was interesting info and pertained somewhat to the topic.

You did a good job explaining the First Amendment.



what'da you mean, 'otherwise'?    

You can say all you want about those founding fathers there, but they were all just elected officials. And who was the first person they chose, appointed, to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

John Jay. And he was NOT a deist, like the others are claimed to be. He was a Christian. They put him in as the lifelong appointed Justice, because they knew that Christians should be interpretting the law. Not just because Christians are fair and just, but because a Christian slant on the law is what makes it what it is. Without that Christian slant, the Constitution is now being used for evil as the interpretation is changing towards something it was not originally intended to be. They chose a Christian to orginally interpret the law, and if it had remainded so, the United States would be a better place for it.

   Jythier

See, what we as conservatives and Christians have to remember, in our debate, is that we're using common sense and a clear view of the obvious, in fighting people whose main weapons include nitpicking, semantics, denial of facts they don't like, and/or deliberate obtuseness.

This is why we rarely actually "win" a debate; it's hard to fight lies and twisted facts with truth when the lies and twisted facts are the only "truth" the other side will acknowledge.

let's talk about that. let's talk about facts people may not like. let's talk about the fact that many founders weren't christians, and that goes beyond the people who wrote or signed any document. thomas paine, the man who essentially started the revolution, was a deist.

and just about everyone in colonial times would claim to be part of a particular church or faith because saying you were an atheist was about a step away from being declared a witch and being burned at the stake in many parts. and the ones who didn't burn ya, would find some other way to eliminate your presence. there were a lot of colonials who didn't want to be "next" if they said the wrong thing.

so many of them declared themselves as unitarians, or congregationalists, which would later merge with the unitarians. the unitarians are not just some protestant sect. the unitarians don't believe in christ's divintity. that in itself makes them "non-christians." i could go on, but at the end of the day, the fact remains that unitarianism is not a christian sect in the sense that we think it is. and we know today that many people signed up as a unitarian cause that was the only church they could hide their lack of faith in and avoid public ridicule, harrassment or worse.

that is why these people did not want us to be a "christian nation" from the standpoint that the christian churches had any influence on the government. they knew our government needed to be secular and serve the citizens, not God. it was their view that if God was truly just and righteous, he would agree with that. not the other way around where we are reduced to doing the bidding of whomever is the most influential church at any given time and all citizens are forced to serve their "holy" agenda.

it is not the seperation of church and state people who twist and nitpick and deny inconvenient truths, it is the loud minority of people who want life to go back to the 1950's and use the founders as some sort of justification for that by using metephoric and literary references to God as if they had some intent of "christianizing" our nation.

and rightwinger...i asked you before politely to turn down your font to the level of everyone else. and you did. now it is growing again.

i don't know what particular brand of psycho-babble informed you that making your actual words bigger will somehow make your argument more persuasive or if that is just your own idea of intimidation (big bold letters that get bigger and bolder as the conversation continues) but it's annoying and a sure sign of arrogance. and the fact that you knowingly went back to growing your font to make your words bigger and bolder is a sure showing of the lack of respect you give others...yet you expect that respect from them.

Nonsense.

one last time RW...please turn down the font to the level that evreyone else writes at. if you need to emphasize things, by all means do by emboldening certain words, use italics or underline them,,,whatever. but making your letters bigger and bolder than everyone else's doesn't help your argument whatsoever, and only serves to diminish it. it's an all too obvious cheap ploy to garner undue attention.

Well, sorry; it's habit.

That's not why I do it....to force my point; I do it so I can better see it to read what I wrote when I come back to reply to subsequent comments. I did agree to reduce the font, but then found myself squinting a little and leaning closer to the monitor, to read what I'd written. Must be time for new glasses. My apologies; I'll go back to the smaller font as you request.

Anyway.....



I agree with this, but they did acknowledge the existence of the Judeo-Christian deity; His influence is noted and even mentioned in our founding documents. The Declaration refers to "the Laws of nature and nature's God", and that we are "endowed by our Creator"---with a big "c". The Constitutional Convention was opened with prayer, as is every session of Congress on down to city and town councils to this day.
You, and they, can't have it both ways; either you're going to acknowledge and invoke a wise, just and all-powerful deity, or you're not.

Jythier posts:


Bingo !

The Founding Fathers were very much concerned with freedom and as such they made provision for the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But what about freedoms that have gone too far? For instance, the so-called "right" to choose. The right to choose what? Death. Abortion involves death everytime. Yet, there is no "right to choose" found anywhere in the US or State Constitutions. The 'right to choose' is pure sophistry, a euphemism that has been used by the pro-abortion industry following the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973. Now, abortion is the "law of the land" even though there is nothing, nada, zip, in the Constitution that says mothers have the right to choose the death of her innocent baby trapped in the womb. Nothing. There is no right to choose abortion. The Constitution declares that Congress makes laws and not unelected Supreme Court Justices.

The Founders wanting a solid and absolute base for our laws and morality referenced God in our founding documents. In fact, the Constitution frames the right to life as the right to all other rights. Without life, we have no other rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in that order. We can't have the pursuit of happiness without liberty. We can't have the pursuit of happiness and liberty without life.

Over the last 34 years, liberals and socialists have steadily expanded in size and scope the US government primarily under the tenets of secular and atheistic humanism. Since then, babies don't have the freedom to be born and being in the womb has become a dangerous place to be. How inverted is that?

Yet, every one of the Democrat candidates plus Rudy Guiliani seeking the Presidency talks about the "right of choosing” death as though it is a proud American tradition to be upheld.

I think the Founders would be appalled by the way we’ve allowed political correctness to play with the Constitution. The evil of abortion has been upheld because of broad, flexible readings that have to do with a women's right to privacy. What we see happening is the Constitution is being bent with whatever wind is prevailing at the time and this doesn't safeguard life and liberty one iota.