Christianity QA

Question:

The real cause of America’s fratricidal conflict, many religious leaders asserted, was the failure of the founders to enshrine God in the Constitution.

Theocrats should be given a choice: A. Leave the country immediately B. Face trial for treason America is not, and never has been a theocracy and anyone trying to turn it into one is a traitor to our country.

Response:

 The real cause of America’s fratricidal conflict, many religious leaders  asserted, was the failure of the founders to enshrine God in the  Constitution. The war was nothing more-or less-than the fulfillment of the  Reverend John Mason’s 1793 prediction that the godless document would one  day impel the Divinity to "crush us to atoms in the wreck." The only way to stop the destruction was to amend the Constitution’s preamble and finally acknowledge not only God but Jesus Christ as the source of all just  governmental power. In 1863, the  "nondenominational," albeit entirely  Protestant, National Reform Association was founded for the specific  purpose of lobbying Congress to put God into the Constitution. Today’s  Christian conservatives frequently use the slogan "Let’s put God back into  the Constitution," thereby implying that "secular humanists" have managed  to overturn what was originally intended to be a marriage of church and  state.  Nineteenth-century clerics knew better and were honest about their desire to reverse what they regarded as the founders’ erroneous decision to that can work too separate church and state. At an 1864 convention in Pittsburgh, the National Reform delegates were in a dither about how to word the proposed amendment before presenting it to President Lincoln and the Congress, so as anot to offend any orthodox Protestant denomination. They were not worried about offending Jews, Catholics, or dissident Protestant sects like Hicksite Quakers, who were appalled by the idea of tampering with the Constitution in order to blur the distinction between church and state. After rejecting acknowledgment of "Almighty God" and "His revealed will" as too imprecise, the ministers finally agreed on a rewording of the preamble that would replace "We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…" with "Recognizing Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, and acknowledging the Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government. . ." SOURCE:Freethinkers A history of American Secularism Susan Jacoby , Metropolitan Book, Holt and Company, NY (2004)  pp 104-105 I found this to be absolutely fascinating.  Thanks for posting it. They were a bit less abashed about such things in those days, weren’t they?

To kind of get a complete context I recommend the following: [His comments after looking over the following: Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian,alt.education,alt.politics.religion,alt.politics.bus h,alt.politics.democrats.d,alt.politics.usa.constitution,alt.atheism [me] To kind of get a complete context I recommend the following:

Amazing stuff.  Reads much like today — the accusation of atheists wanting to take God out of the schools, the controversies over government-supported chaplains, the claims that calling this a Christian nation does not discriminate against Jews and other minority religions — I was stunned at how much of this 150-year old news sounds like just another ho-hum week on `alt.education’. Thanks. — cary  ] To kind of get a complete context I recommend the following: AMERICAN THEOCRATS. PAST AND PRESENT SECTION I                         BY THE REV. D. M’ALLISTER. [David McAllister (1835-1907) D.D., LL.D., was one of the founding editors of The Christian Statesman and served at one time as general secretary of the National Reform Association. He was vice president of Geneva College, and the pastor of the Pittsburgh Reformed Presbyterian Church. http://www.natreformassn.org/mcallisterToC.html ] Principles of a Christian Political Science, Part 1 http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/02/chpolsci.html Principles of a Christian Political Science, Part 2 http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/03/chpolsci2.html Scriptural Basis of the National Reform Association http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/03/scripbas.html The Secular Assault on Christian Civil Government http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/03/secassau.html Defense of the State’s Duty to Confess Its Allegiance to Christ http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/99/confess.html The Christian Character of the Colonial Governments http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/99/charactr.html True Idea of the State http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/01/trueidea.html Testimonies to the religious defect of the Constitution of the United States: PART 1 http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.politics.usa.constitution/msg… PART II http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.politics.usa.constitution/msg… PART III http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.politics.usa.constitution/msg… PART IV http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.politics.usa.constitution/msg… PART V http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.politics.usa.constitution/msg…                                 J.H. THRONWELL The religiously correct version of American history has never given proper credit to the central importance of the Enlightenment concept of natural rights-or to the anticlerical abolitionists who advanced that concept before the public-in building the case against slavery. Throughout the three decades preceding the Civil War, the anticlerical ethos of the radical abolitionists was used against them by religious opponents of emancipation, who frequently trotted out the specter of the French Revolution and even described abolitionism itself as an atheist plot. In 1850, the slavery-exalting Presbyterian J. H. Thornwell, who was about to be named president of the College of  South Carolina, declared that  "the parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders-they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins on the one side, and the friendsof order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground-Christianity and atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity the stake. "6 6. Cash, W.J. The Mind of the south. New York: Knopf, (1941) p. 80 The battle over religious orthodoxy at the College of South Carolina, founded as an Enlightenment stronghold, bears out Cash’s observations about the shifting theology of the South in the first half of the nineteenth century. From 1820 to 1832, the institution’s president was Thomas Cooper, one of the most distinguished American scientists and a critic, as a result of contemporary discoveries in geology, of any literal interpretation of the biblical creation story. Cooper was expelled from the faculty for heresy, and men of Thornwell’s views took charge. While most abolitionists were neither atheists nor Jacobins, the defenders of slavery were right to make the connection between the revolutionary freethought of Paine and the radical wing of the antislavery movement. Religious conservatives today are the ones who are mistaken in their insistence that the antislavery movement had nothing to do with Enlightenment values-values that would, in turn, be adopted and adapted by abolitionist women who wished no less for themselves than they wished for slaves. Freethinkers A History of American Secularism. Susan Jacob Metropolitan Book, Holt and Company Ny, (2004) Pp. 70-71                                 SAMUEL CHASE Samuel Chase who was appointed a Justice on the United States Supreme Court by George Washington.  In the  case of Runkel v. Winemiller, 1799, Justice Chase gave the court’s opinion: "Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the  people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty." Runkel v. Winemiller,4 Harris & McHenry, 276, 288 (Su. Ct. Md. 1799)   SECTION II, PART I CHRISTIAN STATESMAN TRACTS No. 6, ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS TO THE RELIGIOUS AMENDMENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. BY THE REV. D. M’ALLFSTER. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.education/msg/2ed67ba52c3d89f7 SECTION II, PART II http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.education/msg/673328f3e98a3c08 SECTION II, PART III http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.education/msg/420fc4f3a8821774 SECTION II, PART IV http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.education/msg/b508d61a89973b85     * Rebuttal to Jefferson’s Bill for Religious Freedom http://members.tripod.com/~candst/statuterebut.htm Post-Civil War attempts to incorporate religious language into the Constitution     * First major attempts to amend the Constitution 1863 – 1880 http://candst.tripod.com/postciv.htm    * The NRA (National Reform Association) and the Christian Amendment http://candst.tripod.com/nra.htm           o The Proposed Christian Amendment http://candst.tripod.com/chrsamnd.htm     * In God We Trust http://candst.tripod.com/motto.htm         Nine Demands of Liberalism".         http://members.tripod.com/~candst/demands.htm         Religious Freedom Amendment".         http://members.tripod.com/~candst/rfa.htm         President Grant’s Speech".         http://members.tripod.com/~candst/granspch.htm         President Grant’s Seventh Annual Message".         http://members.tripod.com/~candst/granmess.htm         The Blaine School Amendment"         http://members.tripod.com/~candst/blaine.htm         The Practical Separation

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