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The Founding Father’s did not want the Nation’s government to be run by religion
- Thread starter Redneck Mystic
- Start date
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Yep on their two cent piece at the time and not on other currency. Reasons were for troop moral as far as I know.
Florida also adopted the same term as a state motto and even in Nicaragua!
The US Congress adopted the term in 1956 at the height of the USSR on our currency for which the term was used primarily to upstage the Soviets.
Oh those Russians!
Heyo
Veteran Member
The Founding Fathers were basically all Christians. Even the many deists were "Christian" deists. Christianity was the only game in town at the time.
Today is the 248th anniversary of the signing of Colonial America’s Declaration of Independence, which begins:
Then follows a l-o-n-g list of the Colonists’ grievances against the King of England, which I do not include here.
Then comes the the declaration of independence:
Then come the signatures of the men who signed the document.
I highlighted in bold the 4 references to a Deity from which the signers of the Declaration of Independence drew their authority.
There is no mention of Christianity in the Declaration of Independence, whose principal author, Thomas Jefferson, was a Deist.
Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Free Masons.
The 4 references to Deity do not resemble Christian names for God.
Amendment 1, US Constitution:
The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of how governments in Europe and the British Isles had become one with the Church and had persecuted, imprisoned and killed “heretics”. The Founding Fathers did not want that to happen in America. Thus, Amendment 1’s, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.
After the Revolutionary War, the “Give me liberty, or give me death” signer of the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry, became the Governor of Virginia. He tried to get the Virginia Legislature to pass a law that effectively would make Christianity the state religion of Virgina. Thomas Jefferson and another signer of the Declaration of Independence, James Madison, who would become known as the Father of the Constitution and America’s 4th president, led the charge to defeat Patrick Henry's law.
Later, Jefferson cut out of his own Bible passages from the New Testament about things Jesus said, which Jefferson liked, and he made them into his own bible, which became known as The Jefferson Bible. The passages Jefferson liked were about living life differently, much easier to say than do.
Amendment 14, Section 1, US Constitution, made the Constitution and Amendments 1-10, known as the Bill of Rights, applicable to the States:
Every anti-abortionist I have known was a religious-right Christian. In the law is the doctrine, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.
Recently, Louisiana’s state legislature passed a law requiring The Ten Commandments to be displayed in Louisiana’s public schools. The Ten Commandments are part of the Jewish Scriptures and are in the Old Testament of Christendom’s Bible. How the 6 religious-right Justices on the US Supreme Court will rule on what Louisiana did is anyone’s guess.
Once upon a time, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, a far-right Christian, had the 10 Commandments installed in the Alabama Supreme Court building in Montgomery, the state Capital. During the Civil War, Montgomery was the Capital of the Confederacy after it was moved there from Richmond, Virginia.
From Wikipedia:
Clinton McGee was my criminal law professor at the University of Alabama School of law. After graduating from that law school, McGee joined the US Army and was sent to Germany to defend Nazis during the Nuremberg Trials.He was so good at defending Nazis that he was shifted to prosecuting them and they didn’t get off.
Some years after I graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law, Roy Moore enrolled there. Professor McGee nick-named Moore, “Fruitcake”.
During my last semester in law school, my infant son died of sudden infant death syndrome, I was disheveled, unable to think clearly. Professor MeGee told me the law clerk of a US District Judge in Birmingham had quit in the middle of his term with the judge, and I might wish to contact that judge about being his law clerk.
I wrote the judge a letter. He replied, inviting me to come see him. I drove from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham and we met in his chambers and mostly we talked about ourselves and hunting and fishing. He offered me the job. I memorialized him in the first chapter of A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known, “He used to drink moonshine.”
Judge W. Clarence W. Allgood also cussed and did not attend church, and was the most Godly man I ever knew. His graveside service at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham was attended my more people than I ever saw at a graveside service.
A Few Remarkable People I Have Known is a free read at the internet library, archive.org, which is run by American colleges. Here’s a link to the free read.
A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known : Sloan Bashinky : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
It also can be read at this link:
But their experience was that Christians didn't get along with Christians of other denominations. The bloody wars in Europe between Catholics and Protestants and among Protestants of different denominations were well in their memory. Many people in the states were there to escape religious persecution.
They knew that whenever a Christian fraction would gain power, they'd persecute all other Christians. That's why they didn't want Christians in power.
It didn't always work out (see the history of Mormons) but overall it worked pretty well.
Especially Christians who are not Baptist Nationalists should remember that lesson because they will suffer as much as any other group when the small group of extremists seize power.
Yeah, the Puritans and the Quakers really went at it in the early colonial times, with the Puritans literally physically torturing the Quakers, who later started protesting the Puritans' religious dominance and their persecutive ways.
Redneck Mystic
Active Member
Well said.
It can also be found in the fourth (and rarely sung) verse of the Star Spangled Banner:
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - "In God is our trust,"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Yes, I agree that the Separation of Church and State has worked well enough, although I've also noticed a trend where some are pushing the idea of the U.S. as a Christian nation. It seemed to gain momentum under Reagan, when the Moral Majority was quite a thing. (Ironically, Barry Goldwater was an arch-conservative but was actually quite critical of the religious zealots in the party.)
I think some of it was a reaction against what some people saw as a loosening of morals - all the sex, drugs, and rock & roll of the 60s and 70s. I knew some people who believed that "it all started when the atheist court kicked God out of the public schools."
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The term separation of church and state is not even in the Constitution. That was a lawyer word game, that sugar coated corruption trying to bypass the intent of the Constitution. Moral people do not handle corruption as well as immoral or relative moral people. The thought was if you can overcome the moral people, by taking away their rights, you can give the immoral and relative moral an advantage; swamp.
The first Amendment places all the restrictions on the State, but not on religion or on the people.. This was in response to the King of England commandeering religion; state run religion. The first settlers came to America to escaped persecution by England's state run religion. A Pilgrimnis a religious term, about religious people migrating to a promised land. They had been bullied by the King of England's state run Church. They had a problem similar to the State run Liberal Religion, bullying the people with their lies and illusions. We did not have to leave to escape, but have the right to address these grievances.
If Congress can make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, that means Congress and government had no say when it comes to Religion. Congress, who make laws, has all the restrictions, when it comes to religion, free speech, free press, right to assemble and the right of citizens to petition the Government for the redress of grievances. Government is suppose to be a civil servant who obeys order and not the overlord like the King of England.
The Swamp and DNC has ignore this, by targeting religion; spying on and calling them domestic terrorists, censoring free speech on social media, censoring the press when the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, and turning the airing grievances about this election tampering into the narrative of an insurrection. When did the Government formally investigate these grievances? The crooks got worse and inflicted injustice via kangaroo courts to take away the rights of their political opponent. Justice is due.
Those in Government who violated this trust and who were not of the people, by the people and for people, need remediation or elimination. They can choose. This is why drain the swamp is a Constitutional act to restore Government to its role as the public servant, and not the overlord. The con artist lawyers who scammed the system need to be disbarred and then tar and feathered.
There are things in the rarely sung verses of that anthem that you don't want to come to light.
We Never Know
No Slack
Like?
Here's the versus 1-4
"O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner—O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto–“In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave."
The Forgotten Verses Of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
We've all heard performers (try to) sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at sporting events and gatherings, but did you know that's only the first verse?
www.dictionary.com
Redneck Mystic
Active Member
Heh, and yet they put it on their money knowing Jesus said they could not worship God and mammon. Beside the cash register in the fabulous Harpoon Harry’s Diner in Key West is a sign on which is, “In God we trust, all others must pay cash.” Across from the cash register is an ATM machine.
Heyo
Veteran Member
... and immediately started persecuting other Christians. The Founding Fathers didn't have to go back to England, which didn't control religion in the colonies as they did at home, they just had to look at their own people. Christians fighting Christians, and they didn't want their new country to take sides.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
Conceptually, God and religion are about higher powers than human. This high of a standard, is needed for a Democracy. If there is no God, then man has the final say and some humans, as history shows, will get drunk with power, and will try to use that to change the rules so they lord over others, thereby negating the needs of a Democracy. In God we Trust, sets the bar so high that humans and the Government have to accept their limitations as Public Servants and not Overlords, as it has become.
The DNC and Swamp have violated all these restrictions since 2020. The First Amendment places all the restriction on Government when it comes to basic God given rights. This is why Liberalism and Atheism have to try to figuratively kill God, so the tyrants and Over Lords can rise again. They cannot accept higher powers that limits their own will to power. The result is a shady lawyer standard and the loss of freedom.
The Swamp, Bureaucratic and the Regulatory States; all connected, have tried to take away rights and have tried to eliminate the God standard, with shady lawyers. The Supreme Count is starting to set the ship right. But it will still be necessary to go door to door to take out the rats and roaches that are hiding, waiting to try again. This will be a job for Trump; drain the Swamp.
The DNC and Swamp have violated all these restrictions since 2020. The First Amendment places all the restriction on Government when it comes to basic God given rights. This is why Liberalism and Atheism have to try to figuratively kill God, so the tyrants and Over Lords can rise again. They cannot accept higher powers that limits their own will to power. The result is a shady lawyer standard and the loss of freedom.
Parents, children, businesses, and political opponents are not safe under this regime.
The Swamp, Bureaucratic and the Regulatory States; all connected, have tried to take away rights and have tried to eliminate the God standard, with shady lawyers. The Supreme Count is starting to set the ship right. But it will still be necessary to go door to door to take out the rats and roaches that are hiding, waiting to try again. This will be a job for Trump; drain the Swamp.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
If we compare Government to all the religions in America, only the Government has the military, makes the laws, controls the justice system and has all the tax money. The religious are a loose confederation of citizen volunteers that meet once a week. The Government has the full over dog advantage. If the Government decided to play favorites or go no attack, they can use all that power to make it more than just a religious war. Government now wars against all religion, placing restrictions on religion such as displaying symbols. It adopted the Liberal Religion, with its weird Orthodoxy based on pronouns and godlessness.
Government controlling religion can become a means to an end, since religion is the underdog no matter how you add it. The under dog is more vulnerable, which is why the more powerful force of Government has all the restrictions in the first Amendment. The current government calls some spiritual leaders domestic terrorists and uses FBI terror tactics to scare a passive resistor, who has the right to peacefully assemble near an Abortion clinic. Yet the Left acts like the scary passive underdog is in charge and needs containment via the FBI.
A truly spiritual person places themself below a higher power. If there is no God then the power is up for grabs, and Democracy becomes a casualty. If there is no God, the power of the over dog will be used against the under dog, since they will play God. It is better to have more people who accept the higher standard by keeping religion open and free. But those of the dark side, know this makes their job harder. The less religion there is the easier their job since you can brain wash without first having to de-program downward.
There is an uproar by the Left for the 10 Commandment being displayed in schools. But if you think of it, if children got used to this higher law they would not be as disruptive as adults. Obviously, chaos and evil does not benefit by a higher power of good. If the bar is set too high, evil looks darker. But if you set the bar low, the darker background, allow the deeper darkness of evil to hide in plain sight.
Heyo
Veteran Member
And for a good reason, because it violates the First Amendment.
Wouldn't you say that the same would be true if they displayed the Eightfold Path, the Seven Tenets or the Rede?
But they choose the 10 Commandment, and they even limited it to a specific version. That is exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted to prevent, some Christians having privileges that other Christians and other religions don't have.
I've seen those signs before. I remember thinking, if Jesus comes in there to eat, they'll trust Him to pay later - or they might even take a post-dated three-party check.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The eightfold path is too advanced for elementary school children. Adult have a hard time living it. The ten commandments is easier.
If you read the First Amendment, the wording restricts Congress, who makes all Federal Laws, but it does not restrict the people practicing any of these rights. It does not say free speech has to be politically correct. That was Government overreach. If I wanted to pray in school, with free speech, the Fed cannot endorse it or deny it. It has to butt out.
Those things not specifically specified as the role of Federal Government, such as your Religious war concerns, need to go back to the States. The States are closer to the people who live there. A nanny state can do something else. The Fed has no authority to do anything about this, but keeps trying to violate the Spirit of the Constitution. The city of New Orleans in Louisiana, is divided into Parishes, which is how the Catholic Church broke down the neighborhoods. The majority rules in Democracies, correct. It not a just a few bureaucrats or whiny cry babies, that get to decide; That was Big Government overreach; kill Democracy and majority rule using the whiny baby defense.
The idea that all religions have to have the same rights undermines Democracy and majority rule. It would be like saying in the fall elections, if one side wins the popular vote and the electoral vote, but one person who lost whines, nobody can win. We need to get rid of future election. That one whiny baby means more, right. The adult work around is to find where you are part of a majority decision and live there. That way you are free and others are free and majorities can rule.
What about the transgender pronouns and sex alternation orthodoxy. This is not backed by science. Gender disorders are considered pathology as are fixation with pronouns. This means since orthodoxy is not rational, it is imaginary like Atheism claims of all religion. The Department of Education may have to be disbanded and rebuilt from the bottom up, since it is very contaminated with sickness and lawlessness.
Congress is suppose to make Laws, but Con Artists in Government and Congress are using the regulatory state, to illegally make laws, that they themselves are not authorized to make, as defined by the Constitution. The Congress cannot establish the religion of sex change. They handed that off to the Department of Education and Indoctrination. The Supreme Court has just ruled to place limits on the authority of the regulatory state, which allows Big Government overreach and deniability by Congress. For now on, Congress will have to stand up and be counted on such matters and be made vulnerable at election time. They will reduced some to one face, instead of having the two faced option of today; say you are, against, and then order others to make a law, for.
Louisiana did not so much establish a religion, as it learned to finally but out, in terms of the local freedom of religion, in their schools. There is a difference when people get back their rights, compared to them being stolen by shady lawyers and Big Government.
Heyo
Veteran Member
What about the Seven Tenets and the Rede? They are even simpler than the 10 Commandments, so they would be even better.
Why can't you stick to a topic? Do you have some mental condition that makes you go off on a tangent and rant about totally off-topic things?
People with any brains know that there are some restrictions that are the result, not of government, but of social norms. When I went to school, if I wanted to pray in class, first I had to get permission to speak at all. That's not monitored by the government, but by the teacher in the classroom. You want to pray in school, why not do it over your lunch -- in the lunchroom? And why does it have to be out loud -- you afraid God can't hear you otherwise?
I speak in politically incorrect terms all the time, and while I may get some odd looks (that's the social part) there are no laws respecting that. I am not allowed to sow hatred, however, in such a way that it threatens harm to other people. Do you think it wise to say "free speech allows me to say, 'I am going to kill you?'" That can cause the person being spoken to to fear personal harm, and that is wrong. That crosses the line, and takes the speech into "true threat" territory, which the Supreme Court has ruled is not covered by the First Amendment.