Don't know if this has been posted yet...but saw this on Yahoo. HTML: http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050823/ts_latimes/groomingpoliticiansforchrist This worries me...Like that one guy in the article said, the Constitution was written to prevent Religion from interfering in politics. This from conservative (by modern standards) white Christians like Thomas Jefferson. Too bad that spirit has been lost. Now the political climate is such that such groups feel to freedom to move so openly.
Ok well, the link didn't work out so here's a working one: http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050823/ts_latimes/groomingpoliticiansforchrist
In one sense if you’re a Christian everything you do is, or should be, influenced by your faith. The problem you refer to is, IMO, more related to the fact that many of these right wing groups have many core positions that are not in accordance with the Bible. They will claim to be literally interpreting the Bible, but if you take a close look they usually have taken a selected passage or passages out of context and what they are saying isn’t supported by the greater context of the Bible as a whole. There is room for debate on some of these issues but some are quite clear, IMO. Today’s incident with Pat Roberson is a frightening reminder of just that, and some of the watered down responses I’ve seen on television today by some ministers have been almost as concerning.
Radical Islamics and radical Christians need to just have out in a steel death cage match -- winner gets Greenland.
Well stated. And as alluded to by tigermission 1, it is the same problem that Muslims and the Islamic faith faces today
Our founding fathers, who were deeply religious people, thought if very necessary to separate church from state. Why this new breed of conservative born again Christians think this is a bad idea is something I don't understand. People are free to have there own beliefs and values, just don't bring the church into government. The American government is made to be inclusive of all religions. How would people feel a religion other than Christianity was being heaped upon the American people?
The founding fathers were deists. Not Christians. But you're right, if they intended America to be a religious nation, they would've used the word God in the Constitution.
Who are you talking about specifically? I think this is the most overused and inaccurate statement about US history. Not that it really matters, frankly.
THat is not true and it is true. Some of the founding fathers were Christians some were deists. Some were Praciticed CHristianity in manner consistent with deism.
Absolutely right Max, Thomas Jefferson was a Deist--many of the founders were religious, some more so than others. The Constitution and our republican system of Democracy are both derived from the standpoint of The Enlightenment and, *gasp*, secular humanisim. However, they clearly sought the "Creator" as a basis for rights that cannot be taken away/reduced by government, despot, oligarchy OR theocracy of ANY religion. That said, I'm SOO glad that men like Max--a former Episcopalian as I am a current one--can show us the TRUE nature of evangelicals and their movement, focus on faith and the spreading of the good news and not the remaking of this country into their image as a totalitarian theocracy.
Hi Max, hope this helps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism Deism was championed by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin are among the most well-known of the American founding deists. Thomas Paine published The Age of Reason, a treatise that popularized deism throughout America and Europe. Paine wrote that deism represented the application of reason to religion, finally settling problems that formerly were thought to be permanently controversial. Deists hoped to also settle religious questions permanently and scientifically by reason alone, without revelation. The first six and four later Presidents of the United States had strong deistic or allied beliefs (Unititarianism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Presidential_religious_affiliations George Washington – Deist; Episcopalian (VA) John Adams – Unitarian (MA) Thomas Jefferson – Deist; Episcopalian (VA) James Madison – Deist; Episcopalian (VA) James Monroe – Deist; Episcopalian (VA) John Quincy Adams – Unitarian (MA) Andrew Jackson – Presbyterian (NC/SC) Martin Van Buren – Dutch Reformed or no affiliation (NY) William Henry Harrison – Episcopalian possibly (VA) John Tyler – Deist; Episcopalian (VA) James K. Polk – Presbyterian; later Methodist (NC/TN) Zachary Taylor – Episcopalian (VA) Millard Fillmore – Unitarian (NY) Franklin Pierce – Episcopalian (NH) James Buchanan – Presbyterian (PA) Abraham Lincoln – Deist; no affiliation known (KY/IN/IL) etc.
I saw a History Channel's documentary on 'secretive societies', where they mentioned that 50 of the 56 signatores of the Declaration of Independence were affiliated with the Freemasons. The Freemasons were hardly religious, weren't they?
