Secular Elation

<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak071202.asp" target="_blank">Michael Novak: The Atheists Civil Liberties Union?</a>

More of the same "our rights come from God" and additional rantings. Read and enjoy.

hezekiah jones

[Bold added]

Poor guy just refuted his entire argument, even if he did misquote the First Amendment.

Shadowy Man

This guy seems to be trying really hard not to offend the Jews - he seems to mention them on equal footing with the Christians in most cases. The Jews only represent about 2% of the population now; I can't imagine they were that important to the establishment of the United States in the late 18th-century.

Buffman

From the Novak article)

The first act of the First Continental Congress in 1774 was a motion to pause for prayer, for guidance in a sudden extremity (British troops were reported to have landed with flame and violence in Boston). When that motion was carried, the prayer chosen was a Jewish prayer, Psalm 35.

He is absolutely correct. The First Continental Congress was terrified that the zealous "Christian" Anglican hoards from across the seas would swiftly and efficiently steal from these self-righteous colonialists what they had stolen from the Native Americans and had developed on the sweat and blood of their African slaves. They needed all the help they could muster from the jealous, vicious, war-like God of the Old Testament if they were to have any chance of surviving the vengeance of their Christian brothers.

[]With American troops suffering terribly at Valley Forge, under the blows of defeat after defeat following July 4, Congress decreed an invitation to the states to celebrate a national day of fasting and humiliation [December 11, 1776], to beg God's pardon for the manifest sins of Americans of all ranks, and to ask for His assistance in the present just and necessary war. [Where was the ACLU that December, when we needed them?]

Again he is absolutely right. Rather than provide the disheveled, beaten and starving Continental Army with food, clothes and arms, they preyed and sent them religious rules to eat. Without some timely, and vital, help from our Oneida Indian allies (Polly Cobus Cooper), many more men would have died at Valley Forge in the Winter of 1777/78 [Where was Novak and his all-powerful God that December when Washington needed them? The same place they were on 9/11?]

[]Even Tom Paine wrote that he was not so much of an infidel as to believe that Almighty God could abandon a people committed to the liberty to which he had called them.

Correct again. However, as a Deist, Paine had no use for any organized religion... especially Christianity.

[]Commander-in-chief Washington ordered his soldiers to begin each day with public prayer, in ranks, in the presence of their officers.

Since he couldn't feed, clothe or arm them, what else could he do to keep them believing in him and against their Christian bothers who were praying just as hard that they would end the "Terrorist Insurrection" quickly? [Maybe Washington should have had them praying for the ACLU and a Squadron of B-52's.)

[]During the Jefferson administration, the largest church service in the United States was held in the US Capitol Building, and Jefferson publicly attended, and saw to it that music was supplied at government expense, by the Marine Band. Decades later, a large church service was also held each Sunday in the Supreme Court building.

But what did President Jefferson think about all this political, Christian, religiosity? (This is such pathetic apologetic for a supernatural belief system in Christianity that it's not worthy of my time to research the particulars. It only makes me wish that the ACLU had been around at that time.)

[]The American way was not separation of church and state. It was accommodation.

And that accommodation was that our government would remain neutral concerning religious beliefs. And how would it accomplish that neutrality? I would remain "separate" from religious advocacy.

The Americans did not want a national, federally chosen established church, such as the Church of England was in Britain. They insisted that the Congress accommodate itself to existing establishments of religion in the several states, and not prohibit existing exercises of religion, public or private.

Americans didn't want any nationally established church that wasn't their own Church. And since the majority of believers in the Confederation probably remained Protestant Anglicans, it was all the more essential that the government remain "separate" from the potential re-introduction of religious majority tyranny.

[] They also wanted unfettered freedom of individual religious conscience,...

Valid.

... for that is what alone of all world religions, Judaism and Christianity distinctively require.

Not valid.

[]The American people, led by the Baptists of James Madison's district in Virginia (who forced Madison to change his intentions on the matter, if he wanted their votes), demanded a constitutional amendment to make freedom of religion explicit in the Constitution.

That was for the Virginia Constitution, not the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. (Actually, it was the Presbyterians whose vote helped to bring Religious Freedoms to Virginia. However, the manner in which the minority Baptists preachers were being treated in that Commonwealth had a great influence on Madisons views about freedom of religious conscience.)

The final amendment prohibited Congress both from any action regarding the establishment of any one national religion, and from any action regarding the disestablishment of any of the existing established churches (in the five states that had such). Congress was to "make no law respecting the establishment of religion," neither for nor against establishment.

(Some of Novak's statements above are inaccurate and incomplete.)

I found the below URL to be an interesting chronology of Christian biblical concern about the rest of humanity. It also identifies how many "sinners" became part of the so-called religious colonies.

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2691/COS.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2691/COS.html</a>