ybnormal

Oh, puleeeeese... you don't have to bother doing that... chide me instead, for not helping more.

Maybe a couple of small town Texas Baptist ministers will help Fromtheright see the light. Buffman's right on David Barton's handiwork leaped from the page enforces the theme of first essay below, with it's, anti-separation of church and state groups and leaders tend to have a common root in David Barton.

If you're gonna read only one of the following pieces, do the Don Wilkey one. He is not a widely known public figure, but I found the personal info below on a message board. I thought it important to know something about the guy, who appears to be one of those rare, publicly outspoken xian ministers who is concerned about all the political militants in his church. He certainly appears to be a simple man with no agenda, and I think the Texas perspective adds some weight to his words too.

Dr. Don S. Wilkey - First Baptist Church, Onalaska, Texas
A Christian Looks At the Religious Right is a stark web page with absolutely nothing on it but a list of links to 29 Wilky pieces.

A Case for Separation - August, 2002 is one of his recent essays that is related here and it mentions Barton too.

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: ybnormal ]

fromtheright

joedad,

I still do not see what being "Christian" has to do with the discussion. Saying that these men were White carries just as much or as little weight. Do you disagree?

Of course I disagree. Being white does not in and of itself carry with it a worldview that attaches strictly to being white. But don't set me up with a straw man. I do not argue that these men were all Christian or even agree with Barton that they were all orthodox Christian, but I also do not believe that they were all Enlightenment Deists either. And just because many belonged to the more liturgical Church of England does not mean that they did not accept basic tenets of the faith.


Is the basis of your position that there is something fundamentally inferior about anything that does not bear the christian label, or conversely for others, the secular label?

I haven't said anything of the sort and don't believe it--any more than you guys think that Christianity is somehow inferior. Do I think I'm right? Of course I do and make no apologies for it, and don't expect any from you for holding to your beliefs.


Is that it in a nutshell, and is that what drives the present debate, or is it just another power struggle?

As to my own place in the debate, I think your imagination is getting away from you. I haven't met with some Christian cabal to plot how I might deceive you.


Can you tell me what the long range and short range goals are for the Christian Rightists?

No, but let me get back to the barbeque with the cabal again and I'll see what I can dig up for you, though.


Sincerely, I would like your response to this question, "Why is the christian label important to you?

Important to me personally or as a description of the Founders? And while you're clarifying the question, why is any label important to you, whether secularist, atheist, freethinker, or what have you? That is in the same terms you are inquiring--for yourself or as a label for the Founders?

BTW, I do tend to agree strongly with the quote you then posted. How else to explain some of the language of the D of I (and please don't confuse that, as some have, as a position regarding the legal status of the D of I, rather simply as an example of the Christian influences.


Shouldn't the juxtaposition of their christianity and their slave ownership in the context of discussing "freedom" raise some red flags?

See above--I did earlier agree that this was inconsistent. But how would you explain George Mason (or was it Gouvenour Morris?)'s statement in the Federal Convention that God judges national sins with national calamities and that He would judge us for slavery.

Buffman

ybnormal

Oh, puleeeeese... you don't have to bother doing that... chide me instead, for not helping more.

Chide! Chide! But the truth will out. I wanted to bump this string back up and you were my foil. Is that better?

Great stuff from both Wilkey and Whitten...even if after the barn door has been open for too many years. I suspect that Pat Roberson had much to do with getting Barton some of the influential contacts he obviously has. However, he did/does do the college and high school circuit like we were in the "last" days. Maybe Bush will make him the next Attorney General and he can move Chief Justice Moore's Ten Commandment engraved monolith into the Justice Department foyer so everyone can kiss it as they go to and from work.

Perhaps he could even establish the first fundamentalist Christian "Hajj" to see it at least once in every true "Born Again's" life.

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: Buffman ]</p>

SLD

Well, FTR, my friend, let me jump in here with a little point. You are correct that they weren't all Enlightenment Deists. There were, IIRC, 52 signers to the Constitutional Convention, correct? What was each of their beliefs. Probably not available today. Were there orthodox christians? Undoubtedly. Were there staunch episcopalians? I'd bet so.

But the leadership however, was enlightenment deist. James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, can all be classified as Deists at best. And of course, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who may not have been there, but whose influences were still profound, are certainly not orthodox Christians. Name a real leader in the movement to create our Constitution who was not a deist - who was a more orthodox Christian.

Also, I think some of the quotes you cite are being misapplied (although it is done by all sides). The founders did not view religion as inimical to the republic; they believed that it served a useful purpose in taming the masses - even if they didn't believe in the mythologies of christianity themselves. That is the point of a lot of their public pronouncements. Like a lot of politicians, they could be hypocritical.

It is also wrong to draw too much about the meaning of the 1st Amendment from their quotes unless they are specifically addressing the subject of church state separation. These guys were politicians; they played to the masses when they had to. Even James Madison issued religious proclamations that he felt violated the doctrine of church and state separation.

Madison is probably the only one who seriously discussed the issue at length in various writings, letters and memoranda; and throughout his serious discussions, he is abundantly clear that his belief is in absolute separation of church and state.

fromtheright

Buffman,

Is your "not out of context" opinion based on the actual words/meanings that appear before and after those extracted lines and omissions in the primary text? Or simply because they all support a devout Christian conditioned viewpoint...like "holy?"

Then please explain to me how they were out of context.


I'm an American. Is that the side to which you allude?---

Come now, Buffman, I think you know the "side" I was talking about was your side of the CSS debate. Or are you arguing that those on my side are not American? I hope we're not stooping to who can wave the biggest flag. I meant nothing sinister in the term "side"--there are two sides in the CSS debate.


fromtheright: I am disappointed, as you, though, that cites were not given, but they weren't given in the atheist articles as I recall either.

Two wrongs do not make a right

I didn't argue otherwise, and made the statement simply to make the point that both sides have been guilty of the same thing--and it is just as wrong for both of them to do so.


Ah, yes! However, Christians deify the Holy Bible. Deists don't require a sacred text to believe in a Divine Providence that was the Master Architect of all that there is. You might almost, and I said almost with tongue in cheek, be able to compare Deists with today's Intelligent Design advocates...if they weren't all Christians...and two-faced Creationists

Okay, Buffman, I finally give up on that part of our discussion. Despite my best efforts to simply make the statement that Protestants also
"hold to that belief 'that faith is primarily a matter between the individual and his Maker'", you seem intent on making this a comparison with Deists which was completely beside the point. I'm not sure what your last statement here had to do with that discussion.

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>

Buffman

39...signed the Constitution

10...never attended

16...attended but did not sign the Constitution

65...Delegates appointed by the states to represent them in the Federal Convention.

("Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787" James Madison, Volume One, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y.. 1987

[ October 15, 2002: Message edited by: Buffman ]</p>

Buffman

fromtheright

I responded as best I could to your questions concerning the issues for this topic. I forwarded a copy of my letter to you. If you have any further questions regarding those items, I will gladly do my best to resolve them. I do not feel that your latest post advances our knowledge about what is or is not propaganda from the radical religious right.

Do you still question the George Washington and French and Indian War relationship?

Do you question my correction on the number of members who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Do you have more questions about Geroge Washington's supposed Prayer Book?

These are the kinds of items I prefer to tackle at this point. Thanks for getting back to me.

fromtheright

SLD,

Hi, my infidel friend! How're things in Bess'mer? I'm definitely not craving the trip to Norfolk, VA once a month!

Name a real leader in the movement to create our Constitution who was not a deist - who was a more orthodox Christian.

Well, first of all, I'm not so sure, one way or the other about Hamilton. Also, I would take you back to my question to joedad about the ideas of the D of I, their origins and their importance to the Founders. Also the names you mentioned were surely leaders (though I don't know if Franklin's question to the Convention about God's role in the rise and fall of nations was a Deist concept of God; the same might be asked of Hamilton's likening of natural rights to a sunbeam written on our hearts by our Creator is a Deist concept), there were certainly others who played strong roles in the Constitutional debates, such as Roger Sherman, George Mason, and Gouvenour Morris. No, I don't know the religious views of these men but they are certainly worth examining (OK guys, before you again beat me up on the relevance of this to the CSS debate, SLD has also raised the question here).


It is also wrong to draw too much about the meaning of the 1st Amendment from their quotes unless they are specifically addressing the subject of church state separation.

I do believe they are important, though (as long as done honestly and accurately) as to showing that the Founders had a worldview that implied a belief in the place of religion in society, as part of the social and cultural melieu (sp?) in which they were set as part of an argument that Church and State are not so neatly separated as modern secularists (nor indeed as mixed as the more theocratically minded on my side, such as the Pat Robertons) would like.


Man, I gotta quit this late-night s--t.

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>

fromtheright

Buffman,

Do you still question the George Washington and French and Indian War relationship?

I really haven't looked at it that closely (I'm sorry, I know you spent alot of time gathering the resources) because I'm not sure of its relevance to the discussion.


Do you question my correction on the number of members who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Absolutely not. It was certainly a controversial move on their part at the time. And there were obviously attendant risks in their doing so.


Do you have more questions about George Washington's supposed Prayer Book?

No, and I do thank you for the information. BTW, I sent the piece about Washington's status as a communicant to wallbuilders--I probably won't get a reply.


I gotta hit the rack, it's late.

Buffman

fromtheright

Commenting on your post to SLD about Hamilton and Franklin, I have yet to find a more accurate biography of Hamilton than the one found at this next URL. Apparently he was a very devout Christian in his youth through college, but then fell in league with the primary Deists of the day. However, toward the end of his life, he once again appears to have returned to his Christian roots...though with a cynicism born more of personal experiences than religiosity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...chap1/duel.htm

Section Two

(Extract)
Sometimes called Deism, the faith of the founding fathers replaced a personal God with an opaque Providence, whom George Washington once referred to as "it." Although the father of the country attended the Episcopal Church, Washington usually left before the communion service, pointedly if silently stating his disbelief in this central ceremony of the Christian faith. When Thomas Jefferson inveighed against "every form of tyranny over the mind of man," he was talking about organized Christianity. During the Constitutional Convention, when the delegates seemed deadlocked, Benjamin Franklin had suggested starting the day with a prayer to seek the help of divine wisdom. Hamilton had risen to oppose the idea, claiming it would be a confession of political disunity. He blithely added that he saw no need to seek "foreign aid."
Deism had apparently seemed sufficient to the mature Hamilton, especially in the 1790s, when he had been President George Washington's secretary of the treasury, the young nation's most influential politician.....
(End extract)

Note: The first draft of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence---already edited by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston---was presented before Congress on June 28. 39 revisions were made on the text before it was adopted on the 4th of July, 1776.

'ftr,'I would like you to consider that the foundation upon which Jefferson crafted the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence can be traced back to much of the philosophy contained in this next URL.

http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm

This is explained rather well in "The Godless Constitution:The Case Against Religious Correctness" by Kramnick & Moore, W.W. Norton Company, New York/London, 1997/1996. Chap. Four.


(Additional note)
"When the crisis came, Jefferson, Paine, John Adams, Washington, Franklin, Madison, and many lesser lights were to be reckoned among either the Unitarians or the Deists. it was not Cotton Mather's God to whom the author of the Declaration of Independence appealed, it was to 'Nature's God.' From whatever source derived, the effect of both Unitarianism and Deism was to hasten the retirement of historic theology from its empire over the intellect of American leaders, and to clear the atmosphere for secular interests" -- The Rise of American Civilization," by Charles A. and Mary R. Beard. (Vol. I., p. 449.)