Primordial Groove

Is this accurate?

dangin

I think there is a quite a bit of spin there. Bush is a wingnut, no matter how you selectively cite history.

Toto

You can find some old threads that discuss the issue of George Washington as Christian. There is no evidence that he was a Christian believer, and a lot of evidence that he held some sort of Deistic beliefs, but he kept all of his religious sentiments out of the public's eye.

So when Easterbrook says:

Washington may have believed in the hand of Providence, as many Deists did (or spoke as if they did), but the part about the genuinely freely chosen worship of Jesus is pure fantasy or projection on the part of modern right wing opponents of church state separation. Washington never mentioned Jesus in all of his personal letters, and there is only one mention of Jesus or Christianity that can be traced to him, in which his secretary who drafted the document recommends it as a civilizing influence on the savage Indians.

Easterbrook then admits that Washington was probably a Deist, but he seems to be trying to claim Deism as practically a branch of Christianity, since it sounds so much like modern day Intelligent Design.

I haven't studied Lincoln enough to know if the alleged "conversion" was real, or if the later religious references were campaign rhetoric or something else. The part about Jefferson is correct.

Easterbrook is correct that all three of these presidents would be out of step today in American politics, either for their irreligious feelings or for being politically incorrect. But it does not follow that Bush's views are practically mainstream.

Gregg Easterbook spends most of his time propagandizing for anti-environmentalist positions. I found a web site devoted to debunking him on those:

http://info-pollution.com/easter.htm

dangin

Re: Lincoln,


"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
-- Abraham Lincoln, to Judge JS. Wakefield, after Willie Lincoln's death

Shake

Well sure. The main problem can be viewed two ways: neither Washington, Jefferson, nor Lincoln are alive today, OR Bush was not around then. As the article states, things were different a century and a half ago (or roughly 2 for Jefferson and Washington). They'd be considered radical now, but no one raised a stink back then. Who knows how Bush will seem in a century or two? Certainly not exactly how we all see him today.

Certainly, it seems blasphemous today to think of women or blacks as second class citizens, but in Washington's day these were common beliefs. You would be seen as blasphemous if you didn't agree with this statement. This is not to say that there weren't those who abhored slavery or the treatment of women, but they were most definitely not the majority.

Strawberry

I'd say that the fact that Bush seems to be consciously trying to abolish the separation of church and state that the founding fathers tried so consciously to create speaks to the various depths of faith and/or self-righteous fundamentalist psychosis in all of these men. Washington turned down a kingdom, but it seems that Bush would be perfectly willing to accept one if it doing so would mean having free reign to purge the country and the world, not necessarily in that order, of evildoahs.

Why has no one challenged the constitutionality of many of Bush's faith-based government initiatives? Oh, wait, I guess money buys political silence in Bush's America. :banghead: Long live Senator Byrd, who's devoted decades of his life to bringing West Virginia out of the dark ages even while the Shrub tries to march them proudly back in. Byrd for president, anyone?

hezekiah jones

Originally posted by Strawberry
Why has no one challenged the constitutionality of many of Bush's faith-based government initiatives?

There are a few challenges in the works, I believe. I think there was a case in federal district court in Wisconsin recently. Toto can probably dig up the link.

The Bush administration will probably rely heavily on voucher programs to distribute the Jesus money, since the Supreme Court declared such programs constitutional last year, at least with respect to fundie education. As we speak, tax dollars are being used to pay some fruitcake to tell some little kids that Jesus filled the ark with a year's supply of fresh eucalyptus leaves for the koalas a couple of thousand years ago, and Rehnquist and his henchpeople said that is okay.

Some other aspects of the faith-based initiatives are more problematic:

Faith-based initiatives quietly lunge forward

There's also a bunch of info at Americans United.

It ain't easy getting into federal court.

Originally posted by Strawberry
Byrd for president, anyone?

Byrd made a nice anti-war speech the other day, but he's pretty wacky in his own right on this subject. His buybull-waving, self-aggrandizing display on the Senate floor after Newdow v. Congress came down was especially appalling. Besides, he's as old as the hills on Grandma's chest.

ZiprHead

That Washington was a believer can be found in statements such as this, from a 1778 letter about the revolution: "The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith."

Imagine the reaction if any contemporary president declared that anyone who lacks faith is "worse than an infidel," especially since as used by Washington, infidel meant Muslim.

Am I mis-reading this or what? From the Washington quote above, I get the impression he thought that the revolution would have fared better if it was influenced by an infidel, that the "hand of providence(s)" influence was the "worse" of the two.

The ABC writer's conclusion seems completely opposite to me of the way I read it.

Toto

The "he" who is worse than an infidel is not the "hand of Providence" but the person who "has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."

The full quote, with as much context as I can find in a quick google search, is:

August 20, 1778, letter to Brigadier-General Nelson, cited in John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, with a foreword by D. James Kennedy (Grand Rapids: Baker Book, 2000) 41-3.


However, the source of this quote seems to be the unreliable David Barton, and it is used exclusively by people trying to prove that Washington was a Christian, and it sounds a little fishy.

Perhaps Buffman knows more.

Toto

See this thread

and this one

Most of the effort so far has gone into challenging the programs legislatively. Many of the programs have not been implemented yet, so are not ripe for litigation.