stryder2112

<a href="http://www.sltrib.com/09012002/commenta/766776.htm" target="_blank">Here's</a> an excellent op ed published in the Salt Lake Tribune!

Stryder

RufusAtticus

Yeah. Episcopals rule! Baptists drule.

Dark Jedi

I fed this to a fundy board I taunt regularly.

I suspect 2 lines of response, and a mutitude of respondants in each line:

1) That is an Episcopalian, so he is obviously out to decieve.

2) You are going to hell.


I also predict that in a few cases, both responses will be included....

Buffman

stryder2112

Thank you for posting that deliciously accurate article. Daniel Webster is the point of contact for this home page:

<a href="http://www.episcopal-ut.org/" target="_blank">http://www.episcopal-ut.org/</a>

Oresta

Stop it. Just quit. All these letters and commentaries about "under God" and the Pledge of Allegiance and the founding fathers being Christian and this being a Christian nation have just got to stop. Even a Utah sculptor revises history depicting three founding fathers kneeling at prayer, a scene historians call unthinkable.
If you are going to argue something, get the facts right. If you want to claim that this should be a Christian nation or that you believe God should be included in the pledge, the Star-Spangled Banner, prayed to in all schools, then be up front and say that's what you are trying to do. Don't invoke the memory of those who worked so hard to keep religion and government separate. Don't claim that because the founders were "Christian" that gives Christians today some sort of preferential status in the country.

These two opening paragraphs should be posted in all courtrooms, schools, and other public places.

Alex Moon

Agreed!!

GeoTheo

Actually, Baptists used to be persecuted by Anglicans (Episcopalians are the US version of Anglicans) in Europe and in the colonies before the doctrine of Seperation of Church and State was
developed. Baptists helped to develop the doctrine and it actually appears in doctrinal statements and Church covenants of Baptist Churches.
Baptists and Quakers were heavily persecuted. This would range from being forced to pay tithes the the official State Church, such as Congregationalism in Virginia, Roman Catholicism in Maryland, to beatings, banishment and even executions for blasphemy.
When Roger Williams, one of the first champions of seperation of church and state and a fully secular government, founded the colony of Providence Plantations(later Rhode Island) many Baptists fled there.
Eventually as America became increasingly pluralistic religiously, seperation of Church and State caught on, and as a result America enjoyed religious freedom unprecedented by any Nation in the world.
It wasn't until about a hundred years ago that many Baptists aligned themselves with the fundamentalist movement and forgot their heritage.
Fundamentalism was a reaction to various changes in society and the increasingly liberal theology in many mainline churches.
Seperation of Church and State became associated with the left. Also fundamentalism beagan to be influenced by reconstructionism.
I am very dismayed by this turn of affairs. Nothing good has ever come from the marriage of Church and State. It is in the history books.

Buffman

GeoTheo

This would range from being forced to pay tithes the the official State Church, such as Congregationalism in Virginia, Roman Catholicism in Maryland, to beatings, banishment and even executions for blasphemy.

You might wish to do a little more research on that statement. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the Anglican Church was the established church in Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina,

In Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, the Congregational church was the established church.

In New York, it was the Dutch Reformed and Anglican churches in turn.

Some Maryland history:

<a href="http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/colonial/book/chap4_2.html" target="_blank">http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/colonial/book/chap4_2.html</a>

However, you are right on the money concerning how things have changed concerning the Baptist view of C-S separation. I noted that change when the fundamentalists captured control of the Baptist Southern Convention.