dk

dk: - I think you make some astute points. There are two sides of this coin, faith and works. On one side of the coin demonstrates faith without works is death. Many Christians simply lack the conviction of faith they profess. On the other side of the coin people still believe in Jesus Christ even thought they aren’t quite sure what exactly they believe.
dk: - I read the same tone in the rhetoric of the secular press. Global Warming, overpopulation, crisis in public education, racism, nuclear war, corrupt government and oppressive regimes dominate.
dk: - I think a puritanical stripe runs irrationally through U.S. history, it’s called “by faith alone”. Most people find a pill more attractive than personal responsibility. Our opinion makers have become adapt at selling the short term fix.
Here's my opinion:
dk: – I submit nations prosper and grow by solving problems and then decline when they encounter insoluble problems. Whether it is quick or spry insoluble problems consume an ever increasing slice of national resources until like a black hole they bleed the body dry. For example the Ancient Greeks bled themselves to death fighting petty wars. The Roman Empire lost the loyalty of the military as the bureaucracy became overbearing and depraved. The Ottoman Empire fell under the weight of their own armies as Western Europe sailed happily into the sunset. The Soviet Union’s command style socialism failed to manage the logistics of the Industrial Complex. Over the last 220 years the U.S. has prospered and grown by solving problems whether it be the Mexican War, Civil War, Robber Barons, WW I, WW II, Jim Crow or Communism. About fifty years ago the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution as a purely secular document to declared war on poverty, illiteracy, drugs, social inequalities, etc… The great society has fond these problems insolvable.

Lets take a quick gut check on the nation’s most vital and basic institutions. The family unit over the last 50 years has gone from A 5% to A 50% divorce rate; unmarried mothers from A 2% to A 30% rate; the number of children in foster care has skyrocketed; and single mothers head of household lead the charge of the middle class into poverty. The nation’s spent trillions on a failed welfare program, then turned it back to the states where the jury is still out. Public Schools (1-12) have gone from the crown jewel of the Great Society to fortified campuses patrolled by armed guards, drug sniffing dogs, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors. A tertiary review of the courts (civil, family, juvenile, criminal) and prisons is enough to make one’s blood run cold. The only word to describe the democratic processes of government is apathetic with barely a 50% voter turnout in Presidential Election years. With the baby boom ready to retire medical costs have skyrocketed and there aren’t enough skilled workers entering the work force to keep them in diapers. As a nation we seem increasingly inept at informal relationships, and increasingly dependent upon the courts for social responsibility. Since the U.S. has declared war (escalating rhetoric) to win the peace it hasn’t resolved or even dented one social problem, and has created several huge dysfunctional bureaucracies. The manufacturing sector has left for cheap overseas labor and corporate welfare. My point is simple, if the U.S. keeps pissing trillions down a black hole of a hedonistic egalitarianism we are in for some very tough times. I’m not exaggerating, and the handwriting is on the wall for all to read.

IvanK

I'm afraid the both of you are buying into some terribly pernicious canards.

The first being that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and has gradually moved toward secularism. The truth is almost precisely the opposite. The U.S. was founded as a secular nation; Christian believers, mostly Protestants, have gradually chipped away at the secular nature of U.S. government until it would be unthinkable these days to leave "under God," "so help me God" or "God bless America" out of a pledge, oath or political speech or for the Senate to ratify a Treaty of Tripoli that explicity states that the U.S. is in no way a Christian nation. Church attendance during the early years of the nation was in fact much, much lower than it is today. For these and other historical facts I refer you to Kramnick and Moore's The Godless Constitution.

The second being that life was just peachy in this country until the Supremes put a stop to the unconstitutional practice of state-supported and -required Protestant prayer in public schools, since which time it has hit the skids hard and is now on the highway to hell. Every valid measure of the quality of human life argues against this, as does the fact that before the Supremes' decision this country suffered through nearly numberless wars foreign and civil, revolutions, natural disasters, plagues, epidemics, depressions and riots. You can call all that "overcoming problems" if you will, but my grandfather who died of the 'flu at the age of 30 in the nineteen-teens or my father who nearly died of scarlet fever a decade later because medical science had not advanced to the stage where immunizations against common and virulent diseases were readily available would probably have a bone to pick with that idea. I expect they'd prefer to have lived today, given the choice, and taken their chances with anthrax in the mail.

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: IvanK ]</p>

Fastfalcon

I'm glad that some people (a la IvanK) are seeing the truth about what is happening to the U.S.

Godless Dave

You're dead on IvanK. I imagine the American Indian children who were murdered by God-fearing, church-going soldiers and the people who were bought and sold by God-fearing, church-going slave owners would agree that the US has experienced a general moral improvement, not decline, over the last 150 years.

Remember, when prayer was required in school, black people weren't allowed in school.

dk

The U.S. was founded with the Declaration of Independence that severed all political ties with the British Crown, the preamble of the Declaration reads, “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men,”

It wasn’t until Everson v. Board of Education (issued in 1947) and Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education (issued in 1948) that Jefferson's metaphor of a "wall of separation" between church and state was evoked by the Supreme Court under the 14th Amendment as broadly binding upon state governments and constitutions. Judge Black wrote in Everson “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. New Jersey has not breached it here”. Judge Black wrote in in McCollum, “Recognizing that the Illinois program is barred by the First and Fourteenth Amendments “. Since the 14th Amendment wasn’t ratified until 1868, the supposition that the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1790 could possibly be given such broad powers over state governments and local municipalities is untenable even absurd. These are called landmark decisions because they were the first of many decisions handed down by the Supreme Court to interpret the U.S. Constitution as a purely secular document.
dk: To “ex post facto” assert State governments that ratified the U.S. Constitutional were unconstitutional undermines the sovereignty of the Union. I’m sorry to hear about the illnesses that killed your father and grandfather, but I assure you the deadly microbes aren’t governed by constitutional law or judicial review whereas terrorism is determined and deterred by human laws. It seems most odd for a freedom loving people to exclude good people of any stripe from the public debate, why it defies reason.

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

PopeInTheWoods

This fails to counter IvanK's position that the US was not founded as a xian nation for two main reasons.

Firstly, your quoted text does not specify who "their Creator" is. And considering Jefferson's main authorship of the DoI, it's doubtful that he's referring to the xian god.

Additionally, while the DoI may have turned the 13 colonies into a (semi-)united nation, it played no role in the establishment of what is currently the US government. That role is reserved for the decidedly secular US Constitution.

Andy

lpetrich

Furthermore, has anyone succeeded in deriving the US Constitution from the Bible?

And the Founding Fathers were much more wiiling to quote such ancient Greek and Roman authors as Polybius, as <a href="http://www.sms.org/mdl-indx/polybius/intro.htm" target="_blank">this paper</a> shows.

Polybius and some of his Greco-Roman colleagues had considered mixed constitutions a Good Thing, because they represented several sectors of society, thus providing an alternative to them trying to destroy each other.

And that had impressed our Founding Fathers. If they had derived that concept from the Bible, their writings would have been full of Bible quotes to that effect. But their writings are not -- as is evident by Church-of-God-the-American ideologues being unable to find any real examples.

I must say that our Founding Fathers had looked in the right place, because those Greco-Roman authors are often more scientific and rational than anyone in the Bible.

sighhswolf

"All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution." -- [Thomas Jefferson, 1776]

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -- [Thomas Jefferson]

That's not all Jefferson said on the issue, and he was hardly alone in his opinions. Washington, Paine, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Lincoln (although not a founder), and other founders of the nation were highly critical of Christianity at times.

Wolf

dk

dk: My original statement was, “About fifty years ago the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution as a purely secular document”. It was Ivan that rebuked me saying the U.S. was never a Christian Nation. Since I never said the U.S. was a Christian theocracy IvanK’s post was a straw-man. I further rebuffed IvanK’s challenge by demonstrating that the U.S. was not a secular nation until the mid-20th Century when the Supreme Court (Justice Black) wrote in the McCollum decision, “That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach”. This point is central to this discussion.
dk: -The Continental Congress managed the Revolutionary War when the DOI was signed into law by the Continental Congress. To manage the peace won in 1781 the Articles of Confederation were signed into Law by the Continental Congress. The Constitution came later to form a more perfect Union. At Gettysburg Lincoln referenced the DOI “four score and seven years ago” or 1776 + 80 + 7 = year 1863. Lincoln reasserted the DOI foundational principles to justification for the Union’s invasion of the South. The possibility that the U.S. Constitution or Government could become an obstacle to the foundational principles was covered in the DOI preamble which clearly states, “That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles”. There simply isn’t any wiggle room here.

[ May 12, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

PopeInTheWoods

You didn't, but free12thinker said, "Religion and God are not the foundations of this country anymore." It was that statement that IvanK was addressing.
In order to refute IvanK's point, you would have to show that the US government actively promoted religion prior to that SC decision. Maybe the reason that 1947 is the first time that state/church separation is explicitly mentioned by the SC is because it wasn't being violated earlier.
Wiggle room? The USA was founded in 1776. Our current form of government was established in 1789 (Lincoln's rhetoric notwithstanding). So what? France has been a nation for centuries, yet their current constitution and governing system is from the post-WWII era. What's your point?

Andy