Oresta

I always read on the treadmill at the gym, otherwise moss grows on my frontal lobes. So the other day, as is my wont, I set up a recent biography of Francis Bacon on my reading rack before firing up to a furious 3 mph. A young man next to me asked what I was reading. I told him a little of Bacon’s precarious life through the religious regime changes of his time, commenting that Tudor/Stewart history made a good case for separation of church and state.
My neighbor said he had read that there was no historic evidence for a wall of separation and proceeded to quote the opening sentence of the Mayflower Compact. His purported version included mention of Jesus. I had none of the compact committed to memory, but I knew for sure that although God and Christianity figure in the document, there is no mention of Jesus.* However, before I could question his source, my Christian soldiered onward into the ever-popular assertion that our forefather came here for religious freedom, etc., etc., etc.
I responded that religious freedom was not their intent as they established a theocracy. “They hanged Quakers,” I said, “banished Anne Hutchinson for heresy, ---”
He interrupted me in a truly astonished voice, “When did this happen, did you say? In the fifteen hundreds?”
(Was he not easy pickings, dear reader?)
“No,” I said, “in the 17th century. The Mayflower Compact was signed in 1620.”
“Ah,” he said, “I’ll have to read up on that. Well, I’ll let you get back to your reading.”
And so I did.
But I had many “I shudda said to him” thoughts afterward. Perhaps I should have engaged him in the Great Treadmill Debate of the YMCA.
What would you have done/said in my place?

* http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1601-1...uth/compac.htm

Buffman

http://www.lilesnet.com/thanksgiving/about/pilgrams.htm

http://www.plimoth.org/Library/compact.htm

(Everyone should read and memorize the basic content of the "Commentary" at the above URL.)

http://www.neta.com/~1stbooks/chron6.htm

(These were the hated Catholics who could not possibly be given credit for anything in a Protestant controlled 13 colonies until approximately 300 years later.)

Oresta

From the second URL cited above:
Indeed, the motives of the framers of this document should be understood for what they really were: an effort to prevent anarchy.

It is interesting to also note that John Q. Adams was among those spin meisters responsible for the misconceptions of the Mayflower Compact that continue to go ringing down through the corriders of time.

More textbook spin on the European settlement of the New World: Back in the seventh grade, having dutifully memorized those founding dates of Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth, I was astonished to find the Spanish well established in the west later in the course! Where did they come from?

{edited by Toto to fix tags}

Buffman

"Church and State in America" by Edwin S. Gaustad, Oxford University Press, New York-Oxford, 1999, Chap. 5, 'The Eastablishment Clause:Public Schools', pg 84.

(Extracts)
Pupils sang Protestant hymns, read from a Protestant Bible (King James Version), offered Protestant prayers, and read their history with a strongly Protestant (that is to say, anti-Catholic) slant. Indeed, Archbishop John Hughes in New York City thought the public schools of the 1840s were so clearly Protestant that public monies should be granted to Roman Catholic schools as well. When he failed to win that argument, he turned to what seemed the only alternative: a parochial school system for Catholic boys and girls.

As early as 1869, parents sued the public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio, in an effort to purge them of their Protestant religious exercises. The Superior Court of that city, more or less in the spirit of Horace Mann, found nothing objectionable in these "non-dogmatic," yet clearly Protestant, observances. One dissenter, however, Judge Alphonso Taft (father of future President William Howard Taft) noted that these daily rituals were clearly "Protestant worship" and, as such, inescapably "offensive to Catholics and Jews." A year later, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed with Taft's dissenting opinion and ruled such activity illegal.
(End extracts)

Yet here we are in 2003, still under the conditioning and indoctrinating influences of Protestantism...though seeing Catholicism making rapid inroads into the highest court in the land. Is it any wonder that evangelical Methodist, GWB Jr., is by-passing Congress and funneling taxpayer monies directly into the religious coffers of the chosen religious denominations via the Faith Based Initiative? Republicans have historically been representative of the Protestant faith beliefs, whereas Democrats have historically represented the Catholics and other national minority beliefs. However, in the recent "under God"/IGWT/10 Commandment issues, there have been no Republicans or Democrats...only believers in the supernatural superiority of Christianity.

For the moment, Protestants and Catholics have been conveniently drawn together to face a growing menace to their mutual Christian religious faith belief...Islam. Woe be to our secular Constitution and all non-believers in a world where the reigns of power are contested between supernatural faith beliefs.

Here are two excellent URLs to use when discussing religious population statistics/views:

http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions

http://pewforum.org/publications/reports/poll2002.pdf

Oresta

What is particularly distressing is that this coalition of Christians draws upon a bogus historical account of "religious freedom" to legitimize its campaign against the First Amendment. And the itony is that while J. Q. Adams was corrupting history, as exerpted here from your URL, Jefferson was writing his "Notes on the State of Virginia" (1781-1782) wherein he does an excellent job of debunking the "freedom of religion" account of the colonial foundings. (See second link and excerpt below.)

http://www.plimoth.org/Library/compact.htm
...and here's Jefferson's take on religious "freedom" in the colonies of both Virginia and New England.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/jevifram.htm