Not Learning From the Cherry Tree Story
The Wall of Separation -- the blog for Americans United for Separation of Church and State -- catches author Stephen Mansfield telling a big lie in an interview on Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink Daily Update site.
So Wall of Separation asked an expert, Philander D. Chase, senior editor of the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia.
And he says?
How can they do this? This writer tries to sell us the idea that George Washington preached everywhere he went, that he talked incessantly about his faith -- and it ... just ... didn't ... happen. We don't even know what he believed. Never preached in any church, as far as anybody knows.
I can't get a handle on the kind of mind that just makes stuff up and offers it as fact, just can't understand it. Or the kind of mind that seeks out this sort of discussion and believes it.
I'm not going to go into it here, but the Wall of Separation blog post is very interesting, exposing Mansfield's theocratic agenda; it's the kind of thing that does not survive in the sunlight.
Mansfield, author of Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America... and What’s Happened Since, says, “Washington was a believer. Washington preached to more churches than any other president in American history — while president. I write that he calls America to a deep faith and to the ethics of that faith.
I repeat what he said in his farewell address, that we cannot expect societal ethics apart from religion. I write that he calls men very boldly to model themselves on Jesus Christ.”
Rewriting History, By George: Washington Recruited Into The Religious Right
So Wall of Separation asked an expert, Philander D. Chase, senior editor of the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia.
And he says?
“We do not know of any instance,” Chase says, “of Washington preaching to a church congregation while he was president or at any other time of his life. As president he did attend a variety of church services, apparently to underscore the importance of religious tolerance as part of national unity.
...
“We have not found any instance,” Chase concludes, “where Washington used the names ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ either separately or together in his personal correspondence, but Washington certainly thought of himself as a Christian. Again, we unfortunately cannot probe but so far into Washington’s religious beliefs, because he never undertook to explain or justify them in detail.”
How can they do this? This writer tries to sell us the idea that George Washington preached everywhere he went, that he talked incessantly about his faith -- and it ... just ... didn't ... happen. We don't even know what he believed. Never preached in any church, as far as anybody knows.
I can't get a handle on the kind of mind that just makes stuff up and offers it as fact, just can't understand it. Or the kind of mind that seeks out this sort of discussion and believes it.
I'm not going to go into it here, but the Wall of Separation blog post is very interesting, exposing Mansfield's theocratic agenda; it's the kind of thing that does not survive in the sunlight.
posted by JimK at 6:35 AM
13 Comments:
Haven't read Mansfield's book so don't know if the quote is takem in proper context or if there are footnotes documenting it. The general argument is definitely true however about how the Constitutional position on religion has been distorted in the last half century. Consider this:
"As Stephen Mansfield contends in his exhaustive, but tightly, written work, what appeared to be a seemingly innocuous decision made by the Supreme Court in 1947 by a 5 to 4 split vote turns out to be the tipping point in the federal - and subsequently the state and local - government's assault on religion in the public arena. In Everson vs. Board of Education of Ewing Township, Justice Hugo Black, writing the majority opinion, stated the state of New Jersey could not reimburse parents for the transportation costs of sending their children to private/parochial schools. This action by the state of New Jersey and others was a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution which contains the titled 10 tortured words, " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ".
Of course, up until the Everson decision, almost everyone, including the Founding Fathers and the writers/contributors to the US Constitution had meant for these words to be applicable only to the governmental establishment of a national church to which citizens must adhere and pay taxes. This, in fact, was the state of affairs prior to the War of Independence when the only recognized church was the Church of England or Anglican Church.
However, it was never the intention of the earlier lawmakers or courts to divorce religion, paricularly Christianity, from governmental institutions. Even Jefferson, who is often cited for his " Wall of Separation " letter to the Danbury Baptists, felt that religion played an important role in the fabric of American consciousness; so much so, that it is referenced on his tombstone. The author enlightens the reader with numerous quotes of key figures in our country's beginnings. All of them gave testimony to the vitality and support that religion gave to the nation's underpinning.
It is indeed a sad commentary on how organizations like the American Way and the ACLU have managed to sabotage through the court system the true meaning and purpose of the 1st Amendment as it applies to the American people and their government. Are we truly better off emotionally, socially, and spiritually by having tortured and continuing to torture the first 10 words of the 1st Amendment? Only each of us can answer that question in light of recent history."
The Cherry Tree whoppers continue unabated. From the cover story in this week's Newsweek Magazine:
"...the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt..."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/
Don't forget this other review of Mansfield's book at Amazon.com jj.
"For a subject such as this one, I would expect a lot more than 100 some odd pages. I think the book made its point, albeit abbreviated. I learned a few new things, but mostly a rehash of similar conservative reads. I much preferred "Original Intent" by David Barton." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Barton
The big lie lives on. Some people in Virginia have asked how Arlington could have caved to PFOX, and is allowing PFOX flyers in it's schools, and PFOX representatives to access students. None of this is true, of course, but by saying it loudly enough and repeating it at the usual outlets, they succeed in deceiving people.
Again, apparently those pesky commandments don't really apply in the battle against the queers. As we've seen repeatedly on this blog, neither do the usual prohibitions on uncivil speech.
rrjr
Jim said "I can't get a handle on the kind of mind that just makes stuff up and offers it as fact, just can't understand it.".
Yeah it really boggles my mind to. Its like they think its okay to lie for Jesus even thought they proclaim to follow the ten commandments which specificially outlaw lying - look at "jolting joe" repeating the lie about lawmakers and courts not intending to divorce religions from governement institutions. Obviously this must be the intent if the governement is to keep from establishing a religion.
Its like these people can ignore the fact that they're lying and still somehow think they're good people.
"Do Atheists Disbelieve in God, Or Do They Hate Him?
Posted Aug 9th 2007 5:40AM by Dinesh D'Souza
Filed under: Religion, Christianity
Even if God's existence could be proven, Niezsche writes in The Antichrist, we would still refuse to accept him. When I read atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, I don't get the impression that they are motivagted by mere unbelief. I don't believe in unicorns, but I don't go around writing books full of rejection and bile about unicorns. When I read The God Delusion and God Is Not Great, I see that their authors do not so much disbelieve in God as they hate Him.
Consequently, the arguments spelled out in these atheist books are out of sync with the actual vehemence of their authors.
Dawkins and Hitchens contend that God is not demonstrable according to the scientific method. But then, lots of things are not demonstrable according to that method. Can Dawkins and Hitchens give a scientific account of consciousness? Can they locate free will under a microscope? What about "equality" and "justice" and "rights": none of these things have any material existence, so does that make them illusions? Since even Dawkins and Hitchens have no problem accepting the existence of lots of immaterial things, they never explain why God is the one immaterial entity that stirs up their skeptical indignation. Somehow the scientific case against God seems to be an inadequate explanation for their belligerent atheism.
Enter the French atheist Michel Onfray, whose Atheist Manifesto is a bestseller in Europe. Onfray comes out of a different tradition than Dawkins and Hitchens, one that he describes as stretching from the Baron d'Holbach to Nietzsche. This is Continental atheism, and it makes its case against God in an entirely different way than do the Anglo-Saxon atheists we encounter in the United States. Onfray, like Nietzsche, regards Anglo-Saxon atheists like Dawkins as representing a low, brutish type, widely found in England.
These themes will be developed in my forthcoming book What's So Great About Christianity. But here's one key difference between Anglo-Saxon atheism and Continental atheism. While Dawkins and Hitchens insist that we can be moral without God, Onfray with astonishing frankness concedes Nietzsche's point that the death of God also means the death of Western morality and Western values. So if God goes, that means that "equality" and "rights" go too. This is a possibility that Dawkins and Hitchens have not even considered. In many ways I think Onfray's atheism is more honest, more darkly appealing, and more dangerous than the atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens."
Of course it is possible to have a rational morality, there's no question about that: the Golden Rule produces a Nash equilibrium. You don't have to postulate any Supreme Intelligence to figure that out, it just makes sense.
As for the belief in a humanlike (we're made in Their image, They must look like us) but very large individual who created the universe in seven days and controls all of destiny, I'm afraid science has gone too far to let that stand. Every clear-headed person realizes no Big Guy made the world in a week. What Copernicus left standing, Darwin has leveled, and the quantum theorists mopped it up and took it to the dump.
As for consciousness, there's a lot to learn there; I'd say a Buddhist or Taoist description is probably going to turn out to be the best explanation, something not-teleological, not-sentimental, a panpsychic perspective that sees ego as illusion. At any rate, a Big Guy in the Sky is not a necessary part of a theory of consciousness.
As for "Western values," as long as those are based on ethnocentrism and revulsion for those whose values are different from our own (the current condition), well, yes, a transition to widespread atheism would almost certainly see a decline in Western values. Some people might lament that, I suppose.
Merle
Thanks for dropping by, Merle.
I would say Dawkins and Hitchens don't hate "God" a much as they do people like D'Souza who repeatedly denigrate others and attempt to impose their limited and constrained view of Christian morality on others.
Of course we can have morality without God. Not only did we manage before monotheism, many cultures manage quite well without it today, and our primate and cetacean cousins manage without it as well. There are individuals who frame their morality in terms of a host of religious traditions, or none at all. If we could just accept that morality is morality, regardless of its source or structure, we'd all be much better off.
Jim writes,
I can't get a handle on the kind of mind that just makes stuff up and offers it as fact, just can't understand it. Or the kind of mind that seeks out this sort of discussion and believes it.
LOL...you know, I was thinking the very same thing...about people who mindlessly parrot that the First Amendment mandates "a Separation of Church and State". Whenever I read or hear that I think to myself, "gee, I never have read that in the First Amendment".
What are Mansfield's qualifications to speak and write on this subject? Perhaps he should take a look at Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, by Brooke Allen. While the Founder's were deeply pious, including Jefferson (I recall reading a little about Jefferson's time at the College of William and Mary; he made a conscious choice to separate himself from what he saw as debauchery...not alot different than what passes on some college campuses these days), they were not formally Christian in the way evangelical Christians today fancy them to be like. I wonder how Mansfield would reconcile what he asserts about Jefferson with the fact that Jefferson wrote himself a copy of the New Testament with all verses related to miracles removed?
Rather than attempting to understand the Founders, in all their complexity, as they understood themselves, both sides...the christianizers and the rabid secularists...are attempting to claim these giants for their own. I suspect they would want nothing to do with either...
El JJ says:
"However, it was never the intention of the earlier lawmakers or courts to divorce religion, paricularly Christianity, from governmental institutions.
It is indeed a sad commentary on how organizations like the American Way and the ACLU have managed to sabotage through the court system the true meaning and purpose of the 1st Amendment as it applies to the American people and their government. Are we truly better off emotionally, socially, and spiritually by having tortured and continuing to torture the first 10 words of the 1st Amendment? Only each of us can answer that question in light of recent history."
'Not sure how much of the above is yours or not JJ, but do you consider yourself a Christian? Are you Christian identified?
I ask because I'm curious as to what stake you have in the effort to apply the first amendment unequally to all Americans.
Or have I misread your sentiments, or perhaps just read this wrong?:
The establishment clause prohibits the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another.
So which is it do you think? Is our government supposed to prefer one religion over another or not?
And I'd especially like to hear from those of you who consider yourselves to be anti-TTF identified (you know who you are :).
Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 25 March 1, 1788-December 31, 1789
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson
...One of the objections in New England was that the Constitution by prohibiting religious tests, opened a door for Jews, Turks & infidels. 3. because the limited powers of the federal Government and the jealousy of the subordinate Governments, afford a security which has not existed in the case of the State Governments, and exists in no other. 4. because experience proves the inefficacy of a bill of rights on those occasions when its controul is most needed. Repeated violations of these parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in every State. In Virginia I have seen the bill of rights violated in every instance where it has been opposed to a popular current. Notwithstanding the explicit provision contained in that instrument for the rights of Conscience it is well known that a religious establishment wd. have taken place in that State, if the legislative majority had found as they expected, a majority of the people in favor of the measure; and I am persuaded that if a majority of the people were now of one sect, the measure would still take place and on narrower ground than was then proposed, notwithstanding the additional obstacle which the law has since created. Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(dg025311))
Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists
The Final Letter, as Sent
To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
Th Jefferson
Jan. 1. 1802.
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
Again, apparently those pesky commandments don't really apply in the battle against the queers. As we've seen repeatedly on this blog, neither do the usual prohibitions on uncivil speech.
Exactly, and this is the very definition of Special Rights. They imagine an exception in the commandment that the rest of us can't see: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor - unless thy neighbor is gay.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor - unless thy neighbor is gay."
Which would seem to validate how they "love" thy gay neighbors.
As long as they love to hate us, it's perfectly Christian.
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