Founding Fathers

[aplonis]

By most of the above definitions many of the principals among the Founding Fathers of these United States do not count as Christians.

George Washington habitually refused Communion. It was his long-standing habit to depart from the church on Communion Sunday along with his niece Nelly Custis, sending the carriage back for Martha who stayed behind to participate. When the pastor rebuked him for it he thereafter absented himself wholly from church on Communion Sundays.

John Adams is quoted to have remarked that the world would be a better place if there were no religion in it. This he wrote to Jefferson after long trials of having to put up with the right-wing religionists of his time.

Thomas Jefferson published his own version of the New Testament without any of the miracles in it (because he did not belive in them). This he did with two bibles, a pair of scissors and some paste. His published version is to this day called the Jefferson Bible and you can buy copies.

Benjamin Franklin answered a letter written to him by a noted clergyman and admitted in his own hand that he did not believe in any of the miracles attributed to Jesus.

James Madison, author of our US Constitution wrote many and many a times just how much he despised any encroachment of religion into the government. He was particularly incensed that Congress should waste tax dollars on the employ of clergy for any official purpose whatever.

Thomas Payne, author of the pamphlets without which the Revolution would never have even taken place also wrote a book entitled The Age of Reason in which he rebukes the Bible quite thoroughly for all the evils recounted therein and attributed to God.

So what were these men, if not Christians? They, many of them, counted themselves as Deists. Now a Deist is someone who believes in a Divine Creator but adamantly dis-believes that any written work (all of which are products of man) can possibly describe Him or carry any slightest trace of His divine intent. Yet they also, and quite frequently, called themselves Christians. And to them what this meant was all the decendents of Christendom...that is to say Western Civilization...those who took the good example of many stories recounted of Jesus and put them into daily practice but without their needing to be persuaded with threat of hell fire or heavenly reward.

You can find this out for yourselves quite easily by reading these men's actual writings and the writings of their actual contemporaries. You will not find it in the revisionist texts propagated since the Civil War. Then is the time from which Lady Liberty started coming off from our coinage and the God-slogan started going on. Teddy Roosevelt minted a gold coin with Lady Liberty on it and...at his express order...no God-slogan. But these were all later recalled and destroyed when all gold coins were recalled.

And here we are in the West rebuking other nations for redacting their histories. It is to laugh...or it would be...if it were not so very sad.

Gan Uesli Starling
Kalamazoo MI

[AllanJGAnderson]

By............ sad.

Wow. The thread has nothing to do with the United States, nor it's founders. If you are so anti-American to swing any topic you desire into a 'prove how evil America is' thread that gets closed by the moderators, then why don't you leave this beautiful land that you so wastefully occupy?
The fact of the matter is that is thread is about Christianity. I am tired of your posts doing nothing but baiting and antagonizing. The thread is about Christianity (2). If you have nothing to say about Christianity, then why are you even repyling? All you are doing is trying to bait somebody into a debate inwhich you will try and prove to a group that you know is patriotic and strongly rooted in their beliefs that we are wrong. That leads to angry posts like mine that get the thread closed. There are many well-read and knowledgeable people here on BudoSeek! and I would love to get their feedback on the thread I posted. Please, hijack somthing else.

[aplonis]

I am not in the slightest degree anti-American. I am very pro-American, but in the most traditional and original sense. I am against ex-post-facto revisionism of what it means to be an American. Some people think, and behave, as if they alone owned the country all to themselves and had a personal right to define what it means to be American. Those people must be confronted with certain historical truths before they run the whole country into absolute ruin. We'll become just like all those other theocracies if they have their way. Liberty will be totally lost. Already they work to erode it as much as they possibly can with all their little alterations to national symbols, history texts and The Pledge.

So whenever the topic intrudes itself into politics, there it must be immediately confronted. Furthermore, this forum is entitled Politics and Current Events, not Religion. You be the one to go someplace else if it is a theocracy you want to live in.

[AllanJGAnderson]

So whenever the topic intrudes itself into politics, there it must be immediately confronted. Furthermore, this forum is entitled Politics and Current Events, not Religion.

The topic did not intrude itself into politics, YOU intruded politics into the topic. Perhaps one of the moderators would be so kind to move the thread to a more appropriate designation. If you have an issue with so called revisionist history and the great devil west, start your own soapbox thread.

[elder999]

I am not in the slightest degree anti-American. I am very pro-American, but in the most traditional and original sense. I am against ex-post-facto revisionism of what it means to be an American. .

Ya know, I'm someone who falls into the same type of thinking-and, I'm in agreement with your post about the Founders and Deism, for the most part-though a few historical details are lacking (the Founders were weird at times...).

It's pretty much irrelevant to the question that was asked, though.

[Cliff Hargrave]

...I am very pro-American, but in the most traditional and original sense....

Good how about making your own thread then about how the orginal and traditional American sense is wacked out left wing propaganda that you seem to promote every chance you get.

So whenever the topic intrudes itself into politics, there it must be immediately confronted. Furthermore, this forum is entitled Politics and Current Events, not Religion. You be the one to go someplace else if it is a theocracy you want to live in.

Put the bong down. No one said anything about living in a theocracy and this thread was about Christianity, not Gan's view of the founding fathers. Who by the way, were very whacked out and you can find quotes from them that were all over the charts and would back just about any view point dependin on how you twisted them.

Go back to hating and seething now..........

[aplonis]

Good how about making your own thread then about how the orginal and traditional American sense is wacked out left wing propaganda that you seem to promote every chance you get.

Put the bong down. No one said anything about living in a theocracy and this thread was about Christianity, not Gan's view of the founding fathers. Who by the way, were very whacked out and you can find quotes from them that were all over the charts and would back just about any view point dependin on how you twisted them.

Go back to hating and seething now..........

Inserting religion into the body politic is wacked-out right wing propaganda. They (you) do this every chance that you get. You change things around, shoehorning religion into even very long-standing things like the Pledge of Allegience and then tell anyone who likes the original version that they had ought to pack up and leave.

You all so easily pass off the writings of those who devised and defined the government and what it truly means to be an American. Where are the quotes to support your own wacked-out right wing view? I defy you to find a single quote from any of the first four presidents of these United States that supports without significant twisting of your own that religion has an official role in American government. Go ahead, find one sentense anywhere by George Washington that supports a role for Christianity in the body politic. Just one. They have libraries where you live, yes?

Your sort is always telling folks that they have to leave your country. Well, you don't own it. And what you cannot abide is anyone who dares suggest that you don't.

Well the topic of this thread was what does it mean to be a Christian. My reply included this very directly in relating how some important folks for this very country's prominent past thought of themselves as Christian even though they did not fit your own, narrow, dogmatic litmus test. Their words are as they are. Your definition is what excludes them. This just goes to show how far out in right-wing wacko land your own narrow definitions are.

For myself, I admire and respect those men just as they were. I read them for what they themselves wrote. And all of it was good. That is pro-American. To redefine their dream is what is truly un-American. Those are the ones who had ought to leave.

[Maro]

I can't see any evidence of Bong usage. Does that infer that anyone who doesn't agree is a Bong-user?

[Cliff Hargrave]

I split this off of the Christianty thread since it didn't belong to begin with.

[Cliff Hargrave]

I can't see any evidence of Bong usage. Does that infer that anyone who doesn't agree is a Bong-user?

Yes, of course.

[Maro]

Yes, of course.

I appreciate that this is a private owned board but I do get the feeling that if you don't agree with someone, you take away the toys........

[David Craik]

How so, Mr. Rous? The Founding Fathers post, while interesting, wasn't really on topic with the original thread. If Cliff wished to 'take away the toys', so to speak, he could have simply deleted all off-topic posts and would have been operating quite within the rules of the forum by doing so.

[elder999]

You all so easily pass off the writings of those who devised and defined the government and what it truly means to be an American. Where are the quotes to support your own wacked-out right wing view? I defy you to find a single quote from any of the first four presidents of these United States that supports without significant twisting of your own that religion has an official role in American government. Go ahead, find one sentense anywhere by George Washington that supports a role for Christianity in the body politic. Just one. They have libraries where you live, yes?.

Now, you don't know me, but most of the "wacked out right-wingers" here will support me when I say I'm not exactly one of them, though I'm no "left-wing whacko," either. And I mostly support what you say about the Founders being deists-however, they were, as I said, weird:

Brothers: I am glad you have brought three of the Children of your principal Chiefs to be educated with us. I am sure Congress will open the Arms of love to them, and will look upon them as their own Children, and will have them educated accordingly... You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention; and to tie the knot of friendship and union so fast, that nothing shall ever be able to loose it." --George Washington in a speech to some Delaware Indian chiefs on 12 May 1779

This has, to my sorrow, been one of the principle statements of our government's relationship to American Indians ever since the day it was uttered.

Of course, Washington wasn't "President" yet, and we weren't "The United States of America," yet, but it's indicative of how easy it is to get wrapped around misquoting for agendas sake on both sides of the aisle, yes?

I'll leave out all the quotes from Washington's writings as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army commanding troops to attend services, the necessity of chaplains, and the social influence that church services have on individuals and society (his primary reason for attending services at St. Paul's Episcopal Chapel in New York, in my opinion, and his exiting prior to Communion being the reason for the Episcopal church's formulation of the service of Morning Prayer) as I'm sure you're aware of them, anyway.

[elder999]

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.
-- John Adams, quoted from Charles Francis Adams, ed., Works of John Adams (1856), vol. X, p. 254

John Adams is here describing to Thomas Jefferson what he sees as an emotion-based ejaculatory thought that keeps coming to him. This was not his reasoned opinion. Although John Adams often felt an urge to advocate atheism as a popular world view (because of the sheer abuses perpetrated by religious charlatans), he was of the firm and reasoned opinion (basically undisputed in his day) that religion is essential to the goal of keeping the masses in line.

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, They may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies.
Letter to Zabdiel Adams (June 21, 1776)

[Maro]

How so, Mr. Rous? The Founding Fathers post, while interesting, wasn't really on topic with the original thread. If Cliff wished to 'take away the toys', so to speak, he could have simply deleted all off-topic posts and would have been operating quite within the rules of the forum by doing so.

I meant as a general observation, not just in this case.

[Cliff Hargrave]

I appreciate that this is a private owned board but I do get the feeling that if you don't agree with someone, you take away the toys........

Oh please, they are not my toys to take.

[Cliff Hargrave]

I think Aaron's very well done posts support my prior statement about the founding fathers having quotes that can go either way. The same is probably true of any famous person. You can pick and choose certain published statements and use them to support a wide variety of views. In reality they were just like the rest of us, with wide ranging views on issues that change depending on the circumstances.