I recently made a website about Thomas Jefferson's views on religion and science, using excerpts from his letters and papers. Please consider visiting it at http://ThomasJeffersonSpeaks.blogspo...
Some responses I got made me realize that many Americans don't know why the Founders advocated the separation of church and state; they don't know the relevant history and they don't know the work of John Locke. I'm hoping that readers of this site will read the following and spread the word.
Evangelical, fundamentalist Christians write as if all Christians agreed with one another, sharing the exact same faith and all its tenets. But historically, this has never been the case. Christianity is not homogeneous; that's why we have Baptists, Catholics, Unitarians, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Evangelicals of various stripes. Even today, you hear some skepticism from Christians like Al Sharpton about Mormons like Mitt Romney. Here's a thumbnail sketch of some high points of religious conflict.
Early modern Europe and Britain were rife with religious strife. When Henry VIII declared himself head of the English church, and when the illustrious Sir Thomas More would not acknowledge his claims, Henry had him beheaded (see the movie, A Man for All Seasons). Henry's daughter Mary, however, was Catholic. During her reign, many Protestants were burned at the stake, earning her the nickname "Bloody Mary." Mary was succeeded by her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, who worried about the popularity of her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots and eventually had Mary beheaded. Although Mary's son, James I, was a Protestant, his descendants had Catholic leanings, and James II was kicked off the throne for his covert Catholicism. The Brits vowed never again to have a Catholic monarch, and the succession was arranged accordingly.
In France, where church and state were united and the church in question was Catholicism, persecution of Protestants had been extremely violent at times. The Edict of Nantes legalized religious toleration; when it was revoked, Protestants were massacred in the streets of Paris. Two of the Founders that I know of--Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris--were of Hugenot descent. Hamilton inveighs against "popery" in some of his early political pamphlets. Indeed, I can't think of a Founder who was Catholic; can you? (This is something people like Bill O'Reilly should ponder, if they are able to ponder. For example, would the Founders be shocked at a Supreme Court in which 5 of the 9 members are Catholic? I'm afraid so.)
Many people assume that hostility only existed between Protestants and Catholics, but in fact, different Protestant sects--Anglicans, Puritans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and sects that have since vanished from the scene--were hostile to one another. For a quick sense of the differences, look online at Calvin and Luther. These fellows did not agree with one another, hence the resulting different denominations. Calvin executed heretics. Luther was a notorious anti-Semite. In Edinburgh, Patrick Hamilton was burned alive at the stake for 6 hours because he had converted to Lutheranism.
John Locke grew up in a Puritan family, and his father fought in the English Civil War. Locke attended university and became friends with Issac Newton and other luminaries. A devout and pious Christian, Locke was concerned about the religious violence of the recent past. In his writings on government and religion, which profoundly influenced all the Founders, he proposed a neutral public sphere, where no religion or denomination could silence, oppress, or marginalize another.
Ergo, the separation or church and state is not anti-religious. It was intended to protect the beliefs of individuals and their chosen denominations/sects from the kind of strife and violence that Europe had endured for centuries. It protected citizens from the state and its ruler, so that a particular set of beliefs--say, Calvin's Five Points, which both Jefferson and Franklin disliked extremely--would not be imposed upon the people at large. (Jefferson was harshly critical of John Calvin and Presbyterianism. Franklin was reared in that denomination, but gave it up because he didn't accept Calvin's principles, like predestination. To read about this, go to my aforementioned website.)
There is an excellent article on Locke at the website of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
"Locke's arguments for religious toleration connect nicely to his account of civil government. Locke defines life, liberty, health and property as our civil interests. These are the proper concern of a magistrate or civil government. The magistrate can use force and violence where this is necessary to preserve civil interests against attack. This is the central function of the state. One's religious concerns with salvation, however, are not within the domain of civil interests, and so lie outside of the legitimate concern of the magistrate or the civil government."
Again, please spread the word. The ignorance on this issue demonstrates a failure of our education system.
Carol V. Hamilton has a Ph.D. in English from Berkeley and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. She also writes for History News Network (hnn.us) and CommonDreams.org.
ILENE PROCTOR
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WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE
One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military
By Michael L. Weinstein and Davin Seay
Under the “boy emperor”, George W. Bush we have entered the Dark Ages in earnest, pursuing a short-sighted path that can only accelerate our decline. What we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture--a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre- Enlightenment world; and the political and a and economic marginalization of our culture.
Add to this the pervasive hostility toward science on the part of the current administration and we get a clear picture of the Enlightenment being steadily rolled back. Religion is used to explain terror attacks as part of a cosmic conflict between Good and Evil rather than in terms of political processes.... Manichaean’s rules across the United States. According to a poll taken by Time magazine fifty-nine percent of Americans believe that John's apocalyptic prophecies in the Book of Revelation will be fulfilled, and nearly all of these believe that the faithful will be taken up into heaven in the 'Rapture,
Fundamentalism and democracy are completely antithetical when the former attempt to engage the machinery of the state to further its parochial biblical world view. The opposite of the Enlightenment, of course, is tribalism, groupthink; and more and more, this is the direction in which the United States is going...
WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military By Michael L. Weinstein and Davin Seay shines a klieg light on one of the most elite educational institutions in the world. The United States Air Force Academy which, from its inception has attracted the best and brightest, producing outstanding leaders not only in the military but throughout American society.
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and his family have a long tradition of service in the United States armed forces. However, Weinstein is now waging a different kind of war. With support at the very highest levels, evangelical groups within the military believe that, serving your country requires the priorities of the military personnel to be, in the words of the Officer’s Christian Fellowship: “ a spiritually transformed US Military” literally “with ambassadors for Christ in uniform” and “empowered by the Holy Spirit.” Weinstein and other American patriots see the evangelicals’ intrusion into military operations and affairs as an affront to the Constitution they were sworn to uphold – and a violation of this nation’s traditionally sacrosanct separation of church and state.
Ten thousand cadets and staff at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, open up their federally-funded newspaper and see an a solicitation signed by hundreds of Academy senior officials and their spouses unabashedly proclaiming, “We believe that the only real hope for mankind is Jesus Christ!” Cadets are bombarded with official command “encouragement” to see the movie The Passion of the Christ at local movie theatres, and stridently sectarian fliers are strategically placed at every cadet’s seat for three straight days in the Academy dining hall. The Air Force Deputy Chief of Chaplains tells a New York Times Reporter, in a front page story, that it is now official U.S, Air Force policy to “Reserve the right to evangelize the un-churched.” (W: April 26 M the Washington Post (July 16 2006): “Let me make it clear. I would shed my last drop of blood to defend their right to hold their biblical worldview….But I will not accept my government telling me who are the children of the greater God and who are the children of a lesser God. That’s a difference I will not defend – I will fight them tooth and nail, and lay down a withering field of fire and leave sucking chest wounds – if they engage the machinery of the state, which is what they are doing.”
A vitally important book at a critical time in our nation’s history, With God on our Side is the story of one man’s courageous struggle to thwart a tsunami of evangelism permeating America’s military and to prevent a taxpayer-funded theocracy in which only the true believers have powers.
Besides sticks and stones thrown at him, Mikey has been reviled by the fundamentalist Christian right, and has been given many names by his evangelical enemies including Satan, Satan's lawyer, the Antichrist, That Godless, Secular Leftist, The Antagonizer of All Christians, The Most Dangerous Man in America and, most recently and perhaps most colorfully, The Field General of the Godless Armies of Satan.
When a country goes to war, it sends a cargo of good and bad
men and women; the vast majority of whom have fine, noble and heroic sensibilities, and, unfortunately a minute minority of sadists and criminals slip in. The country then pours this entire, mixed bag of people into another society -- and with them, their courage and nobility; but also, their problems, their frailties, and their crimes. And then this entire spectrum is subjected to the kind of tremendous stress and strain, endemic only to the experience of war, that’s almost beyond human endurance.
The point is that war is an inferno, and so spiritually and physically catastrophic for both sides, that it must never be allowed to be manipulated by an unconstitutional cabal of evangelical zealots and mindless so-called patriots.
Why is Mikey Weinstein fighting the religious right take-over in the military: The answer: a recent ESPN.com exposé by Mike Fish aired an interview with Lt. Col Kauzlarich, who was the "cross commander" of the Rangers in Khoust, Afghanistan, in April 2004. Kauzlarich, in a stunning display of Christian empathy, blamed the family for continuing to ask questions about the circumstances of Pat's death, and suggested that the reason they'd found no closure was that infidels such as themselves (the Tillmans did not belong to a church), when they die, are only "worm dirt."
Important Statistic in the US Force Academy: out the 2595 cadets listing some form of "protestant" as their religious preference: 1650 belong to mainline and progressive (non-fundamentalist) protestant churches 945 belong to Fundamentalists and Evangelical protestant churches. Yet, of the 10 Protestant Chaplains serving the cadets: 9 were Fundamentalist, Evangelical, or Conservative Christian. Only one mainline progressive Chaplain served 1650 cadets while 945 Evangelicals were served by 9 Chaplains PLUS the resources and personnel of multiple Fundamentalist para-church organization Spire Leaders. Look at tremendous increase in number of military chaplains…almost all evangelical. The AF Academy in the 60s-early 80s had 6 Chaplains for a larger cadet population than exists now…. 3 mainline protestant chaplains, 2 catholic priests, and a rabbi. In 2004, I discovered that the Academy now has these same 6 chaplains described above. But in addition, they have an additional 12 evangelical chaplains, PLUS 25 reserve chaplains (nearly all evangelical) assigned to the Academy.
Faith Based Military (Contractor): Read Blackwater. Erik Prince (a devout evangelical – religiously and politically) is running a huge mercenary Army of nearly 125,000 as part of Bush’s Praetorian Guard. Check out the evangelical links and the cross over of Pentagon execs to Blackwater payroll. Joe Scmitz who whitewashed the Boykin bizarre behavior and the evangelical cancer at the AF Academy, moved from DOD IG to an exec of Blackwater. He is a self proclaimed evangelical politico also. And there are many more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael L. Weinstein is founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He is an attorney and businessman who served on active duty in the USAF as a Judge Advocate General (JAG) for ten years and also spent three years as an attorney in the Reagan White House and formerly General Counsel for H. Ross Perot and Perot Systems Corporation. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Davis Seay is the author of seven books. He lives in Woodland Hills, California.
WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE
One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military
By Michael L. Weinstein and David Seay
Publication date: October 9, 2006
Price: $25.95, Cloth
Pages: 272
ISBN #0-312-26143-2
Note: We would appreciate two tear sheets of reviews or mention or any hyper-links to your web sites.
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/uploads/JOF_LBT_02.mpg click here Hi Mikey,
Thanks for being so generous with your time this morning--we asked you to extend the interview from 30 minutes to an hour because you were such a great guest. You were, as Charles put it, "very well-spoken and on fire," just how we like! It'll be a real pleasure to have you back again very soon.
Here is a copy of the interview for your files. Just right click on the link and select 'save target as' to download an mp3...
LATEST NEWSLETTER FOR JUNE 2007
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WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE short film now complete!
Click here to read more about it and other happenings
in the Military Religious Freedom Foundation Newsletter!
HJLJD
by
Ilene (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Saturday, July 28, 2007 at 1:49:36 PM
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