Texts From American Hisotry.

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

Thanks Ben...just following up on your VERY GOOD QUESTION

The idea that the US is a "Christian nation" is far from "undisputed"; your saying so does not make it so, you see. "Official Church documentation" says no such foolish thing. There is no scripture making the US a "Christian nation," as we all know. It is not a theocracy.

I agree the BoM quotes were more likely referring the BoM lands...not the USA.

And I'm not sure I am right about this, but I think that the furthest the LDS Church goes is to say that the Constitution was divinely inspired by God.

This scripture certainly is in reference to the USA...

D&C 101:80 And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood.

Note that Deists would agree with this scripture's truth, based on their definition of Providence (which I mentioned in my previous post).

HOWEVER...in this verse, God does not specify an interpretation of the Constitution...that is, God makes no comment on the separation of Church and State. He simply says that He inspired the Constitution.

It is quite possible for God to establish the Constitution, allowing total freedom of religion, without favoring Christianity in any way. In fact, that seems to be the way the LDS God works...he promotes Free Agency. To establish a Christian government would be a threat to the free agency of the American people...they would start converting to Christianity by law, rather than by faith.

But the LDS God's way is to give people total freedom and let them choose to do good or evil...their punishment or reward will be in the afterlife...not in our courtrooms.

[Outshined]

It is very clear from George Washington's Prayers, that he worshipped Jesus Christ; therefore, he was a Christian.

If it makes you feel better to call him a Christian, help yourself, but it is not a title he claimed for himself. In fact, he denied affiliation with any particular faith, as evidenced by his own words many times and shown in the quotes provided earlier.

[sgallan]

Great posts (as usual TS)

Since our resident troll brought up Adams, I thought I'd add a few more Adams. He is pretty cool.....

God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.

-- John Adams, "this awful blashpemy" that he refers to is the myth of the Incarnation of Christ, from Ira D. Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" (1787-88), from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 258, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, "Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church"

We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.

-- John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785, quoted from Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom (1991)

As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

-- John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816

The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.

-- John Adams, letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, October 18, 1756, explaining why he rejected the ministry

I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.

-- John Adams, letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756, explaining how his independent opinions would create much difficulty in the ministry, in Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation (1987) p. 88, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, "Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church"

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

-- John Adams, from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

-- John Adams, letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, from George Seldes, The Great Quotations, also from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.... And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.

-- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814, quoted in Norman Cousins, In God We Trust: The Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers (1958), p. 108, quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because of suspected heresy? Remember the Index Expurgato-rius, the Inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter, and the guillotine; and, oh! horrible, the rack! This is as bad, if not worse, than a slow fire. Nor should the Lion's Mouth be forgotten. Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years.

-- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814, quoted by Norman Cousins in In God We Trust: The Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 106-7, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

Numberless have been the systems of iniquity The most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own Order They even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure ... with authority to license all sorts of sins and Crimes ... or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude....

Of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence and holiness around the idea of a priest as no mortal could deserve ... the ridiculous fancies of sanctified effluvia from episcopal fingers.

-- John Adams, "A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law," printed in the Boston Gazette, August 1765

We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu.

-- John Adams, one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 234. Quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, "Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church."

[Outshined]

Very good posts, TS. I agree with you. B)

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

No one said Washington did not believe in God, only that he never claimed any particular faith. His friend said he was a Deist, and I'd trust his word over the attempts to paint him with the belief you want him to have. Washington himself said he respected all belief, and made no claim to any particular system.

Washington's religious views are a matter of some controversy. There is considerable evidence that he (like many of the Founding Fathers) was a Deist - believing in God (he preferred more impersonal appellations, like Providence), but not believing in divine intervention in the world after the initial design. Before the Revolution, when the Episcopal Church was still the state religion in Virginia, he served as a vestryman (lay officer) for his local church. He spoke often of the value of religion in general, and he often accompanied his wife to Christian church services. However, there is no record of his ever becoming a communicant in any Christian church and he would regularly leave services before communion - with the other non-communicants. When Rev. Dr. James Abercrombie, rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia mentioned in a weekly sermon that those in elevated stations set an unhappy example by leaving at communion, Washington ceased attending at all on communion Sundays. Long after Washington died, asked about Washington's beliefs, Abercrombie replied: "Sir, Washington was a Deist."

Various prayers said to have been composed by him in his later life are highly edited. He did not ask for any clergy on his deathbed, though one was available. His funeral services were those of the Freemasons.

Washington was an early supporter of religious pluralism. In 1775 he ordered that his troops not burn the Pope in effigy on Guy Fawkes night. In 1790 he wrote to Jewish leaders that he envisioned a country "which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.... May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid." This letter was seen by the Jewish community as highly significant; for the first time in millennia, Jews would enjoy full human and political rights.

Link

[sgallan]

Outshined -

At least we (and others) are giving some history lessons.

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

No, if you'd read, it's been recognized that many of his "prayers" were altered after his death by well-meaning others.

His own quotes show no such leaning. Washington was a Deist. From the rector of the church Washington attended:

When Rev. Dr. James Abercrombie, rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia mentioned in a weekly sermon that those in elevated stations set an unhappy example by leaving at communion, Washington ceased attending at all on communion Sundays. Long after Washington died, asked about Washington's beliefs, Abercrombie replied: "Sir, Washington was a Deist."

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

Here is something interesting I was able to find about Washington's Prayer Book. This quote is from an analysis written by Franklin Steiner, titled "The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents". One of the revealing things that Steiner talks about here is the "Prayer Journal".

Washington must have been "powerful in prayer" if we are to believe two other stories told of his attempts to reach the "throne of grace." Some 30 years ago it was proclaimed that in his youth he composed a prayer book for his own use, containing a prayer for five days, beginning with Sunday and ending with Thursday. The manuscript of this prayer book was said to have been found among the contents of an old trunk. It was printed and facsimiles published. Clergymen read it from the altar, one of them saying it contained so much "spirituality" that he had to stop, as he could not control his emotions while reading it.

Yet, while this prayer book was vociferously proclaimed to have been written by Washington, there was not an iota of evidence that he ever had anything to do with it, or that it even ever belonged to him. A little investigation soon pricked the bubble. Worthington C. Ford, who had handled more of Washington's manuscripts than any other man except Washington himself, declared that the penmanship was not that of Washington. Rupert Hughes (Washington, vol. 1, p. 658) gives facsimile specimens of the handwriting in the prayer book side by side with known specimens of Washington's penmanship at the time the prayer book was supposed to have been written. A glance proves that they are not by the same hand.

Then in the prayer book manuscript all of the words are spelled correctly, while Washington was a notoriously poor speller. But the greatest blow it received was when the Smithsonian Institute refused to accept it as a genuine Washington relic. That Washington did not compose it was proved by Dr. W.A. Croffutt, a newspaper correspondent of the Capital, who traced the source of some of the prayers to an old prayer brook [book] in the Congressional Library printed, in the reign of James the First.

Even the Rev. W. Herbert Burk, rector of the Episcopal Church of Valley Forge, although a firm believer in Washington's religiosity, thus speaks of these prayers: "At present, the question is an open one, and its settlement will depend on the discovery of the originals, or upon the demonstration that they are the work of Washington."

I have no idea if the author is telling the truth, but I suppose if it is, his sources must be out there somewhere.

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

From Washington's secret diaries: Jesus who?

Okay, I made that up...

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Guest Taoist_Saint]

So, we each continue to quote sources to substantiate our own arguments. ;-)

Here's another of mine:

Said John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court, about Washington, "Without making ostentatious professions of religion, he was a sincere believer in the Christian faith, and a truly devout man."

(re: Faith of Our Founding Fathers)

None of us has proven that any of these quotes were false, so they might all be true.

Well it sounds like we have lots of sources that give conflicting quotes by Washington...so it can only end by admitting we don't know if he was Christian or Deist...or if he was both (at different points in his life)...or if he was just very confused about the nature of God.

I think it is best to look at the other founding fathers, and just assume Washington MIGHT have been Christian.

Then we will have a Constitution that was at least INFLUENCED by Christians and Deists, but not exclusively authored by either group.

Christian influence does not make Christianity the official religion of the United States any more than Deist influence makes Deism the official religion of the United States.

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

We could show you some of the many times he stated that religion did not belong in the government, but you wouldn't read them...

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....

"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

And not a single of those quotes said anything about Christianity and the Constitution...

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."

John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

I quote prophets.

And incorrectly so; none say Christianity is the basis of our Constitution...

As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....

"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

The prophets are correct, you just quote them wrong.

The truth is that:

"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

[Aristotle]

Edited by Aristotle

[Outshined]

You are certainly welcome to your opinion on that.

It is just that, of course. your opinion.