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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (26771)	12/9/1998 7:36:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Bob, I'm not sure whether this is accident or evasion, but you appear to be responding to somebody else's post. The opinions I discussed were mine, not Jefferson's, and you don't seem to want to discuss them. Nonetheless: The government by placing any restriction on christianity at all has violated the true intentions of our founding fathers. Regardless of how many out of context quotes can be posted their true intentions were as I have stated here. Neither you nor I nor anyone else knows what their true intentions were. Since they aren't here to tell us, I think it would make sense to assume that they meant exactly what they said. The christian faith was not questioned in those times, it was assumed it was the one true religion. Is this a situation you think we should return to? I think it's good that we've made some progress toward respect and tolerance for other faiths since then. The government has imposed it's will over religion How so? Government is doing nothing to restrict Christians from practicing their faith. Government is not doing a great deal that it could do. Government has made no serious effort to tax churches, though it is certainly possible to argue that the accumulation of institutional wealth is in no way an essential function of religion. Certainly the exemption of religious professionals from paying personal income taxes is totally uncalled for. Christian TV networks broadcast openly partisan political content on a regular basis, in violation of their tax-free status, but government does little or nothing to restrain them. My beliefs on the issue of school prayer have now been posted to you twice without response; I don't think I'll bother doing it again. One point I will stress again is that Christianity forces Government to restrain it to some degree by requiring its members to prosletyze, a clear violation of the religious freedom of others. Your right to swing your beliefs around ends where my right to enjoy my beliefs in peace begins. What restriction has been placed on Christianity that has not been placed equally on all other religions? Steve

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (26771)	12/9/1998 10:28:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

>>>>>The government by placing any restriction on christianity at all has violated the true intentions of our founding fathers.<<<<< Bob, I am a little late coming to the discussion, but aren't you just talking about such things as no longer having public prayer in school? Maybe you live in a lily-white Protestant community, but where I live (Fairfax County, VA) there are so many different nationalities that I believe there are like 50 different languages spoken by school-age children in their homes. I can't tell you the number of religions, and will content myself with stating with assurance that Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish are not the only ones, by a long shot. How can all of these children's religions be accommodated during public prayer? E. keeps suggesting teaching religion as a social science, I can't think of any other way, unless you think that the tax-payer funded school system should impose observation of Christianity on all these non-Christian children, and I am sure you don't want that.

To: Sidney Reilly who wrote (26771)	12/10/1998 8:35:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

RE: true religious intentions of founders Your historical opinions appear to me to be very confused and often incorrect. The idea of separation of church and state was one of the key ideas of the Enlightenment, which many of the Founders accepted. There were few religious bigots among them. Washington may have been an Episcopal vestryman but ideologically he was a Mason, and Masonry was nearly always anti-clerical. Franklin was non-sectarian and known as a friend of the Jews, as of all other groups. Jefferson attempted early (1776) to disestablish the Church in Virginia, and was opposed to established religion as he was to every other form of tyranny over the mind of man. He had listed on his stone his authorship of the Declaration and the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty (and his founding of UVa) as his proudest achievements. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was promoted by Madison who also wanted to apply it to the States (in his proposed 14th amendment which was not accepted). Few wanted Congress to establish a National Church (since they realized there were regional differences, especially Congregational and Anglican)so none was actually proposed, but the existence of these state churches supported by the ruling classes made it politically inexpedient to forbid state establishment then. Of course, by the time the 14th Amendment was adopted (1868), all state churches had been disestablished with the rise of popular democracy and manhood suffrage, and the Supreme Court was later able to rule that the establishment and free exercise clauses applied to the states under the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th. Many of the Founders were nominal Christians, but many were actually deists (i.e. monotheists) and rejected (at least in petto) the divinity of Jesus (which I guess is required to be a Christian.) Nearly all of them believed in religious freedom, the legal equality of all sects. If a majority of them had preferred limitation of religious liberty to Christians, they could have enacted it, and I have little doubt that the mass of the people would have cared very much. I believe they were centuries ahead of their constituents, and very wise in avoiding restrictive religious rules that they could have easily adopted. Instead they adopted principles which in time would permit this country to become truly free in religious behavior and would forbid one group of people to impose their beliefs on others.