| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
11 Aug 2005 01:00:53 PM |
| Object: |
God, Caesar, and Historical Revisionism |
God, Caesar, and Historical Revisionism
By Karen Scott, Walt Pontynen, and Leigh Johnsen
http://www.libertyexpress.org/content/NL1102_2.html
[ excerpt
American philosopher George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana’s dictum could
easily be applied in the United States today, where many have forgotten the
story of how separation of church and state became one of the nation’s core
values.
Rewriting History
The problem arises with those who seek to revise the nation’s historical
record. The claim is made that the Founders never intended, in principle,
to disentangle or separate religion and government in the United States. In
fact, the concept is supposedly an invention of modern secularists,
humanists and atheists. The most current update extends this thesis,
depicting the concept entering U.S. law in response to anti-Catholic
bigotry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1
This strain of revisionism is wrong. It seeks to obscure the fact that the
concept of separation has been fully realized and appreciated in theory and
practice among Americans for centuries. It has often been referred to as
the “great American experiment.” Furthermore, it does serious injustice to
early American Christians who struggled to create a barrier between
government and religion in order to develop and guarantee freedom of
conscience.
To revisionists, the Founding Generation assumed that civil promotion of
Judeo-Christian values was necessary for the survival of the Republic.
Thus, the claim that the U.S. was intended to be a Christian nation, and
its Constitution a Christian document establishing a Christian basis for
the rule of law. Numerous citations from the Founding Fathers’ writings
regarding the value of religion in society are put forward as singular
evidence. However, other substantial evidence denying the alleged Christian
foundations of our Constitutional system tend to get overlooked.
[end excerpt]
]
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
