Take closer look at founders' views
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071105/OPINION02/711030388/1014/OPINION
November 9, 2007
Letters
Take closer look at founders' views
James Evans struck a chord in challenging the Iraq War. His views are
coherent, while his challengers rant about patriotically endorsing whatever
conflict we engage in and supporting our troops as if they were a football
team.
Now we are told Evans fails to understand our prohibition against
establishment of religion. ***** Brewbaker says the founding fathers merely
sought to avoid "a state church on the English model," not state-sponsored
Christianity.
I looked up what the fathers said. Jefferson touted a "wall of separation"
between church and state and was proud of drafting the Virginia Statute for
Religious Freedom.
Madison introduced the Bill of Rights before Congress. And as quoted in
President Bush's Religious Freedom Day proclamation of 2005, Washington
wrote, "The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states, of worshipping
Almighty God agreeably to their consciences, is not only among the choicest
of their blessings, but also of their rights."
Washington ordered his troops not to burn the pope in effigy and later
wrote to a synagogue that America "gives to bigotry no sanction."
Government-established Christianity would disrespect our Jewish, Muslim and
other non-Christian citizens. Nowhere did the fathers say we should
establish Christianity as long as it's not the Church of England.
Mr. Brewbaker cites the Northwest Ordinance as sponsoring Christianity. In
its preamble the ordinance expressed the goal of "extending the fundamental
principles of civil and religious liberty" and it begins with Article 1 "No
person ... shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or
religious sentiments."
Don Nolte
Montgomery
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You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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