jwgh | Flong flong flong

Someone who is, as far as I can tell, a complete stranger sent me and a bunch of other people (I think we have a mutual friend who himself occasionally sends messages to all of us) a nice little piece of flong.

I probably should have just deleted it, but instead I replied to all.

Very nice.
And we are in the Bible Belt.
Is Rhode Island really in the Bible Belt these days?

The argument in that email is very interesting. It begins by asking what the big deal is. Who cares if a public school has a kid pray before a football game or not? It's so unimportant, I'm going to write a 100-line diatribe about it! This paragraph in particular is remarkable:
Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us just to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying. God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well..........just sue me..
Yes, that's right, the courts are telling you you can't pray before eating and sleeping. That's EXACTLY what's going on. Give me a break.

If you want to worship your God in your own way, I don't think any reasonable person will criticize you for it. Getting the state to sponsor your religion is another matter altogether. Can people really not tell the difference?

I also like the phrase 'the silent majority'. Yeah, you never hear Christians talk about their faith or complaining about perceived threats to their faith ever. Legislation and lawsuits to have creationism taught in addition to, or instead of, evolution -- things like that NEVER happen. Christians are so quiet and reserved that if I put my hands over my ears their clamor might be reduced to a dull roar.

People say that this is a Christian nation based on Christian ideals, but I don't see it. Freedom of religion is not a Christian ideal. The right of habeas corpus is not derived from the Bible. These ideals (along with many other non-sectarian values and some less disreputable things like slavery) are the ideals this country is based on, and they are mostly humanist values, not specifically Christian ones. In principal all religions are respected equally by the U.S. government. It's unfortunate that that's not enough for some people.

-jwgh

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek

That's the funniest goddam thing I've seen all week.

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<cite>Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek</cite>

That's the funniest goddam thing I've seen all week.

<citeOur Bible tells us just to pray without ceasing.</cite>

The Bible also says prayer should be done indoors, out of public view (Matt. 6:5-6).

There is some hypocrisy and self-righteousnes here that makes one feel sick.

I am all depressed now after reading the dissenting judges' opinions in the Mass. gay marriage case. Sure, the narrow-minded asshats lost, but only by one vote. This country is in a sad state. Can we move to Canada ?

to the Founding Fathers, freedom to choose which Christian tradition to follow, where I mean "Christian" loosely enough to include the Deists and the Theists, who all felt free to draw on the stories of Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus in their own ways to define their particular God. In that sense, it was an ideal of about half of Christianity, the other half being busy sending Jesuits to Brasil and Elders to Siberia to pound the heresy out of the natives and each other. And, of course, even among the Protestant half, to many groups it was really only the ideal for people who freely chose to agree with them.

Also, "in principal" of what school?

Yeah, I made at least two major typoes in that message.

As far as what the founding fathers meant by freedom of religion, I would imagine that to some extent at least it would depend on which of them you asked, particularly since at least a couple of them were themselves atheists. There were certainly Jewish folk in America and as far as I know no post-bill of rights attempt was made to punish them for not being Christian.

Maybe I'll ask my sister and her husband (history professors both) about this since I very likely don't know what I'm talking about.

despite any words of motherhood about how wonderful it was we stopped Hitler, discrimination against Jews was still widespread in America up through the 1960s. Even those Jews that we rescued from Germany and Poland before the end of WWII weren't wanted here, so they were kept in secret camps to be sent home after the war. (Check out the musical Oswego--now retitled, I guess, Haven, the same as the book it came from--for a surprisingly sincere portrayal of this.) When my father first started with My Big Imployer, they had some of the longest standing policies of equal employment for women and blacks but would never hire a Jew. It really wasn't until after Khomeini's revolution that conservatives in this country became so solid and strident in their support for Israel--and I think plenty of them still silently include the middle word in "liberal Jewish media" even though they've mostly stopped saying it.

That's sure true. If you haven't seen it already, my sister and her husband did write back to me to provide some perspective on religious freedom in the U.S. that you might find interesting.

I happen to live right up the road from the oldest extant Jewish homestead (http://gomez.org/) in North America. True to form, though, I know next to nothing about it, and their webbage even suggests that everything I do know about Fred Goudy having lived there is WRONG!

Actually, according to most reasonable sources, this country was based on the principles set up by the Romans who may or may not have been practicing Christianity at the time. It was purposely set up by The Continental Congress to emulate the positions of the Roman Senators and to become the "New Rome". For further details see, "Founding Brothers" or the Letters of John Adams or Any of the many books on Thomas Jeffereson, or even the biographies on Abigail Adams who helped share her husband's vision of how the US should work.

Hey look, my American Studies major was good for SOMETHING after college!

Flong flong flong

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Of course, "freedom of religion" really meant,

Re: Of course, "freedom of religion" really meant,

I don't know about any anti-Jewish legislation, but,

Re: I don't know about any anti-Jewish legislation, but,

BTW

Founding Fathers