Merry Christmas to all SJI bloggers and readers.
In the abiding spirit of revolution embodied in the Declaration of Independence, our Founders created this country as a nation ruled by secular, Constitutional law, not religion and mythology, though the assault on this principle by theocrats is ongoing and relentless. Those who attempt to wield the Bible and the teachings of Christ as a weapon—from George W. Bush and Pat Robertson to the Catholic Church and the Texas Department of “Education”—for political and social control, to stifle intellectual debate or cover up the facts of science, do so under false pretenses. Jesus would be appalled.
This week, we celebrate the birth of the great philosopher whose teachings would make this nation a better place to live if those millions of us who profess to follow them really did live by them. Jesus was an idealist so I thought we might take the opportunity to reflect on a little bit of that idealism. I ask you to imagine what it would be like if this were truly a Christian nation today:
Poverty and the gap between rich and poor would disappear. Those with more than enough would give freely to those without.
There would be no war, acts of territorial aggression and offensive weapons, or reasons for any of them. We would not kill.
There would be no crime, prisons, death penalty or sophisticated personal weaponry. We would love our neighbors and not covet their property.
Fear would not be a motivation for any action. There would be no torture, “enhanced interrogation,” rendition, Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. We would do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Without borrowers, lenders and usury, there would be no credit crisis and people living way beyond their means.
There would be no commercial exploitation of the have nots for the profit of the haves.
There would be care for all instead of insurance for only those who can afford it.
I would like to live in a nation like that. Wouldn’t you?
Blogging gets the information out there. We have learned in Santa Clara that the legal firm working for Cedar Fair, also worked for the NHL and San Jose Sharks, and also worked with Lennar, who is running the rival stadium plan for San Francisco. Cedar Fair’s attorney, Ivor Samson failed to disclose that when he appeared before the Santa Clara City Council. I wonder why. With all of Chuck Reed’s faults, he does believe in disclosure, I will respect that.
“I would like to live in a nation like that. Wouldn’t you? “
No. I’d be bored senseless.
Besides, what would we watch on TV? Little house on the prearie and Leave it to Beaver?
Leave it to good old liberal Jack to ruin Christmas week with one of his stupid political rants.
So Christianity isn’t just about hating gay people?
Another example of the big lie that the founding fathers envisioned a secular government, as opposed to a non-sectarian government. Even the most casual reading of the foundational documents of the republic show that the founding fathers all saw a place for God in the public life of the country. They wisely, however, wanted to ensure that government didn’t favor one over another.
My dog is better than your god
5:
Quit spending my tax dollars on proselytizing your religion, you tax-and-spend theocrat! There’s a deficit!
Great points, Jack, but those of us who call ourselves Christians aren’t celebrating “a great philosopher” on par with Plato and “his teachings” but rather redemption from original sin by His Life, death, and resurrection.
I know, I know, “a technicality,” but important ones to those of us believers, anyway.
Also, I have no brief for George W., but the rabid hatred of him by his opposition is really quite something. Do you really think that people of his ilk are just hypocrites using religion when elitist political and social control is their ultimate aim? I’d submit that much of the far-right that is so demonized does believe strongly in Christ and “their God”—it’s their fervor to make everyone else believe and do as they do that is a problem. Their belief set isn’t just some ploy to rob retirees, subjugate women, and oppress minorities, and profiteer, though the actions of some of their brethren result in some of those outcomes. Those folks simply cannot be equated with people who blow up motorcades, delis, or skyscrapers, seeking violence without a directed outcome.
More directly to your imagining, all of the bads you note above involve CHOICES by people who are not simply passive agents or innocent victims of others.
And many, many of those things are not confined to our borders. We need the WORLD to change. So, “if this were truly a Christian nation today” (on the basis of behavior, regardless of religious beliefs per se), there would still be genocide in the Sudan, assassinations and mayhem in the Middle East, starvation in Africa, deforestation in South America, and that plastic garbage dump floating between here and Hawaii.
I, too, would like to see a better world and would humbly suggest that each of us, today and in the New Year, do just a little something to make the world a better place. Help a stranger change a tire, volunteer at a school, pick up a piece of litter on the street, donate to charity, or pray for someone who needs help if you cannot help them directly. This includes the President, even if you hate him.
If everyone did just a little bit more, imagine the Heaven on Earth we could have. Now we’re talking.
6 and 7, thanks for the well reasoned and thoughtful posts.
Well, I am not sure about toleration anymore. Look at Ivor Samson, the attorney for Cedar Fair. As Mayor of Lafayette, Samson was the overseer of the movement to eliminate crosses as Iraq War Memorials. This seems very intolerant to me.
Wow, Jack Van Zandt isn’t just an expert on school elections in Berryessa, even though he had good crib sheets from Jude Barry, Jack is also an expert on Christianity and theology, too! Fascinating.
Jack: revisionist history at its worst. Our Founding Fathers were decidedly Christian folk, and references to God are everywhere.
Or recent problems stem mainly from the imbalance between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in our Constitution.
“Render unto Caesar…” Remember who said that, Jack?
The world you decribe is not of this earth.
Oh, and by the way, I am a nonbeliever.
JohnMichael
You are incorrect.
The Declaration and the Constitution are products of the Enlightenment (the “Age of Reason”), not Christianity.
The word “God” does not appear in the Constitution and only once in the Declaration in a direct reference to “Nature”:
“…the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”
There is also “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” which makes no reference to said creator being a mythological being or anything in particular.
The word “God” appears only twice in the Federalist papers, both times by Madison in a very perfunctory way.
“Jesus,” “Christ,” and “Christianity” never appear in the Declaration or Constitution.
The Founding Fathers were not religious men. They were largely atheists and deists. The atheists believed in the controlling force of nature and the deists often implied or stated in their speeches and writing their belief in “God” as Nature. Read Paine, Franklin and Jefferson and you will find plenty of examples.
Franklin and Jefferson both expressed the view that the philosophical teachings of Jesus had been corrupted and misrepresented by a series of zealous religious lunatics ever since his death.
I don’t see the imbalance you mention between the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, which seem quite clear. The imbalance is in the minds of “believers” who don’t know the difference.
#13
Jack, there you go again. Confusing people with the facts.
The appearance of the word “God” in official government documents is not controlling, Jack. Nice lawyer-like argument, but it doesn’t pass muster. Even the Statue of Liberty, sent here decades after our founding as a nation, has numerous Christian references. “In God We Trust” remains a hallmark of the beliefs of this country.
Do I believe that this is a Christian country in the same way that Israel is a Jewish country, or that Iran is a Muslim country? Of course not.
Thankfully, we have separated government from religion, which is as it should be.
But it is absolutely undeniable that the US of A was founded on Christian principles with the majority belief in a Christian God. I do not share that belief, but I understand and accept that it remains the underpinning of this republic. And, I don’t have a problem with that, either; because many of the principles—uncluttered by the politics of organized religions—are words to live by.
I have no problem with Christian principles. My problem lies primarily with organized religion.
I accept some principles of many religions/philosphies; but I remain an unbeliever in anyone’s version of God as an entity that actually exists.
Are there folks in this country who would change our separation of church and state—also a phrase that appears nowhere in official government documents? Of course. Should they be resisted? Absolutely! We do no need theocracy.
But the history of this country—whether it’s in documents or not, notwithstanding—is DECIDEDLY and UNDENIABLY Christian in its beliefs/philosophy.
And just in case you missed it, I am a NONbeliever.
And the Establishment Clause has trumped the Free Exercise Clause in this country since Earl Warren became Chief Justice, if not before. The balance those two clauses attempted to make has been skewed by numerous court decisions.
But then, so has the balance between criminal defendants’ “rights” and the rights of the general public or, even worse, the rights of victims, which just don’t exist any longer in our criminal “justice” system.
And Prisoners’ “rights”. There’s an oxymoron. Beyond very basic human rights, what more should they have a right to expect? Jack, you should never have got me started.
Happy New Year!
JohnMichael
I didn’t miss the fact that you are a non-believer and not a fan of organized religion. I am in the same camp.
This is way too big a matter to discuss via blogging. However, I would like to point out that I am not making a “lawyerly” presentation as an advocate in #13, just stating a few facts. If my conclusions are different from yours, it’s entirely understandable. Nonetheless, we are on the same page with some of these issues and I am enjoying the discussion.
By the way “In God We Trust” is from the Civil War period and was made a national motto by Congress in 1956, in spite of the fact that we already had a much more appropriate one from 1782: E Pluribus Unum.
Happy New Year to you.
A Merry Christmas to all immediately followed by references to Abu Gharib and Guantanamo and revisionist history?
Just another day at SJI.
Jack, please provide the counterpunch URL that is the basis for today’s missive.
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
Patrick Henry
Upon which Christian principles was America founded?
Christianity is a religion of submission. Monarchies are founded on this; the people unquestioningly submit to the divine right of the king to rule in the name of God, from Whom he has received his power. This is the same as the way in which Christian men are to unquestioningly submit to God, and Christian women are to unquestioningly submit to men. When faced with the sheer inequality of this, the people are told to await justice in the afterlife.
America is a democratic republic in which the government receives its power from the consent of the governed. When looking upon inequalities and injustices that exist, they know that they can trust in the justice of their government to right the wrongs that they see here in this real world. I don’t see how that is related to Christianity at all.
#18
Let’s see the link to the 700 Club from where you draw these quotations from minor players in the American Revolution, then.
Why waste time citing quotations, when the real question is how our system could possibly based on a faith requiring total submission to God and patriarchs?
Paine:
It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion…[240 pages about how revealed religion is nonsense]…I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to good ones.
Now what did that accomplish?
#18
Thanks for bringing up Patrick Henry. The teachings of Jesus were obviouly important to the personal philosophies of Henry and other founders who saw them as enlightened principles for application to an individual’s actions as citizens.
Henry was also one of the prime movers behind the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution as well as the 1776 state constitution of Virginia which contains the following said to be written by him:
“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other. “
Of course, there was a wide variety of opinion on the subject among the Founders. One of Lincoln’s absolute favorites was Tom Paine whose “Age of Reason” has this line:
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
Hey Jack, I have to say your post is somewhat a downer.
We have so much to be thankful for and be positive about. You do have some of the facts right, although they are mostly the ones in favor or your arguement, even though It does not have much if any to do with San Jose.
Most Government meetings have prayer, a daily prayer in the US Capitol, swearing on the bible, “so help me God”, etc. The US Capitol was blessed by God with a lengthy Masonic ceremony when they laid the foundation.
My point is there has always been a Christian tradition in this country and why not just leave it at that instead of attacking it?
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.
Jeff Dennison