• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

America's Christian Heritage

Somerville said:
Nope. Some of the colonies were founded by various religious groups but damned few of them supported religious freedom for anyone who did not believe as those colonies founders demanded.
Click to expand...
Speaking from personal experience, of course. How old did you say you were, Somerville?
 
Dooble said:
Speaking from personal experience, of course. How old did you say you were, Somerville?
Click to expand...

Why would I need to "speak from personal experience"? We have the written records.

Ever heard of some guy named Roger Williams and his accomplishments?
 
Logicman said:
There most definitely had to be a significant Christian heritage and founding in America in the beginning, considering the efforts for the past 200 years of all the anti-god lawyers and groups who have been trying to eradicate any mention of God and Christianity from the public square.
Click to expand...

The God stuff that is being protested wasn't around at our founding.
 
Thorgasm said:
Now if you can post some links to anything in this link that lawyers have filed suit against.

While you are at it, tell us all when "under God" was inserted into the pledge of allegiance and "In God We Trust" was put on our currency.
Click to expand...

Your original argument was already shot down by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Will you first acknowledge you were wrong when you said, "The God stuff that is being protested wasn't around at our founding"?

Otherwise I'd be wasting my time entertaining further arguments from you.
 
Logicman said:
Your original argument was already shot down by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Will you first acknowledge you were wrong when you said, "The God stuff that is being protested wasn't around at our founding"?

Otherwise I'd be wasting my time entertaining further arguments from you.
Click to expand...

You said, "considering the efforts for the past 200 years of all the anti-god lawyers and groups who have been trying to eradicate any mention of God and Christianity from the public square."

Don't try to act like you have some high ground here when you aren't being honest. There haven't been 200 years on anti-god lawyers and groups trying to eradicate any mention of God in the public square. If there were, they would have been accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.

You can ignore my request for links to these 200 year old law suits and protests, but don't think you have won anything here.
 
Thorgasm said:
You said, "considering the efforts for the past 200 years of all the anti-god lawyers and groups who have been trying to eradicate any mention of God and Christianity from the public square."

Don't try to act like you have some high ground here when you aren't being honest. There haven't been 200 years on anti-god lawyers and groups trying to eradicate any mention of God in the public square. If there were, they would have been accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.

You can ignore my request for links to these 200 year old law suits and protests, but don't think you have won anything here.
Click to expand...

You didn't even have time to study the links I provided. So how can you be educated to go on arguing further?

And you also didn't bother to answer the question: Will you first acknowledge you were wrong when you said, "The God stuff that is being protested wasn't around at our founding"?

Answer the question?
 
Logicman said:
You didn't even have time to study the links I provided. So how can you be educated to go on arguing further?

And you also didn't bother to answer the question: Will you first acknowledge you were wrong when you said, "The God stuff that is being protested wasn't around at our founding"?

Answer the question?
Click to expand...

No, I will not acknowledge that I was wrong. I am not wrong. Point me to one thing in your link that has been protested. All the stuff in your link was from a time when people didn't dare speak out against it.
 
Thorgasm said:
No, I will not acknowledge that I was wrong. I am not wrong. Point me to one thing in your link that has been protested. All the stuff in your link was from a time when people didn't dare speak out against it.
Click to expand...

You are wrong, and I documented it, and unless I'm desperate I won't be wasting my time debating with you anymore. Bye-bye.
 
ernst barkmann said:
then it goes back to why do certain mindsets to assert that the founders were not Christians.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that claim smells like Strawman to me.

No one is denying that most of the US in the 18th Century were Christians (and some Jews), or that this had some influence on their political views.

The point is that the principles used to develop the US Constitution were not primarily derived from scripture. They were derived far more from Enlightenment philosophers (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and others), the existing political structures of Europe and the Colonies, the particular mindset of a pack of wealthy white men, the problems caused by the Articles of Confederation, and the compromises they struck to get out of Philadelphia before anyone realized what they were up to.
 
Somerville said:
Why would I need to "speak from personal experience"? We have the written records.

Ever heard of some guy named Roger Williams and his accomplishments?
Click to expand...
Yes, but where are your sources? Where's the link that supports what you said here:

"Some of the colonies were founded by various religious groups but damned few of them supported religious freedom for anyone who did not believe as those colonies founders demanded".

And please don't use Wikipedia, the dictionary anyone can edit. Use a credible source.
 
ernst barkmann said:
then it goes back to why do certain mindsets to assert that the founders were not Christians.
.
Click to expand...

Many weren't, as has been established. But what does it have to do with anything except the dominionists desire to impose their weird sect on rest of us?
 
Logicman said:
There most definitely had to be a significant Christian heritage and founding in America in the beginning, considering the efforts for the past 200 years of all the anti-god lawyers and groups who have been trying to eradicate any mention of God and Christianity from the public square.
Click to expand...

There is a Christian heritage in most western countries. And a Roman heritage, and a Hellenic heritage, and a Germanic heritage, and an Enlightenment heritage.

So clearly some bizarre dominionist agenda is at work in the OP. It's as silly as claiming Norway is a Christian nation, along with Ethiopia. What is it supposed to tell us?
 
Dooble said:
Yes, but where are your sources? Where's the link that supports what you said here:

"Some of the colonies were founded by various religious groups but damned few of them supported religious freedom for anyone who did not believe as those colonies founders demanded".

And please don't use Wikipedia, the dictionary anyone can edit. Use a credible source.
Click to expand...

God, Government and Roger Williams' Big Idea | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

Quakers fight for religious freedom in Puritan Massachusetts, 1656-1661 | Global Nonviolent Action Database

The Massachusetts Bay Colony of the New World was a Puritan theocratic state in the early 1650s. Puritan leaders did not have much tolerance for people of other religions, and as a result, the Puritan government often persecuted and banished religious outsiders who tried to enter and live in their Puritan towns. A fear was embedded in the Puritan society that if they started to admit outsiders, they would lose their political and religious control of the colony.
Click to expand...

from your Library of Congress link
Although they were victims of religious persecution in Europe, the Puritans supported the Old World theory that sanctioned it, the need for uniformity of religion in the state. Once in control in New England, they sought to break "the very neck of Schism and vile opinions." The "business" of the first settlers, a Puritan minister recalled in 1681, "was not Toleration, but [they] were professed enemies of it."
Click to expand...

Are those "credible sources"?
 
Visbek said:
Yeah, that claim smells like Strawman to me.

No one is denying that most of the US in the 18th Century were Christians (and some Jews), or that this had some influence on their political views.

The point is that the principles used to develop the US Constitution were not primarily derived from scripture. They were derived far more from Enlightenment philosophers (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and others), the existing political structures of Europe and the Colonies, the particular mindset of a pack of wealthy white men, the problems caused by the Articles of Confederation, and the compromises they struck to get out of Philadelphia before anyone realized what they were up to.
Click to expand...


you have two sides, one side wants to say most of the founders were not Christians, and another wants to say most were...........there you have the argument in question.

I did not make the claim that it did, the constitution is not a religious document...it was not meant to be.
 
head of joaquin said:
Many weren't, as has been established. But what does it have to do with anything except the dominionists desire to impose their weird sect on rest of us?
Click to expand...

you use the word many, ..how many is many?

there were some i cannot find, them making anything of religion in their life's, ..however i find that number to be a few and not many.
 
ernst barkmann said:
you have two sides, one side wants to say most of the founders were not Christians, and another wants to say most were...........there you have the argument in question.

I did not make the claim that it did, the constitution is not a religious document...it was not meant to be.
Click to expand...


It really comes down to a definition of "Christian". Though some like Jefferson called themselves Christian, few of our present day churches, in particular those promoting the idea of America's "Christian heritage" would accept those gentleman as being Christian. What a person says they are does not always fit the definition employed and understood by others.
 
Somerville said:
It really comes down to a definition of "Christian". Though some like Jefferson called themselves Christian, few of our present day churches, in particular those promoting the idea of America's "Christian heritage" would accept those gentleman as being Christian. What a person says they are does not always fit the definition employed and understood by others.
Click to expand...


who are those "gentlemen".............if you say the founders, then you are making the assertion again, that the founders were not Christians again........and we are going to go round and round again....

for one.... to be a christian, ......ones accepts the blood and body of Christ........thats what you have to do.....there is no magical, guideline to "everyday living"...that makes you a christian.

many people call themselves Christians, but dont always live by the "word".......by sinning....... however that does not make them less a christian, if they have accepted Jesus.

In 1800 when the seat of federal government moved from New York to Washington, DC, the Congress authorized the Capitol building to serve also as a church building. [The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1851), 6th Congress, 2nd Session, pg.797, December 4, 1800.]

Thomas Jefferson, attended worship services in the Capitol while president.
 
ernst barkmann said:
you use the word many, ..how many is many?

there were some i cannot find, them making anything of religion in their life's, ..however i find that number to be a few and not many.
Click to expand...

The founders of modern Germany, Russia and Ethiopia were predominantly Christian. So they're Christian nations too, using your logic.

What exactly is this supposed to tell us?
 
head of joaquin said:
The founders of modern Germany, Russia and Ethiopia were predominantly Christian. So they're Christian nations too, using your logic.

What exactly is this supposed to tell us?
Click to expand...

when I look up the founders backgrounds, what they said, what organizations they were part of, what church were they part of and cemetery and buried in that

it tells me a lot, of which faith is theirs.
 
ernst barkmann said:
who are those "gentlemen".............if you say the founders, then you are making the assertion again, that the founders were not Christians again........and we are going to go round and round again....

for one.... to be a christian, ......ones accepts the blood and body of Christ........thats what you have to do.....there is no magical, guideline to "everyday living"...that makes you a christian.

many people call themselves Christians, but dont always live by the "word".......by sinning....... however that does not make them less a christian, if they have accepted Jesus.

In 1800 when the seat of federal government moved from New York to Washington, DC, the Congress authorized the Capitol building to serve also as a church building. [The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1851), 6th Congress, 2nd Session, pg.797, December 4, 1800.]

Thomas Jefferson, attended worship services in the Capitol while president.
Click to expand...

George Washington would leave his place in a church when communion was served - you know, accepting "the body and blood of Christ" thing

Church services in the Capitol were much more of a social occasion than religious worship

The first forty years of Washington society: portrayed by the family letters ... - Margaret Bayard Smith - Google Books
pgs 13-14
The custom of preaching in the Hall of Representatives had not then been attempted, though after it was established Mr. Jefferson during his whole administration, was a most regular attendant. The seat he chose the first sabbath, and the adjoining one, which his private secretary occupied, were ever afterwards by the courtesy of the congregation, left for him and his secretary. I have called these Sunday assemblies in the capitol, a congregation, but the almost exclusive appropriation of that word to religious assemblies, prevents its being a descriptive term as applied in the present case, since the gay company who thronged the H. R. looked very little like a religious assembly. The occasion presented for display was not only a novel, but a favourable one for the youth, beauty and fashion of the city, Georgetown and environs. The members of Congress, gladly gave up their seats for such fair auditors, and either lounged in the lobbies, or round the fire places, or stood beside the ladies of their acquaintance. This sabbath day-resort became so fashionable, that the floor of the house offered insufficient space, the platform behind the Speaker’s chair, and every spot where a chair could be wedged in was crowded with ladies in their gayest costume and their attendant beaux and who led them to their seats with the same gallantry as is exhibited in a ball room. Smiles, nods, whispers, nay sometimes tittering marked their recognition of each other, and beguiled the tedium of the service. Often, when cold, a lady would leave her seat and led by her attending beau would make her way through the crowd to one of the fire-places where she could laugh and talk at her ease. One of the officers of the house, followed by his attendant with a great bag over his shoulder, precisely at 12 o’clock, would make his way through the hall to the depository of letters to put them in the mail-bag, which sometimes had a most ludicrous effect, and always diverted attention from the preacher. The musick was as little in union with devotional feelings, as the place.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom