A Christian Nation?
by David Limbaugh
http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbau...p;comments=true


President Barack Obama said in Turkey: "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." Well, I don't know what "we" consider "ourselves," but I do think we ought to examine that statement and why Obama felt compelled to make it a part of his world apology tour.

Can you imagine the Saudi king coming to America and bragging that his nation is not Muslim? I assure you that he's not ashamed of the Islamic character of his nation, even though his nation is demonstrably less tolerant of other religions.

So is (or was) America a Christian nation? If by that we mean that America is a Christian theocracy, that our government should give Christians preferential treatment, or that members of other faiths aren't welcome, the answer is an emphatic "no."

But if we are talking about the ideals that led to the very colonization of this land, our declaration of independence from Britain, and the formulation of our Constitution, then the answer is certainly "yes."

In the words of professor John Eidsmoe, "If by the term Christian nation one means a nation that was founded on biblical values that were brought to the nation by mostly professing Christians, then in that sense the United States may truly be called a Christian nation."

Why does this matter? Simply because our dominant secular culture delights in demonizing Christianity, distorting its character, conflating it with less tolerant faiths, and associating it with all our societal woes. History revisionists have convinced many that we mainly owe our liberties to secular humanist ideals and those borrowed from the Greeks, Romans and the French Enlightenment.

To the contrary, our freedom tradition can be traced to our predominantly Judeo-Christian roots.

While secularists endlessly cite a few high-profile members of our Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, as being deists (which itself is even debatable), the overwhelming majority of both the Declaration of Independence's and Constitution's signers were strong, practicing Christians, as the late Dr. M.E. Bradford meticulously documented.

Some point to the so-called generic references to God in the declaration and Thomas Jefferson's authorship of its first draft as evidence that its influences were non-Christian. But as Dr. Gary Amos has noted, "The humanists and Enlightenment rationalists viewed the concept of inalienable rights with scorn."

As for deists, they believed in a "cosmic watchmaker," not a superintending God.

Plus Jefferson's draft was vetted by a congressional committee, which made more than 80 changes, removing some 500 words and adding two references to a "providential God." Jefferson denied he was speaking solely for himself in the draft, saying "it was intended to be an expression of the American mind."

Nor could the declaration's affirmation that "all Men are created equal … (and) are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" have come from the polytheistic Greeks or Romans, because "Creator" is singular. And, as Amos observed, the Greeks didn't believe the universe or man was created, but that it "emanated … from an impersonal divine force that permeates the universe. … There was no room in Greek philosophy or religion for the notion of endowment because creatures and divinity were never separated." The Greeks "could not conceive of rights that were god given." They "believed that rights were a product of society and state."

Sounds hauntingly familiar, doesn't it?

The concept of unalienable rights inheres in the Judeo-Christian precept that an all-loving God created man in his image, thus entitling him to dignity, freedom and rights that cannot be divested by the state.

Our constitutional framework of government can only be understood in the context of the Framers' predominantly Christian worldview. While they believed in man's dignity, they also believed in his depravity and that only if they imposed limitations on government would it be possible to establish a scheme of individual liberties.

Much of our Bill of Rights is biblically based, as well, and the Ten Commandments and further laws set out in the book of Exodus form the basis of our Western law. Indeed, English legal giants Sir William Blackstone and Sir Edward Coke both believed the common law was based on Scripture. Though we often hear there were no references to the God of the Bible in the Constitution, the document closes by citing the date with "in the Year of our Lord."

Our ruling class today is dominated by those who no longer believe that our rights are God-given or that our liberties depend on effective limitations on the state. They are so divorced from true history and American statecraft that they fail to see the irony in their dissociation with and apologies for our Judeo-Christian heritage, which is responsible for making this the freest and most prosperous nation on earth for people of all races, ethnicities and religions.

Oh My!...It's genetic...

The Left's Severe Case of Collective Projection by David Limbaugh

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=...hristian+nation

After WWII, it was a Judeo-Christian nation.

I think many of our laws (good and bad) are based on biblical principles.

I would say most people think that our country is a country of religious people, but I don't think Americans count anyone's religion out of the American fabric. Jefferson and Jackson wanted a separation of church and state, but they were Theists, and most people of that time, and this one, are Christians.

We may be a nation inspired by Christianity, but we are not a Christian nation.

A couple that we are acquainted with are in the process of getting a divorce. The reason the woman is suing for divorce is that before they were married he told her he was a Christian and a Republican
and it turns out he is neither one...I told her you couldn't be both a Christian and a Republican but
she didn't think I was funny.

FAITH UNDER FIRE
2 in 3 to be in church on Easter
Day 'continues today to be a source of great hope'
Posted: April 09, 2009
11:00 pm Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

In contradiction to a Newsweek proclamation regarding "The End of Christian America," a new poll reveals that nearly two in three Americans plan to be in church this Sunday, on Easter.

According to a new Knights of Columbus-Marist poll, of all Americans, 63 percent plan to observe the day by attending church services, and among Catholics, the percentage rose to 74 percent.

The poll also revealed 70 percent of Americans identified the day as the most important, or one of the most important religious holidays, on the calendar.


The poll also found 86 percent of Americans and 88 percent of Catholic Americans correctly identified Easter as the celebration of Jesus Christ's resurrection.

"This data shows very clearly that Americans and American Catholics have a very deep-rooted faith," said Carl Anderson, chief of the Knights organization. "In the celebration of Christ's resurrection on Easter, Americans reconnect to the faith that has been handed down to them over thousands of years, and continues today to be a source of great hope."

The poll also showed many Americans prepare for Easter by observing the solemn season of Lent, the traditional 40 days of penance and reflection leading up to Easter Sunday.

More than one-third of Americans and two in three Catholic Americans said they observe the special time.

The survey of 2,087 Americans and 521 Catholics was done by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion from March 24-31, and has a margin of error of 2.5 percent.

The organization posted full results at KOFC.org.

The recent Newsweek report trumpeted editor Jon Meacham's thrill that the country "is maturing beyond uptight Christian orthodoxy and beyond any Christian claim to insist on social conservatism."

Meacham argues on behalf of the "serious" nature of "liberal Christianity," the same position he took several weeks earlier when his magazine launched its "religious case" for homosexual marriage.

Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, disagreed with Meacham.

"Newsweek clearly see traditional Christianity as a pestilent obstacle to the kind of libertine America they want to create. How nice to pick the week of Easter to tell Americans that Jesus is on the wane," he wrote.

Meacham had cited the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey, which said the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation rose from 8 percent in 1990 to 15 percent today.

He also said the percentage of self-identified Christians fell from 86 to 76 percent.

Then he wrote, "While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing…"

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25632?l=english
Poll: Most Americans Celebrate Easter

63% Say They Will Attend Church Services


NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, APRIL 10, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Nearly two-thirds of Americans will be attending Church services this Easter, according to a poll released by the Knights of Columbus.

The fraternal organization released on Thursday the results of a poll conducted by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

Of those surveyed, 63% said they plan to observe Easter by attending a Church service. Among Catholics, 74% said they would attend a service.

Seventy percent identified Easter as the most important, or one of the most important, religious holidays. Of the practicing Catholics polled, 80% said the same.

The poll also found that 86% of Americans and 89% of Catholic Americans correctly identify Easter as the celebration of Christ's resurrection.

"This data shows very clearly that Americans and American Catholics have a very deep-rooted faith," said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. "In their the celebration of Christ's resurrection on Easter, Americans reconnect to the
faith that has been handed down to them over thousands of years, and continues today to be a source of great hope."

In addition, 34% said they prepared for Easter by observing the solemn season of Lent -- the traditional 40 days of penance and reflection
Leading up to Easter Sunday. Of the practicing Catholics polled, 77% said they observed Lent.

The survey polled 2,078 Americans and 521 Catholics from March 24 to March 31.

Gort posted this at EPU. I thought it may be relevant here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxGMqKCcN6A

Obama's 'Christian Nation'
Monte Kuligowski
Sad to say, Obama is correct in stating that we are no longer a Christian nation. More

I started to quote you and just say, "amen." But, come to think about it, we are actually a nation inspired by Deism, if you are referring to the religion practiced by Jefferson, et al.

However, if you are referring to the inspiration of present citizens, then Obama was exactly right.

I would like for Obama to have said, We aspire to be a humanitarian nation with a democratic
government...

POPE: We have drifted into a desert of godlessness...

Atheism: The religion of hatred and intolerance? PoliGazette - ‎ This Easter weekend we revisit the extraordinary ending of that story - the discovery by some women friends of Jesus that his tomb was empty. And we read of the reactions of the disciples - fearful, incredulous, but eventually believing that, ...

America's Not a Christian Nation—and I'ma Fat Black Lesbian Who ... Town Hall - by Doug Giles Last week Obama told the planet on his Dixie Chick America Sucks Euro-Tour that ol' bigheaded America is not and has never been a Christian nation. I believe he said that right after he bowed and curtsied to the Saudi King and told the ...

Arguing against Bill of Rights Dallas Morning News - ‎ President Barack Obama said, "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation...." and Mr. Dodson twists the words, saying that Obama said we are "not a nation comprised of people of religion." The First Amendment explicitly states that Congress cannot ...

Easter reminds us that Christianity's still here Boston Herald By Margery Eagan The cover of Newsweek this Easter week screeches in big red letters, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." In fact, Christianity remains strong in America. But it's waning, significantly. In 1990, 86 percent of us called ...

Atheism is a religious term, coined by religious people and popularized by various brands
of religion to elevate their particular brand...

Most of the persons that I know who do not use religious constructs in their thinking and
talking, do not like being labeled Atheist...they prefer person...

Of course they prefer to obscure the fact that most of them are atheists and don't believe in God,
and would like to see all references to any religious constructs removed from daily life.

Obamas attend Easter mass Politico - ‎ By NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON | 4/12/09 1:49 PM EDT Photo: AP The first family greeted parishioners and took communion at St. John's Episcopal Church, attending Easter Service at a historic church, a short walk from the White House. ...

This oversimplification of atheism would be better described as "anti-theism." Atheism doesn't automatically mean you would like to see all references to any religious constructs removed. Many world leaders are atheist who see religion as a convenient way of controlling the masses. Many atheistic warmongers see religion as a convenient way to divide an conquer.

Without proof, god can be anything we imagine it to be. Just because someone doesn't believe in your version of god, doesn't mean that they don't believe in the concept of god. If I imagine that George Burns or Alanis Morissette is God, I could call you an atheist for not believing the same.

PBS had The Secret Family of Jesus on.
British theologian Robert Beckford discusses his theory that family members of Jesus played an influential role in the shaping of early Christianity. Included: Beckford meets with Vatican experts.

I enjoyed this look back as it shows the truer character of Jesus and Christianity before Paul. The churches have picked and chosen from test through the years that the concept of compassion has completely been lost.

I think your description of a number of these world leaders is equally applicable to theistic regimes otherwise known as theocracies. And we see this particularly in the Middle East, including Israel.

Well we certainly were given testimony by numerous people over the centuries as to some semblance of God, not to mention
testimony of those who personally knew Jesus Christ. And then there are the biblical scriptures.

It wouldn't surprise me if the leaders of some of these theocracies are closet atheists and don't believe the $hit they are shoveling.

Many people have claimed to have seen Elvis alive in the past 3 decades since his death also.

Your comment is ludicrous. Elvis sightings are just a tad different from the New Testaments written by Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. But you probably haven't read those, or you wouldn't have put Elvis sightings in the same category.

Obama's 'Christian Nation'
By Monte Kuligowski

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/oba...n_nation_1.html

President Obama is taking a fair amount of heat from conservatives for his recent comments in Turkey in which, speaking for Americans, he said that, "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Back in June of 2006, Obama said,

"Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation - at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."

Obama made a similar statement in an email response to CBN's David Brody in 2007:

"Whatever we once were, we're no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."

We see that Obama believes we are no longer a Christian nation but an assortment of several mini nations. Obama believes America is a nation of citizens curiously "bound by ideals and a set of values," having no extrinsic anchor and objective source.
In full context of Obama's statements made in Turkey on April 7, the President did at least acknowledge the following:

I think that where -- where there's the most promise of building stronger U.S.-Turkish relations is in the recognition that Turkey and the United States can build a model partnership in which a predominantly Christian nation and a predominantly Muslim nation, a Western nation and a nation that straddles two continents -- that we can create a modern international community that is respectful, that is secure, that is prosperous; that there are not tensions, inevitable tensions, between cultures, which I think is extraordinarily important.

By referring to America as a "predominantly Christian nation" Obama is speaking in terms of population, not of the religion's influence on national morality, policy and law. America is populated primarily by Christians. In that sense Obama is correct.
Sad to say, Obama is also correct in stating that we are no longer a Christian nation. I argue that we are a country divided and that two principal nations currently coexist within the same country. Those two dueling nations have irreconcilable differences on the big questions of life and fundamentally consist of left versus right.
I understand that the word "nation" is used interchangeably with the word "country," but at its core nation means a group a people united by a common faith, morality, set of customs and traditions and language. In the fundamental meaning of nation, we once were a nation which operated from a system of Judeo-Christian morality -- that is, a common faith provided the basis for right and wrong.
That historical fact, Obama refuses to acknowledge. Obama's words, "Whatever we once were," seem to imply that what we once were is not important or perhaps that one cannot objectively determine what we once were. Either way, Obama's lack of basic understanding of American liberty is highlighted.
Additionally, Obama is inaccurate to say that currently we are a Muslim nation, a Hindu nation, a Buddhist nation, etc. Approximately 76 percent of adult Americans identify themselves as Christians. Historically, countries don't do well consisting as a collection of mini nations; unless, of course, a strongman rises up to provide forced order and peace.
America's shores once assimilated different cultures and religions into its existing "one nation under God." Today the "great melting pot" means that traditionalists get thrown into the boiling kettle of liberal diversity.
America today is a much more diverse place, of course, than it was yesterday. The problem, however, is not census numbers and diversity but that Christian morality has been systematically undermined in lower education, academia, media and government (most notably, by the U.S. Supreme Court) for several decades. The problem was never the traditional Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus -- they, for the most part, are happy to live in a country founded on faith in the Judeo-Christian God in which they may live freely, enjoying the practice of their particular religions.
Indeed, the basic morality of right and wrong of traditional religions is strikingly similar. The vast gulf in morality is between the far left and traditional Americans.
When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892 observed that "this is a Christian nation" it wasn't that people of other religions and nonbelievers were nonexistent in America at the time. The observation could be made because people of all beliefs largely respected the Judeo-Christian system and accepted it as society's basis for right and wrong and moral order. Indeed, back then, even an atheist would have acknowledged society's religious moral framework as the basis for social order.
Unfortunately, the country currently is irreconcilably divided and the division is not among traditional religions; but between leftwing non-traditionalists and traditionalists (predominately Christians, of course). Those, like Obama, who believe they can fundamentally transform America into a better place via their "smart policy," as Hillary would say, are the real problem and threat to American liberty. Every dictator, come to think of it, always believes he is smarter than his average countryman.
When a unifying faith dissipates, people often turn to believe in someone. And when a unifying faith in an external authority disappears, government necessarily becomes the highest authority. From there, well, you know what happens from there.
You will notice that Obama, throughout the economic catastrophe, as he calls it, has not led the country in a single prayer to God, asking for His kind assistance. In former times, even a Deist was not ashamed to petition God for help to America in time of need. Indeed, a certain Deist suggested to the Christian men gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 that prayers be offered at the Constitutional Convention -- and, surprise, he even quoted the Bible to support his request.
Obama doesn't need to appeal to some Christian God, after all, "We are a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." We wouldn't expect those of the Religious Left to literally believe that Almighty God is actually there, now would we?

In my opinion, this guy either has a serious personality disorder or is a dangerous paid lackey for the radical religious right

see....

christianity is fine in SMALL doses....

but dont waste your time trying to make sense of it

not unless you *like* going insane

- perry

Just because something is in print, doesn't make it true.



BTW. I didn't deny that Jesus existed or that multiple people thought they saw the same miracles.

I find your comments borderline sacriligious.But I don't disabuse you of your right to say them. Doesn't make them true either.

From the US Supreme Court:

Link to the Case Preview: http://supreme.justia.com/us/143/457/

Link to the Full Text of Case: http://supreme.justia.com/us/143/457/case.html


U.S. Supreme Court

Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892)
Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States

No. 143

Argued and submitted January 7, 1892

Decided February 29, 1892

143 U.S. 457

ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED

STATES FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

[i]Syllabus [/i]

The Act of February 26, 1880, "to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor in the United States, its Territories, and the District of Columbia," 23 Stat. 332, c. 164, does not apply to a contract between an alien, residing out of the United States, and a religious society incorporated under the laws of a state, whereby he engages to remove to the United States and to enter into the service of the society as its rector or minister.

THE case is stated in the opinion.

MR. JUSTICE BREWER delivered the opinion of the Court.

Plaintiff in error is a corporation duly organized and incorporated as a religious society under the laws of the State of New York. E. Walpole Warren was, prior to September,

Page 143 U. S. 458

1887, an alien residing in England. In that month the plaintiff in error made a contract with him by which he was to remove to the City of New York and enter into its service as rector and pastor, and in pursuance of such contract, Warren did so remove and enter upon such service. It is claimed by the United States that this contract on the part of the plaintiff in error was forbidden by 23 Stat. 332, c. 164, and an action was commenced to recover the penalty prescribed by that act. The circuit court held that the contract was within the prohibition of the statute, and rendered judgment accordingly, 36 F.3d 3, and the single question presented for our determination is whether it erred in that conclusion.

The first section describes the act forbidden, and is in these words:

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that from and after the passage of this act it shall be unlawful for any person, company, partnership, or corporation, in any manner whatsoever, to prepay the transportation, or in any way assist or encourage the importation or migration, of any alien or aliens, any foreigner or foreigners, into the United States, its territories, or the District of Columbia under contract or agreement, parol or special, express or implied, made previous to the importation or migration of such alien or aliens, foreigner or foreigners, to perform labor or service of any kind in the United States, its territories, or the District of Columbia."

It must be conceded that the act of the corporation is within the letter of this section, for the relation of rector to his church is one of service, and implies labor on the one side with compensation on the other. Not only are the general words "labor" and "service" both used, but also, as it were to guard against any narrow interpretation and emphasize a breadth of meaning, to them is added "of any kind," and further, as noticed by the circuit judge in his opinion, the fifth section, which makes specific exceptions, among them professional actors, artists, lecturers, singers, and domestic

Page 143 U. S. 459

servants, strengthens the idea that every other kind of labor and service was intended to be reached by the first section. While there is great force to this reasoning, we cannot think Congress intended to denounce with penalties a transaction like that in the present case. It is a familiar rule that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute because not within its spirit nor within the intention of its makers. This has been often asserted, and the reports are full of cases illustrating its application. This is not the substitution of the will of the judge for that of the legislator, for frequently words of general meaning are used in a statute, words broad enough to include an act in question, and yet a consideration of the whole legislation, or of the circumstances surrounding its enactment, or of the absurd results which follow from giving such broad meaning to the words, makes it unreasonable to believe that the legislator intended to include the particular act. As said in Plowden 205:

"From which cases it appears that the sages of the law heretofore have construed statutes quite contrary to the letter in some appearance, and those statutes which comprehend all things in the letter they have expounded to extend to but some things, and those which generally prohibit all people from doing such an act they have interpreted to permit some people to do it, and those which include every person in the letter they have adjudged to reach to some persons only, which expositions have always been founded upon the intent of the legislature, which they have collected sometimes by considering the cause and necessity of making the act, sometimes by comparing one part of the act with another, and sometimes by foreign circumstances."

In Margate Pier Co. v. Hannam, 3 B. & Ald. 266, 270, Abbott, C.J., quotes from Lord Coke as follows: "Acts of Parliament are to be so construed as no man that is innocent or free from injury or wrong be, by a literal construction, punished or endangered." In the case of State v. Clark, 29 N.J.Law 96, 98-99, it appeared that an act had been passed making it a misdemeanor to willfully break down a fence in the possession of another person. Clark was indicted

Page 143 U. S. 460

under that statute. The defense was that the act of breaking down the fence, though willful, was in the exercise of a legal right to go upon his own lands. The trial court rejected the testimony offered to sustain the defense, and the supreme court held that this ruling was error. In its opinion, the court used this language:

"The act of 1855, in terms, makes the willful opening, breaking down, or injuring of any fences belonging to or in the possession of any other person a misdemeanor. In what sense is the term 'willful' used? In common parlance, 'willful' is used in the sense of 'intentional,' as distinguished from 'accidental' or 'involuntary.' Whatever one does intentionally, he does willfully. Is it used in that sense in this act? Did the legislature intend to make the intentional opening of a fence for the purpose of going upon the land of another indictable if done by permission or for a lawful purpose? . . . We cannot suppose such to have been the actual intent. To adopt such a construction would put a stop to the ordinary business of life. The language of the act, if construed literally, evidently leads to an absurd result. If a literal construction of the words of a statute be absurd, the act must be so construed as to avoid the absurdity. The court must restrain the words. The object designed to be reached by the act must limit and control the literal import of the terms and phrases employed."

In @ 74 U. S. 486, the defendants were indicted for the violation of an act of Congress providing

"that if any person shall knowingly and willfully obstruct or retard the passage of the mail, or of any driver or carrier, or of any horse or carriage carrying the same, he shall, upon conviction, for every such offense, pay a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars."

The specific charge was that the defendants knowingly and willfully retarded the passage of one Farris, a carrier of the mail, while engaged in the performance of his duty, and also in like manner retarded the steamboat General Buell, at that time engaged in carrying the mail. To this indictment the defendants pleaded specially that Farris had been indicted for murder by a court of competent authority in Kentucky; that a bench-warrant had been issued and

Page 143 U. S. 461

placed in the hands of the defendant Kirby, the sheriff of the county, commanding him to arrest Farris and bring him before the court to answer to the indictment, and that, in obedience to this warrant, he and the other defendants, as his posse, entered upon the steamboat General Buell and arrested Farris, and used only such force as was necessary to accomplish that arrest. The question as to the sufficiency of this plea was certified to this Court, and it was held that the arrest of Farris upon the warrant from the state court was not an obstruction of the mail or the retarding of the passage of a carrier of the mail within the meaning of the act. In its opinion, the Court says:

"All laws should receive a sensible construction. General terms should be so limited in their application as not to lead to injustice, oppression, or an absurd consequence. It will always therefore be presumed that the legislature intended exceptions to its language which would avoid results of this character. The reason of the law in such cases should prevail over its letter. The common sense of man approves the judgment mentioned by Puffendorf, that the Bolognian law which enacted 'that whoever drew blood in the streets should be punished with the utmost severity' did not extend to the surgeon who opened the vein of a person that fell down in the street in a fit. The same common sense accepts the ruling, cited by Plowden, that the statute of 1st Edw. II which enacts that a prisoner who breaks prison shall be guilty of felony, does not extend to a prisoner who breaks out when the prison is on fire, 'for he is not to be hanged because he would not stay to be burnt.' And we think that a like common sense will sanction the ruling we make, that the act of Congress which punishes the obstruction or retarding of the passage of the mail, or of its carrier, does not apply to a case of temporary detention of the mail caused by the arrest of the carrier upon an indictment for murder."

The following cases may also be cited: Henry v. Tilson, 17 Vt. 479; Ryegate v. Wardsboro, 30 Vt. 743; Ex Parte Ellis, 11 Cal. 220; Ingraham v. Speed, 30 Miss. 410; Jackson v. Collins, 3 Cowen 89; People v. Insurance Company 15 Johns. 358; Burch v. Newbury, 10 N.Y. 374; People v.

Page 143 U. S. 462

Commissioners of Taxes, 95 N.Y. 554, 558; People v. Lacombe, 99 N.Y. 43, 49; Canal Co. v. Railroad Co., 4 G. & J. 152; Osgood v. Breed, 12 Mass. 525, 530; Wilbur v. Crane, 13 Pick. 284; Oates v. National Bank, 100 U. S. 239.

Among other things which may be considered in determining the intent of the legislature is the title of the act. We do not mean that it may be used to add to or take from the body of the statute, @ 72 U. S. 386, Chief Justice Marshall said:

"On the influence which the title ought to have in construing the enacting clauses much has been said, and yet it is not easy to discern the point of difference between the opposing counsel in this respect. Neither party contends that the title of an act can control plain words in the body of the statute, and neither denies that, taken with other parts, it may assist in removing ambiguities. Where the intent is plain, nothing is left to construction. Where the mind labors to discover the design of the legislature, it seizes everything from which aid can be derived, and in such case the title claims a degree of notice, and will have its due share of consideration."

And in the case of @ 16 U. S. 631, the same judge applied the doctrine in this way:

"The words of the section are in terms of unlimited extent. The words 'any person or persons' are broad enough to comprehend every human being. But general words must not only be limited to cases within the jurisdiction of the state, but also to those objects to which the legislature intended to apply them. Did the legislature intend to apply these words to the subjects of a foreign power, who in a foreign ship may commit murder or robbery on the high seas? The title of an act cannot control its words, but may furnish some aid in showing what was in the mind of the legislature. The title of this act is 'An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States.' It would seem that offenses against the United States, not offenses against the human race, were the crimes which the legislature intended by this law to punish. "

Page 143 U. S. 463

It will be seen that words as general as those used in the first section of this act were by that decision limited, and the intent of Congress with respect to the act was gathered partially at least, from its title. Now the title of this act is

"An act to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor in the United States, its territories, and the District of Columbia."

Obviously the thought expressed in this reaches only to the work of the manual laborer, as distinguished from that of the professional man. No one reading such a title would suppose that Congress had in its mind any purpose of staying the coming into this country of ministers of the gospel, or, indeed, of any class whose toil is that of the brain. The common understanding of the terms "labor" and "laborers" does not include preaching and preachers, and it is to be assumed that words and phrases are used in their ordinary meaning. So whatever of light is thrown upon the statute by the language of the title indicates an exclusion from its penal provisions of all contracts for the employment of ministers, rectors, and pastors.

Again, another guide to the meaning of a statute is found in the evil which it is designed to remedy, and for this the court properly looks at contemporaneous events, the situation as it existed, and as it was pressed upon the attention of the legislative body. United States v. Union Pacific Railroad, 91 U. S. 72, 91 U. S. 79. The situation which called for this statute was briefly but fully stated by MR. JUSTICE BROWN when, as district judge, he decided the case of United States v. Craig, 28 F.7d 5, 798:

"The motives and history of the act are matters of common knowledge. It had become the practice for large capitalists in this country to contract with their agents abroad for the shipment of great numbers of an ignorant and servile class of foreign laborers, under contracts by which the employer agreed, upon the one hand, to prepay their passage, while, upon the other hand, the laborers agreed to work after their arrival for a certain time at a low rate of wages. The effect of this was to break down the labor market and to reduce other laborers engaged in like occupations to the level

Page 143 U. S. 464

of the assisted immigrant. The evil finally became so flagrant that an appeal was made to Congress for relief by the passage of the act in question, the design of which was to raise the standard of foreign immigrants and to discountenance the migration of those who had not sufficient means in their own hands, or those of their friends, to pay their passage."

It appears also from the petitions and in the testimony presented before the committees of Congress that it was this cheap, unskilled labor which was making the trouble, and the influx of which Congress sought to prevent. It was never suggested that we had in this country a surplus of brain toilers, and least of all that the market for the services of Christian ministers was depressed by foreign competition. Those were matters to which the attention of Congress or of the people was not directed. So far, then, as the evil which was sought to be remedied interprets the statute, it also guides to an exclusion of this contract from the penalties of the act.

A singular circumstance throwing light upon the intent of Congress is found in this extract from the report of the Senate committee on education and labor recommending the passage of the bill:

"The general facts and considerations which induce the committee to recommend the passage of this bill are set forth in the report of the committee of the house. The committee report the bill back without amendment, although there are certain features thereof which might well be changed or modified in the hope that the bill may not fail of passage during the present session. Especially would the committee have otherwise recommended amendments, substituting for the expression, 'labor and service,' whenever it occurs in the body of the bill, the words 'manual labor' or 'manual service,' as sufficiently broad to accomplish the purposes of the bill, and that such amendments would remove objections which a sharp and perhaps unfriendly criticism may urge to the proposed legislation. The committee, however, believing that the bill in its present form will be construed as including only those whose labor or service is manual in character, and being very desirous that the bill become a law before the adjournment, have reported the bill without

Page 143 U. S. 465

change."

P. 6059, Congressional Record, 48th Cong. And referring back to the report of the committee of the house, there appears this language:

"It seeks to restrain and prohibit the immigration or importation of laborers who would have never seen our shores but for the inducements and allurements of men whose only object is to obtain labor at the lowest possible rate, regardless of the social and material wellbeing of our own citizens, and regardless of the evil consequences which result to American laborers from such immigration. This class of immigrants care nothing about our institutions, and in many instances never even heard of them. They are men whose passage is paid by the importers. They come here under contract to labor for a certain number of years. They are ignorant of our social condition, and, that they may remain so, they are isolated and prevented from coming into contact with Americans. They are generally from the lowest social stratum, and live upon the coarsest food, and in hovels of a character before unknown to American workmen. They, as a rule, do not become citizens, and are certainly not a desirable acquisition to the body politic. The inevitable tendency of their presence among us is to degrade American labor and to reduce it to the level of the imported pauper labor."

Page 5359, Congressional Record, 48th Congress.

We find, therefore, that the title of the act, the evil which was intended to be remedied, the circumstances surrounding the appeal to Congress, the reports of the committee of each house, all concur in affirming that the intent of Congress was simply to stay the influx of this cheap unskilled labor.

But, beyond all these matters, no purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation. The commission to Christopher Columbus, prior to his sail westward, is from "Ferdinand and Isabella, by the grace of God, King and Queen of Castile," etc., and recites that "it is hoped that by God's assistance some of the continents and islands in the

Page 143 U. S. 466

ocean will be discovered," etc. The first colonial grant, that made to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, was from "Elizabeth, by the grace of God, of England, Fraunce and Ireland, Queene, defender of the faith," etc., and the grant authorizing him to enact statutes of the government of the proposed colony provided that "they be not against the true Christian faith nowe professed in the Church of England." The first charter of Virginia, granted by King James I in 1606, after reciting the application of certain parties for a charter, commenced the grant in these words:

"We, greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Desires for the Furtherance of so noble a Work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet government; DO, by these our Letters-Patents, graciously accept of, and agree to, their humble and well intended Desires."

Language of similar import may be found in the subsequent charters of that colony, from the same king, in 1609 and 1611, and the same is true of the various charters granted to the other colonies. In language more or less emphatic is the establishment of the Christian religion declared to be one of the purposes of the grant. The celebrated compact made by the pilgrims in the Mayflower, 1620, recites:

"Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid."

The fundamental orders of Connecticut, under which a provisional government was instituted in 1638-39, commence with this declaration:

"Forasmuch as it hath pleased the Allmighty God by the wise disposition of his diuyne pruidence

Page 143 U. S. 467

so to Order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and vppon the River of Conectecotte and the Lands thereunto adioyneing; And well knowing where a people are gathered togather the word of God requires that to mayntayne the peace and vnion of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Gouerment established according to God, to order and dispose of the affayres of the people at all seasons as occation shall require; doe therefore assotiate and conioyne our selues to be as one Publike state or Comonwelth, and doe, for our selues and our Successors and such as shall be adioyned to vs att any tyme hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation togather, to mayntayne and presearue the liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus weh we now prfesse, as also the disciplyne of the Churches, weh according to the truth of the said gospell is now practiced amongst vs."

In the charter of privileges granted by William Penn to the province of Pennsylvania, in 1701, it is recited:

"Because no People can be truly happy, though under the greatest Enjoyment of Civil Liberties, if abridged of the Freedom of their Consciences, as to their Religious Profession and Worship; And Almighty God being the only Lord of Conscience, Father of Lights and Spirits, and the Author as well as Object of all divine Knowledge, Faith, and Worship, who only doth enlighten the Minds, and persuade and convince the Understandings of People, I do hereby grant and declare,"

etc.

Coming nearer to the present time, the declaration of independence recognizes the presence of the Divine in human affairs in these words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that thet are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. . . . We therefore the Representatives of the united states of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name and by Authority of the good these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare,"

etc.;

"And for the

Page 143 U. S. 468

support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

If we examine the constitutions of the various states, we find in them a constant recognition of religious obligations. Every Constitution of every one of the forty-four states contains language which, either directly or by clear implication, recognizes a profound reverence for religion, and an assumption that its influence in all human affairs is essential to the wellbeing of the community. This recognition may be in the preamble, such as is found in the Constitution of Illinois, 1870:

"We, the people of the State of Illinois, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political, and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations,"

etc.

It may be only in the familiar requisition that all officers shall take an oath closing with the declaration, "so help me God." It may be in clauses like that of the Constitution of Indiana, 1816, Art. XI, section 4: "The manner of administering an oath or affirmation shall be such as is most consistent with the conscience of the deponent, and shall be esteemed the most solemn appeal to God." Or in provisions such as are found in Articles 36 and 37 of the declaration of rights of the Constitution of Maryland, 1867:

"That, as it is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to Him, all persons are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty, wherefore no person ought, by any law, to be molested in his person or estate on account of his religious persuasion or profession, or for his religious practice, unless, under the color of religion, he shall disturb the good order, peace, or safety of the state, or shall infringe the laws of morality, or injure others in their natural, civil, or religious rights; nor ought any person to be compelled to frequent or maintain or contribute, unless on contract, to maintain any place of worship or any ministry; nor shall any person, otherwise competent, be deemed incompetent as a witness or juror on account of his religious belief, provided he

Page 143 U. S. 469

believes in the existence of God, and that, under his dispensation, such person will be held morally accountable for his acts, and be rewarded or punished therefor, either in this world or the world to come. That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this state, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this constitution."

Or like that in Articles 2 and 3 of part 1st of the Constitution of Massachusetts, 1780:

"It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. . . . As the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God and of public instructions in piety, religion, and morality, therefore, to promote their happiness, and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic or religious societies to make suitable provision at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily."

Or, as in sections 5 and 14 of Article 7 of the Constitution of Mississippi, 1832:

"No person who denies the being of a God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state. . . . Religion morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government, the preservation of liberty, and the happiness of mankind, schools, and the means of education, shall forever be encouraged in this state."

Or by Article 22 of the Constitution of Delaware, (1776), which required all officers, besides an oath of allegiance, to make and subscribe the following declaration:

"I, A. B., do profess

Page 143 U. S. 470

faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore, and I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."

Even the Constitution of the United States, which is supposed to have little touch upon the private life of the individual, contains in the First Amendment a declaration common to the constitutions of all the states, as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," etc., and also provides in Article I, Section 7, a provision common to many constitutions, that the executive shall have ten days (Sundays excepted) within which to determine whether he will approve or veto a bill.

There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons. They are organic utterances. They speak the voice of the entire people. While, because of a general recognition of this truth, the question has seldom been presented to the courts, yet we find that in Updegraph v. Commonwealth, 11 S. & R. 394, 400, it was decided that

"Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania; . . . not Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men."

And in People v. Ruggles, 8 Johns. 290, 294-295, Chancellor Kent, the great commentator on American law, speaking as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, said:

"The people of this state, in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity as the rule of their faith and practice, and to scandalize the author of these doctrines is not only, in a religious point of view, extremely impious, but, even in respect to the obligations due to society, is a gross violation of decency and good order. . . . The free, equal, and undisturbed enjoyment of religious opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussions on any religious

Page 143 U. S. 471

subject, is granted and secured; but to revile, with malicious and blasphemous contempt, the religion professed by almost the whole community is an abuse of that right. Nor are we bound by any expressions in the Constitution, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at all, or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Mahomet or of the Grand Lama, and for this plain reason, that the case assumes that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors."

And in the famous case of @ 43 U. S. 198, this Court, while sustaining the will of Mr. Girard, with its provision for the creation of a college into which no minister should be permitted to enter, observed: "It is also said, and truly, that the Christian religion is a part of the common law of Pennsylvania."

If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find every where a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, "In the name of God, amen;" the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing every where under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation. In the face of all these, shall it be believed that a Congress of the United States intended to make it a misdemeanor for a church of this country to contract for the services of a Christian minister residing in another nation?

Page 143 U. S. 472

Suppose, in the Congress that passed this act, some member had offered a bill which in terms declared that if any Roman Catholic church in this country should contract with Cardinal Manning to come to this country and enter into its service as pastor and priest, or any Episcopal church should enter into a like contract with Canon Farrar, or any Baptist church should make similar arrangements with Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, or any Jewish synagogue with some eminent rabbi, such contract should be adjudged unlawful and void, and the church making it be subject to prosecution and punishment. Can it be believed that it would have received a minute of approving thought or a single vote? Yet it is contended that such was, in effect, the meaning of this statute. The construction invoked cannot be accepted as correct. It is a case where there was presented a definite evil, in view of which the legislature used general terms with the purpose of reaching all phases of that evil, and thereafter, unexpectedly, it is developed that the general language thus employed is broad enough to reach cases and acts which the whole history and life of the country affirm could not have been intentionally legislated against. It is the duty of the courts under those circumstances to say that, however broad the language of the statute may be, the act, although within the letter, is not within the intention of the legislature, and therefore cannot be within the statute.

The judgment will be reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.

PUBLIC CITIZEN V. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 491 US 440 (1989) - ...
... is its lengthy review of the "mass of organic utterances" establishing that "this
is a Christian nation," and which were taken to prove that it could not. ...
supreme.justia.com/us/491/440/case.html - 101k - Cached

VAN ORDEN v. PERRY, in his official capacity as GOVERNOR OF ...
... accepted the idea that America was not just a religious nation, but "a Christian
nation." Church of Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 US 457, 471 (1892). 30. ...
supreme.justia.com/us/545/03-1500/case.html - 101k - Cached

LYNCH V. DONNELLY, 465 US 668 (1984) -- US Supreme Court ...
... ed.), and in the language "One nation under God," as part of the ... Resurrection, among
many others with explicit Christian themes and messages. [Footnote 4] The ...
supreme.justia.com/us/465/668/case.html - 101k - Cached

Almost Every Elite Institution Has Failed Us
America's Cultural Bear Market ]
By SAM SMITH

Cultures rise and fall like the stock market, only it takes longer and no one has come up with a really good index to tell you what's happening. My guess is that American culture has been in a bear market since sometime around 1980, with the fiscal bear market only catching up to the larger reality in the last year or so.

These days you can clearly sense the cultural collapse just by watching our inability to deal with the fiscal one. To be sure, our leaders in politics, academia and the media are determined and decisive but then so are a lot of inmates in mental institutions. What's lacking is logic, pragmatism, imagination, and common sense. Instead, they toss out trillions like confetti and call it policy.

And it's been going on a lot longer the current crisis. For example, one of the reasons we got into this mess and can't get out is because we've turned so much of life over to lawyers and MBAs. Practical business people (as opposed to marketers parading as such) seem non-existent in Washington, wise economists are ignored and the simple lessons of history aren't even considered.

Further, our leaders seem tone deaf. There is little consciousness that to get the economy moving, people at every level have to feel it's moving. Things have to happen and they have to be visible. Like new buildings, new businesses, new jobs.

There's a lot of talk about FDR but Roosevelt did it differently. He didn't use a banker or an MBA to get things rolling; he actually used a social worker, Harry Hopkins, who created more new jobs in four months than Obama promises to create (or "save") by 2011.

The Works Progress Administration built or repaired 103 golf courses, 1,000 airports, 2,500 hospitals, 2,500 sports stadiums, 3,900 schools, 8,192 parks, 12,800 playgrounds, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, and 651,087 of highways and roads.

Nothing like that is even contemplated this time around.

Obama, however, is not the cause of the problem; he is merely another product of it. He is just the head guy in a society that has lost the ability to get things done or fixed.

I once wrote a book called The Great American Political Repair Manual. While the title was still under discussion I got a call from my editor who said a couple of her colleagues had problems with it. One thought that because of the word "repair" it might be put in the automobile section of the bookstores. The other said that "repair" sounded too much like work. I replied, "Oh yeah, I forgot. You folks in Manhattan don't repair anything. You just call the super."

The problem today - 12 years later - is that there is no super to call to repair America.

There are two major alternative prognoses for such a time. One is that the stock market analogy is correct and we will indeed rise from our fall. The other is that it's actually much worse: that we are in a state of cultural dysevolution and America will never again be what it once was.

The arguments for the first prognosis include not only the history of past fiscal crises but the similarity between the time in which we live and those eras that historians call "great awakenings," times of obsession with religion over reality that were followed by things like the American Revolution, the abolition movement, and the progressive politics of the last century.

There seems to be a yin and yang to this: our politicians fail us and so we turn to God, forgetting the part about rendering unto Caesar that which is his business. After awhile, say like right now, it becomes apparent that God isn't going to keep your job for you or pay your cable bill. So there's a drift back to politics.

For example, the past few American decades have been run in part on the premise that gay marriage and abortion are more important than pensions, healthcare or jobs - and that so-called family values, as defined by a bevy of self-appointed priests and pols, are more important that home values.

The fiscal crisis and other reminders of reality have already done a good job of challenging all that. The gay marriage dispute has taken a major turnabout, thanks to some judges and the Vermont legislature. The Reverends Rick Warren and Reverend Jeremiah Wright have both proved more of a liability to Barack Obama than a blessing. The percent of youth in Canada, where it's easier to be honest about such things, claiming no faith at all has risen from 12% in 1984 to 32% today. And a new Rasmussen Poll finds that those Americans under 30 favor capitalism over socialism by only 37% to 33%.

Our president and supposed agent for change reflects none of such changes, but, as in the stock market, it's often the small cap companies that lead the way. As noted here during the campaign, Obama could just be a reverse Carter: instead of paving the way for the rightwing revolution that almost destroyed us, he could be the transition to something much better.

That's the cheery prognosis. On the other hand, what has happened may be permanent just as with the ancient Greeks or the Mayans. Bear in mind that humans are the only species that, with malice aforethought, ignore, disable or destroy the advantages of biological evolution. Thus we have moved from Gutenberg presses to text messages, from Bach to American Idol, and from weapons capable of killing only one at time to those that can explode the whole world. We have moved from survival of the fittest to survival of the Twitterist, and from dependence on DNA to dependence on MBAs.

There is no index, or even scientific theory, to plot the costs of such a course, but if the current crises of economics, ecology and culture are reasonable indicators, it makes biological determinism look pretty good and certainly an improvement over the advice of Tim Geithner, Tom Friedman, Glenn Beck or the Washington Post.

In fact, almost every elite institution - politics, academia, think tanks, the media - has failed us. These institutions have destroyed our national environment, constitution, integrity, reputation and communities.

To reverse what is happening, we must create strong alternative ideas and hardy alternative institutions and communities, a counter culture that rejects the myths of Washington and Wall Street just as, in the 1960s, a generation put the establishment on the defensive or in the closet.

This won't happen easily. The establishment has become far more skillful at defending its turf - using everything from fake town meetings to greater illegal spying. But there's another even more discouraging problem: the acceptance of helplessness by so many of those one might, in other times, have been expected to lead the rebellion against the catatonic confederacy of those in control.

A particularly painful example is the support of the Af-Pak war by those who still boast of their liberalism. This is a war - after Obama adds his most recent announced troops - that will bring us to the same status as we were with Vietnam in mid 1965 when a visible anti-war movement was already underway. Why such silence now? Are liberals on their way to extinction, too?

In any case, we need to act, but independent of those responsible for the mess, those exculpating them, those offering remedies that are mere manipulated shadows of the failure, and those engaged in misleading or misguided organizing on their behalf even if with purportedly noble intent.

There is no salvation to be found in the Democratic Party, in Obama or in more ranting about how bad Rush Limbaugh is. We need a loud and clear agenda - with things like single payer, no more imperial wars, public campaign financing and an economic policy that helps real people and not just bankers and hedge fund hustlers. We need to be at odds with both the criminally egregious and their ineffective or unintentional enablers.

The collapse of American culture was an inside job. Its cure is to be found on the outside, in a counter culture that is clear and worthy in its goals, eclectic in its alliances, and which builds community, recovers integrity and helps us to sing again. If we can't save our culture, we can at least create a new one.

Sam Smith is the editor of the Progressive Review, where this column originally appeared.

Resurrecting Our Nation
Posted by John Zmirak on April 12, 2009
As Christians around the world wait by the tomb, reenacting the vigil of the Blessed Virgin and the Apostles, …
[Read More]

Humanity must use weapons of truth, mercy to end conflict, says pope

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Christ's resurrection is not a myth or fairy tale; it is the one and only event that has destroyed the root of evil and can fill the emptiness in people's hearts, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Easter message.

But Christ still wants humanity to help affirm his victory by using his weapons of justice, truth, mercy and love to end the suffering in Africa, build peace in the Holy Land, and combat hunger and poverty worldwide, he said April 12 in his message "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world).

"Africa suffers disproportionately from the cruel and unending conflicts, often forgotten, that are causing so much bloodshed and destruction in several of her nations," and increasing numbers of Africans fall prey to hunger, poverty and disease, the pope said in the message broadcast from St. Peter's Square to millions of people worldwide.

He said when he visits the Holy Land May 8-15 he will "emphatically repeat the same message" of reconciliation and peace he brought to Africa during his March 17-23 visit to Cameroon and Angola.

While reconciliation is difficult, he said, it is an indispensable "precondition for a future of overall security and peaceful coexistence and it can only be achieved through renewed, persevering and sincere efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Pope Benedict read his message and gave his solemn blessing after celebrating Easter morning Mass in St. Peter's Square, which Vatican Radio said was attended by about 100,000 people.

A sea of flowering trees and shrubs, and other colorful blooms, donated by companies in the Netherlands, decorated the steps and central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica.

The pope, who turns 82 April 16, tripped without further incident when he climbed the dais where the papal throne sat in the central balcony.

He offered Easter greetings in 63 different languages and gave special encouragement to those struck by the April 6 earthquake and string of aftershocks in Italy's L'Aquila province.

During the April 11 Easter Vigil, Pope Benedict baptized and confirmed one woman and two men from Italy, a woman from China and Heidi Sierras, a 29-year-old mother of four from St. Joseph Church in Modesto, Calif.

The pope used a small golden shell to pour the holy water over each catechumen's head. The newly baptized, wearing laced white shawls, had a brief personal exchange with the pope when they brought the offertory gifts to the altar.

During the evening ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica, the pope asked that the fragile flame and delicate light of God's word and his love, which God has lit in every Christian, may not be snuffed out "amid the confusions of this age ... but will become ever stronger and brighter, so that we, with him, can be the people of the day, bright stars lighting up our time."

The next morning, after celebrating the Easter Mass, the pope urged Christians to spread the hope the world so desperately needs.

"At a time of world food shortage, of financial turmoil, of old and new forms of poverty, of disturbing climate change, of violence and deprivation which force many to leave their homelands in search of a less precarious form of existence, of the ever present threat of terrorism (and) of growing fears over the future, it is urgent to rediscover grounds for hope," he said in his Easter message.

Christ's resurrection "is neither a myth nor a dream, it is not a vision or a utopia, it is not a fairy tale, but is a singular and unrepeatable event" that brings light to the dark regions of the world, he said.

The "sense of emptiness, which tends to intoxicate humanity, has been overcome by the light and the hope that emanate from the Resurrection," he said.

But while the resurrected Christ vanquished death, "there still remain very many, in fact, too many signs of its former dominion," said the pope.

Christ wants today's men and women to help him "affirm his victory using his own weapons: the weapons of justice and truth, mercy, forgiveness and love" and spread the kind of hope that inspires courage to do good even when it costs dearly, he said.

The earthquake in central Italy was never far from the pope's mind during Holy Week and Easter services.

At the end of the candlelit Way of the Cross at Rome's Colosseum April 10, Pope Benedict again asked for prayers for those affected by the earthquake.

"Let us pray that in this dark night, the star of hope -- the light of the risen Lord -- will appear also to them," he said.

The meditations for the rite were written by Indian Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil of Guwahati and focused on the way Jesus confronted violence and adversity with serenity and strength, and sought to prompt a change of heart through nonviolent persuasion.

Under an awning on a hill overlooking the Colosseum, the pope knelt through the entire service while women and men from Italy and India, as well as two Franciscan friars from the Holy Land, were among those who carried the black wooden cross.

After the 14th station, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the papal vicar for Rome, handed the cross to the pope who stood and held it aloft.

"We have relived the tragic event of a man unique in the history of all times, who changed the world not by killing others but by letting himself be killed as he hung from a cross," Pope Benedict said at the end of the ceremony.

Pope Benedict left the Vatican Easter afternoon for the papal villa in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

Reciting the "Regina Coeli" prayer with hundreds of visitors gathered in the courtyard of the villa April 13, the pope said Christians rejoice because "the resurrection of the Lord assures us that, despite all the dark moments in history, the divine plan of salvation certainly will be fulfilled. This is why Easter really is our hope."

"We who have risen with Christ through baptism must now follow him faithfully with holiness of life, walking toward the eternal Easter, sustained by the awareness that the difficulties, struggles, trials and sufferings of our existence -- including death -- can no longer separate us from him and his love," the pope said.

- - -

Contributing to this story was Cindy Wooden at the Vatican.

- - -

Editor's Note: The text of the pope's Easter message in English can be found online at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict...-easter_en.html.

The English text of the pope's homily Easter morning can be found online at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict..._pasqua_en.html.

The English text of the pope's Easter Vigil homily can be found online at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict...asquale_en.html.

The English text of the pope's remarks at the end of the Way of the Cross can be found online at: http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin...INGUA%20INGLESE.

END

Faith of Our Fathers
Posted by Kevin R. C. Gutzman on April 13, 2009 Were the Founders “Post-Christian”?

Two years ago, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham published American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. There, as in his public appearances and journalism since, Meacham argued that the United States were founded on a Madisonian vision of secular government.

Meacham of course did not blaze any new trail making that argument. In fact, since the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township (1947), Americans have lived under a system in which local and state ordinances recognizing the traditional Christianity of their culture are apt to be invalidated by federal courts. Usually, the decisions striking such ordinances down come wrapped in opinions purporting to instruct the hoi polloi in the error of our ways.
Thus, the pre-game prayers we said before we went out under the Friday night lights in the little Texas town where I graduated from high school in 1981 supposedly now would be unconstitutional. Ditto the invocation at the annual baccalaureate exercises, led by local ministers on a rotating basis. The same holds for traditional Christian imagery in long-standing city seals, Christian symbols on public land, and myriad other nods to the base of most Americans’ conception of the cosmos.

Just in time for the Easter holiday, Meacham gives over his magazine’s cover and prime pages to a story under the title “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Here, Meacham explains that recently, Christianity’s political and cultural influence in America has been waning. Now, he notes, there has been a significant decline in the proportion of Americans claiming to be Christian: from 86% to 76% in the last 19 years. He adjudges this “good for our political culture.”

Claiming high secular authority, Meacham says that political culture is “as the American Founders saw, … complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance.” Reading this assertion, my antennae pricked up. Which Founders? Compel how? What does he mean by “religious belief or observance”?

People familiar with the Revolution and Early Republic—the period when the American tradition of writing constitutions was born—can guess easily enough, even without prior familiarity with Meacham’s argument, which figures he has in mind: perhaps Tom Paine, possibly Benjamin Franklin, and certainly James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Sure enough: there they are, two pages later:

By the time of the American Founding, men like Jefferson and Madison saw the virtue in guaranteeing liberty of conscience, and one of the young republic’s signal achievements was to create a context in which religion and politics mixed but church and state did not.

Hmm. What does Meacham mean by that? The half-educated (think of Justice Hugo Black writing for the Court in Everson) might conjure up a mental image of Jefferson with Latin, Greek, French, and English editions of the Bible, carefully excising anything his to-this-purpose-feeble mind could not explain. This, he might think, was The Founding Fathers’ Attitude Toward Church and State.

Well, yes, it was Jefferson’s attitude—in private. For some reason, Jefferson kept his biblical bowdlerization to himself. Only after his death did his favorite grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, publicize Jefferson’s account of Christ’s life. And what was the reason that Jefferson did not publicize his hostility to the Bible far and wide? As he explained to an acquaintance in another context, Jefferson had several irons in the political fire, and to make himself obnoxious on a question about which he was not going to persuade his compatriots would only defeat his other efforts. Discretion, in other words, was the better part of valor: Jefferson knew that his fellow Virginians would have drummed him out of political life if he had told them what he thought.

Besides which, as then-Justice William Rehnquist noted in dissent in the Wallace v. Jaffree “moment of silence” decision, Jefferson had nothing to do with drafting the federal Bill of Rights. Indeed, he didn’t help write his own state’s declaration of rights or constitution, not to mention the federal Constitution, either. It thus is difficult to see what his private conception of the proper relationship between church and state, Christianity and government, has to do with the U.S. Constitution.

Yet, on the other hand, James Madison favored the project of abolishing legislation to govern the human mind. He, unlike Jefferson, played a significant role in drafting not only Article XVI of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (the church-state article), but also the U.S. Constitution and the federal Bill of Rights. Surely if he favored secular government, as he certainly did, that proves that the Founding bequeathed us a system in which Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Ginsburg are within their rights, indeed doing their duty, when they say that high school students in, say, Belton, Texas cannot constitutionally be led in the Lord’s Prayer by their coach after a football game.

Well, no. For James Madison’s private opinions, even his public positions, are not equivalent to any particular provision of the U.S. Constitution. (This is a good thing, since Madison was about as consistent as the weather in a Texas spring.) In fact, one of the most common errors in scholarship about the Constitution is to elevate Madison’s every private jotting and utterance to the status of the Constitution itself. Like Jefferson, Madison knew that his private preferences were unpopular in Virginia. It is to his public position that we ought to look, and then only when it was consistent with that of the body that gave a particular constitutional text effect.

Madison said in the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution and, and this is what counts, in the ratification campaign thereafter that a bill of rights was unnecessary. In fact, he said that amendments along that line could be dangerous.

But Madison did not reckon with public opinion, specifically with Baptists’ opinion, in his home community, Piedmont Orange County, Virginia. His neighbors (read: the local electorate) insisted there be a religious liberty amendment, because they feared a revivification of the colonial Episcopalian establishment if there wasn’t. Besides the Baptists, Madison’s elite political friends Edmund Randolph, Jefferson, and George Mason all insisted that there must be a bill of rights. That’s why Madison promised that he would propose amendments in the first federal Congress: he disliked the idea, but popular and elite pressure in Virginia squeezed grudging support for it out of him. Having promised to sponsor amendments, Madison was narrowly elected to the first U.S. House after being rejected as too nationalist—too much in favor of centralization—in Virginia’s election for the first Senate.

Madison did not believe that the First Amendment banned state actions such as having local ministers give invocations at public-school events. Meacham is right to say that he and Jefferson favored such a prohibition, but he is wrong to imply that anyone in the Founding era wrote one into federal law.

The supposed location of this prohibition in the Constitution is the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, however, says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (emphasis added), and it means precisely that: that Congress shall make no such law. Far from fortuitously, this language was intentionally about Congress, and not the state legislatures. As the Preamble to the Bill of Rights shows, the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights was further to delineate the limits on federal authority, because Antifederalists insisted that the unamended Constitution had not made those limits clear enough. The phrase “respecting an establishment of” was chose instead of “establishing” because the former could be read as banning congressional disestablishment of states’ established churches, as well as congressional attempts to establish a national church.

Why, you might ask, would James Madison, the chief author of the Bill of Rights, have omitted a provision allowing the federal government to police states’ policy-making in this area? After all, as we’ve seen, he favored secular government, and the unamended Constitution already included some provisions—most notably but not only the Contracts Clause—empowering federal officials to police state behavior.

The answer is that he tried. The First Congress’s Bill of Rights included twelve proposed amendments, of which ten were ratified in 1791 and one was ratified in 1992. It did not include the one that Madison ever after insisted had been the most important one: his proposed amendment stating that “No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience….”

Madison had attempted to use the Philadelphia Convention to create a national government, and he had been disappointed. He then vowed to sponsor amendments clarifying the limits of federal power, but this characteristic subterfuge yielded a proposed amendment to empower federal officials to intervene to regulate the states’ religion policies. Pace Meacham, Madison not only failed to write a federal ban on state religion legislation into the Constitution, but he could not even get it out of the House.

Meacham notes that Christians have endeavored sporadically since 1962 to overturn the Supreme Court’s opinion that year banning prayer in public schools. He omits that so unpopular was that decision in its day that all but one governor insisted it should be countermanded. The Constitution makes amendment difficult, except in the case of amendment via judicial legislation; that kind of amendment, which is far the most common kind, is virtually impossible to correct. The Supreme Court can foist off upon us a decision such as the School Prayer Decision, with which Americans never agreed and to which they never consented, and there is essentially nothing that can be done about it.

Yes, our culture is becoming less Christian. I attribute this in large part to the success of the Supreme Court in wiping Christianity out of our public life. The Court’s campaign to do so has been aided and abetted by other significant actors in American intellectual life, such as the editor of Newsweek. When people like Jon Meacham tell us that the attenuation of the Christian element in our culture is simply a trend, perhaps like the weather, and that it is in consonance with what the sainted Founders wanted, who can contradict them? Who knows any better? It is in the interest of the government to aid in divinizing the government, including its creators. The cult of Madison and Pals may well replace the old one, Christianity, in Americans’ affection. If it does so, that event will mark the success of a long-standing propaganda campaign by figures such as Jon Meacham and Hugo Black, Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Ginsburg.

Article URL: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/faith_of_our_fathers/

What did I say that wasn't true?

I think Thomas Jefferson and I would have gotten along just fine!

- Perry

From a practicality point of view, it's gotten to a point where I simply redirect the whole issue with the statement, "I was brought up Anglican!"

When it comes to God, your usually dealing an exceedingly immature and childish mindset combined with a few individuals aspiring to high ideals.

On a practical level however, I find it's necessary to humor these people, telling them what they want to hear, but internally, keep waiving that middle index finger.....

Because I know what they are like....

And anyone who makes it their business to stick their nose into my business, is no friend of mine!

- Perry

American Masonic History

What Are America's True Roots?*
There is much speculation on the religious nature of the United States of America as it was founded. Many Christians assert that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and, therefore, it is not only our right but our duty to reclaim it for God. But is America a Christian nation in the true sense of the word?

To call anyone or anything "Christian," whether an individual or a nation, certain criteria must be met. If we are speaking of an individual, the Biblical requirements are that he must be born again by the Spirit of God, understanding all that this entails.

If we are speaking of a nation, its purpose must be that of ministry in the name of Jesus Christ alone, without regard to any other gods. Its primary charter must be the Bible, and all who hold positions of authority must be individuals who meet the criteria necessary to call themselves Christians. A true Christian nation would be a theocracy governed by God through His prophets. His law would reign supreme in the hearts and minds of that nation's founders, and all who founded the nation would have to meet the criteria necessary to call themselves Christians. Just as important, the nation would have to have been created in response to a covenant initiated by God with those who founded it.

As a point of information, the Pilgrims did not found the United States; they founded a small colony that eventually got swallowed up by the states and the newly formed federal government.

The belief that the Mayflower Compact was the basis for a Christian nation has caused many to attempt to reestablish what never existed: a Christian nation based upon Biblical precepts and founded upon a covenant relationship with God. What is overlooked is that the Mayflower Compact reaffirmed loyalty to the King of England; its framers never intended to found an independent state.

Ignoring, and even twisting the facts of history, "Christian" dominionists quote some of the founding fathers whose words seem to indicate faith in Jesus Christ. But many quoted were Freemasons who highly regarded Jesus as a man who attained the highest degree of moral enlightenment.

The words of many Freemasons might lead the uninformed to believe that they are true brethren in Christ. An example is this statement from a Masonic publication:

God may have other words for other worlds, but His supreme Word for this world, yesterday, today, forever, is Christ! He is the central Figure of the Bible, its crown, its glory, its glow-point of vision and revelation. Take Him away and its light grows dim. He fulfilled the whole Book, its history, its poetry, its prophecy, its ritual, even as He fulfills our deepest yearning and our highest hope. Ages have come and gone, but He abides-abides because He is real, because he is unexhausted, because He is needed. Little is left today save Christ-Himself smitten and afflicted, bruised of God and wounded-but He is all we need. If we hear Him, follow Him, obey Him, we shall walk together in a new world wherein dwelleth righteousness and love-He is the Word of God (Joseph Fort Newton, "The Great Light in Masonry," Little Masonic Library, Vol. 3, p. 177).

Unless we recognize that the theosophical philosophy of Freemasonry attributes its own definitions to Biblical language, we won't understand the author's meaning. We might welcome him as one of our own.

Only the most naive would not know that many who claim to be Christians do not meet the required criteria. Such is the case with Freemasons. While Freemasonry has an outward show of religious faith, the tenets of Freemasonry preclude any truly born-again believer from belonging.

Space doesn't allow for a full treatise on Freemasonry's religious philosophy, but true Christians will recognize from another statement in the same publication that the Faith is not compatible with Freemasonry:

Into Freemasonry have been poured the irradiations of the mystical schools of antiquity. Particularly is this so in the higher degrees of the Order, such as the Scottish Rite, where undeniable traces of Cabalism, neo-Platonism, Rosicrucianism, and other mystical cults are plainly discernible. I do personally contend that Freemasonry is the direct descendent of the Mysteries, but that our ritual makers of the higher degrees have copied the ancient ceremonies of initiation so far as the knowledge of those ceremonies exists (Henry R. Evans, A History of the York and Scottish Rites of Freemasonry, p. 8).

Because most Christians today are unaware of the manner in which Christianity was melded with the esoteric philosophies of theosophy and Jewish Cabalism to produce a hybrid mystery religion known as Freemasonry, they offer quotes from many of our founding fathers as evidence that they were Christians. Indeed, some were even clerics. But just as one of today's most famous clerics, Norman Vincent Peale, was a Freemason (prelate of the Grand Encampment of the Knights Templar of the United States), many of the nation's founding fathers were also Freemasons who used peculiar definitions of Biblical language in asserting their beliefs.

This is not to say that they were not noble men. Freemasons pride themselves in their noble attitudes and adherence to strict moral codes. These are not "evil" men in the classical sense. But they are blinded to the true revelation of God's Word, and their religious philosophy embraces all religions as valid. To be a Freemason, one must believe in a supreme being, but he need not be a Christian.

Based upon the evidence of Masonic influences in the establishment of this nation, there is no doubt that the criteria necessary to classify the United States as a Christian nation were not met. An objective study of the Masonic affiliations of the founding fathers must cause Christians to reevaluate their own political philosophy. For if the United States is not a Christian nation then we must choose to whom we will commit "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" -- our Lord or our country.

20 GREATEST NAMES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

• John Adams - Spoke favorably of Freemasonry -- never joined
• Samuel Adams - (Close and principle associate of Hancock, Revere & other Masons
• Ethan Allen - Mason
• Edmund Burke - Mason
• John Claypoole - Mason
• William Daws - Mason
• Benjamin Franklin - Mason
• Nathan Hale - No evidence of Masonic connections
• John Hancock - Mason
• Benjamin Harrison - No evidence of Masonic connections
• Patrick Henry - No evidence of Masonic connections
• Thomas Jefferson - Deist with some evidence of Masonic connections
• John Paul Jones - Mason
• Francis Scott Key - No evidence of Masonic connections
• Robert Livingston - Mason
• James Madison - Some evidence of Masonic membership
• Thomas Paine - Humanist
• Paul Revere - Mason
• Colonel Benjamin Tupper - Mason
• George Washington - Mason
• Daniel Webster - Some evidence of Masonic connections

Summary: 10 Masons, 3 probable Masons, 1 Humanist, 2 Advocates of Freemasonry, 4 no record of connections.

SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Known Masons (8): Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, Robert Treat Payne, Richard Stockton, George Walton, William Whipple

Evidence of Membership And/or Affiliations (7): Elbridge Berry, Lyman Hall, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Nelson Jr., John Penn, George Read, Roger Sherman

Summary: 15 of 56 Signers were Freemasons or probable Freemasons.

It's true that this represents only 27% of the total signers. But this 27% included the principle movers of the Revolution, most notably Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the primary authors of the Declaration. The former was a Freemason, the latter a deist and possible Freemason. If one were to analyze the Declaration, he would see the humanistic influences.

In any event, there is no evidence that even 27% of the signers were true Christians. In considering whether or not this is a Christian nation, it isn't the number of Masons that is as important as is the number of founders overall who were non-believers.

SIGNERS OF THE CONSTITUTION

Known Masons (9): Gunning Bedford, Jr., John Blair, David Brearly, Jacob Broom, Daniel Carrol, John Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, Rufus King, George Washington

Evidence of Membership And/or Affiliations (13): Abraham Baldwin, William Blount, Elbridge Gerry, Nicholas Gilman, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Lansing, Jr., James Madison, George Mason, George Read, Robert Morris, Roger Sherman, George Wythe

Those Who Later Became Masons (6): William Richardson Davie, Jr., Jonathan Dayton, Dr. James McHenry, John Francis Mercer, William Patterson, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer

Summary: 28 of 40 signers were Freemasons or possible Freemasons based on evidence other than Lodge records.

MASONIC INFLUENCES IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY

- Lafayette, French liaison to the Colonies, without whose aid the war could not have been won, was a Freemason.

- The majority of the commanders of the Continental Army were Freemasons and members of "Army Lodges."

- Most of Washington's Generals were Freemasons.

- The Boston Tea Party was planned at the Green Dragon Tavern, also known as the "Freemasons' Arms," and "the Headquarters of the Revolution."

- George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States by Robert Livingston, Grand Master of New York's Masonic Lodge. The Bible on which he took his oath was from his own Masonic lodge.

- The Cornerstone of the Capital building was laid by the Grand Lodge of Maryland.

Even if the initiators of the Revolution had been Christians, the fact remains that the Revolutionary War and the nation's government were structured by the tenets of Freemasonry, not God's Word. It was an unholy alliance at best.

Scripture tells us that God has made one nation of all: the Church. It is the Church that is our "Christian nation," not the social and political institutions of the world.

We can thank our heavenly Father that we enjoy the freedoms that this republic grants us. But as citizens of Heaven, our allegiance is first to our brethren in foreign countries. Otherwise, we may find ourselves killing true Christians for political causes.

We must be vigilant to the dangers of becoming embroiled in political and social causes in the name of Christ. Else we will find ourselves unequally yoked, storing up for ourselves wood, hay, and stubble for the day of judgment.

* This material has been excerpted from a 6/90 Media Spotlight Special Report -- "A Masonic History of America," by Al Dager.

http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/mashist.htm

when reading through this post and others on Government and Religion in general I get the same thought. Who owns the word Christian, what is their use of the word indicate, is it a value issue or morals and ethics.

I guess my question is who owns the word christian and its meaning?

Who owns the word, "Word" and its meaning? Some versions of the Christian Bible starts with the sentence,
"First, there was the word."

The scripture:

One could interpret that to mean that God only lives in the words of the bible.

Beginning of what? If words have been around since the beginning of the Universe, then words came at the same time or before matter. If that's true, than the dictionary is currently more important than the bible, because it has a broader vocabulary and is the most widely accepted document for identifying what words mean today.

There is no ownership since the authors of the bible were all dead before the advent of copyright laws, which would have only protected it for 100 years after their death anyway. Now the word is public domain.

It seems obvious to me that words evolved much later than physical matter and much sooner that dictionaries or
bibles...if that is true what would be your interpretation?

I would still think that the dictionary is more important. All documents rely on interpretation. All interpretation relies on a common definition of words.

This question brings back some painful memories. Ultimately I guess I would consider them teachers, albeit ones that do not want again.

A lot of people make the assumption that the bible is somehow an *accurate* portrayal of a man that walked the earth 300 years before that book was authorized by a Roman emperor, as the official word of god, as the official "story".

So many people just kind of accept it as status quo, they just go along with the group. And for many it meets a need. But for those of us that actually wanted answers, at least something that "worked", it left so much to be desired.

Looking back now, all I could have asked for was for someone to have been able to have pointed this out to me and show me the facts of the situation.

It's a bitterness that I have to live with now. Kind of an emotional injury in a way. But in order to make life better for myself I am continuosly trying to forget the past. And there by broadcast positive energy so that I'll get back positive results.

And not let myself be injured by the past.

And, as you can tell, also share what I've learned.

I really need to buckle down and work on my book.

If only I can tear myself away from this wonderful thing called "life" as mine is rather sweet at the moment.

Have a nice day,

- Perry

1 Corinthians 13:12

Interestingly enough, I once met a mason in Uptown Minneapolis who wanted to know if I would be interested in joining...