How Christian Were the Founders?

[PixelPusher]

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect." - James Madison

"Every other sect supposes itself in possession of the truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong. Like a man traveling in foggy weather they see those at a distance before them wrapped up in a fog, as well as those behind them, and also people in the fields on each side; but near them, all appears clear, though in truth they are as much in the fog as any of them." - Benjamin Franklin

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." - Thomas Jefferson

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!" - John Adams

[PixelPusher]

Probably because you are so much smarter than everyone else. Take what you want from the words. I guess google the word slave in the nt and use every reference. Your argument that these were references the slave owners used to suppress the slaves, I think you proved your point. However if you had read all those in full context, you would see it differently I believe. The slaves didn't have to be converted to christianity. They chose it. Also the slave owners, did not have church services ran by them, atleast no record of it. They invited the local pastor.

First, that bit of snark was in reference to the "pull it out of your ass" assertion that any references to slavery were Old Testament. The verses I posted were from Matthew's account of Jesus and various letters from Paul to various churches acknowledging and tacitly endorsing the ins ution of human slavery.

Second, of course the slave owners were only too happy to provide access to Christian religious services to their slaves; it puts a nice goodly Christian bow on their argument that as long as their slaves' souls were saved, that was the end of their Christian duties towards them.

[rjv]

i love it when others speak for dead people they never knew.

[NFGIII]

There are also those who try to say that the unnamed God is the God of Christians and Jews, but that is never said either.

Correct but couldn't you possibly see an implied meaning in that? The colonies were founded by people who believed in Judeo-Christian ethics regardless of how they applied them to others. The first Europeans to successfully colonize North America came for differing reasons but primarily for religious freedom (Pilgrims, Quakers, Puritans..etc) and financial and personal opportunity, even to the point of being an indentured servant for seven years in order to get out of the hopeless situation that they found themselves in. Mainly Protestant - that is the British territory and the French were Catholic - and with an at ude that they were God's people and destined to conquer this untamed land and it's native tribes. Henceforth the doctrine of Manifest Destiny used to spur on the final conquest of the West in the 19th century and teach those savage Injuns a thing or two. Frankly if you were to ask anyone at the time who that unnamed God was most would have said the Holy Trinity in some form.

[boutons_deux]

The religious beliefs of the founders is totally irrelevant.

In reaction to the Dark Ages and the centuries of oppression of the tandem of European states and the Catholic Church, the Founders absolutely founded a secular government, while assuring religious freedom for all. They didn't found a country to be terrorized and corrupted by perverting millitant "Christian" supremacists.

[admiralsnackbar]

There are also those who try to say that the unnamed God is the God of Christians and Jews, but that is never said either.

I'm not sure I'm reading you right... did you just essentially say "some people claim that the unspecified God is the Judeo-Christian God, but it isn't specified,"?

[PixelPusher]

i love it when others speak for dead people they never knew.

Lucky for us the Founding Fathers were prolific letter writers, and weren't adverse to airing out their opinions on a large variety of subjects, particularly any topic with political implications - like religion.

[NFGIII]

i love it when others speak for dead people they never knew.

^

Lucky for us the Founding Fathers were prolific letter writers, and weren't adverse to airing out their opinions on a large variety of subjects, particularly any topic with political implications - like religion.

So long as we discuss issues with an open mind and not be ethnocentric then it becomes an historical debate in order to understand the subject better rather than an assault on someone else's beliefs/acts that at that moment in time might have been sanctioned but today abhorred/questioned.

[rjv]

Lucky for us the Founding Fathers were prolific letter writers, and weren't adverse to airing out their opinions on a large variety of subjects, particularly any topic with political implications - like religion.

nevertheless, epistles are no replacement for one-on-one discourse and any text can be "rewritten" so to speak when interpreted. granted, this is all historians have to work with and it is what we base our definitions of those in the past on, but when more controversial points are made regarding these texts then that is when the pandora's box of deconstructionalism enters the picture.

[mogrovejo]

All the Western civilization is, historically, Christian. The tensions between Athens, Jerusalem and Rome are the roots for the West, its moral and philosophical foundations. A key event in the history of the West was the separation of Church and State that took place when Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium. Away from the emperor, the first fissure in the absolute power of the ruler was created: the Church was the first and for many centuries only ins ution to temper the absolute power of the monarchs.

I don't think there's the danger of a theocracy. I'm more worried about those who want to exclude religion or religious people from the public and political sphere - the danger they pose to liberty isn't smaller.

[admiralsnackbar]

All the Western civilization is, historically, Christian. The tensions between Athens, Jerusalem and Rome are the roots for the West, its moral and philosophical foundations. A key event in the history of the West was the separation of Church and State that took place when Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium. Away from the emperor, the first fissure in the absolute power of the ruler was created: the Church was the first and for many centuries only ins ution to temper the absolute power of the monarchs.

I don't think there's the danger of a theocracy. I'm more worried about those who want to exclude religion or religious people from the public and political sphere - the danger they pose to liberty isn't smaller.

What does it really mean to say all Western Civ is historically Christian? You could just as easily say all Christianity is, historically, Neo-Platonic. But my point isn't to argue about origins of ideals, as much as to question whether the individuals who make up history can so conveniently be cast as members of a group, and -- if they can -- what descriptive value the name of that group really has.

[rjv]

What does it really mean to say all Western Civ is historically Christian? You could just as easily say all Christianity is, historically, Neo-Platonic. But my point isn't to argue about origins of ideals, as much as to question whether the individuals who make up history can so conveniently be cast as members of a group, and -- if they can -- what descriptive value the name of that group really has.

..and to add to this, domains can vary greatly in scope. for instance, categorizing kierkegaard, camus and sartre all as existentialists.

[mogrovejo]

You are mistaken. Antony spent too much time lollygagging with Cleopatra, which was all the rope Caesar needed to hang him. And the Greeks were hospitable to just about anyone thanks to their abiding pre-Christian belief that Zeus walked among men, and would punish anyone who mistreated him.

As to fellowship between groups... was there no trade between Mediterranean countries? I agree that families of different religions would be unlikely to marry into one another, but that is an issue distinct from different races coming together -- which would have been rather easy given the enormous variety of races brought under the political, economic, and often religious banner of as during their imperial age.

Not for nothing, but have you ever read any pre-Christian history? Or do you always assume that everything good finds it's source in the Bible? Even with a lack of proof to support yourself?

(...)
But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?

There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.

But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male and female. Wherefore the poets say,

It is meet that enes should rule over barbarians;

as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature one.

[mogrovejo]

You're conflating customs, language and culture with racial categories, which came out of an Enlightment Era emphasis on taxonomy and a desire to justify treating certain groups of people as little more (or less) than beasts of burden.

False.

There are few contexts in the history of the mankind where racist was more rampant than during the Reconquista, from the early to the high middle-ages and well before the Enlightenment.

[admiralsnackbar]

So, by quoting Aristotle, are you saying Western Civ is, historically enic, mogro? Jokes aside, I never said the Greeks didn't have slaves -- just that slaves weren't chosen on the basis of race. Slaves were made up of the conquered, but not all the conquered became slaves, as they would in a racist society.

As for the Reconquista... no mames. If it was simply a racist purge, why were people allowed to live if they forsook their heathen faith? Moreover, I assume that you are a Spaniard? If so, explain the racial differences between a Tarifeño and a Tangerian.

[mogrovejo]

So, by quoting Aristotle, are you saying Western Civ is, historically enic, mogro?

Sure, didn't I just write that "the tensions between Athens, Jerusalem and Rome are the roots for the West, its moral and philosophical foundations"?

I'm not sure what do you mean by that question.

Jokes aside, I never said the Greeks didn't have slaves -- just that slaves weren't chosen on the basis of race. Slaves were made up of the conquered, but not all the conquered became slaves, as they would in a racist society.

It is meet that enes should rule over barbarians;

Most slaves were barbarians, few barbarians were free.

The idea that in a racist society all the conquered become slaves is bizarre, to say the least. Where has such a society existed? In that case, one could make the case that racism never existed.

The point is that ethnic stereotypes were abundant in the Antiquity - even before the Greeks. The assumption of the natural superiority of the enistic man over the barbarian (who was devoided of individuality, as Aristotle explains) was consensual. As an intellectual and emotional concept with a practical translation to the public life, racism, discriminatory ideas and acts, was there - even if it wasn't called racism (which is a very recent word - but the idea that there wasn't racism before the existence of such a word is a very weak thesis).

As for the Reconquista... no mames. If it was simply a racist purge, why were people allowed to live if they forsook their heathen faith? Moreover, I assume that you are a Spaniard? If so, explain the racial differences between a Tarifeño and a Tangerian.

The idea that the Reconquista was simply a racist purge is certainly a product of your imagination. Why were people allowed to leave? I think your concept of racism is just...crazy. The fact that people were allowed to leave suggests there wasn't racism?

[mogrovejo]

Al-Jahiz was an Arab scholar, theologist and thinker of the 8th century. A very influential intellectual and public man. He wrote a few books, including one led "Risalat mufakharat al-sudan 'ala al-bidan" - which can be translated to "The superiority of Blacks to the Whites". He was one of the pioneers of the environmental determinism school of thought. And this centuries before the Enlightenment or the modern notion of scientific racism.

The fact that people weren't exterminating each other doesnt' mean there wasn't racism - it's like saying there wasn't racism in South Africa during the Apartheid.

[Supergirl]

I think perhaps the problem is in trying to classify all the "founding fathers" as one type. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were certainly not devout Christians. They considered themselves deists, Jefferson created his own "bible" which was a collection of spiritual readings from a variety of sources, including the Bible but also other religions and other sources.

John Adams was a Unitarian, George Washington was an Episcopalian, so which founding father are we talking about? Although 3 out of the 4 I've listed here - possibly the four best known - were solidly NOT Christian believers.

Which, BTW, is why they advocated so strongly for the separation of church and state. They wanted people to be able to practice their religion in freedom, but they also wanted people to have the freedom to not practice any religion.

A distinction which seems to have been lost on much of the wits you hear in contemporary discourse.

[Bartleby]

Al-Jahiz was an Arab scholar, theologist and thinker of the 8th century. A very influential intellectual and public man. He wrote a few books, including one led "Risalat mufakharat al-sudan 'ala al-bidan" - which can be translated to "The superiority of Blacks to the Whites". He was one of the pioneers of the environmental determinism school of thought. And this centuries before the Enlightenment or the modern notion of scientific racism.

You're making the same mistake SNC made. Of course skin color has been used as a marker to identify the Other throughout history, but the widespread ins utionalization of the concept of race and its incorporation into the dominant ideology of large populations is a relatively modern phenomenon.

[mogrovejo]

You're making the same mistake SNC made. Of course skin color has been used as a marker to identify the Other throughout history, but the widespread ins utionalization of the concept of race and its incorporation into the dominant ideology of large populations is a relatively modern phenomenon.

That's a pe io principii.

Here's what you wrote first:

You're conflating customs, language and culture with racial categories, which came out of an Enlightment Era emphasis on taxonomy and a desire to justify treating certain groups of people as little more (or less) than beasts of burden.

Now, faced with things you didn't know, you're talking about a "widespread ins utionalization of the concept of race" (what does this mean?) and "its incorporation into the dominant ideology of large populations" (huh?).

Widespread and ins utionalized discrimination of people due to their race, as a classification of humans accordingly to various sets of their heritable characteristics, existed well before the Enlightenment. You may want to re-define racism to include only the post-XVIII century scientific racism, but that's nothing more than a cheap sophism.

[spursncowboys]

You're making the same mistake SNC made. Of course skin color has been used as a marker to identify the Other throughout history, but the widespread ins utionalization of the concept of race and its incorporation into the dominant ideology of large populations is a relatively modern phenomenon.

You are making the mistake of putting the racism definition into some kind of narrow context from your personal experiences. Tribes conquered tribes. States conquered states. However there were always classes. One better than the other. How can putting someone in a class because of their race and treating them less than someone of their own race not considered racism?

[SAGambler]

Likewise, then, the influence of certain Christians in supporting slavery, at least in these United States, is overlooked.

So true. Where in this country was slavery practiced the most? The Southern states. What part of this country is commonly referred to as the "Bible Belt"? The Southern States.

Nuff said about so called "Christians" and their practice of enslaving a group of people, based on race.