Hi Holden,
I am still looking forward to Lew's replies to my questions on behalf of the ACLU, but you shouldn't feel you are butting in at all...
Originally posted by Holden McGroin
Butting in: No religion in the public square is not the same as prohibiting the establishing of an official government sponsored religion.
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You make a good point here, few people today are actually aware of the historic situation that brought about the First Amendment right to "Freedom of Religion." Great Britain had what is referred to as an
established church in other words, the Church of England (or Anglican Church) was the official church of the Kingdom and they held (and still hold) that the King was the head of the church - a position that many Scottish Presbyterians held to be blasphemous as only Christ could be head of the church. This led to great persecution in Scotland as the English attempted to remove Presbyterianism and establish the Church of England there during the 17th century as well. The period from the 1660s to 1688 in Scotland was known by Scots Presbyterians as "the Killing Times" as the King's dragoons hunted down and killed and imprisoned many of the Covenanters who refused to take a loyalty oath which declared that the King was the head of the church. Many Scots during this period fled first to Ulster and then the American Colonies, bringing their hearty detestation for the established church of England. In the colonies themselves, until the revolution repression of other churches continued with non-church of England ministers outside of New England frequently denied official licenses to preach, and their assemblies broken-up and the congregants imprisoned. Additionally, it was impossible to hold office or official postings, and attend many of the British Universities if one was not a member of the Church of England. The "dissenters" were explicitly second class subjects. The Baptists in particular suffered immensely during this time, and so it is not surprising that it was the Danbury Baptists who wrote Jefferson to confirm that freedom of religion was an inalienable right assured to all Americans by the Constitution.
This hatred for the established church was one of the catalysts for the Revolution and helps to explain why so many Presbyterians and Congregationalists in particular were behind it, while so many Anglicans (particularly in the south) were loyalists or "Tories." George III himself called it the "Presbyterian war" and Walpole quipped that "There is no use crying about it. Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it." At the Battle of Concord when the colonial minutemen were commanded to put down their arms in the name of their Sovereign King George III, their reply came back
"We recognize no Sovereign but God and no King but Jesus!" What so many of the Colonists were fighting for was their own freedom to practice their religion
openly and without fear of repression because of it. the situation today where an openly religious person can be squeezed out of the academy or stigmatized is exactly the opposite of what they wanted. They wanted freedom for religion, not freedom
from religion. The early years of America therefore saw no establishment of a single religion, but yet Christianity thoroughly permeated all parts of the society including the government. In the early 19th century for instance no one would have thought something like Blue Laws, which added the force of law to the keeping of the Lord's Day were unconstitutional. Obviously that has changed dramatically.
Although the 1774 prayer sounds like it was torn from the new testament, it was not a force of law, nor does the prayer said before each session of Congress today.
True, but that wasn't the point I was making. I was actually answering Silat's contention that "Christians" had somehow recently added religion to an essentially atheistic society as if the prayer in congress was something the Republicans voted in under George Bush. I pointed out that the Prayer at the opening of Congress goes back to the FIRST CONGRESS and at that time it was explicitly and even polemically and evangelistically Christian.
- SEAGOON
