John Rossomando
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A reporter’s question to GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich whether or not he would impose Christian values “on everyone else” Wednesday during the announcement of his 21st Century Contract With America showcases the growing intolerance of Christians on the part of militant secularists. This is also true of the other relgiously motivated attacks on other GOP presidential candidates.
My question to this secularist journalists is: “When will you keep your secular utilitarian worldview to yourself and stop trying to force everyone else to accept it?”
The First Amendment’s establishment clause aimed to prevent Congress from legislating matters of THEOLOGY like the divinity of Christ, the number of sacraments, and the like. Never matters of morality. Even the most deistic founders like Jefferson and Franklin did not see any problem with allowing Christianity from influencing moral legislation.
Jefferson wrote the following in an 1809 letter to a certain James Fishback:
“Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality.”
Even the Supreme Court acknowledged the place Christianity played in forging the nation’s common morality in the 1892 Holy Trinity case when it referenced the 1824 Pennsylvania Supreme Court case Updegraph v. Commonwealth that found that:
“The constitution of the United States has made no alteration, nor in the great body of the laws which was an incorporation of the common law doctrine of Christianity…”
But now what protects orthodox Christians and Jews from having courts, boards of education, legislatures, or executive agencies from imposing secular, neopagan utilitarian values on them and their children in our current era. Nothing.
In reality their morality is a jump back to the past and is a reincarnation of pagan 2nd century B.C. Epicureanism brought into the modern era through the likes of John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and John Dewey.
Neopagan utilitarianism has effectively been incorporated into our legal system without recourse for dissent.
Progressives arrogantly posit that they are the ultimate in human evolution. But how is taking a jump backwards over 2,000 years to the pre-Christian worldview where people were viewed as things anything other than regressive?
The irony is their morality is what is outdated.
Secularists feel all too confident on pretending they are the arbiters of reality and unilaterally deciding that Christians and Jews who don’t accept their call to compulsory Unitarian-Universalism have no right to participate in our democracy.
The sad fact is the First Amendment no longer provides orthodox believers any protections from the whims of judges, legislators, and bureaucrats who use their power to impose their neopagan values.
Consequently, the only solution now is to push through state constitutional amendments placing the same sorts of disabilities that have been imposed on religion on militant secularism.
Only then will there be a level playing field. Until then, the values of moral egotism (aka moral relativism), sexual self-indulgence, and hostility to traditional religion will continue to be forced down our throats in the name of tolerance and enlightenment.
Restore freedom of conscience by separating militant secularism and state.
Below is what Thomas Jefferson said so I think you need to get over it and realize your christianity will not be forced on the rest of us.
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."
"And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.... error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.... I deem the essential principles of our government.... Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; ... freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected."
"I know it will give great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them."
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
"I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another."
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
Posted by: Damien | October 01, 2011 at 08:16 PM