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Just read the entire article in our local Pathways magazine, which can be found by googling.
By Harvey Wasserman, “Our Founders Were Not Fundamentalists”.
1) Actual Founder-Presidents #2 through #6 — John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams — were all freethinking. Deists and Unitarians; what Christian precepts they embraced were moderate, tolerant and open-minded.
2) Actual Founder-President #1, George Washington, became an Anglican as required for original military service under the British, and occasionally quoted scripture. But he vehemently opposed any church-state union. In a 1790 letter to the Jews of Truro, he wrote, “the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistances, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.” A 1796 treaty he signed says, “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Washington rarely went to church and by some accounts refused last religious rites.
3) Washington was also the nation’s leading brewer, and since most Americans drank much beer (water could be lethal in the cities) they regularly trembled before the keg, not the altar. Like Washington, Jefferson and Madison, virtually all American farmers raised hemp and its variations.
4) Jefferson produced a personal Bible from which he edited out all reference to the “miraculous” from the life of Jesus, whom he considered both an activist and a mortal.
5) Tom Paine’s common sense sparked the Revolution with nary a mention of Jesus or Christianity. His Deist Creator established the laws of Nature, endowed humans with Free Will, then left.
6) The Constitution never mentions the words “Christian” or “Jesus” or “Christ.”
7) Revolutionary America was filled with Christians whose commitment to toleration and diversity was completely adverse to the violent, racist, misogynist, anti-sex theocratic Puritans whose “City on the Hill” meant a totalitarian state. Inspirational preachers like Rhode Island’s Roger Williams and religious groups like the Quakers envisioned a nation built on tolerance and love for all.
8) The US was founded less on Judeo-Christian beliefs than on the Greco-Roman love for dialog and reason. There are no contemporary portraits of any founder wearing a crucifix or church garb. But Washington was famously painted half-naked in the buff toga of the Roman Republic, which continues to inspire much of our official architecture.
9) The great guerilla fighter (and furniture maker) Ethan Allen was an aggressive atheist; his beliefs were common among the farmers, sailors and artisans who were the backbone of Revolutionary America.
10) America’s most influential statesman, thinker, writer, agitator, publisher, citizen-scientist and proud liberal libertine was — and remains — Benjamin Franklin. He was at the heart of the Declaration, Constitution and Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution. The ultimate Enlightenment icon, Franklin’s Deism embraced a pragmatic love of diversity. As early America’s dominant publisher he, Paine and Jefferson printed the intellectual soul of the new nation.
11) Franklin deeply admired the Ho-de-no-sau-nee (Iroquois) Confederacy of what’s now upstate New York. Inspired by the legendary peacemaker Deganawidah, this democratic congress of five tribes had worked “better than the British Parliament” for more than two centuries. It gave us the model for our federal structure and the images of freedom and equality that inspired both the French and American Revolutions.
Via Facebook –
Surely FreeMasons founded America as well as other religious dissidents. ALL of my personal founding fathers and mothers arrived in “America” virtually on the Mayflower and they were ALL Protestant. Mind you, according to Catholic-ology that is not “true” christianity, but it absolutely is the Christianity that America is steeped in today.
xo
Patty, there is a website — I think it’s somewhere on the Organic Consumers Association website — where there is an article about how native Americans did more than just co-exist with the natural world.
In many cases they altered the landscape in subtle ways that allowed for a greater diversity of plant and animal life.
So their way of live not only did not harm natural systems, but went a step farther and helped natural systems to sustain themselves.
I find this idea really interesting and would like to learn more about it. It is also a reminder that the rest have much to learn from indigenous people.
Eric, if I may opine a farthing’s worth: The United States of America was NOT based on Christian dogma nor principles. The founding fathers of this nation were deists and Freemasons. Ergo, in honor of those visionary men who knew better than to cite the Eucharist, or delineate the stations of the cross in The Constitut…i…on: We the people, on this Fourth of July 2010, will strive to separate church and state, in order to form a more perfect Union!
Happy Birthday U.S.A.
And, “HOW!”
everybody back to africa.
Better yet, have a safe 4th. And I’m gonna get one of those t-shirts as a bd present for me!
Thanks everybody, it’s been a great day so far; wined and dined and desserted and now ready for a nap! Please have a save Fourth of July.
be
Happy Birthday, Be, my fellow cancerian. Enjoy your day and I hope you do something extra special for yourself :0)
xo
MoonRose
Happy Birthday Be!
There’s a great explanation of the 4 races/colors on Walking the Red Road this morning. Embrace who you are, and others too. There is a reason for everything.
Be:
Here’s the site for the T-shirt:
http://westwindworld.com//store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=73%22
Patty:
Funny about Costner. Michael Lutin said the same thing about him. He really is about to make a move up – when Pluto hits your Sun, you are capable of doing great things, if you hear the call.
Be:
Happy Solar return, my love. Forever young.
be, well then – wonderful solar return and ‘happy birthday’! blessings and prayers for all good things to come.
Patty and Fe,
I will be observing my 71st solar return in about 8 hours, or 18 arc minutes, as the crow flies. Half-way between the two eclipses. I feel this country’s growing pains and I feel yours and your family’s pain too Patty. Fe, where can I get one of those damn t-shirts? It’s kinda nice to know I get a Pisces Moon this time around, but conjunct Uranus and Jupiter? Enjoy the holiday brothers and sisters.
be
one of my favorites. the original version of the phrase is “fighting terrorism since 1492” and features Geronimo and other Chiracahua Apaches on the front. you can find the original source (and other products) here;
http://westwindworld.com//store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=73
another local favorites here en la frontera is “we didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us”
http://socialistworker.org/2006-1/586/586_13_Border.shtml
Fe I think my daughter has that t-shirt. People need to think about what a warrior really is, and what he or she represents. I think perhaps the greatest movie ever made was the Kevin Costner film, Dances with Wolves. Now it turns out that Kevin owns the company that may have the technology to clean up oil spills. Have to keep our eye on all the Capricorns we know. They’ve been hidden for awhile, but no more.
Patty:
Reading your post, I am reminded of a great T-shirt I saw right after 9-11 with a turn of the century photograph of a American Indian chief on the front. Underneath it, in big bold letters it read:
“Fighting terrorist attacks on American soil since 1492.”
So let’s give it back to the Indians. Everyone on facebook should ‘like’ “Walking the Red Road.”
Vernon Means, ” “People need to understand that Indian people are a nation within a nation. People get the idea that we’re getting something for nothing, when in fact we gave America everything we had. Through these treaties we ceded millions and millions of acres for the meager services we now get on reservations. We have had to over…come a tremendous amount of stereotypes and racist and biased education just to let people know that we do indeed have legal standing in this country and that our cultures are alive and well. ” Does that sound like it now might apply to society at large? I think so. It is as if we don’t exist and don’t matter.
Another quote from another contributor said, ‘…we didnt’ leave any trash behind because we didn’t have any.’
My kids can’t stop reading this page – it is like they found themselves, and found home. There is a great outpouring of grief, and a new found hope.