Huckabee is trying to be President, which has to be taken into account whenever he does an interview. With that being said, Stewart comes across as if Christians; and Barton, are trying to establish Christianity from the Constitution. Because Stewart fails to understand the truth about our founding, he is over-exaggerating the issue. Huckabee should have shown the Founding Fathers established a Christian Nation and called us one:
Here is John Adams stating we are a Christian people, to respect Christianity in public service. If this statement doesn't blow away separation of church and state, nothing will:
[T]hat they may consider what further measures the honor and interest of the Government and its constituents demand; if a resolution to do justice as far as may depend upon me, at all times and to all nations, and maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world; if an unshaken confidence in the honor, spirit, and resources of the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all and never been deceived; if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people deeply engraven on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and age; and, with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect.Here is Stewart:
--Inaugural Address, In the City of Philadelphia, Saturday, March 4, 1797
"You spoke right after him at an event, and you called him the greatest historian in America,” Stewart said. “And I don’t know if everybody’s familiar with David Barton, but he doesn’t seem like a historian, he seems almost like a theologian whose thrust is, ‘I want this country to be Christian and go by the Bible.’”Mr. Stewart, yes, the Founding Fathers said we were a Christian Nation. This is what is so frustrating. The media and politicians have no clue about our founding.
Stewart goes on:
“What makes me uncomfortable about these Texas curriculum changes … is that they’re not looking at it from a historical perspective, they are looking at it as a way to justify their religious beliefs within the context of the country,” Stewart said.
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Below is a legaly binding treaty (the Treaty of Tripoli) presented to Congress by John Adams. The treaty was passed unanimously by the senate and became law in 1797. Here's the text of Article 11:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
Also, even if we gran that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, it was Christian Deism that was practiced by the Founding Fathers. That is to say, they did not believe in revealed theology, i.e. the bible is not true.
Here are some other quotes by John Adams that reveal Mr. Adam's real feelings about Christianity:
"God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world."
“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!”
"Cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires."
I could on and on and on...
Zachforn,
That Treaty of Tripoli quote has been going around. The semi-colon after religion continues the thought and provides the context for the claim.
It is true John Adams was a Unitarian, and did not like Catholicism for the abuses against freedom of conscience--among other things.
I was under the impression Deism was the clockmaker god, who wound up time, let it go, and sat back and watched.
Hi. Yes, the semicolon, continues the thought which is concluded with the line: "it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." Which is to read that because the U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation, it has no religious opposition to Islam.
Deism denies a personal,intervening god, as well denies the miracles of Jesus, and all miracles in general (in fact, Jefferson wrote his own version of the bible in which he took out all the miracles of Jesus).
Deism is based upon the "God" that arose from the philosophies of the Enlightenment (Leibniz, Hobbes, Spinoza, etc.), this God is conceived and spoken of as a "force" akin to gravity and the evolutionary processes. The Enlightenment God is one that created a universe in which Freewill is denied, and one in which both Time and Evil do not exist. Obviously, this sort of universe and this sort of God is not what Christians today are talking about when they attempt to make the erroneous claim that the U.S. was established as a "Christian nation."
Hi Zachforn,
I was under the impression the leading Deists of the Enlightenment believed in violations of the Laws of Nature.
Nope, not really.
The Professor quoted in this post, lays out the leading Deists of the Enlightenment believed in miracles:
http://ourfoundingtruth.blogspot.com/2011/03/did-men-of-enlightenment-believe-in.html
It is mysterious that Deists would believe in violating the laws of nature.
I have no doubt the Professor believes in what he writes. I also have no doubt that Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hobbes, et al believe in what they wrote.
And if I were to be asked what I think Leibniz, Spinoza, Jefferson, Hobbes, et al believed I would have to respond, "read them and find out." For once you do you will see that they put forth doctrines of thought in which Time (as we understand it today) does not exist, evil in the universe does not exist, and freewill (as we understand it today) does not exist. Which is to say their "Christianity" is nothing at all like ours is today, so much so it might as well be another religion.
To deny this is to either, 1)not have read these thinkers in full, or 2) to be working backwards from what one believes then crafting lenses to see these beliefs in various writers from the Enlightenment, much like your professor does.
It's interesting you wrote the enlightenment rationalists denied free will. I've never seen that. Sounds a little like Calvin's unconditional election.
He isn't my prof. I saw his work online for the quotes on miracles.
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