(December 4, 2012 at 3:03 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:"In the history of the Revolutionary War, there were the Tories who fought as loyalists to the crown. Doubtless, they were inspired by Romans 13:1-2 which proclaimed the divine right of kings to rule (all the rage in Europe at that time).....(December 4, 2012 at 11:21 am)A Theist Wrote: Maybe you see it that way, but I see it being a battle for the culture...a struggle between two philosophies....traditionalists who are struggling to preserve the culture and the neo-leftists who are attempting to overthrow the culture and replace it entirely with a distortion of our culture...
I would agree that there is a war for our culture, one that has been fought since the American Revolution started. In each battle along the way, there were reactionaries who drew inspiration from Christianity and the Bible to fight against it.
It was one thing to boldly proclaim "all men are created equal" but living up to that promise has been our struggle throughout history. Such a concept wasn't even enshrined in our federal constitution until the 14th amendment, and even with that promise it hasn't yet been fully implemented.
In the history of the Revolutionary War, there were the Tories who fought as loyalists to the crown. Doubtless, they were inspired by Romans 13:1-2 which proclaimed the divine right of kings to rule (all the rage in Europe at that time).
Then there were the slave owners of the south who felt their right to own slaves was both ensured and regulated by the Bible. The OT regulated the practice of slavery, including how to beat your slaves, how to sell your slaves and even how to rape your slaves if you fancied them. The NT admonished slaves to obey their masters and accept their lot in life as assigned from on high.
And then the civil rights struggle took over a century to more-or-less carry the promise of equality, fought against by Christians who thought their god created the races to be separate.
And "all men" should include "all women" as well but Christians fought on the wrong side of this battle, gaining inspiration from Paul's epistles that clearly placed women in a subservient position to men.
Notice a pattern here?
Each battle must be fought against reactionaries who claim the mantle of the will of Jesus and "traditional values". Each one decries the radicals and trouble-makers who upset tradition and the "proper order" as ordained by their god. Each one disavows the previous group of reactionaries as people who didn't understand either American values or the teachings of Jesus ...except the rhetoric of the reactionaries always seems to sound eerily similar.
It's like what Jesus said, a man can't serve two masters. As he loves one, he must hate the other. The Bible or The Constitution? Which do you serve?
Or as Rushdooney, the leader of the Christian Dominionist movement said, "Christianity and democracy are enemies."
Crushing the political influence of Christianity is nothing less than the last great battle of the American Revolution.
Down with King Jesus.
Doubtful...the Tories were simply colonial loyalists who considered themselves subjects of the British Crown...Patriots however, resisted a Big Government tax imposed on them for the government controlled tea trade in the colonies that was hurting their businesses by driving up the cost of British tea...the patriots resisted by refusing to buy British tea and smuggled tea into the colonies from Holland....with the East India Company in financial straits the British government gave them a bailout and tried to make up the cost by taxing the colonists...after a while the British government and the East India Company responded to the colonists boycott by selling directly to the colonists at a cheaper cost than the imported Dutch tea, undercutting the colonial middlemen,...hurting their businesses...and eventually led to the colonists Boston Tea Party resisting Big Government Control through taxation without representation.
"The NT admonished slaves to obey their masters and accept their lot in life as assigned from on high."...it was the Churches and Christian Ministers who largely led the abolition effort in America and condemned slavery from the pulpit....Revivalists like Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher, (father of Harriet Beecher Stowe who authored Uncle Tom's Cabin)...Finney was also Oberlin College's second president...Oberlin College in Ohio was built and established primarily to train young men for the ministry and for the abolition effort...the Tappan brothers who financed the building of Oberlin were abolitionists and were converts of Finney as was also Theodore Weld another leading abolitionist....doubtless they were inspired by Paul's epistle I Corinthians 7:21 that encouraged slaves to take advantage of the opportunity to become free.
"And then the civil rights struggle took over a century to more-or-less carry the promise of equality, fought against by Christians who thought their god created the races to be separate."....again, Christian Ministers, (like the Reverend Martin Luther King), and Churches were at the forefront of the civil rights movement.
"And "all men" should include "all women" as well but Christians fought on the wrong side of this battle,"....Again, some of the most vocal supporters of women's suffrage were Christian ministers and the Churches...one of the most vocal to support the suffrage effort was the very conservative evangelist, Billy Sunday...
"Notice a pattern here?"...yes I do.
"It's like what Jesus said, a man can't serve two masters. As he loves one, he must hate the other.....which do you serve? The Constitution or a big leftist government control overthrow of the Constitution?
"Down with King Jesus."...King Jesus forever.
"Inside every Liberal there's a Totalitarian screaming to get out"
Quote: JohnDG...
Quote: JohnDG...
Quote:It was an awful mistake to characterize based upon religion. I should not judge any theist that way, I must remember what I said in order to change.