During The American Revolutionary War, the state religion of Great Britain was Christianity?

Who is "we" here? You are not just one single person but several are posting under that name "oristarA"?

What ever: you (singular or plural) did perhaps forget that you (singular or plural) started an own thread about that Dickens quote.

Surely you are not included, WH.
I'm not alone.
(Otherwise, why does the bunch of you fight here in low morale?)
Rather, I am impressed that you're in fact alone that if I criticise you, no one will go to help you.
I suggest that you better go to improve your English. Your arguments are often gibberish and fail to get the point.

It seems that Contrex, the wise man, has more or less lost his usual way of offering crystal-clear explanations, under the pressure from a mysterious source?

I certainly would like to follow your wise advice.
Where, do you think, should I go? England? Been there quite often? (That might be a reason why my English is so bad: I transcribed quite a few of of the English Pauper Letters, which often lack punctuation, have only loose orthographic and grammatical structure)

Or to the USA? (I agree that my English sounds strange there, as many here can testify.)

You are incorrect.

'We' are not expecting anything of Contrex.

You are expecting something of Contrex, and while waiting are managing to insult any number of people who have been kind and helpful to you over the past few years.

I put you on ignore some time ago because of your rudeness.

I came into the thread to see what could be so interesting about this ESL question and discovered it was you managing to insult several people at the same time. I marvel that anyone still wants to help you.

I have not taken offense.





David

Do you see the "principle" of this ehBeth, David?

The rivals against me here have insulted Jefferson (not only that, one of them went further:"even Jefferson's dog could be elected as President of the United States" - a great insult to American people who hold a deep love for the democracy of their country) and I've tried hard to defend him, so I am called by this ehBeth as ungrateful. ehBeth's logic is that if the people helped you, you'd better agree with anything they speak.

Your ridiculousness will be not accepted, ehBeth.

Glad you've put on me on your Ignore list. Thank you very much.

That's because you've not disagreed with him.

No. I disagreed with her a few months ago,
qua the Constitutional legitimacy of the withdrawal
from the Union by the Southern States.

I remain fully confident that the Founders, in the 17OOs,
fully understood that the States that ratified the Constitution
were perfectly free to leave if thay so chose. It was not advertized as a trap.

In its Instrument of Ratification, the State of New York
(which invaded the Confederacy), explicitly declared its right to leave.
That remains in the National Archives. The invasion was in bad faith,
just a naked grab for real estate.

Oristar disagreed with my position, but no rancor,
just intellectual debate.





David

You disagreed about a point of law, that's not the same. Oristar is claiming a direct causal link between the American Revolution and the decline in Christianity in Britain, using an off the cuff remark from Contrex as his only source.

The very idea is preposterous, nobody agrees with him, nobody.

However that may be,
civil relations have not broken down, insofar as I am concerned.





David

You may give up your idiot, baseless claim, or you may explain just how it was that Jefferson, largely a political non-entity at the time of the revolution, would have been able to attack christianity in Great Britain. What mechanism do you allege that he employed--how was he to accomplish this end? You really put no thought into this exercise in politico-historical fantasy.

My "off the cuff" remark was intended to convey something like this: "It seems a bit paradoxical that the USA has a constitution which enshrines the separation of church and State, and which forbids the State to promote any religion, yet in that country people coming out as atheists can face social ostracism, while in the United Kingdom, where a major division (England) has an official State religion, it is people who bang on about Jesus who are regarded as odd, and church attendance is at an all-time low".

Contrex's remarks are not, of course, so ludicrously wrong-headed as the drivel that Oristar has posted--but they are, in some respects, almost as simplistic. While it is true that the conventional political wisdom would be not to own atheism if one were running for public office, i would be interested to know how many publicly, self-declared atheists have served as Prime Minister in London. In fact, the only Premier of a western-style democracy that i know of to own to being an atheist is Julia Gillard in Australia from 2007-2010. I fully acknowledge that religion is not the emotive issue in Europe that is here.

But that should be understandable. Even before the foundation of the United States, the North American colonies have become a havem for religious dissenters. Massachusetts Bay, of course, became a haven for Puritans seeking to avoid the tender ministrations of Archbishop Laud. Those among their number who were accounted heretical, or even just doctrinally incorrect found a have in the colony of Rhode Island. When Charles and James Stuart prepared to leave the continent to return to England in 1660, they borrowed 15,000 pounds from Admiral Penn. Unable to repay the debt before Penn's death, Charles gave a huge swath of North America to his son, William Penn, who had become a member of the Society of Friends--the Quakers. His privately-owned colony was religiously tolerant, and sectaries of all types found a haven there. Huguenots fleeing France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes found havens in Holland, German, England and the new colony of North Carolina. Baptists, so widely despised in Europe, found a have in the North American colonies.

The first amendment to the United States constitution begins: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . --so if anything, the United States has become more of a haven than the colonies were before the revolution. Puritans, Independents, Baptists, Catholics, Moravians, Mennonites--all manner of sectaries have found a refuge in America. The discrepancy between the United States and other nations in the matter of what one might call religious fervor derives rather obviously.

The political influence of religion is also often overstated in the European press. When the elder Bush was running for president in 1988, someone at a rally asked him about a remark attributed to him that atheists should not be allowed to vote. He admitted the remark, and re-affirmed it. I have often thought that the question was by a plant. It allowed him to court the religiously devout, while not making any specific statements about doctrine or his personal adherence. At any event, religious tests are illegal in the United States, so no one is ever going to be asked what their religious confession is when registering to vote.

And the power of the religious right is not as great as it once was thought it would be, while politicians who have courted them have signally failed to deliver on their vaguely stated promises. There is a good deal of disenchantment among the fundamentalists and charismatics, and among politicians as well. The younger Bush failed to deliver on the promises he made, and many lower level politicians have succeeded despite the opposition of religious groups. I suspect that politicians will still claim religious adherence as a matter of course--but a Muslim was elected to the House of Representatives, and despite the howls from the fundamentalists, successfully insisted that he be sworn in by swearing on the Quran rather than the Bible.

So long as the United States is seen as a haven for sectaries, i imagine they'll still show up on our doorstep. They will be welcome, too, so long as they obey the laws and pay their taxes.

Did the Declaration of Independence have anything
to do with the Revolution?? Thay didn't invite ME to write it.





David

The Declaration of Independence was written by a committee, and it was not original work on Jefferson's part. If you had not simply jumped into the thread looking for an opportunity to pick a quarrel, you'd know that, because Walter has already posted about it.

Yea, I 'm SURE that the Founders went looking
for political non-entities at the time of the revolution
to write the Declaration of Independence; a condition precedent to eligibility! Right!

Read the thread, pea-brain, rather than just jumping in to try to pick a fight.

Again, Contrex acted scholarly and to be himself. This wise man's calm explanation cogently anatomised an extemporaneous remark, which was actually well-thought-out and entered into his subconscious. That is why he would speak it out in an off-the-cuff manner. He's not joking here, because both (the situations in US and UK) are serious realities.