The United States was not founded on Christianity.

1. Meso-Americans weren't Catholics.

2. Illegal immigrants brought Catholicism from Italy, Ireland and Greece long before the current Nativist BS.

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I was referring to the religious distribution now, in the 21st century. Immigration from the South was still relatively small as late as the 1950's, but today is a veritable flood. Those who come North seeking a better life and opportunities from Mexico, etc., are overwhelmingly Catholic. At the same time "main-line" church membership has remained constant, or has fallen.

Nativism isn't a new thing either. Attempts to exclude immigration, especially from Eastern and Southern Europe and Catholic countries existed in the first quarter of the 19th century. By the mid-19th century, immigrants from Asia were bullied with impunity. Mexicans whose families had lived here in the Southwest for hundreds of years suddenly became second-class citizens.

BTW, Setanta is again correct about our struggle with the Barbary Pirates. They were Muslims who "justified" their depredations and blackmail on the basis of religion. They exacted annual tribute from larger more powerful seafaring nations who sailed the Mediterranean. The new United States wasn't one of those larger more powerful seafaring nations, and so American seamen were captured and generally sold into slavery. Americans detested the idea that good Christians were being enslaved by followers of Islam, but even more they hated the idea of paying tribute. Americans, it has been often noted, have a high regard from themselves, and a very, very high regard for their purse. The U.S. at the time of the Barbary "Wars" wasn't rich, and President Jefferson had done his worst to destroy the fledgling U.S. Navy that was a center piece of Federalist policy. The USMC might have won that "war" on the battlefield, but the diplomats had already done their thing.

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The way I see it, there are a great deal of overlap in christina ideals and american democratic ideals, that overlap however is not congruent, nor is it exclusive. The ideas in which Christians hold most dear are not unique to christianity.

Read the letter from Jefferson to the Virginia(?) Baptists. he explains the first amendment. Look at the treaty of Tripoli.

I don't doubt that the founding fathers ound some inspiriation in christianity, but it's offensive to my core that Christians think that they own this country.

I'm a Deist, and I can understand why Jefferson et al would make a places that protects people of a different belief than his own. The founding fathers understood that this goverment had to be big enough for all beliefs or the effort wasn't worth it at all.

I am not a Christian, but I believe you should be free to be one.
I do not understand why they can't reciprocate that desire for my freedom.

Lastly, as a thought. Imagine you could go back in time. Talk to the Vriginia Baptists. Tell them that because of their protest, their letters would be used in the future as a means to inturpret the constitution to allow for all religions. What do you think that they would do?

Would they send the letters anyway? Or would they sacrifice their church to keep other religions out. I think that they'd still send it. I think that they would be more concerned with their own community.

I think that modern Christians have no understanding of what religious oppression is, and working so hard to remove other religions from this country's origins and working to make this a christian country oonly serves to cheapen the freedoms that the founders worked so hard to give them.

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Diest TKO wrote:

I am not a Christian, but I believe you should be free to be one.
I do not understand why they can't reciprocate that desire for my freedom.

This is why (reposted from grist.org):

The reconstructionists (also known as dominionists), a smaller but politically influential sect, put the onus for the Lord's return not in the hands of biblical prophesy but in political activism. They believe that Christ will only make his Second Coming when the world has prepared a place for Him, and that the first step in readying His arrival is to Christianize America.

"Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ," writes reconstructionist George Grant. Christian dominion will be achieved by ending the separation of church and state, replacing U.S. democracy with a theocracy ruled by Old Testament law, and cutting all government social programs, instead turning that work over to Christian churches. Reconstructionists also would abolish government regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, because they are a distraction from their goal of Christianizing America, and subsequently, the rest of the world. "World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish," says Grant. "We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less." Only when that conquest is complete can the Lord return.

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BDoug wrote:

I have to agree but would like to add an addendum. The "founding fathers" or more specifically Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin amongst others were more outspoken as Deists. Believers in a creator that made the world but then left it to its own devices.

A common misconception.

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Evidence that our founding fathers wanted to protect this co
If they were protecting anything (of a religious nature) it was the freedom to worship or not worship as each person saw fit. One powerful influence upon them was the centuries long Protestant/Catholic atrocities that plagued Europe for centuries. In addition, if you look around the capital (DC that is) you see more of a Greco-Roman look, including their policy making and philosophy of government.

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Asherman wrote:

Actually, the Founders were overwhelmingly Christians, and the country at large was even more heterogeneously Christian in the last half of the 18th century. Washington regarded himself as a Christian, and was a regular contributing member to his congregation. Jefferson and Franklin were probably the least religious of the well-known Founders, and it could be rightly that even Jefferson was a Christian who only despised organized dogma.

On the other hand, one of the contributing factors in the settlement of North America was by refugees fleeing the religious wars of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in northern Europe. The English Civil War that brought Oliver Cromwell to power, was as much a struggle about religious freedom as it was between the powers of King and Parliament. Henry's expulsion of the Catholics and seizure of their wealth made England the darling of European Protestants, but it only grudgingly permitted a wee bit of religious freedom to most commoners. Religion cost King Charles his head, and after the restoration, it drove the last Catholic British monarch (James) from his throne. Those who arrived in the New World were mostly determined to set up their own religious dictatorship, though Rhode Island resisted that trend.

The Founders were Christians, but they belonged to a wide range of denominations. To avoid religious turmoil between Christian sects, and to guarantee that the Federal government never, ever adopt a single state religion the Constitution formalizes the separation of Church and State. Still the great majority of the Founders strongly believed that religion was an important, perhaps essential foundation for stable and humane government. The Founders never foresaw a time when other religions would be followed by significant numbers of our citizens.

The drift away from Christianity is really quite recent. Prior to the middle of the 20th century, the overwhelming majority of Americans were Christians or Jews. Now around fifty years later, Christians and Jews still predominate. The number of Catholics has increased along with the number of immigrants from the South and the number of Muslims has also increased. Illegal immigrants have brought their Catholicism north with them from Meso-America. The number of Buddhists has grown as well over the last 50 years, even as the number of devout Christians has languished.

I agree, but IMO its important to remember that the Christianity known by the Founders is not quite the same as the Christianity known today--at least, not as it is often perceived and/or portrayed today. Fundamentalism did not really emerge until the early years of the 20th century. The Fundamentalist insistence on literalism and inerrancy was what made the difference between what is seen as Christianity then and now.

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What we call "fundamentalism" first appeared even before our revolution--you clearly know nothing about the history of religion in America. You need to educate yourself about what is known as "The Great Awakening," an evangelical movement in England and the North American colonies in the early 18th century. It has such a profound effect on religious establishments in the colonies (yes, several colonies had established churches) that many churches were irrevocably fragmented--such as the Congregationalists in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the Presbyterians and Baptists in New York and Pennsylvania.

Evangelicalism continued to flourish in England, and after our revolution, it was continually "re-imported" into the United States. Revivalism represents a constant thread in the history of religion in the United States, and became a great deal more important in the American South during the Civil War when the Confederate armies were swept by an evangelical movement which easily reconciled Christianity and the racist institution of slavery, and which established the "tent meeting" as a facet of religious life in the United States, although largely popular in the South.

Both before and after the war, there was a strong current of anti-Cahtolic sentiment which was directed at the Irish, Polish and Italian immigrants. The claim that this were a Protestant nation, threatened by "evil" Catholic influences was common enough that we have made a minor national hero of Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist famous for his attacks on Tammany Hall. The story which passes for history is that he is admirable for attacking municipal corruption. But that is a scam, and not history. He attacked Tammany Hall because they were overwhelmingly Irish and Catholic, and he was a militant Protestant--municipal corruption was a fact of American life then, just as it sadly so often is even today.

In the post-Civil War atmosphere of Protestant hysteria a movement grew up which was founded and centered in the American South, but which had adherents all over the country. That was the Lily Whites--Lily refers to the Protestants (as though Protestants had some proprietorial claim to the Easter holiday), and white part was racist. The Lily Whites were Protestant and white supremacist, and had their largest number of adherents in the fundamentalist Protestant sects which were increasingly popular throughout the nation. They believed in separation of "the races" and that whites were superior, and they were virulently and violently anti-Catholic and anti-Jew. The movement reached its height in the early years of the First World War, before the United States entered the war, in response to the popular motion picture The Birth of a Nation, which was unashamedly racist and based upon the novel The Clansman, and which glorified the Ku Klux Klan (which then had ceased to exist); and in response to the hysteria over the accusation of murder made against Leo Frank, a Jew who was lynched.

The original Ku Klux Klan had been founded by Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1866. However, although their purpose was to resist the effects of reconstruction, many people loosely associated with the organization became "night riders" and set about burning and lynching. The Southern "elites" (most of them former Confederate officers) realized that the activities of the night riders were only drawing more Federal troops into the South, and they repudiated the Klan. Forrest dissolved the organization in 1870, although the night riders had never been under his control, so that meant little except that the paramilitary leadership withdrew. Grant's Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act) soon put an end to the worst excesses of the night riders, and ended their days as a paramilitary organization. But lynchings and burning continued.

In 1915, inspired by the Lily Whites, The Birth of a Nation and the novel The Clansman, and the Leo Frank trial and lynching, the modern Ku Klux Klan was "re-founded" in Georgia. The founder was a discredited Protestant minister, William Joseph Simmons. The Klan quickly became popular all over the nation, which was essentially racist. It's popularity was assured because it peddled the same message as the Lily Whites, a message of racist hatred, and Protestant and white supremacy.

As had been the case with the issue of slavery before the American Civil War, the Lily Whites and the Klan helped to fragment traditional Protestant denominations. The Presbyterians and Baptists had already been fragmented by the Great Awakening before the American Revolution, and they fragmented further over the issue of slavery. Among the Methodists, the issue of slavery lead to the establishment of the "Free" Methodists, who publicly condemned slavery. The rise of the Lily Whites further fragmented the Protestant sects in the United States. Although modern fundamentalist sects may not all be racist, many of them owe their existence to the controversies of slavery and the racism of the Lily Whites.

Religion in America has been fragmenting from the very beginning of the English-speaking colonies. "Fundamentalism" has been a commonplace factor in American religious life since the earliest days, long before the Revolution. Since John Winthrop condemned and banished Anne Hutchinson from Massachusetts in 1637 right up to the present day, churches in America have fragmented, and evangelical and charismatic Protestant sects have proliferated and prospered.

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Setanta wrote:

What we call "fundamentalism" first appeared even before our revolution--you clearly know nothing about the history of religion in America. You need to educate yourself about what is known as "The Great Awakening," an evangelical movement in England and the North American colonies in the early 18th century.

I stand by what I said.

I don't know who the "we" is to whom you refer, but the term Fundamentalism was not coinged until the 20th Century, nor did the movement designated as Fundamentalist begin unti the 20th Century.

Quote:

Fundamentalism originally referred to a movement in North American Protestantism that arose in the early part of the 20th century in reaction to modernism (see below, "History"), stressing that the Bible is literally inerrant, not only in matters of faith and morals but also as a literal historical record. This original "fundamentalism" holds as essential to Christian faith five fundamental doctrines:
1. the inerrancy of the Bible,
2. the Virgin birth,
3. physical resurrection,
4. atonement by the sacrificial death of Christ, and
5. the Second Coming.
In its broadest usage in general terms, it denotes strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles; or, in the words of the American Heritage Dictionary: "a usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism."

source for the above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

Quote:

Origin of the Concept: The term `fundamentalism' has its origin in a series of pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915. Entitled "The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth," these booklets were authored by leading evangelical churchmen and were circulated free of charge among clergymen and seminarians. By and large, fundamentalism was a response to the loss of influence traditional revivalism experienced in America during the early years of the twentieth century. This loss of influence, coupled with the liberalizing trends of German biblical criticism and the encroachment of Darwinian theories about the origin of the universe, prompted a response by conservative churchmen. The result was the pamphlets. In 1920, a journalist and Baptist layman named Curtis Lee Laws appropriated the term `fundamentalist' as a designation for those who were ready "to do battle royal for the Fundamentals."
Date of Birth: Second decade of the 20th century
Birth Place: The United States
Year Founded: Concept coined in 1920
Sacred or Revered Texts :
The Bible is the sacred text of the Christian Fundamentalists. Indeed, if there is one single thing which binds Fundamentalists together, it is their insistence that the Bible is to be understood as literally true. Further, Fundamentalists see themselves as the guardians of the truth, usually to the exclusion of others' interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentalism in other faith traditions similarly proclaims guardianship of truth.

source for the above:
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/12942.htm

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Actually, the Christian fundamentalists are closer to the religion followed by 18th century North Americans than most of today's mainline churches.

The English colonies attracted the dissenters from the Church of England, and they were a bible thumping lot who took their religion to serious extremes. The Church, of whatever domination, tended to exercise a heavy hand over the colonists within their community. Church services were both frequent and long. The preaching style was lengthy and typically blood and thunder. If an individually didn't conform, they might be exiled from the community.

Predestination was an accepted dogma. God before the beginning of creation, being all knowing, knew who among all mankind would be saved and who would not. No one could change their fate by either faith nor by their actions. The greatest preacher, the new born infant, were just as likely to be consigned to Hell's fires as a traitor, a murderer, pirate or beggar on the street. That uncertainty didn't make the early American worshiper's more tolerant, instead they were totally convinced that their sect alone was favored by God. Catholics and Jews were considered pagans to be discriminated against. Folks not only read their bibles, they memorized large parts of it and made a public show of their sanctity.

"Traveling" ministers were celebrities and revivals were popular. Cotton Mather and his father were leading figures. Arron Burr's grandfather led one of the first waves of large scale revivalism in New England.

Rhode Island was pretty open minded and became a haven for folks fleeing other colonies. Maryland attracted most of the Catholic immigrants, but even there they were in the minority. The tidelands of Virginia and the Carolinas tended to attract a wealthier segment of English society. They formed the plantation system and dreamed of becoming landed gentry in the same basic pattern of the Blighty. They also tended to follow the fundamental doctrines of the Church of England, and became what we call Episcopalians. Poorer members of the Scottish Kirk became the Presbyterians, and early Irish immigrants from Northern Ireland settled into the hill country along the frontiers.

At the end of the Revolution, the States regarded themselves as sovereign and that the central government was a confederation of mere convenience. States had their own domestic and foreign policies, issued their own currency, imposed their own tariffs and taxes. Each State was typified by the same sects that were dominant during the Colonial Period. The individual States had huge war debts, and were struggling with citizens who regarded independence as meaning mob rule and redistribution of wealth. Things were chaotic and the central government was unable to govern.

When the Constitutional Convention convened survival of the experiment was very doubtful. Washington and others later to be designated Federalists, were convinced that a strong central government with the power to enforce national policies and provide a coherent national defense was necessary. Getting a Constitution that was acceptable to all the States was like herding cats. Everyone had their own self-interests in mind and feared giving up sovereignty to a central government. Wasn't that what they had fought against during the eight long, bitter and difficult years of Revolution? The Constitution was hammered out in secrecy behind doors in a room without air conditioning. In order to get a document that gave the Federal government the powers it needed to effectively govern could only be obtained by compromise. Some issues were unresolvable, so they were left for later resolution (think slavery).

Without the agreement to include the Bill of Rights the Constitution might not have been ratified. Article I. Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacefully to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. There would be no establishment of a National Religion in the new Republic, and no religion prohibited to incite a religious war. Whatever one might believe, they would be free to speak and write about it openly and with censorship. The Federal government was prohibited from imposing those controls over the People that are fundamental to despotism. The Founders were probably more concerned with religion than most of those alive at the beginning of the 21st century.

The unintended result of the First Amendment was that American individualism when it comes to religion multiplied. The major religious sects of the 18th century divided and divided again. Immigrants from continental Europe, especially Southern and Eastern Europe, were drawn to the United States by the promise that their religion wouldn't be interfered with. Irish Catholics settled in New York and Boston in large numbers. Out along the westward frontier, small congregations adopted their own interpretations of the Bible and religion was both inspirational and entertainment. Faith drove the Mormons to settle the Great Salt Lake and Utah. The Catholicism of Mexican and Spanish culture in the Southwest has remained important here. Then there is California, that fabled land where New Age religions are born every hour. Immigrants from Asia have brought with them Buddhism, and Hinduism. Islam is a more recent arrival, yet all of these religions have at least one thing in common; they come here in the expectation of being left to peacefully practice their own religion without government interference.

BTW, Setanta published while I was composing. Between the two posts, I hope that we've corrected the mistaken notion that todays fundamentalists are unique to our times. They are instead only the latest in a long line of religious fundamentalism in our country.

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The term "race" as an allegedly scientific term only dates to the later portion of the 19th century and the term racism was coined in the early 20th century. On such a basis, i wonder if Eclectic would claim that racism did not exist before the 19th century.

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Setanta wrote:

The term "race" as an allegedly scientific term only dates to the later portion of the 19th century and the term racism was coined in the early 20th century. On such a basis, i wonder if Eclectic would claim that racism did not exist before the 19th century.

LOL! Good one. You don't even know what race I am.

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Yes i do. You're a member of the human race. There is only one race, the human race.

The point, which you choose to ignore, is that simply because no one called extremist religious splinter groups fundamentalists until the early 20th century is not a plausible basis for saying that no extremist religious splinter groups existed before 1901.

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Quote:

Yes i do. You're a member of the human race. There is only one race, the human race.

Point Setanta (assuming he is correct, of course).

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Setanta wrote:

The term "race" as an allegedly scientific term only dates to the later portion of the 19th century....

Yes, one of the more prominent works to try to sell this and other pseudo-scientific ideas was published during this time period and was titled:

Quote:

ON

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION,

OR THE

PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE

FOR LIFE.

BY CHARLES DARWIN, M.A.,
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL, GEOLOGICAL, LINNAEAN, ETC., SOCIETIES ;
AUTHOR OF 'JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES DURING H.M.S. BEAGLE'S VOYAGE
ROUND THE WORLD.'

from http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=side&pageseq=1

In a later work, the same author used this pseudo-scientific term to great effect:

Quote:

It might also naturally be enquired whether man, like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races, differing but slightly from each other, or to
races differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful species?[/u] How are such races distributed over the world; and how, when crossed, do they react on each other, both in the first and succeeding generations? And so with many other points.

The enquirer would next come to the important point, whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate, as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence, and consequently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated. Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace each other, so that some finally become extinct? We shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the lower animals.

from http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F937.1&viewtype=side&pageseq=1
emphasis mine

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So your point is that Darwin said it, so it must be true? That is an hilariously stupid position to take. All science is based upon falsifiability. The concept of separate human races has been falsified, and whether or not Darwin believed there were separate races is meaningless. It neither makes him correct in that regard, nor does it make him incorrect in regard to all the other work which he did.

I'm sure you're highly amused, though.

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Of course, Darwin nowhere even suggests that humans are divided into different species. Darwin only asserts that species are not immutable, but adaptable to environmental conditions. Variation within species can be very large. We humans, no matter how great the apparent differences in features remain a single species ... Homo Sapiens.

Darwin's work "inspired" a number of ideas totally unjustified and unintended. In particular, Social Darwinism sprang into being to "explain" why the Anglo-Saxon was superior to all other varieties of humans. For instance, hot and humid climates retarded intellectual and cultural development. Negroes were valued as sugar plantation slaves as early as the 16th century because, "they are better suited to work in tropical fields". And, work they did until they died, sometimes within weeks of being set to labor. The demand for sugar led to the demand for an ever increasing number of slaves. Slave societies are by nature paranoid, always expecting revolt, and ever needful of a rational for their oppressive methods. By the late 19th century slavery had been eliminated from most European and American countries, but Blacks were still regarded as inferior. Why inferior? Because Nature made them that way.

Colonialism wasn't exactly slavery, but Social Darwinism fit the justification bill. It led to paternalism, the White Man's Burden. There were, of course, other manifestations of Social Darwinism, but since Darwin has been wrongfully accused of inventing racism, that needs to be our focus here.

BTW, I've avoided citing any particular work for Social Darwinism, because many of them aren't much more culpable than Darwin was. People read into ideas what they believe they need, and sometimes that interpretation can be really, really far from the author's intent.

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Asherman said:

Quote:

Actually, the Founders were overwhelmingly Christians, and the country at large was even more heterogeneously Christian in the last half of the 18th century. Washington regarded himself as a Christian, and was a regular contributing member to his congregation. Jefferson and Franklin were probably the least religious of the well-known Founders, and it could be rightly that even Jefferson was a Christian who only despised organized dogma.
. . .
The Founders were Christians, but they belonged to a wide range of denominations. To avoid religious turmoil between Christian sects, and to guarantee that the Federal government never, ever adopt a single state religion the Constitution formalizes the separation of Church and State. Still the great majority of the Founders strongly believed that religion was an important, perhaps essential foundation for stable and humane government. The Founders never foresaw a time when other religions would be followed by significant numbers of our citizens.

Deist TKO said:

Quote:

The way I see it, there are a great deal of overlap in christina ideals and american democratic ideals, that overlap however is not congruent, nor is it exclusive. The ideas in which Christians hold most dear are not unique to christianity.

. . .

I don't doubt that the founding fathers ound some inspiriation in christianity, but it's offensive to my core that Christians think that they own this country.

I'm a Deist, and I can understand why Jefferson et al would make a places that protects people of a different belief than his own. The founding fathers understood that this goverment had to be big enough for all beliefs or the effort wasn't worth it at all.

I am not a Christian, but I believe you should be free to be one.
I do not understand why they can't reciprocate that desire for my freedom.

I said:

Quote:

I agree, but IMO its important to remember that the Christianity known by the Founders is not quite the same as the Christianity known today--at least, not as it is often perceived and/or portrayed today. Fundamentalism did not really emerge until the early years of the 20th century. The Fundamentalist insistence on literalism and inerrancy was what made the difference between what is seen as Christianity then and now.

Setana said:

Quote:

The point, which you choose to ignore, is that simply because no one called extremist religious splinter groups fundamentalists until the early 20th century is not a plausible basis for saying that no extremist religious splinter groups existed before 1901.

still

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eclectic wrote:

BUT, as Asherman suggested, above, at the time of the Founders the nation was "overwhelmingly Christians, and the country at large was even more heterogeneously Christian in the last half of the 18th century." This is definitely not the case today, and, IMO Fundamentalism is one of the chief instigators for the increasing polarity. It has much more sociological and political influence than "splinter groups" of the past.

There may have been Bible-thumpers in the colonies, but the majority of citizens were more or less in agreement that religion was important, while still

You display a wonderful ignorance of the history of religion in the United States. At the time of the Revolution, Massachusetts (and therefore, by extension, the "province" of Maine), New Hampshire and Connecticut had established churches--the Congregational Church, the descendants of the Puritans. New York and New Jersey had no religious establishments, because the Dutch had been somewhat tolerant (in the terms of their day) of other Christian sects, and when the English took New Holland, they agreed to Protestant toleration, so as not to alienate the then majority Dutch Reform population. The Dutch had recently taken Delaware from the Swedes and a similar provision was made to a toleration of the Lutheran Church. Pennsylvania was the only colony with an explicit toleration of all religious sects. Maryland was a colony given to the prominent English Catholic Calvert family, in recognition of the services rendered by Lord Baltimore to James I--although a haven for Catholics, for pragmatic reasons, the Calverts put government into the hands of Anglicans, at which Catholics grumbled--and there was therefore no established religion. Virginia had a religious establishment of the Episcopal or Anglican Church. North Carolina and South Carolina had, ostensibly, an establishment of the Episcopal Church--never enforced in North Carolina, which filled up with English dissenters and Scots-Irish Presbyterians. It was observed with public livings for Episcopal ministers in South Carolina, but church attendance and church taxes were not enforced.

Thomas Jefferson coined the phrase "wall of separation between church and state" in a letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist congregation, which complained that they were "tolerated" by the Congregationalist establishment in that state, rather than there being religious freedom. Jefferson was, of course, powerless to interfere in the Connecticut legislature's measures, so his letter was simply one of sympathy. It was common in those states which had religious establishments that the legislatures would list exactly which sects would be tolerated. In most cases, that was a response to the threat of lawsuits. The religious establishment of Massachusetts had such a death grip on the religious life of the state (before the Revolution, Baptists and Quakers were run out of the state, and if they returned and were caught preaching they could be and frequently were executed), that the taxes which Thoreau refused to pay were not taxes to the Federal government (he wasn't subject to direct federal taxation), but were the church taxes for which all citizens of the state were liable, whether they were Congregationalists or not. (Other people paid the church tax for Thoreau so that he wouldn't be jailed--he was an old fraud.) The "powers that were" in Massachusetts were scandalized when George Briggs was elected governor of the commonwealth (1844), since he had converted to the Baptist Church while he was an adolescent.

Baptists and Presbyterians were persecuted in Virginia, even after the Declaration of Independence had been written and published. Virginia was a unique exception which proved the rule about religious intolerance when religious toleration was enshrined by law in that commonwealth. Other states continued to assess church taxes, with the only modification being that the taxpayer could designated to which denomination the money would be paid--but not the congregation. Since the two "great awakening" evangelical events had split many churches, the more radical congregations always complained that the laws were set up to impoverish and exclude them. It was not until the 1830s that state churches were "disestablished" in all the states, and many states continued to collect church taxes for long after, well into the 1850s.

Andrew Jackson, a Presbyterian, refused when in the White House to name a national day of prayer and thanksgiving when the nation suffered a terrible cholera epidemic in 1831-32. Both Houses of the Congress proposed and the House passed resolutions to call for such a day of "prayer, humiliation and thanksgiving," and many religious bodies wrote the President to plead with him to comply with the resolution. We know his feelings because his letters to those religious organizations have been preserved, and he refused to do so, citing the concept of the separation of church and state. Even the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, was an informal Anglican establishment--until complaints were made after the Civil War, the only chapel on the grounds of the military reservation was an Anglican chapel, and the only minister employed an Anglican minister.

The notion that the majority of citizens in the early United States were "committed to the idea of separation of church and state" is completely without historical foundation.

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Thoreau was an avowed individualist, a Transcendentalist, and objected to all government on principle. He refused to pay his Poll Tax for six years and was imprisoned in the Condord jail when he walked into town to have a shoe mended in 1846. Writing from his jail cell, he concluded that it was morally wrong to support a government that sanctioned slavery and invaded weaker nations, such as Mexico.

"When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country (Mexico) is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize ... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood."

Whatever Thoreau's reasons for refusing to pay his Poll Tax for the half dozen years before his incarceration, in the end his rational was to protest the Mexican War. This rational has since been used as a touchstone for civil disobedience by opponents of government everywhere. His Aunt Mavin paid his tax bill, and Thoreau's actual jail time was much less than Paris Hilton's. Celebrity justice.

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The United States was not founded on Christianity.

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