Religious group challenges 'traditional' history(Jefferson anti-Christian)

http://www.newsvirginian.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WNV/MGArticle/WNV_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031781112366&path=!news!localnews&tacodalogin=no

Religious group challenges 'traditional' history

Gina Farthing
The News Virginian
Tuesday, February 22, 2005

(snip)

At the Christian Heritage Center in Fishersville, Thomas Jefferson was not on the list of honorees Monday.

(snip)

It was the day to recognize the perpetrator, that “enemy of the Gospel” - Jefferson, according to Christian Heritage officials.

The new religious group, which recently built a complex on a hilltop overlooking Interstate 64 at Tinkling Spring Road, pronounced Jefferson “the anti-Christian” and George Washington’s opposite.

(snip)

Each actor cited examples to suggest Jefferson was the enemy of Christians and that Washington was a model Christian, who walked the walk - even begging forgiveness from God when his prayers were not fervent enough.

complete story:
http://www.newsvirginian.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WNV/MGArticle/WNV_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031781112366&path=!news!localnews&tacodalogin=no

These idiots continue their efforts to give God a bad name.

Jefferson and Washinton were pretty tight. Who do they think taught George how to cultivate weed, anyway?

They need a spanking.

:spank:

Washington comes out and says America is not a Christian nation, and yet even his own words don't convince those who desire otherwise.

This country is fucking NUTS.

n/t

the Treaty was written by Joel Barlow, but he was appointed by Washington and I have no doubt that Washington approved of the treaty.

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/boston4.htm

then carry on about how Jefferson was anti-christian...who gives a shit!

So tell me about their Christianity.

This group is against Locke, Voltaire et al. and the Enlightenment tradition of human rights.

Whether you like Jefferson or not, or whether or not he was hypocritical in his actions, his writings support freedom for all. That is what this groups is arguing against when they rail against Voltaire and the other human rights philosophers.

Jefferson and slavery
Jefferson has been criticized for the keeping of slaves. In his own mind he knew it was an abhorrent system but felt that the wholesale release of a people unprepared for freedom in that particular society was equally irresponsible. He made his position clear with this statement, "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other . . . Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever . . . But if something is not done, and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children . . ." This was the author of the words, "all men are created equal." Is it any wonder that the issue of slavery was to be an agonizing conflict for Jefferson all of his life? He was born into a family of privilege and a society where the holding of slaves was commonplace. He knew that the public at large would not allow slaves to live as free men, but he sincerely believed that they should be free. He drew up a Bill in his native Virginia to prevent the further importation of slaves which was passed and this was, at least, a first step to the eventual emancipation which was to come in future generations.

Or do they want to rescind it and join the UK?

n/t

;-)

using men, He writes through men. So the document is divine.

I've read that and heard it different times.
One from an Evangelical and once from a Mormon.

The notion of honoring Jefferson so highly for being the author of the Declaration has always struck me as a bit off balance.

Here is a page that discusses the Declaration.

http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_023700_declarationo.htm

One of the interesting things discussed on this page is how the delegates forced the removal of the passage that implies slaves have the natural right to rise up against their masters.

However, Jefferson was ignorant by today's standards in many ways. He did not have the benefit of modern science and social science to explain how ethnocentric assumptions arise, for example.

On the other hand, what I think Jefferson did do was advocate ideologies (natural rights, separation of church and state) and institutions (public education) that would allow us to counterbalance "tyranny over the mind of man," as he put it, and set out on paths toward progress and enlightenment.

Many people. Many discussions. Many false starts. There is no way to put it all on the shoulders of one man. Jefferson. Locke. Or even, say, Tom Paine, without whom the Declaration would have been nearly impossible to conceive of... In the end, Jefferson wasn't among the big cheeses at the time. He was given the duty to write down what they had been discussing. He did it well, with help from many. But it seems odd to have such idolatry of him for that.

He had no religious authority figure - no clery or ministry present - at his deathbed, and was often described as a Deist. His army chaplain was a universalist.

Up to that point, he had been active in church matters and even an alderman. But he resigned and never went back to regular services again. According to associates, he did indeed become a Deist.

These people are trying desperately to perpetuate the dying mythology that the bible is "The Word of God."

In fact, the bible is simply a collection of tribal history, legend, lore, poetry and propaganda.

Deists rejected the bible, but not the idea of a supreme being, differently conceived. It's time for America to grasp the reality:

The bible is NOT the "Word" of God!

It appears that the Bible was never the Bible until they put all of the writings together that they determined were appropriate.

those that could best be used to control people.

and when questioned by the minister he never went back again.

with those others?

As if I didn't know.

Anyway, every time I see these skypilots again perverting what should be a pretty good religion, I have a flashback to a movie I saw years ago where the Hitler Youth were singing "Our Day Has Come."

tomorrow belongs to me.

Hitlerjugend singing in Cabaret. Best song (best tune anyway) in the movie and too bad it had to be a bunch of Nazis singing it.

In the meantime, we’re cautioned about bird flu. Cuckoo.

He wrote, in the preface to his cut-up Bible: "I am a materialist, not a spiritualist."

A man as brilliant as Thomas Jefferson could never have been chained by such baloney. I am thankful that, instead of trying to taint his legacy of rationality with their little fairy tales and perpetuating the lie that all the founders were devout Christians, in the spirit of their bible-beating lunacy, today, that they're finally owning up to the fact that the author of the D of I, and the Bill of Rights didn't have their dogma in mind. Even Washington was like some lapsed Anglican or something.

Point to this the next time that Aunt Pearl tries to feed you some pull quotes from a Christian web page. I think this is great -- this isn't "revisionism." This is finally the truth.

NT!

They know people aren't gonna fall for their silly fairy tales for much longer. Jefferson was a genius and these narrow minded flakes can't stand it. They are going down and they know it - these acts today are of a desperate bunch - Jesus would hate these vile and despicable people. Jefferson made his own bible to weed out all the "crap" from the bible - because he thought Jesus teachings were the best around - he just couldn't stand the nut job prechers who were competing for the government for power. Religion is the single biggest threat to democracy and peace ever invented.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Where does slavery or the attempted genocide of the Native Americans fit in to these loon jobs version of "what this great country was founded on" bullshit?

I am sick of their revisionist crap!

Our founding fathers owned slaves and had children with them. Indians were wiped out by planted small pox, kicked off their land, and their children sent off to schools to brainwash them. They were deprived of their culture, their names, and their religion. All in the name of God?

After centuries of denial, DNA (science) trumps false beliefs (bigotry and idolatry). Flat-earthers have a incurable, hereditary learning disability.

.. isn't that what we are spending billions for? So THEY can have religious freedom? Oh.. the irony!

The GOP doesn't want that here. I guess Exxon country declared in Iraq allows free medical care.

Why don't they bring that up???

Because this really proves that they do not want to live in a Democracy at all. I say we put them on a ship and let them go find a new home, maybe in Iraq where they can be closer to the garden of eden.

For a long time they have been lying about Jefferson being Christian now it seems they have come to terms with reality and are rejecting the guy who put together much of what we stand for. Fine with me because now everyone will know they are nuts.

"Get thee closer to pardise!"

well, nobody ever said they had much in the way of brains

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law."
-- Thomas Paine

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
-- Benjamin Franklin

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
-- James Madison

"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."
-- John Adams

"They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility, against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
-- James Madison

"Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."
-- Justice Hugo Black, On the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Hey, it's getting pretty crowded here on the wood pile. Glad for the company though.

Say it ain't so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"A bunch of liberal, secular, Age of Enlightenment, free thinking Deists founded our beloved country, and now we have to re-write history to pretend they were Theocrats, like us!!!!!!!!!!"

right?

This evening I watched a program on the little-known cable channel Ovation, which is an actual fine arts and documentary channel, called The Lost Treasures of Kabul.

It told about what happened to Afghanistan's formerly impressive historical, archeological, and artistic treasures under the Taliban. They not only destroyed anything that they deemed "un-Islamic," but basically, anything that they didn't understand. What survived did so only because it was hidden away or disguised. Since pictures of humans or animals were forbidden, one museum employee went around painting over such depictions with water soluble paint, which worked surprisingly well to fool the Taliban into thinking that the paintings were mere landscapes or room interiors.

In another case, there was an ancient stone jar with naked dancing girls on the outside. The museum officials wrapped it in cotton, covered the outside with plaster of paris, and convinced the Taliban that it was just a plain old stone jar.

However, many artifacts could not be disguised or hidden, and the Taliban showed incredible determination to destroy them. In one case, some marble statues were too hard for their hammers, so they came back the next day with pick axes and larger hammers.

Some of the artifacts and monuments they had destroyed were 1500-2000 years old.
:cry:

With just a little more fanaticism, I can see some of our cultists doing stuff like that.

I couldn't be happier to hear this!

These idiots are striking at Jefferson. Jefferson. They're doing it because one of the pillars of this country's founding had the temerity to disagree with their religious views. I can tell you where this is leading.

Other fundie groups are going to have to come into line with this. They can't do otherwise, because no fundie group is going to have another fundie group be "godlier" than them. This will permeate the fundamentalist movement. I'm assuming that Jefferson will become America's Serpent in the Colonial Garden of Eden.

As an aside, I'm getting a huge laugh imagining how some of the religious militia groups are going to respond to this. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with, umm... never mind that. He was SATAN!!"

Anyhow, there's no more important figure in the founding of America than Jefferson. Perhaps Washington won the battles (and I wonder how much the help of the French is being played down these days in FundieLand), but Jefferson was the one who determined more than anyone what would arise from the end of the war. And fundies will have to reliquish him to liberals. "Jefferson was a liberal!" Can anyone think of a better way to make that term a completely irrefutable badge of honor? "You're a liberal!" "Yep. Me and Jefferson."

Imagine the infighting. Neocons who won't want to repudiate Jefferson vs. fundies who do. Imagine the battles. Coulter vs. Falwell. Buchanan vs. Robertson. It's delicious.

With fundies giving up Jefferson because of his writings, it's only inevitable that they'll have to give up Washington because of his views on church/state:





Uh oh. Washington supports the wall between church and state!! The fundies will eventually have to throw him under the bus as an opponent of a Christian state, too. Who's left? Adams? Nope. Madison? Nope. Monroe? Nope. Franklin? Not even close. So write off the Founding Fathers. Perhaps there are other icons which might serve, right?

How about Lincoln?







Ouch!! So this means that fundies are in opposition to Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, Lincoln. Kind of makes it hard to wave the flag at that point, hmm? Not only that, there's no way that they can co-exist with nonfundamentalists in the Republican party. And there goes the alliance. Imagine a debate in which a Republican starts blithering about "a culture of life" and a Democrat comes back with, "he's pandering to a group which is in opposition to the philosophies of Lincoln and the Founding Fathers. Would you take an axe to the roots of the Constitution?"

That's the thing about fundamentalists. Their beliefs will always marginalize them. Always. I just hope that they drag the neocons down with them.

Franklin and Hamilton too. And what about Adams? I know he was a religious Puritan, but didn't he support a strong separation between Church and State (as much to preserve the integrety of the Church as the Government)?

I think we should start gathering the views of the founding fathers on religion and send them to this organization - maybe we can get them to repudiate the entire revolution.

there is no America.

Besides, whatever the fundamentalists want to say about him, Jefferson was a Bible scholar. He not only studied the Bible, but he edited his own version of the New Testament entitled the Jefferson Bible in which he tried to distill the teachings of Jesus. He also attempted to compare texts from the Bible in different versions/languages.

I have the impression that Jefferson was a sincere follower of the teachings of Jesus, but that he did not worship Jesus as God -- like Unitarians. I believe that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and a number of other Founding Fathers had similar religious beliefs. Based on their letters, I believe that Jefferson and John Adams agreed about religion, at least in their old age. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Madison pretty much shared the religious beliefs of Jefferson and Adams.

I guess that leaves George Washington as the only early president the fanatical right wing Christians can claim as one of their own -- except -- George Washington was a Mason. I think Masons can also be Christians. My uncle was both, but I don't believe that being a Mason is consistent with fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

better than their average.

Jefferson said:

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

If ONLY the fundies could say THAT!
He also said:

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

http://www.quotationspage.com/search.php3?homesearch=jefferson&page=3

Again, fundies cannot come close.
They did what they always do.
Promote darkness instead of the Light they claim to possess.

Jefferson was a very spiritual man. I have a copy of the Jefferson Bible at home. A great little book. He took the parts of the Bible that meant the most to him and that he thought were the most important/relevant and put them in a little book. He used this book of passages from the Bible as his "guide" for living a spiritual life.

What so many people tend to forget is that many people came to the US to escape religious persecution because their religion was not the accepted religion in their homeland. This is the reason for the separation of church and state. It is to keep the government from adopting an official state religion, ie Christianity, and persecuting anyone that doesn't fit in. Kind of like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Jefferson cut out of the Gospels all the portions that did not coincide with his Rationalism. It wasn't that he chose his favorite portions. In fact, in the original Jefferson bible, the whole point is to flip through the cutout version - it was a mark of his disdain.

He said that he and several other divinity students cut all the verses related to poverty from a Bible and after they were done it was full of holes. According to him, something like 1 out of every 7 verses relate to poverty. Yet our "Christian" president and the GOP chooses to cut programs for the poor in favor of tax cuts for the rich. Go figure.

He simply thought that his teachings were the best set available - so he cut out the portions that actually applied to real people - with none of the "magic" or "fairly tales" - or whatever words he used. Jefferson was a genius and helped to make this country great, the Christians want to turn us into a Taliban state and kill or repress everybody and anybody who disagrees with them. These are truly SATAN worshipping freaks and are very dangerous. If they are so happy with their lives, then why don't they mind their own fucking business. They are jealous of free thinkers - want to start a war you loving religious fools?

It has been a LOOOONG time since anyone challenged the "Christian" credentials of far out sects that have been mainly structured only to control the minds of fervent simple followers and not examine the Gospels too closely. There have been some of course to rival any wild sects of the ancient past for charlatan cult leaders, weird gnostic teachings and deadly results. The "mainstream" fundamentalist is a fringe taking camp in the "heartland" not fleeing to Jonesville but intent on buying a chunk of America and making it the New Jerusalem.

Any expression of truth, Christianity or anything is a threat to the exclusivists(if they are sincere and not merely shills for some GOP master plan). It is not Jefferson fans that should be offended however, it is the constant one-upping and silencing of Jesus by the Punishers that for real Christians puts them in heretical fruitcake land. Jesus would have been happy indeed with anyone helping the poor and spreading justice over and against ANY nominal boaster of the title disciple of Jesus. "You know neither the day nor the hour" was not a titillating challenge to superior cult leaders to ferret out God' s secret and control the magic like some profit seeking shamans of animistic cults. So if Jefferson even were an enemy of the Church, which is false, how on earth would that apply to the spiritually challenged gurus of the new Gnostic Christian Heritage Foundation.

They probably want to build a time machine so they can run a candidate against Jefferson(replete with fraud and lies and money), launch and win the Civil War for the South and wreak angelic havoc on God's creation in general. The thrill of punishment is getting to be bit like Dem bashing necrophilia. I am sure besides going after the nutcase Lincoln and that commie cripple traitor-to-his-caste FDR they will explain how the conmen of the GOP are such stellar "Christians" by virtue of lipservice and abuse of power.

Speaking of the Communists most countries learned the benefits of limited socialism. The self avowed Christian saints like those noted above instead admired and copied their decadent tools of brainwashing and oppression and retroactive propaganda. Is the Eschaton at the end of EVERY Five Year Plan?

The conflict of Progressivism versus Orthodoxy defines our current political battles and virtually every legal and social struggle since the Enlightenment. The Founders characterized it in the terms of Revolution, as Royalists against Revolutionaries. I believe we now call it Liberal versus Conservative.

Jefferson wrote that every political conflict was a manifestation of this division. Will we stand for science and progress, or cling to dogma and tradition?

Incidentally, if you've read about Washington as I have, you know that he was far from the parading religious fanatic that they portray him. He professed he was a deist and a product of the Enlightenment.

"We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition ... In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States."
-- George Washington, letter to the members of the New Church in Baltimore, January 27, 1793

"...I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution." George Washington, to United Baptists Churches of Virginia, May, 1789

"Among many other weighty objections to the Measure, it has been suggested, that it has a tendency to introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel men to a mode of Worship which they do not profess."
-- George Washington, to John Hancock, then president of Congress, expressing opposition to a congressional plan to appoint brigade chaplains in the Continental Army (1777)

"The pictures that represent him on his knees in the winter forest at Valley Forge are even silly caricatures. Washington was at least not sentimental, and he had nothing about him of the Pharisee that displays his religion at street corners or out in the woods in the sight of observers, or where his portrait could be taken by 'our special artist'!"
-- Reverend M. J. Savage

$50 fine- hand to God, that's true. Just last month. Must be something in the water?

They hate TJ for penning the phrase "separation of church and state".

snip>
Separation of church and state is not something the Supreme Court invented in the 1950's and 60's. The phrase itself appears in a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, on Jan 1, 1802.
The Baptist Association had written to President Jefferson regarding a "rumor that a particular denomination was soon to be recognized as the national denomination." Jefferson responded to calm their fears by assuring them that the federal government would not establish any single denomination of Christianity as the National denomination. He wrote: "The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between Church and State."
Notice the phrasing in the U.S. Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3:


The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (emphasis added)

http://www.theology.edu/journal/volume2/ushistor.htm

parts that he didn't think Jesus really said. - And I believe he tossed out Revelations altogether. So that right there would have been enough to get him burned at the stake if Pat "God might strike you down with a Meteor" Robertson had been in charge.

he tries to rescue Jesus from his followers.

he excised the entire old testament, and everything after Jesus' death, and used only the 4 gospels. he cut out every extraneous piece of mystical mumbo jumbo (virgin birth, miracles, lazarus, rising from the dead), and left only his words & actions.

TJ felt they stood on their own as philosophy. and THAT is what fundies are threatened by. having to live by Jesus' words & deeds, not Revelation & Deuteronomy.

You are so right.

They are also terrified that their precious bible is dying a long-overdue death from lack-a-cred. They know that once the bible falls, their entire house-of-cards falls.

Absolutely everything in western religion--as it's now practiced--is based on the assertion that the bible is divine revelation.

"The Word of God?" Hardly! If the Creator of the universe wanted to write a book, it would be actually rational and sensible and decent. Not the mixed-bag piece of legend and lore and propaganda and tribal history and ancient mythology that passes for our most holy book.

so, they are an anti-American group?

expect they're tax-exempt, too

Christian Heritage Center is the ministry home where MOCHAL (The Museum of Christian History and Library)
and the Linked In Christ Foundation (a 501c(3) charitable organization, all donations to the Linked In Christ
Foundation are tax deductible as allowed by law.) are located. Our address is 10 Croyden Lane, Staunton, VA 24401. http://www.christianheritageworks.com/
http://www.linkedinchrist.com/




(link from site doesn't work)

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

The more they try to shove theism down my throat, the more I reject their undeserved pre-eminence in the public square ...

If so, they just might want to replace him with Junior, their very favourite "Christian president" of all time.

:eyes:

http://www.nps.gov/moru/

. . . been no Democracy. These people have absolutely no sense of history whatsoever.

Who will think of the children...

Satan's 5 cents, that's what it is.

What's next?

Giving Mt. Rushmore the Taliban treatment?

This is just pathetic.

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Which is, of course, a fundamental principle of the US Constitution--a document which makes no mention of God, Jesus or the Bible. If you believe that Christianity should be the state religion of the United States, you are fundamentally un-democratic and anti-American. You are, in fact, a theocrat and a traitor.