Kline: It’s a Judeo-Christian nation

Great. Another politician who doesn’t even know how our country was founded. Our country was NOT “founded on those Judeo-Christian principles of belief in the almighty and belief in an all powerful God”, as the founders went out of their way to ensure that our country was founded as a secular country where people can practice whatever religion they wish. Most of the founding fathers were either non-religious, or deists, not Christians.

Looks like someone could use a basic history lesson, but he probably already knows this and is just playing politics as usual in this election year.

John Kline is really off. We are not a Judeo-Christian nation. We are a Religious nation with the freedom of religion. The funny thing is, he is leaving out Islam which comes from the same seed of Abraham that Judaism and Christianity come from. It is a major mistake to tie Judaism with Christainity and leave Islam out when they all share in the same origin and all are monotheistic. He has no concept of the American value of diversity and acceptance. He advocates enmity instead.

The U.S. Constitution was also founded on the ideals of white men being able to own black property and female property. I miss those ideals. Why can’t we return to our sexist, racist, Judeo-Christian roots like God intended?

It’s a strange definition of omnipotence when a few unbelievers can erase God out of the public square.

In this day and age, it’s a strange thing for a member of Congress to crow about what language he and his associates succeeded in putting on a replica of the Capitol Visitor Center.

The country must be in great shape if that’s such a pressing issue for Rep. Kline.

Kline should learn the story of Roger Williams, the Baptist minister who was banished from Mass Bay Colony for demanding freedom of religion and complete separation of church and state. Roger Williams went on to found Providence, Rhode Island, and the Rhode Island colony was the first American colony to grant unconditional freedom of religion, and a complete separation of church and state. As Williams famously said, “forced worship stinks in the nostrils of god”.

How disappointing. Jews and Christians don’t have a monopoly on how to think about governing in diverse societies. They didn’t at our country’s founding either. Even talk about “God” and divine providence is not something Christians and Jews monopolize.

Why do some politicians want to frame our country in ways that pretend those of us who are not Christians or Jews are somehow less part of the fabric of this nation than they are? The Constitution expressly forbids religious tests for public office …. yet here is Mr. Kline, elevating his religious views as though they matter more in our country, it’s founding than mine and others like me who are not of his faith.

Mr. Kline knows better, but still serves up this garbage when elections come around. It is getting old.

Eric posted the comment posted September 13, 2010 @ 2:23 pm

It’s a strange definition of omnipotence when a few unbelievers can erase God out of the public square.

If that “God” is “erased” from the public square, does S/HE cease to exist? Does Eric’s belief in that God lessen? Are we sure we’re talking about the omnipotent God of the Judeo-Christian tradition – the God that gave his Son on earth as sacrifice for our sins? … Or Not?

How could an omnipotent God be affected by mere human action?

Why must some people dominate our common public spaces with their peculiar religious thoughts?

It’s instructive to read the comments from these leftists who hate God, worship government as their messiah and who are so ignorant of this nation’s founding and have been so brainwashed by their leftist educators that they ignore, or are ignorant of, the four references to God in the declaration of independence, which was the rationale for our revolution.

You grandfathers weep at the thought of your ignorance and disrespect.

Dennis,

You oddly ignore the Constitution, which is an entirely godless document. What’s even worse for your case is that there was a debate over inclusion of explicit religious references in the Constitution, including Christianity. The Klines, Emmers and Bachmanns of that day lost.

We made the right choice.

For more information on this see ‘The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness’, by Kramnick and Moore.

Dennis,

Perhaps it’s escaped your attention that the Constitution–certainly a far more relevant document to questions of law and policy than the Declaration–is an entirely secular document.

A good book on this is “The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness.”

At the founding of our country we made the right decision.

I see Glen Beck University has its first History Grad out re-writing American History.

Eric, the purpose of the Constitution is to define the limits of government in a free society.

The Declaration is no less relevant in that it provides the rationale. The words “…with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” tell you all you need to know about the role of faith in the lives of our Founding Fathers.

That’s weird. Cuz I thought the Constitution was created “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Dennis,

You wrote, “The Declaration is no less relevant…” My comments established a context of “law and policy.”

Were you referring to something else? Because if you weren’t then your statement is factually incorrect. Law and policy in the US are built on the Constitution. Allusions to the Declaration might have moral appeal or some partisan historical authority for some, but the Declaration is not the basis of law in the US.

Seperation of Church and State is the way it should be.

Eric, Kline’s point was that the Constitution was based on Judeo-Christian values, such as those found in the Ten Commandments.

We don’t allow the government to cut off a thieves hands, like they do with Sharia law. We don’t allow the government to excuse honor killings like they do in the Koran. We don’t allow ritual suicide, like they do in Sati.

We don’t allow the government to require certain forms of dress or prevent women from driving or getting an education.

But most importantly, we require the government to protect each individual’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … rights that the Founders tell us came, not from the king or even from those chosen to lead, but from God.

That’s what Kline meant.

If you read the Old Testament, it dictates the death penalty for being disrespectful to your parents. There are many other harsh penalties for some pretty arbitrary “crimes”. How can someone laud the Old Testament of the Ten Commandments and not enforce the rules written there? Did God not mean it when He said that anyone who wore clothes made of more than one fabric, they were to be put to death? And to wear a mixed fabric and eat shrimp? Abomination. Why are Judeo Christians so proud of themselves when they deliberately ignore the orders of God written in the Old Testament they purport to be the word of God?

As for basing our law on the Ten Commandments, I give you:

You shall have no other Gods before me. Not a law.
You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. Not a law.
Remember the Sabbath Day to make it holy. Not a law.
Honor your father. Not a law.
You shall not kill. Finally, a law.
You shall not commit adultery. A law in some places.
You shall not steal. A law.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Not a law, people lie all the time.
Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife. Not a law.
Don’t covet your neighbor’s property. Not a law.

So, our law is based on “don’t kill, don’t steal, and (in some states), don’t commit adultery”. Pretty thin foundation. When you look at U.S. Law, and see that only three categories are mentioned in the Ten Commandments but that dozens come from English Common Law, it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to claim our laws are based on the Ten Commandments.

Dennis, that’s nonsense. John Kline is not even that minimally profound a thinker. What he “meant” was to throw a bone to the Bible-thumping conservative base.

What does “Judeo-Christian” mean? It’s a nonsense phrase (if you’re Judeo, are you Christian?). It was first used in the English language well after the Constitution was drafted. I doubt the Founders–who were far from the monolithic ideological and theological block you may wish to imagine–would have regarded themselves in such a term. None of them were “Judeo,” and several of them would not easily be caled Christian (and don’t take the odd phrase out of context. Jefferson’s antipathy towards organized religion is too well discussed to bear repeating).

What is telling is not the rhetoric of the Declaration, but the actual substance of the Constitution. Would a nation founded on “Judeo-Christian values” have made such a point of including the third paragraph of Article VI?

BTW, I would not be so broad in describing the Christian devotion to limited government. There are plaenty of Christians who would have no problem prescribing a public dress code. You also do your credibility no favors by repeating the lie that honor killings are sanctioned by the Qu’ran.

Dennis,

Your reading of history is amateurish at best

This heavily Christian country was born with slavery, with women as second class citizens (dress codes, prohibitions on education, participation in the professions, etc.–very Taliban-esque for many decades after our founding); Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, nonbelievers and others faced systematic discrimination; you could be banned from teaching in many schools for not towing anti-intellectual conservative religious beliefs; homosexuals could and were killed with impunity; censorship was widespread; labor rights were mostly non-existent; all sorts of intellectual, scientific and social movements had to battle religionists for legitimacy.

The religious legacy of this country is very mixed, to say the least. You have some currents–flexible, capable of learning and adopting, humane and self-critical, who represent some of the best this country has produced. On the other hand what to make of the thousands of Christian ministers who marched with the Ku Klux Klan? Or what of the Christian cops who would kick the testicles of gay men into their bodies in 60s San Francisco…and then the gay men would be turned away from treatment at Christian run hospitals? What of the Mormon Churches blatant belief in the inferiority of blacks up until quite recently? Or, we could discuss the raging antisemitism in Minneapolis only a few decades ago? In light of mercury contamination in a huge number of lakes in the US, coal plant pollution killing thousands a year in the US, plastic particles turning up in huge quantities in the oceans, etc., etc., a huge number of evangelicals according to polls OPPOSE efforts to deal with these problems.

Shall we go on?

So, go ahead, claim this as a Christian nation, but be honest about what you’re prize looks like.

Contrary to impassioned theocratic urban legend, the country was NOT founded on belief in a God. It was founded on the belief in the people to govern themselves through a government that derives it’s authority FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

[The political philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evident truths"]
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html

Religious zealots like to quote the Declaration of Independence, but they take it out of context in pursuit of their own agenda.

[We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,]

Instituted among Men (not the church), deriving their powers from the consent of the governed (not God).

“I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other. If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men’s souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth.”
- John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration
http://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm

“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.”
The Constitution, Article VI
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

We are a nation of (mostly) Christians, but we are NOT a Christian nation. Religious zealots seem incapable of comprehending the difference, or simply refuse to acknowledge it.

http://zerablog.wordpress.com/issues/a-nation-founded-on-faith-in-the-people/

Put Kline’s face on the three dollar bill.