Pawlenty: America was founded under God

He’s a political weasel who will say anything if the think it will benefit him.

Did Christianity Today call him out on his lie? Of course not.

“I try to express myself in ways that are measured and appropriate and hopefully civil and positive.”

That’s weird. I never knew “civil and positive” meant “snarky and sarcastic.”

“The Declaration of Independence merely refers to a creator and to “Nature’s God.””

“Merely?” The only other one-page mission statement that mentioned God four times would only come from a religious organization.

1) When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of [Nature's God] entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

2) 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.

3) We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the [Supreme Judge] of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,

4) And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of [Divine Providence], we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Can we finally have an end to all this ahistorical conservative Christian mythmaking about the founders?

****Benjamin Franklin:
“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.”
(Good ‘ol Ben. You can’t blame him.)

“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.”

“He (the Rev. Mr. Whitefield) used, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.”

****Thomas Jefferson
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

“Priests…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.”
(Mr. Jefferson, I’m sorry to inform you but today’s Republican Party would run you out of town for such views.)

“I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.”

“It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.”

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”

****And last, but far from least:
“The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity…. Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.”
– The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831; first sentence quoted in John E Remsbert, “Six Historic Americans,” second sentence quoted in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15

Put any of these founding freethinkers in the middle of a Tea Party rally, or at an evangelical megachurch, and they might not make it out alive.

Dennis,

When the rubber hit the road, the founders decided on a thoroughly godless constitution–the document that matters for US law, not the Declaration. There were also proposals at the time to include mention of the trinity and Jesus, and these were firmly rejected.

Not only is our most important foundational document godless, but the founders also saw fit to….[gasp]…

“Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance -In 1798
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/

Dennis
So which version of “God” is the official one? The Catholic version, Amish version, Wisconsin Synod, Baptist, Jewish, Native Americian?

The United States has a pluralist religious tradtion, there is no ONE version of Christianity that is followed. You fellow poster Tim’s protests not withstanding.

The Constitution of the US was deliberately set with NO specific state/national religion. It’s that reason that religion has flourished in the US and not elsewhere. Having no national religion has allowed all versions to be able to exist without the power of government interfering.

If Eric and Scott would bother to read either Pawlenty’s or my words they’d notice that neither of us mentioned Christ or Christianity.

Apparently when YOU think God, you think Christ. I never made that connection, you did. Interesting how you assumed that I hold your prejudices.

My grandparents had to flee Northern Ireland after death threats because of conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. She was Protestant, and he was Catholic. When I became of age, I volunteered and joined the Army, and I served as an 11B Infantryman. Most of my time in the field was in squad or platoon size operations. We would have discussions about what we were fighting for. It always came back to the “Bill of Rights”. To me the most important was “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
What else did our Founding Fathers have to say about religion?
“Question with boldness even the existence of a god.” – Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787):
“All natural institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason;
“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together”, John Madison.
“Lighthouses are more helpful than Churches”, Benjamin Franklin

Dennis

You have no basis to try and “turn the tables” on the readers of this blog. Most all your posts are diatribes of regurgitated right wing psycho bable. When the shoe fits Dennis.

Thank you; this is how journalism should be. You reported Pawlenty’s statements, pointed out where he is factually wrong, and noted his change in views. I somehow doubt the mainstream media would even bother doing this. Instead, they would just report what Pawlenty tweeted or something else inane.

Dennis,

Let’s not play naive.

We all know that if Pawlenty started yapping about Jesus being the foundation of the this country that he’d be attacked relentlessly in the press for his discriminatory views. (And, to spell things out for you, it wouldn’t be because he used “Jesus” in a sentence, but because this is political code speech for a kind of Christian supremacism.)

Knowing this ahead of time, he instead burnishes his Christian credentials by talking about his god a lot. It’s the way he knows how to speak to his potential hyper-Christian base without unduly riling up everyone else.

Here is an Idea.. Let’s do what Thomas Jefferson wanted and get “Gawd” out of ALL of this political rancor .. This way we might actually be able to EVOLVE into a better species that CARES about our future …

Gov T Baggs!! at this point your just grasping at straws… Your Insanity is not going to match that of “The Crown Jewel ‘ of the Trailer Park… (michele bachmann)

[...] Pawlenty: America was founded under GodMinnesota IndependentChristianity Today's Sarah Pulliam Bailey asked him, “Your book encourages Christians to be involved in public issues. At what point might Christians rely …and more » [...]

god: the exact etymology of this word is uncertain. the best guesses can be summarized thus:

1. pie root *ghut- = that which is invoked
2. pie rooy *gheu- = to pour, pour a libation
3. *gheu- -> gk. khein = pour, as in the gk. phrase ‘khute gaia’ = ‘poured earth’ which refers to a burial mound

german ‘gott’ = eng. ‘god’. eng. guttural from lat. ‘guttur’ = throat. possible phonetic relationship?

speculation: the english word ‘god’ has its roots in the notion of ‘voice’, or ‘that which is spoken’, in that the spoken word ‘pours’ out of the mouth; which sort of makes sense when one considers the following:

1. discussions about ‘god’ are generally related to death
2. ‘god’ is invoked at funerals
3. ‘god’ botherers often kill people for their ‘god’
4. the expression: ‘god told me to do it’ indicates that ‘god’ in this sense is a voice in someone’s head. voices in the head are often, although not exclusively, associated with insanity and strange human behaviours

the ancestor cults of hunter-gatherer societies are constructed on the death of the parent/s, possibly in invocations of familial fidelity uttered over their corpses. in some cases the consumption of the corpse, or select portions thereof, would add a concrete component to the interaction between the living and the dead and possibly imbue a sense of personal intimacy between them.

oaths of fidelity to an invocation – now extant only in written form, and enshrined with all pomp and circumstance – verbally uttered at the establishment of a nation by people now long dead, whose corpses are immortalised in graves and statues, is exactly the same behaviour. clinging to a dead document of nationality is as absurd as clinging onto a collection of ancient texts; in both cases the expectation is that these documents will deliver us to a new age of enlightenment and freedom, yet it is painfully obvious that neither of them do such a thing. they both contribute heavily to the ongoing delusions and madness that cause immeasurable daily suffering to countless humans worldwide because they were uttered, and written, in a time that has long since passed by people who are long dead. a current world needs current solutions, logically thought out and enacted in the current global setting. the constitution of the us has become, in effect, a ‘god’ in itself.

Go T-Paw!!!!!! http://www.iowansforpawlenty.com

Gosh Dennis,
Just which religion should we assume he’s talking about, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hindu? I AM not prejudiced against “Christians” as there is a very wide variety of them. I have serious issues with conservative ones that feel they are morally superior to the rest of us and that they therefore can use their own narrow religious beliefs to determine the laws the rest of us follow.

And in what publication was Pawlenty interviewed in? “Hindu Today”, “Zeus Today”? Oh wait it was “Christianity Today”.

The mixing of religion and goverment is very dangerous. It’s why some of us keep a close eye on what our politicians are saying and doing.

Jon Adams, founding father, wrote the following in the Treaty of Tripoli. The Senate voted on it by unanimous decree. Many of the Senate were founders. It was unanimous. The quote was published in most major newspapers of the time. There was no public outcry.

What did founding father Jon Adams write and the Senate voted into treaty?

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;”

Theological beliefs are by no means the only route to madness and depraved disregard for the rights of others. In fact, I am starting to miss the religious right. There is nothing religious about the Tea Party maniacs. They invoke 18th-century “natural law”, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and sullen amateur constitutional assertions in service of their crazed agenda–never scripture. The Tea Party makes me miss Christians, however politically misguided those religionists might be. At least Christians are obliged to admit to meaning well, on some level. The Tea Party amounts to a gaggle of blood-crazed cretins, ill-meaning and bitter. Their demented fantasies can never be realized, but they will surely settle for ruining us all. That they thus ruin themselves is an insight far beyond their cognitive capabilities.

The “dominionists” among us, T-Paw, T-Party folk, et. al., are trying to establish a theocracy. Simple observation reveals in their world:
1. The society and its leaders believe they have a divine right.
2. The divine mandate is interpreted in specific political contexts.
3. Civil rights and a code of conduct are dictated by religious dogma.
4. Individual aspirations are subordinate to the priorities of the state/beliefs.
5. Domestic and foreign policy is guided by a religious ideology.
6. Leaders are part of a theologically trained elite. (The Truth Project, The Family, etc)
7. Leadership is limited by religious dogma and is rarely skilled in economics.

Isn’t god that little old bag lady I saw digging through the dumpster the other day looking for something to eat.

@Richard
Yes, she is.

[...] we have Mr. Pawlenty going off like this: In an interview released in Christianity Today Thursday, Tim Pawlenty asserted that the United [...]

And isn’t God also that homeless vet we see struggling with mental illness?

“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”, John Madison;

Havent Tims unemployment benefits run out yet? Can he afford to wait until 2012 to apply for another job? Some work ethic.

It scares the crap out of me when I hear that an elected person with so much power, relies on faith. There is a conflict !!

maby some one should ask him why the scout camp next to the cristian brotherhood camp on the st. croix is still around

“Congress shall pass NO LAW respecting religion”

You cannot just dismiss Continental Native ‘American’ or early Viking ancestors presence nor their belief systems. They were here before what we all have been taught, that being the history of the church of Englands Columbus and the formation of our nation.. A tiny scratch upon that distorted claim to history reveals the truth. Scandinavians who made it here decades before Columbus actually fled the persecution of The Church. “The founders deliberately left the word ‘God’ out of the Constitution — but not because they were a bunch of atheists and deists,” says Susan Jacoby, author of “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.” “To them, mixing religion and government meant trouble.” The curious thing is that in trying to bring God into the Constitution, the activists — who say their goal is to follow the original intent of the founders — are ignoring the fact that the founders explicitly avoided religious language in that document.

This endless, ever-angry escalating assault on our Constitution by crusading theocrats could be obliterated with the effective incantation of two names: Benjamin Franklin, and Deganawidah.

But first, let’s do some history:

1. Actual Founder-Presidents #2 through #6—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams—were all freethinking Deists and Unitarians; what Christian precepts they embraced were moderate, tolerant and open-minded.

2. Actual Founder-President #1, George Washington, became an Anglican as required for original military service under the British, and occasionally quoted scripture. But he vehemently opposed any church-state union. In a 1790 letter to the Jews of Truro, he wrote: The “Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistances, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.” A 1796 treaty he signed says “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Washington rarely went to church and by some accounts refused last religious rites.

3. Washington was also the nation’s leading brewer, and since most Americans drank much beer (water could be lethal in the cities) they regularly trembled before the keg, not the altar. Like Washington, Jefferson and Madison, virtually all American farmers raised hemp and its variations.

4. Jefferson produced a personal Bible from which he edited out all reference to the “miraculous” from the life of Jesus, whom he considered both an activist and a mortal.

5. Tom Paine’s COMMON SENSE sparked the Revolution with nary a mention of Jesus or Christianity. His Deist Creator established the laws of Nature, endowed humans with Free Will, then left.

6. The Constitution never mentions the words “Christian” or “Jesus” or “Christ.”

7. Revolutionary America was filled with Christians whose commitment to toleration and diversity was completely adverse to the violent, racist, misogynist, anti-sex theocratic Puritans whose “City on the Hill” meant a totalitarian state. Inspirational preachers like Rhode Island’s Roger Williams and religious groups like the Quakers envisioned a nation built on tolerance and love for all.

8. The US was founded less on Judeo-Christian beliefs than on the Greco-Roman love for dialog and reason. There are no contemporary portraits of any Founder wearing a crucifix or church garb. But Washington was famously painted half-naked in the buff toga of the Roman Republic, which continues to inspire much of our official architecture.

9. The great guerilla fighter (and furniture maker) Ethan Allen was an aggressive atheist; his beliefs were common among the farmers, sailors and artisans who were the backbone of Revolutionary America.

10. America’s most influential statesman, thinker, writer, agitator, publisher, citizen-scientist and proud liberal libertine was—and remains—Benjamin Franklin. He was at the heart of the Declaration, Constitution and Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution. The ultimate Enlightenment icon, Franklin’s Deism embraced a pragmatic love of diversity. As early America’s dominant publisher he, Paine and Jefferson printed the intellectual soul of the new nation.

11. Franklin deeply admired the Ho-de-no-sau-nee (Iroquois) Confederacy of what’s now upstate New York. Inspired by the legendary peacemaker Deganawidah, this democratic congress of five tribes had worked “better than the British Parliament” for more than two centuries. It gave us the model for our federal structure and the images of freedom and equality that inspired both the French and American Revolutions.

It’s no accident today’s fundamentalist crusaders and media bloviators (Rev. Limbaugh, St. Beck) seek to purge our children’s texts of all native images except as they are being forceably converted or killed.

Today’s fundamentalists would have DESPISED the actual Founders. Franklin’s joyous, amply reciprocated love of women would evoke their limitless rage. Jefferson’s paternities with his slave mistress Sally Hemings, Paine’s attacks on the priesthood, Hamilton’s bastardly philandering, the grassroots scorn for organized religion—all would draw howls of righteous right-wing rage.

Which may be why theocratic fundamentalists are so desperate to sanitize and fictionalize what’s real about our history.

God forbid our children should know of American Christians who embraced the Sermon on the Mount and renounced the Book of Revelations…or natives who established democracy on American soil long before they saw the first European…or actual Founders who got drunk, high and laid on their way to writing the Constitution.

Faith-based tyranny is anti-American. So are dishonest textbooks. It’s time to fight them both.

Jefferson didn’t just reject the Christian belief that the Bible was “the inspired word of God”; he rejected the Christian system too. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he said of this religion, “There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites” (quoted by newspaper columnist William Edelen, “Politics and Religious Illiteracy,” Truth Seeker, Vol. 121, No. 3, p. 33). Anyone today who would make a statement like this or others we have quoted from Jefferson’s writings would be instantly branded an infidel, yet modern Bible fundamentalists are frantically trying to cast Jefferson in the mold of a Bible believing Christian. They do so, of course, because Jefferson was just too important in the formation of our nation to leave him out if Bible fundamentalists hope to sell their “Christian-nation” claim to the public. Hence, they try to rewrite history to make it appear that men like Thomas Jefferson had intended to build our nation on “biblical principles.” The irony of this situation is that the Christian leaders of Jefferson’s time knew where he stood on “biblical principles,”

“The government of the US is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.”George Washington

Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionists. Born in 1916 to Armenian immigrants, Rushdoony graduated from the University of California-Berkeley before becoming an ardent foe of secular education and the author of a series of texts that redefined conservative theology.

Rushdoony, who died in 2001, articulated a doctrine called “presuppositionalism.” All issues are religious in nature, he posited, and people don’t have the right or the ability to define for themselves what’s true; for that they must turn to a literal reading of the Bible. His defining tome, the 800-page Institutes of Biblical Law, was published in 1973. But because of its extremism and overt racism—Rushdoony denied the Holocaust and defended segregation and slavery—Institutes and its author were largely ignored in mainstream circles until the movement launched by Schaeffer found its intellectual grounding in Rushdoony’s writings.

At the heart of Rushdoony’s argument were two biblical passages. Genesis 1:28 commands men to have “dominion” over “every living thing.” And in Matthew 28:18-20, the “Great Commission,” Jesus commands his followers to proselytize to the world. Thus was born dominion theology. (Not all dominionists are Reconstruction apostles—but the differences are a matter of theological finesse, and political strategies are largely indistinguishable.) Adam and Eve broke their covenant with God, and Satan seized dominion. Christian Reconstruction claims it has a reconstituted covenant with God and the right to a new dominion in his name.

In this worldview, the mandate for Christians is not just to live right or to help their neighbors: They are called upon to take over or eliminate the institutions of secular government.

This is what sets Reconstruction apart from the conventional Christian right and gives it a key advantage in organizing.

Traditionally, groups like Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority were “premillennial”: They believed that humanity was inevitably headed for Armageddon, which would most likely arrive with a nuclear blast, whereupon Christ would appear in the Second Coming and set things right. “The debate was over whether Brezhnev was the Antichrist,” says the University of Georgia’s Larson.

Reconstruction’s alternative was “postmillennialism”: Christ would not return until the church had claimed dominion over government, and most of the world’s population had accepted the Reconstruction brand of Christianity. The postmillennial twist offered hope to the pious that they could change things—as long as they got organized. (Reconstructionists angrily denounce end-times visions like those of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series: If these are the Last Days, American Vision’s website points out, “then why bother trying to fix a broken world that is about to be thrown on the ash heap of history? Why concern ourselves with education, healthcare, the economy, or peace in the Mideast? Why polish brass on a sinking ship?”)

For premillennialists, Reconstruction’s revolutionary philosophy offered an opportunity to turbocharge the religious right. Most conservative churches opposed abortion, for example, but Reconstruction-influenced groups such as Randall Terry’s Operation Rescue were willing to field soldiers and take the fight to the enemy. This not only emboldened activists, it gave Reconstructionists a chance to spread their organizing message: If you want to do God’s work, this needs to be God’s nation.

Similarly, Baptist morality focused on personal choices, such as avoiding drinking. But Reconstructionists didn’t tell believers to shun sin. They said to conquer it, even if the price was jail or martyrdom. Paul Hill, the antiabortion activist executed two years ago for the 1994 murders of abortion clinic workers in Pensacola, Florida, had been a minister in the Reconstruction-dominated Presbyterian Church in America.

The old left—the Communist Party and its many splinters—used organizing tactics called popular fronts, in which people were recruited through specific causes into a

movement tacitly guided by the Party. Reconstruction has married those Leninist tactics to the causes of the right—abortion, evolution, gay marriage, school prayer. Gary North wrote in 1982, in an effort to reach Baptists,“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty…until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Nowhere at the Restore America rally did anyone hoist a banner for Reconstruction; those attending came to develop a united front supporting such things as displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings. But they were also introduced—and recruited—to the broader program.

Reconstruction’s major impact has been through helping to found and guide cross-denominational and secular political organ-izations. The Council for National Policy—a group that holds meetings for right-wing leaders, once dubbed “the most powerful conservative group you’ve never heard of”—was founded in 1981 as a project of top John Birch Society figures (see “The Fountainhead”). Its members included Rushdoony, Gary North, Tim LaHaye, former Reagan aide Gary Bauer, and activist Paul Weyrich, who famously aimed to “overturn the present power structure of this country.”

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/11/28/172929/14

http://www.liarsforjesus.com/

http://godsownparty.com/blog/2010/03/christian-dominionism-101/

http://www.liarsforjesus.com/

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/michele-bachmann-christian-reconstructionists#

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

http://www.yuricareport.com/Strategies_Propaganda/TruthOrConsequencesAmericasOpenSociety.html

“[W]e are determined …to obey Christ’s commission to proclaim [the Gospel] to all mankind and to make disciples of every nation.” (Emphasis added.)

First, in the usual text of Matthew 28:19 it states, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them…” In the usual interpretation of the Great Commission, however, the word “nation” is interpreted to mean a tribe or a group of people, since following the word “nations,” in the various versions of the Bible, the verse goes on to say, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Now one cannot baptize a nation state. However, while the meaning of the word “nation” was questioned and debated at the time, the final statement adopted was “to make disciples of every nation,” which necessarily includes nation states. This leads to a new political concept, which can be seen in Section 5 of the document, where, for the first time ever—Evangelical Christians—signed the statement acknowledging that socio-political involvement is a component of ones’ “Christian duty.” Thus the document discreetly created and affirmed the theological grounds for establishing the “Church” as the worldwide dominant power that is to function as a dominatrix over all the nations. It marked a major theological change among Evangelicals.

and you have nothing with out crist maby even mankind

i can do that to wendy
now give me your money

Mr. J C Southworth: You’re now banned from commenting for repeated violations of our comment policies, and I’ve deleted several of your comments.