Subject: "Sectarianism"
From: kevin4vft@aol.com (KEVIN4VFT)
Date: 18 Dec 1998 12:41:00 EST


In article <19981217145321.07300.00000641@ng-cf1.aol.com>, edarr1776@aol.com (EDarr1776) writes:

>Kevin has posted nothing that suggests that the "theistic spirit" of the
>Declaration is opposed to religious freedom,

No, the theistic spirit was NOT opposed to freedom for Christians of every sect. I've never said it was.

>nor that it was designed to
>exclude any believer of any faith, nor any disbeliever of any faith.

Name one person (besides Franklin or Jefferson [maybe]) who signed the Declaration who believed that atheists should be allowed to hold office or testify in court -- and quote him to that effect. I will promptly cite the rest of the signers, and will quote the constituitons they drafted which excluded atheists.

>The
>"theistic spirit" was clearly a civil spirit, not a sectarian religious one.

I am against sectarianism, i.e., the preference by law of one Christian sect over another.

Gov Samuel Johnston affirmed this during No.Carolina's ratifying convention:

I know of but two or three states where there is the least chance of establishing any particular *religion.* The people of Massachusetts and Connecticut are mostly Presbyterians. In every other state, the people are divided into a great number of *sects.* In Rhode island, the tenets of the Baptists, I believe, prevail. In New York, they are divided very much: the most numerous are the Episcopalians and the Baptists. In New Jersey, they are as much divided as we are. In Pennsylvania, if any *sect* prevails more than others, it is that of the Quakers. In Maryland, the Episcopalians are most numerous, though there are other *sects.* In Virginia, there are many *sects*; you all know what their *religious* sentiments are. So in all the Southern States they differ; as also in New Hampshire. I hope, therefore, that gentlemen will see there is no cause of fear that any one *religion* shall be exclusively established.[20]

Notice how the word "religion" is used. It is a mistake to impose our ignorance on the Founders. They used words with a specific meaning, which we may not understand 200 years later. Also speaking to the First Amendment in the same convention, Mr. Iredell:

[Congress] certainly [has] no authority to interfere in the establishment of any *religion* whatsoever; and I am astonished that any gentleman should conceive they have. . . . Happily no *sect* here is superior to another. . . .
This article is calculated to secure universal *religious* liberty, by putting all *sects* on a level.[21]

As Story wrote specifically regarding the purposes of Article VI:

It is easy to foresee, that without some prohibition of religious tests, a successful sect, in our country, might, by once possessing power, pass test-laws, which would secure to themselves a monopoly of all the offices of trust and profit, under the national government.[22]

(20) Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on
the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Washington: Printed for the Editor,
1836, vol. IV, p. 199. Emphasis added.

(21) Ibid., p. 194. Emphasis added.

(22) Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,
Abridged Boston: Hilliar, Gray & Co., 1833, p. 690.

I join the Founding Fathers in defending a non-sectarian Christocracy.

I have been alternately called an aristocrat and a democrat. I am now neither. I am a Christocrat. I believe all power. . . will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands of man. He alone Who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.
-- Benjamin Rush

Kevin C.
http://members.aol.com/TestOath/ca_ap_c.htm
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And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7